International Court of Justice to hear Australia's case against Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean on June 26, 2013

Media Release

ATTORNEY-GENERAL TO REPRESENT AUSTRALIA 

 IN INTERNATIONAL WHALING CASE AGAINST JAPAN

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus QC will appear in Australia’s whaling case against Japan which has now been set down for a three week hearing in the International Court of Justice in the Hague from 26 June, 2013.
“I welcome the announcement of the ICJ hearing date. Australia wants this slaughter to end. We will now have our day in court to establish, once and for all, that Japan’s whaling hunt is not for scientific purposes and is against international law,” said Mr Dreyfus.
“The fixing of the date sets up the final stage in this case brought by the Australian Government. The oral hearings are the last phase of legal proceedings before the Court makes its decision.”
Australia commenced the proceedings against Japan on 31 May 2010. The International Court of Justice has received written submissions from both Parties.
Australia’s views on whaling are well known – we condemn all commercial whaling, including Japan’s so-called ‘scientific’ whaling,” said Minister for Environment Tony Burke.
“The Australian Government’s decision to bring this legal action demonstrates our determination to end commercial whaling.”
Minister for Foreign Affairs Bob Carr said Australia’s whaling case did not undermine the relationship between Australia and Japan.
“Australia and Japan have agreed that our differences over whaling will not affect the strong bilateral relationship we share,” said Mr Carr.
“The International Court of Justice is the appropriate forum to resolve these differences in a calm and measured way.”
Counsel appearing in the case with the Attorney-General will include Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson SC, Bill Campbell QC, Professor James Crawford SC, Professor Philippe Sands QC and Professor Laurence Boisson de Chazournes.
“We hope the Court will deliver its decision on the legality of Japan’s whaling before the start of the next whaling season,” Mr Dreyfus said.

April 12, 2013

ICJ hearing schedule

WHO IS THE AVERAGE AUSTRALIAN?

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics Social Trends:

Despite many people's image of the typical Australian being male, the average Australian is in fact a woman: in 2011, just over half of all people in Australia were female.Throughout most of the twentieth century, there were more men than women in Australia, but since 1979, women have slightly outnumbered men. In 1911, there were around 108 men for every 100 women, but in recent years, the sex ratio has remained relatively constant at around 99 men for every 100 women.

Much has been made in the media about the specific characteristics of this 37 year-old Australian-born married woman, living with her husband and two children (a boy and a girl aged nine and six) in a three bedroom $1,800 a month mortgaged house in the suburbs of a capital city while working as a sales assistant - with little mention of the fact that 'she' probably doesn't exist in the flesh as an average over such diverse demographic sets will almost inevitably produce a statistical myth.

Saffin welcomes tax support for providers of ethics classes

Media Release 9 April 2013

Saffin welcomes tax support for providers of ethics classes

Page MP Janelle Saffin has welcomed the Australian Government’s announcement that organisations running ethics classes in government schools will be eligible to receive tax deductible donations.

Ms Saffin said people had lobbied her about the issue and she took it up with Assistant Treasurer, David Bradbury.

“Currently the tax laws contain general deductible gift recipient (DGR) categories for organisations which provide religious lessons in government schools to receive tax deductible donations, but there is no category for providers of ethics classes.

“The Australian Government wants to support ethics classes in government schools through the provision of the DGR tax concession.

“Minister Bradbury contacted me directly this week to tell me of the Government’s announcement.

“Under the changes, the Government will amend the DGR categories in the tax laws to include organisations approved by state or territory governments to provide ethics classes in public schools.

“This means organisations running ethics classes, such as Primary Ethics, will get the same benefits as organisations running special religious education classes in government schools.

“This is great news for these organisations, who will find it easier to collect donations because of these changes.

“It’s also great news for many parents as these classes give them more choices about the education opportunities for their children.”

Anglican Church to vote on coal seam gas investments this weekend

“Why would the Church be interested in what we're doing in the first place?” Once again the coal seam gas industry fails to understand what a social license entails.

ABC News 11 April 2013:

The State Council of the Uniting Church will vote to exclude investments in coal seam gas and coal mining at this weekend's Synod in Sydney.

Four-hundred delegates are being asked to consider a motion that places corporations engaged in the extraction of fossil fuels on the Church's Excluded Stock List.

It also calls for an immediate freeze on new investments, and the sale within 12 months of existing holdings, in CSG and mining companies.

Uniting Church Minister in the North West Plains, the Reverend Robert Buchan, says increasing numbers of his parishioners are raising concerns about CSG expansion.

"There is an application that is on the table at the NSW and ACT Synod where there will be a vote taken about the Uniting Church's attitude towards coal seam gas and coal mining, particularly in areas that are ecologically sensitive, sensitive in terms of food production and particularly where there are significant aquifers," he said.

Moree-based Reverend Buchan says congregations are calling on the Uniting Church to engage in the debate.

"A mining executive said, 'Why would the Church be interested in what we're doing in the first place?”……

UPDATE

Channel 9 News 16 April 2013:

In a meeting held in Sydney on Tuesday, 400 synod council members from the Uniting Church in NSW and the ACT voted unanimously to divest from companies engaged in fossil fuel extraction and place them on its `excluded stock list'. The synod said investments in mining companies contradicted its ethical investment principles, which require it to shun companies involved in `substantially changing the environment'.

Leaving the Clarence River dam-less

Letter to the Editor The Daily Examiner 25 March 2013:

Leave river dam-less

I ADMIRE Mr Ibbotson for having the conviction and resources to restart the debate concerning dams on the Clarence in such a bold way. I learnt some things from his interesting opinion piece, but feel I must correct a number of points and state some facts that have been omitted.
Most of us here in the Lower Clarence floodplain live below the 10m contour and are at the mercy of floods - the price we pay for the benefits I guess. No doubt a structure could be built on the Clarence that would mitigate the impacts of some floods, but not without irreversible consequences. Despite whether Ibbo's dam could stop the floods we experienced this year or not, there are a number of ecological considerations that were not covered in his advert. These relate not only to his dam but any dam proposed for the Clarence.
What he and his supporters fail to appreciate is the Clarence River is a sum of its whole. The Clarence River needs floods. From its headwaters to the mouth it is one functioning ecosystem that has provided and will continue to provide directly and indirectly to the livelihoods and wellbeing of generations of floodplain farmers, fishers and communities of the Clarence Valley. The still functioning Clarence brings essential nutrients, carbon and sediment to the lower river, the estuary, the floodplain and the ocean from upstream.
It does this mostly in times of flood. With a dam we irreversibly cut this flow and impact on the function of the whole river system and its floodplains, both upstream and downstream. Flooding is an essential process of our still-functioning river.
Mr Ibbotson states that his dam will create a "pleasant lake". A look at a topographical map shows that this will be a very large "pleasant lake". About 65km in length if the 80m contour is flooded and over 100km if the 100m contour is flooded. A 100km artificial lake to replace 100km of natural functioning river habitat, home to local fish species found in numbers not known anywhere else in the world. Local fish such as the endangered eastern freshwater cod, bass, eel-tailed catfish, freshwater herring, eels and mullet along with platypus, birds and water plants are all dependant upon on this section of the river and access through it.
The fish are mostly migratory species and are dependent on the natural freshes and floods to move between spawning and breeding and feeding grounds along the length of the river from the estuary to around 800m elevation.
Mr Ibbotson's assertion that "lakes are great" because they attract more wildlife diversity, people and achieve environmental outcomes is difficult to support in the case of his dam.
To raise water levels to the 80m contour a dam of 30m height would be required. To dam to the 100m contour a dam 50m high would be required. The Clarence river gorge, located approximately 150km upstream of the Clarence River mouth, has seven waterfalls of between two and 8m in height and is a natural barrier to these migratory fish on their long (up to 300km) return trips from the estuary. The Clarence Fishtrack study has shown that Australian bass are only able to pass upstream of these falls during flood events that occur on average every 1.25 years when the falls are drowned out.
The legacy of inappropriate land use and clearing in the upper catchments, particularly the Timbarra catchment has provided a huge amount of sediment into the Upper Clarence which is now making its way downstream.
Unfortunately the volumes are so large upstream of the gorge that they are likely to pose a limit on the capacity of Ibbo's dam over time. This sediment, while damaging to our river's deep waterholes, is vital to replenish that which is washed out to sea. If it is trapped behind Ibbo's dam then we could expect increased erosion downstream.
Mr Ibbotson's claim that the tidal section "belongs to the sea" is false. It is simply the tidal portion of the Clarence River, a connected part of the Clarence River ecosystem accessed by some marine and estuary species moving upstream including sharks and dolphins who come up to feed, and freshwater species such as bass, mullet and eels which migrate downstream at times in their life cycle.
To function as the healthy productive estuary that it is, our river relies almost entirely on inputs from upstream. The replenishment of silt, sediment, nutrients and organic carbon and of course fresh water all comes from upstream, most of which would be trapped behind Ibbo's dam and therefore denied to the estuary, floodplain, wetlands, farms, soils, in-stream plants and animals that depend upon this input to replenish that washed out to sea naturally as part of the functioning river.
I hope Mr Ibbotson, after living in our Valley for a bit longer, will grow to appreciate the wonder of the east coast's most pristine large river system. He could use his creative skills and resources to promote a greater understanding of its ecology, its unique species and habitat and its existing tourism opportunities.
The advert points out accurately that the river is stressed through many human interventions. But despite this, it still supports NSW's largest fishing fleet, a viable cane industry, internationally recognised wetlands, a vast diversity of threatened species and a community which is proud of its river.
No other NSW river still does this like the Clarence, but they all used to. The main reason we are lucky enough to live alongside one of the last healthy large river systems in Australia is simply because it has been allowed to run free, to flood and to function as a river should - without dams.

Nigel Blake
Grafton

Come on down, Luke 'Mañana' Hartsuyker!

The ever laid back Nats MP Luke Hartsuyker told The Coffs Coast Advocate this month that "We're not in fantasy land, a dream sci-fi world. We have to deliver affordable broadband to people quickly" and the cost of bringing fast broadband into the house will be "addressed as time went by".

Come again?

Labor will give me free fast broadband connection into my house by 2021.

Luke will give me slower broadband to a junction box somewhere into my street by 2019 and I will have to pay for every metre of cable laid from that box into my house.

If - and it’s a big if – I can afford it.

And if I move house I bet I’ll be paying again under Luke’s plan.

So till the day I win Lotto Luke expects me to get his broadband to my PC via Telstra’s 100 year-old copper wire phone network which in 2003 even that telco said was within "five minutes to midnight" of its deathbed.

I could almost hear fellow voters falling off their chairs when they read Hartsuyker’s comments.

No wonder many techies fell about laughing when he said the Coalition broadband scheme was a win for regional areas. They know that sending broadband to a computer along old copper wire will never give the fast download speeds of fibre optic cable.

What Hartsuyker is really offering the North Coast is a souped up version of this:

For which he expects us all "to pay up to $5000" each to upgrade if Labor's Janelle Saffin is right.

Pic from the folks at CSIRO

When a newspaper sets itself up as a quasi-court meting out punishment

Every so often the Clarence Valley’s largest newspaper catches a bout of righteous indignation and does this:

The Daily Examiner will resume publishing the details of drink drivers who front Grafton and Maclean local courts.

The paper will collate the names, age and town of residence of the offenders, the location, time and date of the offence, the PCA reading and the penalty handed down.

This list will appear in the paper after local court hearings at Grafton or Maclean.*

Obviously ignoring the fact that NSW courts have rightly imposed specific legal penalties (which cannot include further public 'naming and shaming'), it wants to punish drink drivers a second time by further stigmatising the offender and, in the Clarence Valley’s small communities also potentially penalising or socially isolating the now easily identifiable innocent parents, partners, siblings or children of these offenders.

If as suggested His Honour Magistrate David M. Heilpern supports this secondary victimisation of persons not before the court (who quite rightly have an expectation of privacy) then I am seriously disappointed in both the man and his office.

That any community interest in naming and shaming has a less than noble side is shown by this remark by a NSW North Coast resident last year when the Coffs Coast Advocate broached the subject of drink driving:

Who knows we might see some local identities and characters that are our neighbours.

Neither The Daily Examiner nor the magistrate appear to have considered that the newspaper’s actual print edition containing these name and shame reports is replicated on the Internet in perpetuity.

Additionally, I have yet to find any reputable study which demonstrates that naming and shaming drink drivers lowers the NSW drink driving rate or affects which convicted drivers reoffend, so there is no excuse for The Daily Examiner’s latest effort to boost newspaper sales.

I am not alone in believing that a return to primitive responses is no solution. Here is Dr Lauren Rosewarne from the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne:

Drunk drivers, of course, is a much more complicated problem. But to suggest that naming an offender in the paper is the answer is laughable. If a person is stupid enough to drink and drive at any time, let alone repeatedly, they are not someone who makes decisions with any clarity. If the thought of killing oneself or others was not enough to prevent them sticking their key in the ignition in the first place, their name in the paper will hardly guide them better next time.

Rather than serving as a deterrent, the name and shame will simply embarrass those people around the drunk. Humiliating children and parents and spouses. 

* 10 April 2013 issue