Paul Howes: Labor's Answer To Tony Abbott

Abbott - v.t. To make a wrong, tasteless, controversial or foolish remark, 

only to retract it the next day.

Once more Australia Worker’s Union National Secretary Paul Howes proves he has mastered an Abbott-esque approach to the media. Grab the moment and spout whatever nonsense comes to mind regardless of the facts of the matter.

Greens Party plays to Woodside's tune 12 April 2013:

Paul Howes said the Greens Party had been Woodside and Shell’s unofficial partner in their plans to rip-off the Australian community.

“The Greens Party, through their long-standing campaign against the James Price Point facility, have given the oil multinationals the perfect cover for moving offshore.

“Today Christine Milne and her colleagues have been celebrating the loss of this project, thousands of Australian jobs, and billions of dollars worth of local content.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Christine Milne is heading straight to Perth to share a glass of champagne with Woodside executives to toast their multi-billion dollar heist at the expense of the Australian public.”

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven (13 October 1925 - 8 April 2013)

http://youtu.be/TbYeJIvVwZk

15  April 2013:

'Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead' failed to top the UK charts this weekend, entering the UK singles chart at number two following a campaign to get the track at the top after Margaret Thatcher's death.

Dexon Group Holdings of Hong Kong exploring for gold and antimony in the Kyogle region

 

Dexon Group Holdings Ltd of Kowloon, Hong Kong, through Dexon Resources No. 3 Pty Ltd (directors Peter Blair, Gennadii Nedria and Mark Levey) has reportedly approached twelve land owners in the Kyogle district concerning one of its mineral exploration leases where it is said to be looking to eventually mine gold and antimony.

 

Dexon Group Holdings’ three associated companies registered in Australia hold mineral exploration licenses EL 7935, EL 7936 and EL 7398 in New South Wales.

 

Gold and antimony mining on the NSW North Coast has a history of environmental damage and catastrophic water pollution:

 

Estimates of sediment migration rates and amounts of Sb and As transported in suspension and solution imply that the catchment contamination will be long-term (centuries to millennia)

 

Antimony contamination, Urunga 2011

I don't know how many times reputable economists have to say it before the Murdoch media will believe it....

 

Here is Stephen Koukoulas at Market Economics trying for the xxxxth time to demonstrate the obvious fact that Australia’s public debt is not at a problematic level:

 

 

Sloan fails to mention in her piece the actual indicators which determine whether a particular level of government debt is a problem or not. These indicators are not opinion or a hunch or a doctrinal Tea Party like fear but simple and observable benchmarks.

Perhaps most important of all of these is the level of government bond yields, or the interest rate that a government pays on its debt. This is a good benchmark on which to judge whether or not government debt is something to be nervous about. In simple terms, if there is too much debt, yields are high. If bond yields are low and the bond market is free of government intervention, there is no fear about government debt.

The Australian 10 year government bond yield is currently around 3.3%, marginally above the record low reached in the middle of 2012. In the last 50 years, there have been only a few months, all of them in the last year, where yields have been lower than they are today. No nervousness here.

In 2013 Australian universities are still predominately the professional training ground of the middle and upper classes while government schools remain the main education providers. So which level of education is most in need of increased government funding?

Once the Gillard Government had announced funding measures to underpin its policy response to the Review of Funding for Schooling Final Report December 2011 (Gonski Report) there was an immediate and predictable outcry regarding the government’s intention to remove $2.3 billion from direct/indirect tertiary education funding commencing in 2014.

Leaving aside the obvious wealth of some of the older universities, is this outcry justified? Should Australian taxpayer dollars continue to be spent at record levels on higher education or should these be spent in a more immediately equitable manner with the eventual aim of increasing the education standard of the population?

Australian Society

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2009–10 twenty-three per cent of the Australian population lived in low income-low wealth households. With sixty-one per cent of female single parents and forty-nine per cent of single male parents living in low economic resource households.

Economic hardship often means that people experience a relatively low material standard of living. For people who live in economic hardship, access to economic resources that provide for the consumption of goods and services such as food, housing, clothing, medical care and so on are limited Low economic resources can also restrict a person's ability to be included in the society around them, and limit their opportunities to create the life they want.

The Universities

The Higher Education Base Funding Review Final Report (O c t o b e r  2 0 11) states that: In 2007, total government funding to the higher education sector was $8 billion, of which base funding was $6.4 billion. In 2011, total government funding had reached close to $12 billion, of which $8.5 billion is base funding. It is estimated that in 2013, total government funding will be $13.6 billion and total base funding will be $10 billion.

A further $500 million will come from the Education Investment Fund for the tertiary sector over the next five years, although it is not yet known what proportion of these funds will be allocated to universities.

According to the Department of Industry, Innovation, Research and Tertiary Education: From 2012 to 2015 the Gillard Government will invest $58.9 billion in higher education and that funding for university student places in 2013 was 10.1 per cent higher.

The majority of students enrolled at Australian universities still come from middle or high socio-economic status backgrounds.

While university enrolments in Australia have more than doubled in the last two decades, students from low SES backgrounds are three times less likely to enter university than those from high SES backgrounds……

An obvious barrier to a student’s entry into higher education is non-completion of secondary school and general poor academic achievement. As noted above, the literature identifies that secondary education non-completion rates are much higher for low SES, Indigenous, and regional and remote student groups than they are for others. The evidence points to a strong negative correlation between low SES and secondary school completion and thus entry to higher education.

The Australian Council for Education Research media release indicates that in 2013 an estimated 14.3 per cent to 18.5 per cent of domestic university undergraduates in Australian universities in 2013 come from a low socioeconomic background.

Primary and Secondary Schools

Government schools remained the main provider of school education in Australia, with a total of 2,342,379 students, compared with 736,595 students attending Catholic schools, and 511,012 students attending Independent schools…..

..in absolute terms Indigenous student numbers in government schools, 149,307, far exceeded the number in non-government schools, 26,750….

In 2012 the apparent retention rate for all students was 79.9%, with the female rate of 84.3% being 8.5 percentage points higher than the male rate of 75.8%.

In 2012, the rate varied considerably across affiliations: 75.8% in government schools, 82.1% in Catholic schools, and 91.8% in Independent schools, the latter down from a high of 94.9% in 2009…..

Between 2011 and 2012, the apparent retention rate for Indigenous males rose by 3.1 percentage points to 49.2%, and for Indigenous females rose by 1.6 percentage points to 52.9%. The apparent retention rates from Year 7/8 to Year 10 for these students were significantly higher at 96.9% for males and 100.0% for females.

A rather disturbing picture

In Focus: North Korea's Nuclear Threats 
The New York Times
12 April 2013

Dart Energy in trouble overseas as well as in Australia

Apparently Dart Energy’s ‘farewell’ to Australia* contained more spin than usual and bad business choices may be at the bottom of its restructuring, cost cutting and refocusing program.

Herald Scotland 7 April 2013:

The troubled Australian company Dart Energy has applied for planning permission to extract up to 60 billion cubic feet of coalbed methane at Airth, near Falkirk.

It has signed a £300 million deal with SSE for the supply of gas over the next seven years, and has said it hopes to start delivery before the end of this year.

But the Sunday Herald has seen evidence that the calorific value of the gas, which is crucial in determining its price for consumers, is unlikely to be high enough for the National Grid.

Dart has been warned about the problem by independent consultants.

The company has been told that the gas may need to be blended with higher-quality gas on the grid, which, if permitted, would have cost implications.

Alternatively the gas could be enriched by adding propane, a high-risk process that is not included in the current planning applications by the company.

According to experts, enrichment would mean importing nearly 100 tonnes of propane every day, in three large tanker deliveries.

It would also require part of the site to be regulated by the Health and Safety Executive as a "major accident hazard".

Dart declined to directly answer questions about calorific value, though it insisted that its gas would be saleable. Critics, however, claimed that the gas-quality issues could be the "final straw" for the Falkirk development.

Stirling Green councillor Mark Ruskell accused Dart of "fuelling suspicion" about its gas development plans.

"If the gas requires further treatment then it makes a mockery of the current planning applications under consideration by two councils," he said.

"It's clear that a moratorium is required at the very least until the planning system is able to address all the concerns that unconventional gas developments are raising."

Dart's applications to Falkirk and Stirling councils to sink 22 wells at 14 sites have prompted more than 700 objections to date.

The councils have postponed consideration of the applications, which will not now be heard until next month at the earliest……

* Interestingly when Dart withdrew from Australia it only had nineteen employees listed in this country.