The NSW Nationals MP for Clarence is not happy when heckled by anti-gasfields protestors

First term NSW Nationals Member for Clarence, former property developer and former Clarence Valley shire councillor, Chris Gulaptis, is a little hot under the collar if ABC News on 31 October 2014 is reading him correctly:

The Clarence MP says he'll sue anyone who suggests he has improper ties to the coal seam gas industry.

Chris Gulpatis said he was recently confronted by someone alleging he had a conflict of interest due to time working with a company known for its CSG work.

Mr Gulpatis worked as a surveyor for LandPartners in 2006.

But he said he never worked on CSG projects.

"Well the Chris Gulaptis that worked for LandPartners as a consultant is me, but the Chris Gulaptis who worked on any CSG projects is total fabrication and lie," Mr Gulaptis said.

He said if rumours continue to circulate about CSG connections, he'll get legal advice.

"Well, I have no ties with the industry and I get very frustrated when they spread lies and innuendo and make false allegations and I would just advise people to be very careful if they do so and they impugn my reputation then I will have no hesitation in seeking a defamation action against them," he said.

Mr Gulaptis accused his critics of spreading rumours based on a 'Google' search.

"What astounds me is people have not researched my background and they come up with these false allegations and I really have to question how much they have researched the CSG industry.

"Clearly if they are fabricating stories about me I would suggest they probably fabricating stories about the CSG industry as well, I mean GOOGLE can find you a million answers," Mr Gulaptis said.

The Daily Examiner 4 November 2014:

Mr Gulaptis said a protester stationed outside his Prince St office loudly accused him of having worked for a company with links to coal seam gas mining.

He did not deny having worked for LandPartners as a surveyor until 2006 but said his job never involved in any CSG operations.

The accusations have since made their way to Facebook.

"As far as I'm concerned, that's nothing but gossip and malicious lies," he said.

"I'm a surveyor - that's my profession - and I worked for LandPartners as a consultant.

"It certainly had nothing to do with the CSG industry and I ceased working for them in 2006

"At that stage, I had never even heard of CSG and I certainly didn't work on any CSG projects."

It would appear that Mr. Gulaptis did not enjoy being heckled by someone who questioned his 2006-2007 work history with Land Partners Limited (formerly Aspect North & KFM Partnership) – a company involved in the planning, design and construction phases of the Eastern Gas Pipeline in 1999-2000.

One has to wonder if he was also questioned about his time at as a senior operations manager for Brazier Motti Pty Ltd engineering and mining surveyors in Mackay, Queensland commencing around 2009 and presumably finishing when he won NSW Nationals pre-selection for the Clarence by-election in 2011.

A position he used to enthusiastically support the mining industry:

After enjoying some time overseas, Chris moved back to Australia when a job opportunity became available in Mackay.
"I was so happy to get involved back into a community where mining was big again," he said.

“We believe the wider Mackay region has a buoyant future in terms of attracting substantial investment in the areas of property development, mining and resources and public infrastructure,” Mr Gulaptis said . “Mining has underpinned the region's economy for a long time and now the Federal Government's Nation Building infrastructure projects will provide the impetus to sustain Mackay through the current economic downturn.”

Theappointment of Mr Gulaptis marks the completion of Brazier Motti's seniormanagement team.

The Mackay region includes the Abbot Point coal port and the town has coal seam gas exploration tenements to its west, as well as some of its businesses servicing the gas industry.

When he unsuccessfully stood for the NSW federal seat of Page in 2007 Chris Gulaptis openly supported the coal seam gas industry and Metgaso Limited:

By 2012 he was in favour of Metgasco establishing a commercial tight gas¹  field in the Clarence Valley.

ABC News 26 September 2012:

A mining company with gas exploration licences for the Clarence Valley has just signed a multi million dollar deal with an energy company.

The almost $3 million dollar agreement between Red Sky Energy and ERM Power will fund drilling of up to nine gas wells.

Clarence MP Chris Gulaptis said as far as he knows it is not a coal seam gas exploration project.

"On the surface they are talking about conventional gas, I think that's a good thing," he said.

"They're talking about domestic use, I think that's a good thing.

"I think the fact that the NSW government has at long last put some regulations in place to monitor the gas industry is also a good thing.

"So it all comes together at the right time."

Mr Gulaptis said he is not yet sure how big the local gas reserve is, or what the lifespan of the project is.

"I'm not sure about the extent of the resource is but clearly with a heavy investment there must be some confidence that the resource is fairly extensive," he said.

"It could be a good thing if it is a sustainable project which delivers gas to our domestic market."

Although from time to time in recent years Mr. Gulaptis has made mild media statements opposing coal seam gas mining in the Northern Rivers region, he has only spoken on the issue twice in state parliament in three years.

The first time on 20 June 2013 he stated; I am neither for nor against coal seam gas. He is also part of a government which has renewed two of Metgasco Limited's coal seam gas exploration licences and granted the company a production licence.

He supports the idea of designated gasfields being established within the state.

One doesn't know what Chris Gulaptis said to pro-CSG Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane in October 2013, when he attended a Canberra meeting along with fellow Nationals NSW MP Thomas George and Federal MP Kevin Hogan, Peter Henderson and Stuart George from Metgasco, a representative of ERM (a major Metgasco shareholder), the head of Geoscience Australia, Richmond Valley Council General Manager John Walker, the head of Richmond Valley Water Users Group,  NORCO chair Greg McNamara, dairy farmer Leigh Sherman, tourism operator and marine biologist Wendy Craig Duncan, Regional Co-ordinator for the Lock the Gate Alliance Ian Gaillard and Bentley landholder Peter Graham.

However, after this meeting the minister was reported as stating that; the majority opinion expressed at this meeting was that the CSG industry should operate within the framework set out by the NSW government including the buffer zone, while also meeting any conditions set out by the NSW chief scientist and where farmers agree to have CSG on their land.

That Mr. Gulaptis has chosen to issue a statement threatening legal action indicates that he is both acutely aware of community sentiment against the gas industry and sensitive about his own history in the lead up to the March 2015 state election.

This move may yet backfire on him as this Facebook post shows:

1. The term “tight gas sands” refers to low permeability sandstone reservoirs that produce primarily dry natural gas. A tight gas reservoir is one that cannot be produced at economic flow rates or recover economic volumes of gas unless the well is stimulated by a large hydraulic fracture treatment and/or produced using horizontal wellbores (Holditch, 2006). Tight gas includes basin-centred gas systems, defined by Law (2002) as low-permeability, gas-saturated reservoirs that are abnormally pressured, regionally pervasive, and lack down-dip water contacts. [SA Government Dept of State Development]

How many NSW North Coast businesses, post offices, police stations and local councils use Internet-enabled security cameras capable of being exploited?

When you walk into your local supermarket to pick up some breakfast cereal or the nearest council chambers to pay your rates do you ever wonder just how benign that security camera monitoring your movements actually is?

Have you any idea if the security camera you are thinking of installing at your business premises or above your front door at home is Internet-enabled?

What about that high-tech baby monitor by the cot?

Haven’t given it a thought? Well, perhaps you should.

These three statements were taken from the websites of companies which supply security cameras for homes, offices, shops etc.:

For highly reliable CCTV surveillance in any conditions, only trust professionally installed and tested products. Protect your property and assets with this trusted visual deterrent that gives you full monitoring and recording facilities. Watch from a central location, or remotely anywhere in the world via an internet enabled device.

Monitor your home or office with high quality MJPEG streaming video. Access, monitor and record up to 16 cameras from the Internet.

TRENDnet’s security team understands that video from some TRENDnet IP SecurView cameras may be accessed online in real time. Upon awareness of the issue, TRENDnet initiated immediate actions to correct and publish updated firmware which resolves the vulnerability.

It would appear from just these thee quotes that security flaws in Internet-enabled security cameras are not only possible but can be exploited at will and, video footage either live streamed or video snapshots posted on publicly available websites.

This potentially means administrative or sales staff and ratepayers or customers may at any time find live images of themselves beamed around the world - as would anyone who had such a camera set up inside their own home.

Cameras with a pan/tilt/zoom function just add to the fun to be had by anyone taking advantage of these security flaws.

If any of these surveillance systems are linked to audio, the privacy issues multiply because your conversations might also fly around the world for the listening pleasure of strangers. 

On 8 November 2014 The Canberra Times reported that; UNSW's Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre co-convenor David Vaile said people should think twice before using internet-connected security devices. "This is a great illustration of the illusion of security coming from surveillance and in fact you're getting the opposite, you're getting increase risk of unwanted and possibly quite hostile misuse of your information,"…

Currently over 900 Australian security camera feeds (along with many of their default passwords) are currently available at one website alone, including a 4 channel Hikvision camera at Evans Head and a 1 channel Foscam camera at Lismore.

Loved that stuffed animal in a yellow outfit, Evans Head! The office mascot perhaps?

Here is a list of just some of the vulnerable security cameras brands and associated software systems:

TRENDnet

D-Link

Cisco

Linksys

IQ Vision/IQeye

3S Vision

HD Network Speed Dome

TP Link

Vivotek

Hikvision

Foscam

Milestone

Axis

Australian conservatives don't do death well

Australian Financial Review 6 November 2014:

Among life’s most reliable performance indicators, when your wife screams at you for something you’ve written, you know you’ve got a problem.

That’s what happened to the News Corp blogger Andrew Bolt when he started dancing on Gough Whitlam’s grave within hours of the great man’s death. His wife yelled at him. And with good reason.

Whitlam passed away in the early morning of Tuesday, October 21. By 8.13am Bolt was attacking him, particularly the Whitlam government’s decision to “end the assimilation project, both for Aborigines and immigrants”.

Bolt thought it was more important to vent, for the 865th time, his personal obsession with race than to show respect for the Whitlam family in its moment of grief.

He thought that abusing a fallen prime minister was more important than conveying respect for the pinnacle of Australian democracy: the office of prime minister itself.

Perhaps, in her anger, Mrs Bolt is an advocate of the timeless adage, passed down by generations of Australian mothers and grandmothers, that “if you can’t say something good about someone who has just died, don’t say anything at all”.

It’s not as if her husband is short of things to say – space fillers for this role in the media. He could have published his 539th condemnation of the ABC, for instance, or his 724th denial of climate change.

But that’s the thing about fanaticism: it blurs one’s judgment. It makes political nutters regurgitate their ideological obsessions, blind to the respectful norms of the rest of society.

While 99 per cent of people lead normal, reasonably balanced lives, in which the emotions of life and death are seen as vastly more important than party politics, inside Australia’s media bubble there’s a group of activists with a different mindset. They regard all aspects of life as inherently political.

Thus for Bolt, Whitlam’s death had nothing to do with the passing of a father, a grandfather, a brother – the mournful sorrow of a grieving family. It was solely a political event, requiring a right-wing response.

But it wasn’t just Bolt. If the sounds of fury in his household had been one-off, an aberrant domestic dispute between husband and wife, it might have been possible to ignore his vindictiveness.

Regrettably, Bolt’s response was typical of the right-wing hunting pack. Like a gang of skinheads kicking over tombstones, Gerard Henderson, Greg Sheridan, Miranda Devine and Rowan Dean also rushed into print, vilifying Whitlam within days of his death.

In a piercing commentary on his own values, Henderson said that praise of the former prime minister had made him unwell, forcing him to “lie on the floor with a wet towel on his forehead”.

This is part of a pattern in our national life – an echo of Alan Jones’s slur that Julia Gillard’s father had “died of shame”.

Australian conservatives don’t do death well……

Australian Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne, House of Representatives Hansard, 21 October 2014:

All of us will remember where we were in 1975. As Barnaby Joyce has indicated what he was doing, I will just briefly say where I was—because I was only eight. My mother was ironing and I was watching Adventure Island, which many people will remember; I remember my mother was ironing and I was watching Adventure Island, and my mother started crying. I thought: ' I wonder why my mother's crying?' I have to let you in on a secret: she was not crying out of sadness when she heard the Whitlam government had been dismissed. She was crying out of joy.

The invisible Mrs Abbott

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott arrived at the memorial service for the late Hon. Edward Gough Whitlam without his wife, as can clearly be seen in the snapshots below.

However, The Daily Telegraph reported on the same day that: There were loud boos from the crowds outside Sydney Town Hall for Prime Minister Tony Abbott as he arrived with wife Margie. [my red bolding]

Such a silly, pointless lie.

A solo Abbott on the steps of the Sydney Town Hall with attendant:

Making his way to his seat inside the town hall with attendant:

Noel Pearson's speech at the state memorial service for Hon. Edward Gough Whitlam AC QC, 21st Prime Minister of Australia - video and transcript

http://youtu.be/QDIc45eOILE

The Sydney Morning Herald 6 November 2014:

Paul Keating said the reward for public life is public progress.

For one born estranged from the nation's citizenship, into a humble family of a marginal people striving in the teeth of poverty and discrimination, today it is assuredly no longer the case. 

This because of the equalities of opportunities afforded by the Whitlam program.

Raised next to the wood heap of the nation's democracy, bequeathed no allegiance to any political party, I speak to this old man's legacy with no partisan brief. 

Rather, my signal honour today on behalf of more people than I could ever know, is to express our immense gratitude for the public service of this old man. 

I once took him on a tour to my village and we spoke about the history of the mission and my youth under the Government of his nemesis, Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. 

My home was an Aboriginal reserve under a succession of Queensland laws commencing in 1897.

These laws were notoriously discriminatory and the bureaucratic apparatus controlling the reserves maintained vigil over the smallest details concerning its charges.

Superintendents held vast powers and a cold and capricious bureaucracy presided over this system for too long in the 20th century. 

In June 1975, the Whitlam Government enacted the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Queensland Discriminatory Laws Act.

The law put to purpose the power conferred upon the Commonwealth Parliament by the 1967 referendum, finally outlawing the discrimination my father and his father lived under since my grandfather was removed to the mission as a boy and to which I was subject the first 10 years of my life.

Powers regulating residency on reserves without a permit, the power of reserve managers to enter private premises without the consent of the householder, legal representation and appeal from court decisions, the power of reserve managers to arbitrarily direct people to work, and the terms and conditions of employment, were now required to treat Aboriginal Queenslanders on the same footing as other Australians.

We were at last free from those discriminations that humiliated and degraded our people.

The companion to this enactment, which would form the architecture of indigenous human rights akin to the Civil Rights Act 1965 in the United States, was the Racial Discrimination Act.

It was in Queensland under Bjelke-Petersen that its importance became clear.

In 1976 a Wik man from Aurukun on the western Cape York Peninsula, John Koowarta, sought to purchase the Archer Bend pastoral lease from its white owner.

The Queensland Government refused the sale. The High Court's decision in Koowarta versus Bjelke-Petersen upheld the Racial Discrimination Act as a valid exercise of the external affairs powers of the Commonwealth.

However, in an act of spite, the Queensland Government converted the lease into the Acher Bend National Park.

Old man Koowarta died a broken man, the winner of a landmark High Court precedent but the victim of an appalling discrimination.

The Racial Discrimination Act was again crucial in 1982 when a group of Murray Islanders led by Eddie Mabo claimed title under the common law to their traditional homelands in the Torres Strait.

In 1985 Bjelke-Petersen sought to kill the Murray Islanders' case by enacting a retrospective extinguishment of any such title.

There was no political or media uproar against Bjelke-Petersen's law. There was no public condemnation of the state's manoeuvre. There was no redress anywhere in the democratic forums or procedures of the state or the nation.

If there were no Racial Discrimination Act that would have been the end of it. Land rights would have been dead, there would never have been a Mabo case in 1992, there would have been no Native Title Act under Prime Minister Keating in 1993.

Without this old man the land and human rights of our people would never have seen the light of day.

There would never have been Mabo and its importance to the history of Australia would have been lost without the Whitlam program.

Only those who have known discrimination truly know its evil.

Only those who have never experienced prejudice can discount the importance of the Racial Discrimination Act.

This old man was one of those rare people who never suffered discrimination but understood the importance of protection from its malice.

On this day we will recall the repossession of the Gurindji of Wave Hill, when the Prime Minister said, "Vincent Lingiari, I solemnly hand to you these deeds as proof in Australian law that these lands belong to the Gurindji people and I put into your hands this piece of earth itself as a sign that we restore them to you and your children forever."

It was this old man's initiative with the Woodward Royal Commission that led to Prime Minister Fraser's enactment of the Aboriginal Land Rights Northern Territory Act, legislation that would see more than half of the territory restored to its traditional owners.

Of course recalling the Whitlam Government's legacy has been, for the past four decades since the dismissal, a fraught and partisan business.

Assessments of those three highly charged years and their aftermath divide between the nostalgia and fierce pride of the faithful, and the equally vociferous opinion that the Whitlam years represented the nadir of national government in Australia. Let me venture a perspective.

The Whitlam government is the textbook case of reform trumping management.

In less than three years an astonishing reform agenda leapt off the policy platform and into legislation and the machinery and programs of government.

The country would change forever. The modern cosmopolitan Australia finally emerged like a technicolour butterfly from its long dormant chrysalis.

And 38 years later we are like John Cleese, Eric Idle and Michael Palin's Jewish insurgents ranting against the despotic rule of Rome, defiantly demanding "and what did the Romans ever do for us anyway?"

Apart from Medibank and the Trade Practices Act, cutting tariff protections and no-fault divorce in the Family Law Act, the Australia Council, the Federal Court, the Order of Australia, federal legal aid, the Racial Discrimination Act, needs-based schools funding, the recognition of China, the abolition of conscription, the law reform commission, student financial assistance, the Heritage Commission, non-discriminatory immigration rules, community health clinics, Aboriginal land rights, paid maternity leave for public servants, lowering the minimum voting age to 18 years and fair electoral boundaries and Senate representation for the territories. 

Apart from all of this, what did this Roman ever do for us? 

And the Prime Minister with that classical Roman mien, one who would have been as naturally garbed in a toga as a safari suit, stands imperiously with twinkling eyes and that slight self-mocking smile playing around his mouth, in turn infuriating his enemies and delighting his followers.

There is no need for nostalgia and yearning for what might have been.

The achievements of this old man are present in the institutions we today take for granted and played no small part in the progress of modern Australia.

There is no need to regret three years was too short. Was any more time needed? The breadth and depth of the reforms secured in that short and tumultuous period were unprecedented, and will likely never again be repeated.

The devil-may-care attitude to management as opposed to reform is unlikely to be seen again by governments whose priorities are to retain power rather than reform.

The Whitlam program as laid out in the 1972 election platform consisted three objectives: to promote equality, to involve the people of Australia in the decision-making processes of our land, and to liberate the talents and uplift the horizons of the Australian people.

This program is as fresh as it was when first conceived. It scarcely could be better articulated today.

Who would not say the vitality of our democracy is a proper mission of government and should not be renewed and invigorated.

Who can say that liberating the talents and uplifting the horizons of Australians is not a worthy charter for national leadership?

It remains to mention the idea of promoting equality. My chances in this nation were a result of the Whitlam program. My grandparents and parents could never have imagined the doors that opened to me which were closed to them.

I share this consciousness with millions of my fellow Australians whose experiences speak in some way or another to the great power of distributed opportunity. 

I don't know why someone with this old man's upper middle class background could carry such a burning conviction that the barriers of class and race of the Australia of his upbringing and maturation should be torn down and replaced with the unapologetic principle of equality.

I can scarcely point to any white Australian political leader of his vintage and of generations following of whom it could be said without a shadow of doubt, he harboured not a bone of racial, ethnic or gender prejudice in his body. 

This was more than urbane liberalism disguising human equivocation and private failings; it was a modernity that was so before its time as to be utterly anachronistic.

For people like me who had no chance if left to the means of our families we could not be more indebted to this old man's foresight and moral vision for universal opportunity. 

Only those born bereft truly know the power of opportunity. Only those accustomed to its consolations can deprecate a public life dedicated to its furtherance and renewal. This old man never wanted opportunity himself but he possessed the keenest conviction in its importance.

For it behoves the good society through its government to ensure everyone has chance and opportunity.

This is where the policy convictions of Prime Minister Whitlam were so germane to the uplift of many millions of Australians.

We salute this old man for his great love and dedication to his country and to the Australian people.

When he breathed he truly was Australia's greatest white elder and friend without peer of the original Australians.

Noel Pearson is an Aboriginal Australian lawyer, land rights activist and founder of the Cape York Institute. This is the full text of the speech he gave at Gough Whitlam's memorial.

Tony Abbott's Blue Screen Of Death

Quote of the Week

Your support for John Ibbotson is laudable, but the only parts of John's last couple of letters to prove scientifically viable would be his name and address.

[The Daily Examiner, 6 November 2014, Ted Strong's letter to the editor on the subject of climate change denier John Ibbotson of Gulmarrad NSW]