NSW Electoral Commission: Local Government Elections 2016 - vote tally live on the night from 6.30pm

NSW Electoral Commission, Results, 10 September 2016:

Virtual Tally Room - link active from 6.30pm

Results will be available as they are counted once polls close at 6pm on Election Day, 10 September.

The first results are estimated to be available about 6:30pm and most election night results by 10pm.

Results by NSW Local Government Area here.

Mayoral Results

Counting Mayoral Votes

Councillor Results

Counting Councillor Votes

Referendum and Poll Results

Counting Referendums and Polls

Counting Schedule

Counting Schedule

NSW Northern Rivers History - Banyam/Baigham, Lismore

Banyam/Baigham, or North Lismore, is an important place for local Aboriginal people, the Bundjalung Nation and tribes from other countries......For thousands of years the showground site has been a significant gathering place, and the landscape around the Showground is rich with stories from the Dreaming through to the present day. [History Councils NSW]

Australian Bureau of Statistics: the pot of gold that is big data

The privacy concerns arising in respect of big data tend to have two foci. First, there are ethical questions about how private information is captured and subsequently used without the subject’s knowledge or consent. Second, there are concerns that the way governments and corporations store and secure this data fails to reach an appropriate standard, leaving the door open for private individual data to be accessed by unauthorised persons, or otherwise released. [NSW LC, Standing Committee on Law and Justice, Remedies for the serious invasion of Privacy in New South Wales, 3 March 2016]

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has shown an interest in accessing the gold mine that is retail scanner data.

Australian Bureau of Statistics, 15 May 2014:

Big data refers to the large volume of structured or unstructured data that organisations generate and store. It is characterised as data that generally contain high volume, high velocity and/or high variety information and demands cost-effective, innovative ways of processing for enhanced insight and decision making .

The opportunity that big data presents to statistical agencies is the potential to produce more relevant and timely statistics than traditional data sources such as sample surveys. As an input into official statistics, either for use on its own, or combined with more traditional data sources, Big data could help position National Statistical Offices (NSOs) to improve the accuracy of their measures or the quality of the statistics produced. It can also help improve the comprehensiveness of official statistics by addressing existing data gaps.

An example of Big data is transactions data from major retailers obtained from the electronic capture of product information at the point of sale. Transactions data contain detailed information about the business name and location of the transaction, date and time, quantities, product descriptions, values of products sold as well as their prices.

Australian Bureau of Statistics, 15 October 2015:

ABS innovations will meet new and emerging data needs. For example, the ABS is developing a prototype known as the Graphically Linked Information Discovery Environment (GLIDE), which is a suite of tools using Semantic Web methods to help analysts explore and visualise linked data. GLIDE has linked personal income tax data with business tax data to explore new methods to manage, link and analyse cross-sectional and longitudinal data.

A pilot project to inform policy development through the combination of Census and social security information was established between the ABS and the Department of Social Services.

The ABS is already a user of big data - with considerable potential to use much more - as effective use of this government data reduces our need to collect information separately and directly from households and businesses.

ABS is moving beyond the public data environment to draw insights from retail scanner data, to explore options with other data sources such as investigating the use of satellite imagery to measure agriculture crop yields and new methodological approaches to using telecommunication location information.

The spatial opportunities of big data approaches are considerable and have the potential to fundamentally change how we produce population information - especially the extent to which we can measure temporal dynamics which have generally been beyond the reach of traditional approaches.

And this online article gives a strong clue as to why the ABS would like to link national census data on individuals and households to retail scanner data – it will increase the commercial value of the statistical data products it offers for sale.

Ad News, 5 September 2013:

One of the country's biggest advertisers, Woolworths, said it doesn't need big splashy ad campaigns to launch its insurance offering. Because its database tells it the people it needs to target directly.

Woolworths Limited director of group retail services Penny Winn said the company has been deliberately shying away from traditional mass advertising for its new insurance business.

Woolworths' combined insurance statistics database and frequent shopper database found those who buy milk and red meat are better insurance risks than those who have pasta, rice and liquor in their shopping baskets. As a result, Woolworths are able to target those good insurance risk customers directly with better insurance offers.

“What we've been able to do is take our insurer's car crash database and overlay it with our Woolworth's Rewards database. I rarely see actuaries get excited but they were very excited about what we found because it was so statically significant,” said Winn.

“Because you see, customers who drink lots of milk and eat lots of red meat are very, very, very good car insurance risks versus those who eat lots of pasta and rice, fills up their petrol at night, and drink spirits. What that means is we're able to tailor an insurance offer that targets those really good insurance risk customers and give them a good deal via direct channels instead of above-the-line [advertising]. And it helps to avoid the bad insurance risks.”

It seems that along with an individual’s name, address, marital status, income range, education level, ancestry, personal hygiene regimen, criminal or traffic infringement record, taxation liability and/or welfare payment history, medication and health status, the ABS would also like to have the option of assessing the individual’s alcohol consumption and insurance risk level.

What a treasure trove for those with a malicious heart and refined hacking skills or overly inquisitive police and national security agencies.

Interruptions to water supply in Maclean CBD on Sunday 11 September 2016

Clarence Valley Council, media release, September 7, 2016:

Interruptions to water supply in Maclean CBD

THERE will be interruptions to the water supply for some businesses in the Maclean CBD on Sunday as the Clarence Valley Council undertakes some essential line repairs.

Council’s works and civil director, Troy Anderson, said only businesses in River Street would be affected and it would only be those on the western side of the street between

MacNaughton Place and the Spar Supermarket and then on the opposite side of the street between Argyle and Union streets.

He said supply was likely to be interrupted between 8am and noon.

“There is a fault in the line that needs repair and, unfortunately, that repair cannot be done without interrupting supply,” he said.

“We’re holding off on this work until Sunday as it will reduce the impact on businesses in the area. We will contact all businesses today to advise them of the interruptions.

“There might be some water discolouration after the repairs are completed, so if that happens consumers might like to run their taps for a while until the water clears.

“We apologise for any inconvenience this might cause.”

A matter of trust

An Essential Research survey of 1,041 respondents was conducted online from the 2nd to 5th September 2016 and, in theory, with a sample of this size there is 95 per cent certainty that the results are within 3 percentage points of what they would be if the entire population had been polled.

This is part of what this particular survey found:

40% don’t trust religious organisations

49% don’t trust political parties;

          

35% of people don’t trust either the federal parliament or state parliaments; and

24% don’t trust local government.

Total trust has fallen since October 2015 by:

-4% for religious organisations;

-2% for political parties;

-6% for federal parliament and state parliaments; and

-4% for local government.

It would appear that the old first and second estates may have well and truly fallen into disrepute with the Australian populace.

Image: Estates of the Realm

A clearly delusional Kevin Hogan rises to his feet in the 44th Australian Parliament

Nationals MP for Page, Kevin Hogan on his feet in the House of Representatives on a Matter of Public Importance during the first sitting day of the 44^th Parliament extolling the leadership virtues of Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull:

Deputy Speaker, I can congratulate you on your election yesterday to the office of Deputy Speaker; I am sure you will be very good—and given that I seconded the motion, I am very confident about that.

I am going to reverse today's MPI, Mr Speaker, to make it much more relevant and much more real. I am going to change the MPI and talk about the Prime Minister's excellent leadership, the excellent leadership that he has now shown for close to a year……. 

If this is the sort of backbench nonsense that will clog Hansard for the next three years we will all be very weary long before the 2019 federal election rolls around.

Barely twenty-four hours after Hogan's paean of praise, the Prime Minister’s leadership failed to keep all government MPs in the Lower House for the full sitting day – resulting in this.

Sky News, 2 September 2016:

The government has suffered an embarrassing end to the first sitting week of the 45th parliament after losing three divisions in the House of Representatives.

Due to several Coalition members leaving parliament before it had been officially adjourned, Labor seized the opportunity to win the vote on three procedural matters on the floor of parliament.

It's believed to be the first time in five decades for a majority government to lose a vote in the House of Representatives.

Since the coalition no longer had the numbers in the lower house, Labor was able to dictate what business the House of Representatives could look at, using the opportunity to move a motion to discuss its proposal for a banking royal commission.

Labor won three divisions in its bid to bring on the debate - with the final vote being tied.

Speaker Tony Smith was forced to use his casting vote - believed to be for the first time - to allow the bid for the debate to be considered.

The Australian, 2 September 2016:

MPs were recalled from airports and turned back on their drives to Sydney as the government lacked the numbers to control the parliament and scrambled to avoid a humiliating defeat on Labor’s campaign to hold a royal commission into the banks.

Scott Morrison was even interrupted live on television as staffers knocked frantically on the door to inform him he was needed for a division in the House of Representatives.

Mr Pyne said those members who had left parliament, including ministers Peter Dutton, Michael Keenan and Christian Porter, had not been given his permission to leave before the House rose.

TONY WATCH (1)

 

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke, with apologies to Annie Leibovitz Source: The Australian

With a bare working majority of one in the House of Representatives the Turnbull Government ended the first sitting week of the 44^th Australian Parliament in disarray.

So it is hardly surprising that former prime minister Tony Abbott was out to draw blood from those colleagues who sacked him on 15 September 2015 finally returning him to the wilderness of the backbench.

Here is the first snippet for TONY  WATCH, an irregular post series recording Abbott’s efforts to bring down Malcolm Turnbull and re-install himself as prime minister.

The Australian, 3 September 2016:

Tony Abbott has clashed with Scott Morrison over his super­annuation changes, labelling them “deeply unpopular” with the Coalition’s base, as support builds for the Treasurer to ­increase the cap on after-tax contributions to $1 million.

In a “tetchy” private meeting with a group of Liberal and ­Nationals MPs in Parliament House on Thursday, Mr Abbott confronted Mr Morrison and Minister for Revenue Kelly O’Dwyer about their proposed $6 billion super package. He ­argued the government was wrong to offer super concessions to low-income earners.

He also argued for the government to abandon its proposed cap on post-tax contributions.

As Mr Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull seek to reach a consensus with backbench MPs on the contentious election policy, The Weekend Australian can also ­reveal that doubling the lifetime cap on non-concessional contributions to $1m would hit the budget bottom line by $750m.

MPs at the meeting said they were “aghast” that Mr Abbott had proposed hitting low-income earners — particularly working mothers — to benefit the wealthy, whom the former leader accused Mr Morrison and Ms O’Dwyer of abandoning.

“He went in there looking for a fight; he wasn’t interested in ­information, he wasn’t interested in listening to his colleagues, he wanted to have a fight,” said one MP present at the meeting.

“He kept interrupting and he wanted to derail the discussion.”

Mr Abbott is understood to have argued that the Coalition should represent lower taxes and smaller government, prompting a retort from Mr Morrison about policies Mr Abbott had put in place while leader that had ­increased taxes. Amid a series of tense exchanges with the man he believed betrayed him in last year’s leadership spill, Mr Abbott said the super changes ­announced in Mr Morrison’s first budget in May “sent the wrong message about aspiration” and he argued that there should be no cap on after-tax contributions.

When he was prime minister, Mr Abbott ruled out changing superannuation, ­saying it was not a “piggy bank” to be raided.

The Weekend Australian ­understands Mr Morrison told Thursday’s meeting that the Coalition needed to focus on its key narrative — the moral ­responsibility it had for budget repair — and pointed to legislation being pursued by the government that cut taxes and spending.

“Scott was very firm, but it was clear from Tony’s demeanour that he had not got out of bed on the right side that morning,” one MP said. Another said: “Tony ­arrived to the meeting cranky, and I think people were a bit shocked that he went for Scott so obviously. It was personal.”