Clarence Valley Council: Yamba Hill landslip red alert extended throughout April 2017

Clarence Valley Council, media release, March 31, 2017:

Slippage risk in Yamba hill

HEAVY rain in Yamba over the past two days has resulted in the reinstatement of a red alert warning for possible land slippage.

Clarence Valley Council works and civil director, Troy Anderson, said the red alert would remain in place throughout April.

Mr Anderson said Council monitored rainfall at Yamba hill area as it provided a guide to the risk of landslip.

“Once again, the rain that has been experienced has reached the level requiring a red alert to be notified,” he said.

On March 18, council advised red alert level had been reached because of heavy rainfall at that time and reduced to threat level to orange on March 22.

“The situation can change within a day, especially when high rainfall events are experienced,” Mr Anderson said.

“It can take some time for the alert level to be reduced, but this also varies depending on how much rain has fallen in the previous days and weeks.

“With the extra rain that occurred this week, the red alert level will remain in place throughout April. This will continue to be monitored and council will advise of any changes.

“If the area gets another 50mm of daily rainfall owners/site managers/occupants should monitor their land and/or buildings for evidence of any movement during and after this rainfall event.

“Should evidence of any movement be detected, those people should consider evacuation, and immediately advise council of their action.”

Below is a chart indicating trigger levels for the Yamba landslide risk zones.

The shaded area shows the Yamba landslip zone

Turnbull Government opposes rise in minimum wage because 9 out of 10 Australian workers on a low wage are NOT from highest income households

The Daily Telegraph, 30 March 2017:

Read the full article here.

Other statistics the Turnbull Government helpfully offered up to the Fair Work Commission in its submission of 27 March 2017:

* More than 50% of low income workers are in the bottom 1-4 percentiles of the 1-10 percentile range of household incomes;

* 20% of all female workers and 15.5% of all male workers are low-paid;

* 26.7% of all low-paid women and 30.3 % of all low-paid men were in the bottom two deciles of household incomes (ie. these households are likely to have an average disposable income of less than $300 to no more than $375 per week);

* 24.7% of all low-paid workers with a partner are the only breadwinner in the relationship; and

* 46.9% of all low-paid workers have children living at home, with 35.9% having dependent children ranging in age between under 1 year and 17 years of age.

Based on the figures cited in the government’s submission (much of it derived from 2012-2014 data) it appears Liberal and Nationals members of parliament and senators are quite content with the fact that so many of their fellow Australians live in either absolute income poverty or relative income poverty, while they enjoy parliamentary base incomes in excess of $195,000 per annum plus allowances and entitlements.

And Donald Trump golfs on........

At the time this article below was published Donald J. Trump had been President of the United States of America for 62 days, his approval rating stood at 39 percent according to a Gallup Daily Poll, he had played golf at least 11 times since his inauguration, sent an est. 700 tweets from two verified accounts and was reported to be watching around 6 hours of television a day.

MSNBC, 23 March 2017:

Donald Trump told reporters yesterday he felt “somewhat” vindicated about his wiretap conspiracy theory following the bizarre press conferences yesterday from House Intelligence Committee Chairman David Nunes (R-Calif.). The president then turned to Twitter to promote messages saying how right he was.

This was an odd reaction. There’s more to this story than the specific details in the president’s tweets, but the fact remains that when he was making the case for his conspiracy theory, Trump said he was personally targeted, and Nunes said the opposite. He said the surveillance was illegal, and Nunes said the opposite. He said Obama was personally involved, and Nunes said the opposite. He said the surveillance was before the election, and Nunes said the opposite. He said this was all part of a campaign-related scheme, and Nunes said the opposite.

In other words, Trump was “vindicated” to the extent that the president got literally every detail wrong.

I mention all of this because it’s emblematic of a leader who continues to struggle, in alarming ways, to separate fact from fiction. If you haven’t read Trump’s newly published interview with Time magazine’s Michael Scherer, it’s well worth your time. The questions about the president’s awareness of reality and appreciation of objective truths are only going to grow louder as a result of some of his more ridiculous comments.

He started by arguing that Hillary Clinton’s emails were on Anthony Weiner’s laptop, the Democratic primary race was “rigged against Bernie Sanders,” and that he was “totally right” about Brexit. All three of these claims are plainly and demonstrably wrong.

Trump went on to say his conspiracy theory about Barack Obama conducting illegal surveillance of him has merit because, “I have articles saying it happened.” He does not actually have articles saying it happened.

This exchange soon followed:

TIME: One of my ideas here is that throughout the campaign and now as president, you have used disputed statements, this is one of them that is disputed, the claim that three million undocumented people voted in the election…

TRUMP: Well I think I will be proved right about that too.

TIME: The claim that Muslims celebrated on 9-11 in New Jersey…

TRUMP: Well if you look at the reporter, he wrote the story in the Washington Post.

When the conversation turned to Trump’s conspiracy theory about Ted Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination, the president said, “Well that was in a newspaper…. I didn’t say that. I was referring to a newspaper…. Why do you say that I have to apologize? I’m just quoting the newspaper.”

The “newspaper,” in this instance, was the National Enquirer, a supermarket tabloid with which Trump has an eerily friendly relationship.

It’d take hours to go point by point, fact-checking every error of fact and judgment, but Trump’s final comments stood as especially interesting: “I inherited a mess, I inherited a mess in so many ways… I mean we have many, you can go up and down the ladder. But that’s the story. Hey look, in the meantime, I guess, I can’t be doing so badly, because I’m president, and you’re not.”…….

* Image of Donald Trump playing golf found at Google Images

Dear Malcolm, Barnaby, Scott, Peter, Julie, Alan and friends - before you put that federal budget to bed in May let me tell you about those living in relative poverty

As the Coalition Government approaches yet another cost cutting budget – the fourth since your political parties regained federal government – I’ve noticed how financially comfortable all six of you are in comparison to a great many of other Australians.

It must be satisfying to see your names listed against family homes, rural properties and investments:

8 March 2017	Turnbull, The Hon Malcolm, Member for Wentworth, NSW
13 January 2017	Bishop, The Hon Julie, Member for Curtin, WA
13 February 2017	Dutton, The Hon Peter, Member for Dickson, QLD
15 February 2017	Joyce, The Hon Barnaby, Member for New England, NSW
28 November 2016	Morrison, The Hon Scott, Member for Cook, NSW
16 December 2016	Tudge, The Hon Alan, Member for Aston, VIC

However, before your red pens slash across currently funded government programs covering health, education, training, community legal services and various forms of income support, you need to remove those ideological blinkers from your eyes and really look at the people you have been labelling welfare cheats, leaners, lazy bludgers and worse for the last four years.

They are not an anonymous horde harbouring a vile intent to drain money from the pockets of your family, friends and business acquaintances.

These ordinary people are not your enemy.

They are two parents with three young children but only one low-paying casual job bringing in a weekly wage.

The single mother at the bus stop who has to scrimp and save for months to buy her children new school shoes because her rent is too high and her part-time wage too small to allow her to buy all necessities easily.

The old man living alone in a rented flat who goes without meals to pay the veterinary bill for his only companion – his faithful old dog.

It is the grandmother with arthritis who gets up at 5am every weekday so she can travel to her son’s house to babysit her grandchildren so both he and his wife can work to cover the normal bills of a growing family.

A 23 year-old permanently confined to a wheelchair who is determined to live a full life and is out there job hunting every week.

Or the 17 year-old on the street selling The Big Issue to get extra money towards a boarding house bed and meals, because growing up in care left him without a support network.

It’s every middle aged person holding down three separate 8 hour-jobs each week to make ends meet in the face of widespread employer age discrimination and not enough job vacancies.

And so many volunteers in every town or village who spend their few spare pension dollars getting back and forth to the unpaid jobs that keep community alive.

These are people who deserve the certainty of an adequate universal welfare safety net – they are also the voters you will have to face in 2018.

Where to make donations to support people affected by Cyclone Debbie

GIVIT is managing all donations to support people affected by #CycloneDebbie. Donate: https://t.co/QSe2ldyL21 or SMS DEBBIE to 0437 371 371. pic.twitter.com/Xb4GaD39h3

— GIVIT (@GIVIT_AUS) March 27, 2017

Australian Red Cross:

Australian Red Cross is on the ground, working alongside the communities affected by ex Tropical Cyclone Debbie in Queensland......

Anyone wanting to know if their loved ones are safe and well, can register at register.redcross.org.au  or call 1800 100 188.

How to donate

To help Red Cross provide valuable assistance to those affected by Cyclone Debbie and other disasters here and overseas, donate to our Disaster Relief and Recovery work. 

Donations can be made online or by calling 1800 811 700.  

Tony Abbott playing the media and electorate for fools once again

The political spin……

Sacked former prime minister and current Liberal backbench MP for Warringah, Tony Abbott on 3AW Radio opining about closure of the aging Hazelwood coal-fired power plant, 24 March 2017:

It's due to shut next week…..

"Obviously there's a risk to power because the lights went out in South Australia for 24 hours," Mr Abbott said on 3AW Mornings.

"There's been further damaging blackouts in South Australia and there was a very damaging blackout in Victoria which has badly damaged the Portland aluminium smelter and led to tens of millions of dollars of subsidy being needed.

"We've got a very serious situation."

Mr Abbott said the government could not become complacent.

"The first task of a government is to keep the lights on," he said.

"It's the sign of a third world economy that the lights do not stay on 24-7."

The truth of the matter……

No Australia Card? Yes, Assistant Minister. Of course you are 100% believable

Hoping against hope I don’t have to eventually file this one under “How can you tell when Government is lying".

However, I suspect that the Assistant Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation is actually lying like the proverbial trooper, given the bare bones of the federated identity service and its attendent privacy & safety risks are on display at the Digital Transformation Agency.

The Register, 19 March 2017:

Australia's federal government is sticking with its plans for a federated identity service, but disruption minister Angus Taylor has moved to quell fears of a revived “Australia Card”*.

What first emerged last year looking like a “single identity” for all citizens across all Australian governments – before being dumped – isn't coming back.

Speaking at the Teach Leaders conference in the Blue Mountains on Sunday, Taylor – full title Assistant Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation – said the Digital Transformation Agency's (DTA's) identity project is now about setting standards rather than creating a single whole-of-government identity provider.

He also said the government considers it a citizen's right to have multiple digital identities for their interactions with government, if that's what they want.

Considering that last year, the then-DTA was trying to recruit state governments to its “federated identity” alpha (only getting the NSW government's support), the new direction looks like a considerable departure from the project's original ambitions.

Taylor said: “We don't see ourselves as creating a centralised solution that we'll roll out and everybody else has to come and play – that's not the answer. But we do need to agree on standards, and we do need to agree on principles as to how this will work.”

He also emphasised that the system had to be user-driven rather than top-down, and that citizens' consent is crucial to the model.

“I must be user-driven. If I want to have 45 identities across the Internet and across my applications, it should be my choice. If I want to have one, that's my choice too.”

He added that the “user-driven approach” has to extend to the citizen having a “genuine consent” about how they interact with a digital identity.

“That, to me, is essential to any solution, and the federal government won't endorse or be part of any solution that doesn't do exactly that.”

A formal announcement about the future of the federated identity project is coming “in the very, very near future.”......

*Comment: For readers unfamiliar with 1980s Australian politics – the “Australia Card” was proposed as a single ID for citizens in 1985.

Offered as an efficiency measure, it landed when “ID cards” in Nazi Germany and the Eastern Bloc were still fresh in many citizens' minds, especially for those who had arrived in Australia's first inrush of non-British immigration.

The uproar killed off the Australia Card after a two-year political battle, but not the concept: public service managers have never lost their love of tracking and identifying citizens.

From that point of view, Paul Shetler's DTO nearly achieved a huge social change by disguising it as “technological disruption”.