Laughing at Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison

Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison exposed as a confirmed time traveller by Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell.  

Zipping back and forth to 1920 at will, in order to extract tax from my long-gone grandparents even before there were Medicare health and medical services to attract a levy.

How does he do it?

More problems for the Liberal Party of Australia

Since 2013 Liberal MPS and senators have been their own political party’s worst enemy.

First it was the discovery of how comfortable some were with accepting unlawful political donations, then it was the blatant rorting of parliamentary entitlements followed by the dual citizenship debacle.

Now it’s this……………………..

The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 September 2017:

The NSW police and Liberal party are under fresh pressure to investigate Felicity Wilson, the MP who falsely swore to have lived in her electorate for a decade, following a new police complaint and after five other Liberal candidates were suspended for irregularities in statutory declarations.

The case of whether Ms Wilson breached the law by incorrectly claiming to have lived in her North Shore electorate for a decade on a statutory declaration has been revived by a detailed 200-page complaint submitted to the Police Commissioner last week, unsigned but understood to have been compiled with input from eminent Sydney lawyer.

Harbourside police had earlier declined to investigate a complaint from a member of the public about whether Ms Wilson had breached the Oaths Act because the form she signed had a typo that rendered the title of the Act as 1990, not its true date of 1900, and they argued it lacked legal status.

But three legal experts contacted by Fairfax Media back up one of many strands of argument made in the fresh complaint, which accuses the police of misapplying the law: that a typographical error does not make the document Ms Wilson signed invalid.

Quotes of the Week

“Seven months into his presidency, Donald Trump is deeply unpopular. In Gallup’s latest poll of presidential job approval, he’s down to 34 percent, a level unseen by most presidents outside of an economic disaster or foreign policy blunder. In FiveThirtyEight’s adjusted average of all approval polling, he stands at 37 percent. And yet, few Republican lawmakers of consequence are willing to buck him or his agenda, in large part because their voters still support the president by huge margins. What we have clearer evidence of now is why. From polling and the behavior of individual politicians, it’s become harder to deny that people support the president not just for being president, but for his core message of white resentment and grievance—the only area where he has been consistent and unyielding.” [Journalist Jamelle Bouie writing in Slate, 1 September 2017]

“You heard Caleb, North Korea? The twerp wants you to take personal aim at his bedroom.” [Asher Wolf tweeting about young Australian warmonger Caleb Bond, 3 September 2017]

Seismologist's response to first evidence of North Korea's latest and largest underground nuclear test

"I think this has been interpreted as a sort of philanthropic and idealistic tweet in being absolutely terrified for the future of the world, and that's largely correct," Gibbons, who studies nuclear explosions for Norway's monitoring agency NORSARtold As It Happens host Carol Off. "But there was also a selfish element of 'my Sunday is now ruined' in it, and I don't know how many people have picked up on that point."

One aspect of social and economic inequality in Australia is gender

Via @unionsaustralia

Australian Politics 2017: Greed Unlimited #2

Former Liberal MP for Dunkley Bruce Fredrick Billson is to be investigated.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 September 2017:

Bruce Billson in Parliament. Photo: Andrew Meares

Former government minister Bruce Billson will be examined by a bipartisan committee to determine whether he acted in contempt of Parliament by taking undeclared payments from a business lobby group.

Mr Billson, who retired from Parliament at the July 2016 election after being dumped from the ministry when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull took over as leader, announced in March last year he was taking up a position with the Franchise Council of Australia. However, the income from this new position was not declared on his parliamentary register. 

Since the failure to register the separate income was revealed, Liberal MPs have expressed surprise that the former small business minister began receiving his $75,000 salary from the industry group while serving as an MP and he has faced calls to donate the amount in question to charity.

Manager of opposition business Tony Burke, who sought the inquiry, said the committee would investigate if the dual employment raised "any issues that may constitute a contempt of the House or to any issues concerning the appropriate conduct of a member" regarding his responsibilities to voters.

MPs who fail to properly complete their register can be declared in contempt of Parliament, risking a fine of up to $5000 or imprisonment for up to six months. 

Speaker Tony Smith said the House of Representatives still had jurisdiction over former MPs for their actions while in office, as in the case of disgraced Labor politician Craig Thomson who was formally reprimanded in 2015 after leaving Parliament in 2013.

Permitting the referral, Mr Smith noted two possibly relevant matters of contempt in Parliament's procedural handbook: "corruption in the execution of a member's office" and "lobbying for reward or consideration"

On 7 March Billson informed the Registrar of Members’ Interests that he was now the director and a shareholder in a new private company, added a private vehicle to his list of assets, outlined hospitality received as an MP and ended what was the last registry update of his political career with the memorable line:

By 23 March 2016 while still MP for Dunkley Bruce Billson was announcing to the world (but not to the Registrar) that he was now Executive Chairman of the Franchise Council of Australia – a paid position which commenced on 9 March.

Billson retired from parliament at the July 2016 federal election still not having declared this chairmanship or the $75,000 annual salary that went with it to the Registrar of Members’ Interests.

Seventeen months later he is calling this glaring omission “an administrative failing on my behalf”.

Not the words I would use to describe his actions.

Global grain crop yields expected to decrease due to climate change

“Agricultural production is vulnerable to climate change. Understanding climate change, especially the temperature impacts, is critical if policymakers, agriculturalists, and crop breeders are to ensure global food security. Our study, by compiling extensive published results from four analytical methods, shows that independent methods consistently estimated negative temperature impacts on yields of four major crops at the global scale, generally underpinned by similar impacts at country and site scales. Multimethod analyses improved the confidence in assessments of future climate impacts on global major crops, with important implications for developing crop- and region-specific adaptation strategies to ensure future food supply of an increasing world population.” [Chuang Zhao et al, July 2017, Temperature increase reduces global yields of major crops in four independent estimates]

Forbes, 1 September 2017:

Increased temperatures from climate change will reduce yields of the four crops humans depend on most—wheat, rice, corn and soybeans—and the losses have already begun, according to a new meta-study by an international team of researchers.

Humans depend for two thirds of their calories on these four staple crops, but yields of wheat are expected to decrease by 6%, rice by 3.2%, maize by 7.4%, and soybean by 3.1%.

"By combining four different methods, our comprehensive assessment of the impacts of increasing temperatures on major global crops shows substantial risks for agricultural production, already stagnating in some parts of the world," the scientists say in the study, which appears in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Yield increase has slowed down or even stagnated during the last years in some parts of the world, and further increases in temperature will continue to suppress yields, despite farmers’ adaptation efforts." The study, led by Chuang Zhao of Peking University, cites three other studies documenting declines in crop yields in Europe, Africa, India, China, Central and South America and other regions.

The study of studies was conducted by scientists in China, Germany, Belgium, Italy, France, Spain, The Philippines, and the United States, including the University of Florida, Stanford University, the University of Chicago, and Columbia University in New York. They hoped to settle a question that seemed to have produced conflicting results in the many studies they reviewed: what are the effects on crop yields of temperature increases from anthropogenic climate change?

The study rebuts an argument made by those who argue against mitigating climate change because they say higher CO2 concentrations will increase crop yields. That argument, the scientists say, fails to account for higher temperatures:

"While elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration can stimulate growth when nutrients are not limited, it will also increase canopy temperature from more closed stomata," the scientists say. The stomata are the pores plants use to exchange gases and moisture with the atmosphere. When plants close stomata because of higher temperatures they may conserve water but lose the ability to absorb CO2.

Higher temperatures can also increase atmospheric absorption of water in the plants and in the soil, provoke heat waves and stimulate pests and weeds.

The study anticipates that crop yields will improve in some areas because higher temperatures will lengthen the growing season, but it finds net losses worldwide.