This blog is open to any who wish to comment on Australian society, the state of the environment or political shenanigans at Federal, State and Local Government level.
PLZ RT: Yamba NSW has only one dedicated taxi rank. In afternoon 10.4.18 a white Range Rover NSW DKC06Y pulled into that rank & proceed to load business files. From arrogance displayed by blonde driver it seems they were your Yamba staff @rainehorne#lawbreakingcanbecomesahabit
“We have the right
to store a copy of your [personal e-health] record and we are the only ones
in the market to have this level 4 certification.” [Romain
Bonjean, co-founder Tyde, app developer registered portal operator with Australian
Government Digital Health Agency & My Health Record, quoted in the Australian
Financial Review on 6 April 2018]
“Life is short and
shorter for smokers. Just legalise vaping.” [Andrew
Laming MP, Dissenting Report, submitted to Australian HoR Standing
Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport, March 2018]
“When we kick
their ass they all like to claim we’re drunk. I’ve been hanging out getting
ready to ram a hot poker up David Hogg’s ass. Busy working; preparing.” [St. Louis radio host Jamie Allman threatening anti-gun activist & highschool
student David Hogg, as reported by Snopes,
9 April 2018]
“They promised us
a grilling. We got PR.”[UK journalist Carole Cadwalladr
tweeting about US
Senate hearing at which Facebook founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared
on 10 March 2018]
“I start to wonder if, in fact, how the developers mine money for
Facebook has become a bit of a mystery to Zuck.”[IT journalist Richard Chirgwin opining on Facebook founder & CEO Mark
Zuckerberg, Twitter,
12 April 2018]
A cousin by marriage of the current Australian Minister for
Agriculture and Water Resources David Littleproud, John Norman, finds his agricultural business practices under scrutiny.....
Fraud charges are
expected to be laid against one of Queensland’s biggest cotton irrigators, John
Norman, within a matter of weeks.
If the trial of the
owner-operator of Norman Farming, and former cotton
farmer of the year goes ahead, it is likely to draw attention to the
links between the irrigator’s family and that of the federal minister for
agriculture and water resources, David Littleproud.
If the charges are laid,
they will also throw the spotlight on the Queensland government’s failure
in administering a key plank of the $13bn Murray-Darling basin plan, how it
withheld critical information about the alleged crimes, and how it raises
queries as to whether it lied about its own investigation.
For the past 18 months,
an expanding team of undercover detectives, cybercrime experts and forensic
accountants have been investigating Norman’s business on the Queensland/New
South Wales border, an irrigated cotton aggregate stretching 45km north from
the McIntyre river.
The investigation has
focused on whether Norman Farming misused upwards of $25m in
Murray-Darling basin infrastructure funds that were supposed to make the
irrigator more efficient and deliver water back to the ailing river system
downstream.
The plan for the basin
is funded by the commonwealth and administered by state governments. But
allegations that the $150m Healthy Headwaters Water Use Efficiency
projects in Queensland, part of the MDB plan, lacked any genuinely independent
checks on projects, means it may have been left open to corruption.
“It’s been a
loosey-goosey slush fund helping irrigators get richer,” according to Chris
Lamey, a dry-land farmer who’s seeking compensation from Norman, his neighbour.
“It’s achieved the opposite of what was intended. There’s a lot of water not
getting into NSW now and it’s backed up in dams next door to me.”
Queensland’s covert
police investigation into Norman Farming went
public in October 2017, when dozens of major crime squad detectives holding
multiple subpoenas fanned out from Goondiwindi in early-morning high-speed
convoys, heading across the floodplain to the irrigator’s properties and
several of its contractors in and around the border river town…..
This undated
file picture released on February 7, 2008, by the Australian Customs Services
shows a mother whale and her calf being dragged on board a Japanese ship after
being harpooned in Antarctic waters .PHOTO: AFP
TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese
whaling vessels returned to port on Saturday (March 31) after catching more
than 300 of the mammals in the Antarctic Ocean without facing any protests by
anti-whaling groups, officials said.
A fleet of five whalers
set sail for the Southern Ocean in November, as Tokyo pursues its
"research whaling" in defiance of global criticism….
The fleet caught 333
minke whales as planned without any interruption by anti-whaling campaigners,
the Fisheries Agency said in a statement…..
Japan is a signatory to
the International Whaling Commission moratorium on hunting, but exploits a
loophole that allows whales to be killed for scientific research.
Tokyo says the slaughter
is necessary for in-depth knowledge of whale behaviour and biology, but it
makes no secret of the fact that whales killed in the hunts often end up on
dinner plates.
It would appear that live animal exporters are still ignoring the health and well-being of livestock. Take Emanuel Exports Pty Limited, first incorporated in Western Australia in 1955.....
A scandal-plagued live
export ship slated to take 65,000 sheep to the Middle East has failed to
satisfy an inspection and must provide evidence of improvements before maritime
officials will allow it to set sail with livestock on board.
The concerns relate to
airflow in pens where sheep will travel.
Inspectors from the
Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) spent hours inspecting the Awassi
Express after it docked in Fremantle, Western Australia, on Sunday.
"AMSA has advised
the master and ship operator that they will have to arrange a third party air
flow verification report to prove compliance with air flow standards before an
Australian Certificate for the Carriage of Livestock can be issued," an
AMSA statement reads.
To carry livestock, a
ship must have a certificate for the carriage of livestock.
The inspected ship, used
by Emanuel Exports, is the same vessel linked to 2,400 sheep deaths during a
voyage to the Middle East last August.
The vision, broadcast on
Channel Nine on Sunday night, showed hundreds of sheep crowded into a small
space, workers throwing dead sheep overboard, and faeces-covered pens where
animals stood panting or collapsed on the ground.
It remains unclear what
will happen to the sheep and 250 cattle Emanuel Exports plans to send to
Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar in the coming days.
Governments and farming bodies will react after the event when particular instances of animal cruelty or poor shipping conditions make the news. However such reaction frequently makes a claim that the incident in question is a 'one-off' occurrence. There appears to be a general lack of will to address the fundamental failure of the live export industry to protect livestock from harm or to turn and face the fact that live export in itself is a cruel practice. Responsibility
for animal welfare lies in the last instance with the Australian general
public and it will not be until tens of thousands of everyday citizens pick up the phone or write/email federal ministers, MPs and senators that the public's voice will begin outweigh the political influence of farmer-grazier lobby groups.
WA's largest live
exporting company, Emanuel Exports, is back in court today to defend itself
against charges of animal cruelty brought against it under the state's Animal
Welfare Act. The case harks back to 2003 when he animal rights group, Animals
Australia, won a Supreme Court order which forced the state to investigate
alleged breaches of the Act during a shipment of 100,000 sheep on the Al Kuwait
in November of that year. The livestock industry and animal rights groups say
the outcome could set a precedent for the future of live exports. Natacha
Hammond spoke with Tim D'Arcy from the Pastoralists and Graziers Association
who has been at the opening morning of the case.
The export licence of
one of Western Australia’s oldest livestock exporters, International Livestock
Exports, the South East Asian export arm of Emanuel Exports, could be under
threat as a result of footage released by Animals Australia this week.
The footage, showing mistreatment of cattle inside Indonesian abattoirs, aired
on ABC Lateline on Tuesday.
ILE is believed to be the exporter responsible for at least one of the animals
shown in the footage.
The Federal Government’s Export Supply Chain Accreditation System, introduced
to improve animal welfare standards in the wake of televised footage of cruelty
in Indonesian abattoirs last year, places the onus of responsibility for the
welfare of all exported animals through until the point of slaughter on
exporters.
Penalties for breaches of the ESCAS include conditions being placed on
licenses, or the suspension or cancellation of a licence.
The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is currently
investigating the footage supplied by Animals Australia last Friday, and will
decide on penalties if it confirms that an Australian exporter has breached the
ESCAS rules.
Emanuel Exports director Mike Stanton told Beef Central this afternoon that the
company has suspended the operations of one abattoir within its accredited
supply chain in Indonesia whilst the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
investigation is underway…..
“It is trite
maths that statistical averages (whether means or medians) tell nothing about
the variability or otherwise of the underlying numbers from which averages are
calculated. Only if those underlying numbers do not vary at all is it possible
to extrapolate from the average a figure for any one of the component periods
to which the average relates. Otherwise the true underlying pattern may be as
diverse as the experience of Australia’s highly variable drought/flood pattern
in the face of knowledge of ‘average’ yearly rainfall figures. Yet precisely
such a mathematical fault lies at the heart of the introduction from July 2016
of the OCI machine-learning method for raising and recovering social security
overpayment debts. This extrapolates Australian Taxation Office (‘ATO’) data
matching information about the total amount and period over which employment
income was earned, and applies that average to each and every separate
fortnightly rate calculation period for working-age payments.” [Terry
Carney AO, UNSW Law Journal, Vol 42 No 2, THE NEW
DIGITAL FUTURE FOR WELFARE: DEBTS WITHOUT LEGAL PROOFS OR MORAL AUTHORITY?,
p2]
The Coalition
government's "robo-debt" program has been unlawfully raising debts
with welfare recipients, wreaking "legal and moral injustice", a
former administrative appeals tribunal member has said.
Emeritus professor of
law at the University of Sydney Terry Carney, who was on the Administrative
Appeals Tribunal for 40 years and was its longest serving member until
finishing in September, has weighed into the debate over the controversial debt
collection method saying the Department of Human Services has no legal basis to
raise debts when a client fails to ‘disprove’ they owe money.
While Professor Carney
urged it be made to comply with the law, the DHS rejected his comments, saying
its Online Compliance Intervention program was consistent with legislation.
"Robo-debt" -
the subject of a Commonwealth Ombudsman report and a Senate inquiry recommending sweeping reforms to the
program - was at the centre of a maelstrom of controversy last year and remains
loathed by critics calling for change….
Writing in the UNSW Law
Journal last
month, he said that despite the DHS' stance it remained responsible for
calculating debts based on actual earnings, not assumed averages.
“Centrelink’s
OCI radically changed the way overpayment debts are raised by purporting to absolve Centrelink from its
legal obligation to obtain sufficient information to found a debt in the event
that its ‘first instance’ contact with
the recipient is unable to unearth information about actual fortnightly earnings.
As noted by the Ombudsman, the major change was that Centrelink would ‘no
longer’ exercise its statutory powers to obtain wage records and that the
‘responsibility’ to obtain such information now lies with applicants seeking to
challenge a debt. Writing a little later, the Senate Community Affairs
References Committee challenged this, contending that
6.13 It is a basic legal principle that in order to
claim a debt, a debt must be proven to be owed. The onus of proving a debt must
remain with the department. This would include verifying income data in order
to calculate a debt. Where appropriate, verification can be done with the
assistance of income support payment recipients, but the final responsibility
must lie with the department. This would also preclude the practice of
averaging income data to manufacture a fortnightly income for the purposes of
retrospectively calculating a debt. …” [Terry Carney AO, UNSW Law Journal, Vol
42 No 2, THE NEW
DIGITAL FUTURE FOR WELFARE: DEBTS WITHOUT LEGAL PROOFS OR MORAL AUTHORITY?,
pp3-4]
North Coast Voices no longer allows the Facebook Button sited at the end of each blog post to activate when it is clicked on by a reader.
This button has been deactivated because it has become clear that Facebook Inc. is not now and has never been a corporation genuinely committed to principles of digital privacy and security of Internet users' personal information and other associated data.
Unfortunately, because Blogger installs this button as part of a set, Gmail, Blog This!, Twitter, Pin Interest and Google + have also been deactivated and, we apologise to readers who may use these features.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
[Adopted and proclaimed by United Nations General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948]
Hi! My name is Boy. I'm a male bi-coloured tabby cat. Ever since I discovered that Malcolm Turnbull's dogs were allowed to blog, I have been pestering Clarencegirl to allow me a small space on North Coast Voices.
A false flag musing: I have noticed one particular voice on Facebook which is Pollyanna-positive on the subject of the Port of Yamba becoming a designated cruise ship destination. What this gentleman doesn’t disclose is that, as a principal of Middle Star Pty Ltd, he could be thought to have a potential pecuniary interest due to the fact that this corporation (which has had an office in Grafton since 2012) provides consultancy services and tourismbusiness development services.
A religion & local government musing: On 11 October 2017 Clarence Valley Council has the Church of Jesus Christ Development Fund Inc in Sutherland Local Court No. 6 for a small claims hearing. It would appear that there may be a little issue in rendering unto Caesar. On 19 September 2017 an ordained minister of a religion (which was named by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in relation to 40 instances of historical child sexual abuse on the NSW North Coast) read the Opening Prayer at Council’s ordinary monthly meeting. Earlier in the year an ordained minister (from a church network alleged to have supported an overseas orphanage closed because of child abuse claims in 2013) read the Opening Prayer and an ordained minister (belonging to yet another church network accused of ignoring child sexual abuse in the US and racism in South Africa) read the Opening Prayer at yet another ordinary monthly meeting. Nice one councillors - you are covering yourselves with glory!
An investigative musing: Newcastle Herald, 12 August 2017: The state’s corruption watchdog has been asked to investigate the finances of the Awabakal Aboriginal Local Land Council, less than 12 months after the troubled organisation was placed into administration by the state government. The Newcastle Herald understands accounting firm PKF Lawler made the decision to refer the land council to the Independent Commission Against Corruption after discovering a number of irregularities during an audit of its financial statements.The results of the audit were recently presented to a meeting of Awabakal members. Administrator Terry Lawler did not respond when contacted by the Herald and a PKF Lawler spokesperson said it was unable to comment on the matter. Given the intricate web of company relationships that existed with at least one former board member it is not outside the realms of possibility that, if ICAC accepts this referral, then United Land Councils Limited (registered New Zealand) and United First Peoples Syndications Pty Ltd(registered Australia) might be interviewed. North Coast Voices readers will remember that on 15 August 2015 representatives of these two companied gave evidence before NSW Legislative Council General Purpose Standing Committee No. 6 INQUIRY INTO CROWN LAND. This evidence included advocating for a Yamba mega port.
A Nationals musing: Word around the traps is that NSW Nats MP for Clarence Chris Gulaptis has been talking up the notion of cruise ships visiting the Clarence River estuary. Fair dinkum! That man can be guaranteed to run with any bad idea put to him. I'm sure one or more cruise ships moored in the main navigation channel on a regular basis for one, two or three days is something other regular river users will really welcome. *pause for appreciation of irony* The draft of the smallest of the smaller cruise vessels is 3 metres and it would only stay safely afloat in that channel. Even the Yamba-Iluka ferry has been known to get momentarily stuck in silt/sand from time to time in Yamba Bay and even a very small cruise ship wouldn't be able to safely enter and exit Iluka Bay. You can bet your bottom dollar operators of cruise lines would soon be calling for dredging at the approach to the river mouth - and you know how well that goes down with the local residents.
A local councils musing: Which Northern Rivers council is on a low-key NSW Office of Local Government watch list courtesy of feet dragging by a past general manager?
A serial pest musing: I'm sure the Clarence Valley was thrilled to find that a well-known fantasist is active once again in the wee small hours of the morning treading a well-worn path of accusations involving police, local business owners and others.
An investigative musing: Which NSW North Coast council is batting to have the longest running code of conduct complaint investigation on record?
A which bank? musing: Despite a net profit last year of $9,227 million the Commonwealth Bank still insists on paying below Centrelink deeming rates interest on money held in Pensioner Security Accounts. One local wag says he’s waiting for the first bill from the bank charging him for the privilege of keeping his pension dollars at that bank.
A Daily Examiner musing: Just when you thought this newspaper could sink no lower under News Corp management, it continues to give column space to Andrew Bolt.
A thought to ponder musing: In case of bushfire or flood - do you have an emergency evacuation plan for the family pet?
An adoption musing: Every week on the NSW North Coast a number of cats and dogs find themselves without a home. If you want to do your bit and give one bundle of joy a new family, contact Happy Paws on 0419 404 766 or your local council pound.
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