Just your standard morning surf session for these #ByronBay locals 🐬 (Video: @CraigParryPhoto in @NewSouthWales) #seeaustralia pic.twitter.com/muH0TbGyU2
— Australia (@Australia) June 6, 2018
Saturday 9 June 2018
Just because it is beautiful.......(37)
Labels:
Byron Bay,
marine life
Quotes of the Week
‘A progressive tax system “discriminates against Australians by
income….Other forms of discrimination, such as by skin colour, race,
or ethnicity, are rightly abhorred, yet the income tax system openly
discriminates against people by income”’ [Institute of Public Affairs (IPA)
quoted by Sam Longford in Junkee, 5 June 2018]
quoted by Sam Longford in Junkee, 5 June 2018]
“just because he quacks like his misogynist homophobic predecessor while
unequivocally cosying up to a deranged and ableist racist doesn't make him the
milkshake duck of prime ministers cheesh fair go” [Academic Ingrid Matthews on the subject of Australian
Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull and the Ramsey Centre for Western Civilisation’s
attempt to fund a BA university course, Twitter,
7 June 2018]
Labels:
education,
lobby groups,
right wing politics
Friday 8 June 2018
Being political tzar of all one surveys does not always mean that the world will bow down before you
There is no disputing that since becoming the ministerial head of that new 'super' federal government department, the Department of Home Affairs, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Craig Dutton has enjoyed a level of political power not shared by his ministerial colleagues.
However he is obviously not happy that this power does not intimidate Australian courts and tribunals.
Perhaps this is because his Migration and Refugee Division and Character Assessments and Cancellations Branch are not always winning Dutton's war against orphans, refugees and those under threat of torture.
Administrative Appeals Tribunal decisions1 in 2018:
The Department of
Immigration and Border Protection refused the applicant’s Protection visa. The
applicant claimed he could not return to Malaysia due to his homosexuality as
he would be subject to discrimination and abuse. The Tribunal set aside the decision.
An application made by a
family of three for Protection visas was refused by a delegate of the Minister
for Immigration and Border Protection. The applicant seeking protection claimed
he was at risk of torture if returned to Pakistan. The Tribunal remitted the
decision with the direction that the applicant satisfied section 36(2)(aa) of
the Migration Act 1958.
The review applicant
sought two Orphan Relative visas for his younger siblings on the basis that
their only existing carer, their mother, was incapacitated and could not care
for them. The applications were refused by a delegate under section 65 of
the Migration Act 1958 and the Tribunal remitted the applications for
reconsideration with the direction they met the criteria for the visas.
The Department
of Immigration and Border Protection refused the visa applicant's Student
visa. The visa applicant was a child residing in Somalia and both of his
parents were deceased. His maternal aunt, an Australian citizen, was his carer
and was attempting to return home to Australia to her family with the child. The
Tribunal set aside the decision.
Footnote:
1. "The
review of decisions to refuse or cancel a visa on character grounds is a small
component of the broad range of decisions about visas reviewed by the AAT, and
an even smaller component of the overall caseload managed by the AAT.
To put
these matters in context, in 2016–17, the Tribunal finalised 42,224 reviews, of
which 168 decisions (or less than 0.4 per cent), related to visa cancellations
and refusals on character grounds
In
considering and deciding these matters, Tribunal members are bound to apply Ministerial
Direction No. 65 which sets out three primary considerations which must be
taken into account. These include protection of the Australian community; the
best interests of minor children in Australia; and expectations of the
Australian Community. The Direction also sets out five ‘other
considerations’ which must also be taken into account, including: international
non-refoulement obligations; the strength, nature and duration of ties; impact
on Australian business interests; impact on victims; and the extent of
impediments if removed. These decisions are routinely published and
contain an explanation of the Members’ evaluation of each of these
considerations." [AAT
appearance at Senate Estimates, 25 May 2018]
Labels:
asylum seekers,
children,
immigration,
law,
Turnbull Government
Whatever happened to what's his name?
It seems that mainstream media reports concerning the Barnaby Joyce soap opera have jogged a few memories in the Clarence Valley.
I have been asked recently about the current status of former Clarence Valley Council general manager Scott Greensill.
As far as I can tell after he left Clarence Valley Council in March 2017 he turned up as General Manager at Fire
& Rescue NSW, followed by a stint as Governance Manager (Fixed Term) at Central Highlands Regional Council in
Queensland and, then he became Director
Corporate, Governance and Financial Services and
sometime Acting Chief Executive Officer at Issac Regional Council in 2018.
And no, I don't know if any of those old rumours were true.
Labels:
local government
Thursday 7 June 2018
Only 39 days to go until concerned Australian citizens can opt out of the Turnbull Government's collection of personal health information for its national database
Apparently this email is currently being sent out to registered Australian citizens.
Australian Digital Health Agency, email, 5 June 2018:
Hello,
You are receiving this email because you registered your email address at myhealthrecord.gov.au to find out more information about how to opt-out of the My Health Record system.
If you do not want a My Health Record, you must register your choice between 16 July and 15 October 2018 during the opt-out period. It is not possible to opt-out of having a record before the opt-out period starts.
The opt-out period will not apply to individuals who have previously chosen to have a My Health Record, or were included in the Nepean Blue Mountains or North Queensland opt-out trials in 2016. Individuals who have an existing My Health Record can cancel their record at any time. Instructions on cancelling a record can be found on the My Health Record website.
Once the opt-out period starts you will receive another email letting you know that the opt-out period has started and what to do if you still want to opt-out.
A My Health Record is a secure online summary of an individual’s key health information. 1 in 5 Australians already have one. It’s an individual’s choice who sees their My Health Record, what’s in it and who it is shared with. My Health Record has safeguards in place to protect an individuals’ information including encryption, firewalls and secure login.
For further information about the My Health Record, please visit the My Health Record website.
Thank you,
The My Health Record System Operator
www.digitalhealth.gov.au
You are receiving this email because you registered your email address at myhealthrecord.gov.au to find out more information about how to opt-out of the My Health Record system.
If you do not want a My Health Record, you must register your choice between 16 July and 15 October 2018 during the opt-out period. It is not possible to opt-out of having a record before the opt-out period starts.
The opt-out period will not apply to individuals who have previously chosen to have a My Health Record, or were included in the Nepean Blue Mountains or North Queensland opt-out trials in 2016. Individuals who have an existing My Health Record can cancel their record at any time. Instructions on cancelling a record can be found on the My Health Record website.
Once the opt-out period starts you will receive another email letting you know that the opt-out period has started and what to do if you still want to opt-out.
A My Health Record is a secure online summary of an individual’s key health information. 1 in 5 Australians already have one. It’s an individual’s choice who sees their My Health Record, what’s in it and who it is shared with. My Health Record has safeguards in place to protect an individuals’ information including encryption, firewalls and secure login.
For further information about the My Health Record, please visit the My Health Record website.
Thank you,
The My Health Record System Operator
www.digitalhealth.gov.au
[my yellow highlighting]
CONSERVATION GROUP FOUNDED TO COMBAT PULP MILL CELEBRATES ITS HISTORY
"No Pump Mill" memorabilia - image supplied |
The Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition celebrated its “almost” thirty years of activity at a Re-Weavers’ Awards Dinner in Grafton on 1st June.
The
Re-Weavers Awards,
which are held annually on the Friday nearest to World Environment Day,
recognise the valuable contribution individuals and groups have made to
environmental protection over many years.
The
Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition was founded almost thirty years ago because
of a proposal for a chemical pulp mill in the Clarence Valley.
On
30th August 1988 The Daily Examiner’s front page headline
shouted: “$450m valley mill planned by Japanese”. Daishowa International had made an
in-principle decision to build a chemical pulp mill on the Clarence River near
Grafton. This, it was claimed, would create about 1200 direct and indirect jobs
in the region.
This fired up the
local community. Some community members welcomed the announcement,
claiming the mill would provide an enormous boost to the local economy.
But not everyone welcomed
it. Many feared the impact such a large
industrial development would have on the local environment – not just of the
Clarence Valley but of the whole North Coast because it was obvious that such a
large mill would be drawing its feedstock from across the region. Concerns included the amount of water this
mill would use, the decimation of the forests, the likelihood of poisonous
effluent being released into either the river or the ocean and air pollution.
On 19 September 1988 concerned people met in Grafton to discuss the
proposal and consider what action should be taken. This meeting resulted in the formation of the
Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition (CVCC).
Rosie
Richards became its President. She was
an ideal person for the job in many ways.
In the conservative Clarence community she was not publicly associated with
any of the recent or on-going conservation issues. While she was concerned
about environmental impacts, both short and long-term, and made no secret of
the fact, she did not look like a greenie – or the conservative view of what a
greenie looked like. Rosie was 56 years old.
She was a grandmother. Her background was not that of a stereotype greenie
either. She grew up in Pymble and in the early fifties was a member of the
Liberal Party Younger Set. Her other
life experiences included years as a farmer’s wife and the wife of a
professional fisherman. (Her husband
Geoff had been both.)
Rosie’s personality
also qualified her for this leadership role in the pulp mill campaign. She ran both the CVCC committee and general
meetings efficiently. She was calm,
sincere, friendly, articulate and very much “a lady” in old-fashioned
terms. But she was also determined and
possessed a “steel backbone”. This
“steel backbone” and her courage were very necessary in the campaign to obtain
information and disseminate it to the North Coast community.
Courage was
necessary to the campaigners because those promoting the benefits of Daishowa’s
plans attacked the CVCC, referring to its spokespersons as scaremongers and “a
benighted group who distort the facts.” Those in power locally and at the state
level weren’t in any hurry to provide
facts but they decried the efforts of community members who were trying to find
information on pulp mill operations.
However, this did not deter the CVCC.
It sought information on pulp mills and pulping processes from around
the world, asked questions of those in power and disseminated information to
the community.
Other
important campaigners included media spokesperson Martin Frohlich and Bruce
Tucker whose time in Gippsland had shown him what it was like to live near the
Maryvale Pulp Mill. Others who played vital roles were John Kelemec, Rob Lans,
Geoff Richards and Bill Noonan as well as core members of the Clarence Valley
Branch of the National Parks Association. These included Peter Morgan, Stan
Mussared, Celia Smith and Greg Clancy.
Public meetings were held in Grafton, Iluka, Maclean and Minnie Water as
well as in other North Coast towns. In
addition the group produced information sheets, issued many media releases,
participated in media interviews, distributed bumper stickers, circulated a
petition, met with politicians both in the local area and beyond, and wrote
letters to politicians and The Daily Examiner.
And there were many others who wrote letters of concern to the paper as
well as some who wrote supporting the proposal.
It was an amazing time as there was a deluge of letters to the Examiner.
There has been nothing like it since!!
One of my
memories is taking part in a Jacaranda procession, probably in 1989. We used Geoff Welham’s truck which was
decorated with eucalypt branches, and driven by Rob Lans with Bill Noonan
beside him. Others of us, wearing koala masks, were on the back. As we drove down Prince Street, Bill had his
ghetto blaster on full volume blaring out John Williamson singing “Rip, rip
woodchip.” I think we drowned out music of the marching bands.
Following
Daishowa’s announcement that it would not be proceeding with its pulp mill
proposal, CVCC President Rosie wrote to the Examiner (4 April 1990)
praising the efforts of the community in defeating the proposal:
“It has been an interesting nineteen months; a period
that has seen the resolve of north coast people come to the fore; we have seen
People Power used in a democratic way to say ‘No’ to something that we knew would harm our
existing industries and our air and water.
If it had not been for the people of the Clarence Valley and their
attendance at public meetings, their letters to politicians, to newspapers in
Tokyo and our own Daily Examiner, and their strong support of the Clarence
Valley Conservation Coalition, we may have had a huge polluting industrial
complex set down in our midst, without a whimper.”
People Power
did do the job – but Rosie Richards and the others on the Coalition Committee
played a very important part in organizing and channelling that people power.
The lessons
of history never seem to be learned. Those
campaigning to protect the environment from the greed of pillagers face the
same problem today.
What Rosie
wrote in a letter to The Daily Examiner in November 1990 still applies
today:
“It seems that every time we stop for breath another
issue crops up that summons us to speak up for common sense and common
interest. Most of us would much rather
be doing other things besides acting as watchdogs for what we see as poor
bureaucratic decisions and flawed advice to governments.”
In the same
letter she answered a criticism that conservationists were “greedy”:
“We speak out as we do because we believe that the
people of today’s and tomorrow’s Australia will not be well served by a country
whose finite resources have been exhausted by sectional interests that have
until now not had to make long term plans for the sustainability of their
industries.”
The pulp
mill campaign was significant both in the Clarence and further afield. It reinforced the message of the other earlier
environmental victory – the success of the Clarence Valley Branch of the
National Parks Association in campaigning to save the Washpool Rainforest. Both of these campaigns showed the state
government and local councils as well as the North Coast community in general
that there were people who were prepared to campaign strongly for effective
protection of the natural environment.
Wednesday 6 June 2018
Australian climate change denying journalists are at it again
.@chriskkenny: Australia’s total
carbon emissions is around 550 million tonnes. That is lower than the annual
emissions from volcanoes. If our emissions go up or down, it will make
precisely no difference to the planet. #kennyonsunday
News Corp journalist, author, former Liberal Party political
adviser and Sky News host of "Kenny on Sunday", Chris Kenny is toying with comparisons in an attempt to downplay climate change facts
and figures.
According to
the Dept. of Environment and Energy Quarterly
Update of Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory annual
greenhouse gas emissions for 2017 stood at 531.9 million tonnes carbon
dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2-e) by September that year.
That
represents a 1.1 per cent increase in Australia’s annual emissions.
While
according to U.S.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, human emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and cement production (green line)
have risen to more than 35 billion metric tons per year, while volcanoes (purple line) produce less than 1 billion metric tons
annually. NOAA Climate.gov graph, based on data from
the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis
Center (CDIAC) at the DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and
Burton et al., 2013. [my
highlighting and emphasis]
Leaving aside the fact that Australia has no active volcanoes so no
direct comparison can be made between domestic man-made greenhouse gas
emissions and domestic natural volcanic emissions, it is clear that the level of human
emissions far exceed volcanic emissions at global levels.
It is also clear that a rise in Australia’s annual greenhouse gas emissions
will have an impact, because carbon emissions are still rising globally and
this country's annual increase is factored into that total global increase.
It is precisely that total global greenhouse emission figure which is definitely making a difference to the planet and, according to established climate science, that difference is already causing global warming induced problems world-wide.
No amount of sophistry will change that fact.
This was also @SkyNewsAust tweeting on 3 June 2018:
This was also @SkyNewsAust tweeting on 3 June 2018:
.@rowandean: On the first day of the
calendar winter we've also had a record breaking cold start to the season
despite, only a day earlier, the climate change-loving Bureau reassuring us all
how warm it would be.
News Corp journalist, magazine editor, author and Sky News commentator, Rowan Dean, is confused about what the term "record breaking" actually means.
On 1 June -
the exact date of the start of calendar winter - in Sydney the lowest temperature was 13°C. The lowest recorded temperature for 1 June was 2.1°C in 1932 and the average minimum for June is 18.6°C.
In Melbourne on the same
day the lowest temperature was 3°C. The lowest June record for Melbourne
was previously set at 3.3°C in 1937 and the average minimum for June is 6.9°C.
Brisbane's lowest temperature on 1 June
was 8°C. The lowest recorded June temperature for Brisbane
was 5°C in 2001 and the average minimum for June is 10.9°C.
So yes, it was a cold start to winter. However the cold was no across the board record breaker.
When it comes to what the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) stated about Winter 2018 - it didn't state every single day would definitely be warm or warmer.
What it did state on 31 May 2018 was that:
When it comes to what the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) stated about Winter 2018 - it didn't state every single day would definitely be warm or warmer.
What it did state on 31 May 2018 was that:
NOTES
*timeanddate.com at https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/australia for Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane temperatures on 1 June 2018
*BOM at http://www.meteorology.com.au/local-climate-history for climate histories of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane
* http://www.eldersweather.com.au/climate.jsp
* http://www.eldersweather.com.au/climate.jsp
It doesn't take a genius to see that Sky News Australia (founded by Rupert Murdoch in 1989) appears to be running an anti-science agenda.
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