Just because it is beautiful.......(37)

Just your standard morning surf session for these #ByronBay locals 🐬 (Video: @CraigParryPhoto in @NewSouthWales) #seeaustralia pic.twitter.com/muH0TbGyU2

— Australia (@Australia) June 6, 2018

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]

“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]

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:

1615725 (Refugee) [2018] AATA 1255

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. 

1419288 (Refugee) [2018] AATA 282

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.

Manash (Migration) [2018] AATA 180

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.

Sheikh (Migration) [2018] AATA 1056

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]

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.

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

[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 1^st 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 30^th 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.

            - Leonie Blain

Leonie Blain (left) & Lynette Eggins (right) - image supplied

Australian climate change denying journalists are at it again

This was @SkyNewsAust, tweeting on 3 June 2018:

.@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:

.@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:

For the winter outlook, issued 31 May 2018, the southeast mainland of Australia is likely to be drier than average.

June has high chances of being drier than average in the southeast mainland, and is also likely to be drier across much of central and western Australia, except the southwest.

Winter days and nights are likely to be warmer than average for most of Australia, except parts of the far north.

Broadscale climate drivers, such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole, are forecast to remain neutral during winter and thus have less influence on Australia's climate.

Below average pressure over the Tasman Sea is likely to weaken the westerlies that bring rain to southern Australia. See the Climate Influences section for more information.

 NOTES

*BOM Average weather conditions 12 Australian Towns and cities 

*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

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.