Tuesday 6 November 2018

Like Donald Trump Scott Morrison is a politician who should keep his tweets to a bare minimum


This is a classic example of a badly through through tweet.

Scott Morrison apparently thinks gender is recorded on drivers licences and, having failed to check his own NSW Drivers Licence, he tweeted this belief to the world.
This was a typical response on Twitter.
Yes, that’s right. The states not federal government issue drivers licences and as can clearly be seen on this NSW mockup – although the current licence application form asks for full name, residential address, date of birth and gender – only the first three appear on the actual drivers licence issued.

Image from Nambucca Guardian

Yes, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison gets more Trump-like with each passing day.

Monday 5 November 2018

Calling all Newtown, Erkinville, Redfern, Stanmore girls wherever you may now live - it's time to make history!


New South Wales goes to the polls on 23 March 2019 to elect a state government. It's everyone's chance to make a difference.

You may not know me, but people call me Aunty Norma. I'm a proud Wiradjuri woman and I've lived in the electorate of Newtown almost all my life.

I grew up in Redfern. Things were very different back then. Growing up was tough but we got by. My mother looked after us and because I was the baby, she took me everywhere with her.

I went to my local public school in Erskineville and Stanmore. As the only Indigenous kid in my class I remember sitting up the back and hoping no-one would notice me because I was so shy, but I knew all the answers and I always loved school.

My passion for education came from my mother. She taught me that education opens doors and that education is powerful.

After school, my love of education took me to Teacher's College and it was activists like Charles Perkins and Gary Foley who inspired me to make the journey to Harvard.

As the very first Aboriginal person to go to Harvard, I could not fail. I had to achieve.

With support from the Black Womens Action Group I got into Harvard. There were no scholarships back then. I did everything I could to survive and in 1985 I made history and graduated from Harvard with a Masters of Education.

This to me was such a proud achievement.

These experiences made me the community activist I am today. I fought to open the National Aboriginal College and started the Lions Club in Redfern.

I also started Murawina, the first fully run Aboriginal full day care early childcare program in Redfern.

I feel like I've come so far from the little girl who sat at the back of the classroom, but every day things get harder for people like me.

Rent goes up, bills get more expensive, Uni and TAFE get more out of reach and our income stays the same.

That's why I'm asking for your help to make history. I need your help to become the first Indigenous member for Newtown.

I really can't do this alone and I need everyone's support.

If you can donate a couple of dollars, get involved in my campaign or tell your friends and family about my story, it all makes a huge impact.

Looking back, the shy kid at the back of the classroom would never have dreamed about running for Parliament.


This is our chance to make history.



Aunty Norma
Labor Candidate for Newtown


P.S. If you would like to contribute, click here!
Keep up to date with NSW Labor on Twitter and Facebook. To make a donation to NSW Labor, click here.

 This email was authorised by Kaila Murnain level 9, 377 Sussex Street, Sydney.

Scott Morrison doesn't know watt's watt


This was the ‘interim’ Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on ABC TV The Drum, 23 September 2018:

SCOTT MORRISON: I want more dispatchable power in the system.
ALAN JONES: Could you stop using the word dispatchable? Out there they don’t understand that.
SCOTT MORRISON: Well, real power, OK?
ALAN JONES: Real power.
SCOTT MORRISON: Well, fair dinkum power.

So what exactly is this “dispatchable power” the Prime Minister is talking about whenever he cites “fair dinkum power” that “works when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing”.

This is what Energy Education:has to say on the subject:

Dispatchable source of electricity

A dispatchable source of electricity refers to an electrical power system, such as a power plant, that can be turned on or off; in other words they can adjust their power output supplied to the electrical grid on demand.[2] Most conventional power sources such as coal or natural gas power plants are dispatchable in order to meet the always changing electricity demands of the population. In contrast, many renewable energysources are intermittent and non-dispatchable, such as wind power or solar power which can only generate electricity while their energy flow is input on them.

Dispatch times
Dispatchable sources must be able to ramp up or shut down relatively quickly in time intervals within a few seconds even up to a couple of hours, depending on the need for electricity. Different types of power plants have different dispatch times:[3]

Fast (seconds)
Capacitors are able to dispatch within milliseconds if they need to, due to the energy stored in them already being electrical, whereas in other types of power storage such as chemical batteries the power must be converted into electrical energy.
Hydroelectric facilities are also able to dispatch extremely quickly; for instance the Dinorwig hydro power station can reach its maximum generation in less than 16 seconds.[4]

Medium (minutes)
Natural gas turbines are a very common dispatchable source, and they can generally be ramped up in minutes.
Solar thermal power plants can utilize systems of efficient thermal energy storage. It is possible to design these systems to be dispatchable on roughly equivalent timeframes to natural gas turbines.

Slow (hours)
While these systems are typically regarded as only providing baseload power, they often have some flexibility.
Many coal and biomass plants can be fired up from cold within a few hours. Although nuclear power plants may take a while to get going, they must be able to shut down in seconds to ensure safety in the case of a meltdown.

What this tells us is that renewable energy can and is used as “dispatchable power” and often responds faster than coal-fired power.

Battery storage by way of home battery installations and mega battery installations such as the Tesla system in South Australia are just two successful examples of storing renewable power for later use – making it dispatchable power.

According to the Melbourne Energy Institute, South Australia’s new mix of renewables and traditional source of energy is working well.

What has become increasingly obvious over the years is that once renewable energy via wind and solar reaches a reasonable scale it becomes cheaper than coal and other fossil fuels. That is where Australia is now.

Yet Scott Morrison apparently doesn’t understand how electricity generation and the national power grid work – it’s a though he has been asleep for the last decade. Because he appears to believe that renewable energy systems have not evolved to meet market demands.


Which in his mind means more coal-fired power.

Expensive, polluting, coal-fired power supplying electricity to Australian homes at maximum cost to ordinary consumers.

Sunday 4 November 2018

Xenophobic, racist US President Donald J Trump produces a midterm election campaign video


This is US President Donald J. Trump campaigning ahead of the American mid-term elections on 6 November 2018.
As with everything Donald Trump tweets - a little fact checking is in order.

Firstly, the convicted felon in this video entered the USA illegally twice. The first as a 16 year-old under a Democratic Administration in 1963 ,which later gaoled and then deported him in 1997 on drug offences. The second time he entered the USA was under a Republican Administration sometime around 2002 and he was not arrested until 2014 – after the drug-fuelled killings for which he was sentenced to death in April 2018.

Secondly, the Fox News mass scene shown is not necessarily video of recent events as Trump has a history of misrepresentation and, the current 'migrant caravans’ are nowhere near the USA-Mexico border, as the first caravan had not yet reached San Juan Guichicovi and the second was yet to enter Mexican territory on 31 October 2018. Both are quite literally thousands of kilometres south of the United States and members of these caravans are travelling on foot.

The yellow line represents the distance the first caravan was from the US border as the crow flies on 1 November 2018. The second caravan is at least 200-300 kilometres behind the first.

What Trump is also not saying in his campaign ad is that no previous migrant caravan has ever made it to the US border. The last one reportedly made it to Mexico City before petering out - at least 1,300 kilometres short of reaching the United States.

Scott Morrison just can't get his political spin to stick up here on the NSW Northern Rivers


Interim Australian Prime Minister and Liberal Member for Cook Scott Morrison just doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut.

He tweeted what looked like one of his own staff's media releases which had been taken up by the Murdoch media, only to have Byron Shire Council issue a denial of his claim that it had backed down. 


SBS News, 29 October 2018:

Byron Shire mayor Simon Richardson has dismissed the Morrison government’s claim the council has backed down from plans to change the date of its Australia Day festivities.

Immigration minister David Coleman stripped the council of its right to hold citizenship ceremonies in late September as a punishment for “politicising” the day, only to reinstate the right on Monday.

The government claimed Mr Richardson’s council had “reversed” its plan to change Australia Day ceremonies.

But the mayor said the bitter argument with the government was triggered by a “misunderstanding”. Byron Shire will proceed with its plans to move Australia Day speeches and awards to January 25, he said.

“Nothing has changed, from our perspective,” Mr Richardson told SBS News on Monday…..

The council plans to hold a citizenship ceremony in the coming weeks. The events are held semi-regularly throughout the year.


BACKGROUND

North Coast Voices, 26 September 2018:

An est. 5 per cent of the total population of the Northern Rivers are Aboriginal people principally from the BundjalungYaeglGumbaynggirr and Githabul Nations.

They are an integral part of townships and villages spread across seven local government areas and, able to clearly demonstrate cultural connection to country, hold Native Title over land and water in parts of this region.

These families and tribal groupings contribute to the richness of community life in the Northern Rivers.

So Byron Shire Council's media release of 20 September 2018 comes as no surprise.

However, Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison's reaction and the manner in which it was delivered did surprise me. 

SBS News, 24 September 2018:

A NSW mayor says his council's decision to change the date of an Australia Day ceremony is to reflect history after Prime Minister Scott Morrison weighed in.

A NSW mayor whose council won't hold its Australia Day ceremony on January 26 has hit back at Scott Morrison after the prime minister tweeted about the issue.

Byron Shire Council will hold some council events on the national holiday but has announced its official ceremony will move to January 25.....

Saturday 3 November 2018

Tweets of the Week


Friday 2 November 2018

“In an unprecedented move, the Morrison government has questioned the Federal Court's authority to commence cases that allow sick children to be brought to Australia for emergency medical care.”



The Guardian, 26 October 2018:

The Australian government is challenging the legality of the federal court hearing applications for urgent medical transfers of refugees and asylum seekers held on Nauru.

The move comes amid a rush of transfers, and appears in contrast to claims made by Australian Border Force to those detainees that the delays are due to the Nauruan government.

Should the federal court action be successful it has the potential to void some previous orders, forcing those cases to refile in the high court.

The rate of medical transfer orders has ratcheted up as the health crisis worsens, criticism of the policy strengthens, and the Nauruans appear to have stopped attempting to block departures.

The home affairs department raised the jurisdictional challenge in a case involving a child detainee, her mother and two siblings, Fairfax Media reported.

The family have already been transferred to Australia. But lawyers for Peter Dutton’s department have continued to argue that under section 494AB of the Migration Act, the federal court cannot hear legal proceedings against the commonwealth relating to a “transitory person”. It is believed to be the first time the government has made this argument in about 50 cases relating to the transfer of people from Nauru.

On Thursday two federal court judges ordered both parties to submit their arguments in coming days for a yet-to-be scheduled expedited hearing, expected next week. The child, an 11-year-old Iranian girl, is being represented by the law firm Robinson Gill and the Human Rights Law Centre.

“This has come out of the blue, and there’s a risk it could make it much harder for desperately unwell children to get the urgent, lifesaving medical care they need,” said Daniel Webb, director of legal advocacy at the HRLC.

The challenge appears at odds with the government’s messages to detainees laying the blame for transfer delays with Nauruan authorities. Guardian Australia is aware of ABF writing or verbally suggesting to people or their lawyers that the department had approved their medical transfer but Nauru was holding up cases.

The Sydney MorningHerald, 24 October 2018:

The legal point was raised last week in the case of an 11-year-old Iranian girl held on Nauru who had not eaten in more than two weeks.

Medical experts gave evidence she was facing “imminent death” if she was not treated by paediatrics experts in an Australian intensive care ward.

However, lawyers acting for the Home Affairs Department argued that under section 494 AB of the Migration Act the court could not hear the case as it did not have jurisdiction because she was a “transitory person.”