Climate Change 2018: local government putting Morrison & Co to shame

Clarence Valley Council, media release, 29 November 2018:

Council aims to be greenhouse gas emission free

THE Clarence Valley Council has set a target to cut its net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.

The first step in reaching that target will be to cut greenhouse gas emissions (excluding landfill emissions) to 40% below 2016/17 levels by 2030.

It has also adopted a target of supplying half of its own electricity demand from renewable energy sources by 2030, with the long-term goal to secure all electricity from renewable energy.

Council’s waste and sustainability coordinator, Ken Wilson, said council had engaged consultants, 100% Renewable, to help with the development of renewable energy and greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in line with council’s climate change policy.

“Their report shows council is performing well, with about 8.3% of the energy used by council coming from renewable energy – primarily rooftop solar,” he said.

“Council currently has 646.3kw of PV Solar generating capacity.

“To achieve the short-term target the report assessed 47 initiatives involving solar photovoltaic and battery storage, street and park lighting, and energy efficiency costing in the order of $5,764,794.

Council plans to implement these measures over five years, which should help council meet its targets and achieve financial savings well before 2030.

“These initiatives have a payback of between four and eight years. Initiatives involving battery storage are expected to become more cost effective over the next few years, which will improve the payback period.

“Anticipated savings will be reflected in facility operating costs and will be ongoing. The average payback period is 6.5 years.

“These projects do not include a current proposal under investigation to develop a mini-hydro system at the Rushforth Road reservoir.

“The recommended targets are considered achievable and cost-effective.”

Release ends.

Quotes of the Week

“Some say the Liberal Party is dead and personally I do not care whether it is or not. Something will rise, phoenix-like, from its trust fund trash ashes. My kids and I have survived a helluva a lot of vicious Liberal Party policy, and will again. But if the Liberal Party is dead, I will be the first to dance on its grave. Good riddance, horrible people.”  ”  [Academic and blogger Ingrid Matthews writing in oecomuse, 27 November 2018]

"The parliament is part time under this prime minister, but the civil war in the Liberal Party is a full-time occupation."  [Opposition Leader & Labor MP for Maribyrnong Bill Shorten, House of Representatives Hansard, 29 November 2018]

Tweets of the Week

Here’s the moment where the NSW Parliament voted tonight to introduce new laws to fast track children from foster care into adoption. As the Bill passed, you could hear loud jokes from Liberal members about wanting to “hurry up so we can get out of here and enjoy Christmas” pic.twitter.com/WW1p1bTbD1

— Padraic Gibson (@paddygibson) November 22, 2018

We can’t allow this trauma to be inflicted on further generations of Aboriginal kids. Help us to STOP forced adoption of Aboriginal children in NSW. https://t.co/e6FyRbl5UM

— AbSec (@AbSecNSW) November 29, 2018

The #FamilyMatters Report 2018 was released yesterday, full of data from across Australia. It finds that not only have governments failed to turn the tide on #Aboriginal child removals, but the outcomes for children and families are getting worse. https://t.co/KbSgABO7Yt pic.twitter.com/eHZUOfFk53

— AbSec (@AbSecNSW) November 28, 2018

A not so new lobbyist on the block - just tired, old Lib-Nats supporters in a poor disguise

www.advanceaustralia.org.au

ABC News, 21 November 2018:

Australia has a new conservative lobby group that wants to knock on your door, get in your ear and ultimately swing your vote.

Advance Australia's named with a nod to our anthem and the hope it can rival the powerful left-wing lobby Get Up!

It has some prominent backers and a bold mission — but can it succeed?

The group's financially and ideologically backed by a group of prominent business leaders including storage king Sam Kennard, businessman and former ABC chairman Maurice Newman and the Australian Jewish Association's Dr David Adler.

Its national director is Gerard Benedet, who was the chief of staff to former Queensland LNP Treasurer Tim Nicholls in a previous life.

"We're not aligned to any political party," he told 7.30.

"We're an independent movement of mainstream Australians, who are determined to protect, advance and defend mainstream values and freedoms."

Get Up! National Director Paul Oosting says that's rubbish.

"Advance Australia is a group of rich white men on a campaign to make themselves richer," he said.

"They want to work on issues that are in their own self-interest, that are the vested interests of the corporate lobby they represent."

The Monthly, 26 November 2018:

The quest for a right-wing opponent to GetUp has been going on for almost as long as the quest for a right-wing Phillip Adams at the ABC – and with about as much success.

The latest wizard wheeze come from a stratospherically elite clique of rich, bored men looking for a hobby. It includes men like Maurice Newman, who preaches that climate science is a fraudulent conspiracy ensuring the establishment of a totalitarian socialist dictatorship under the United Nations, and James Power, currently fighting to prevent women from becoming members of Brisbane’s Tattersall’s Club.

After diligent market research, they have settled on the unoriginal name of Advance Australia, which is not only plagiarism but deeply misleading – the only way they want Australia to advance is either jogging on the spot, or, preferably, stumbling backwards.

They claim to be protecting mainstream Australian values, but just about the only ones they have come up with thus far are maintaining superannuation tax lurks for the rich, keeping tax deductions for those who have not paid tax in the first place, and not moving Australia Day from January 26. To date, mainstream Australia has resisted the urge to storm the barricades on their behalf.

The organisation’s oligarchs are predicting that they will have a million members in time for the federal election, but are coy about how they plan to recruit these hordes.

Perhaps they are assuming that sheer weight of money, of which they have plenty, will suffice, much in the way that Malcolm Turnbull bought his Wentworth preselection and, before then, Kerry Packer bought Australian cricket.

But mass campaigning does not work that way; buying up a rent-a-crowd is hardly likely to move swinging voters. You need a grassroots movement of enthusiasts and idealists, and for that you need not a top-heavy pyramid, but a bottom-up structure based on volunteers – like GetUp.

Call to protect infants from dangerous infectious disease, whooping cough

The Daily Examiner, 27 November 2018, p3:

NSW Health is urging all pregnant women and new parents to be aware of the symptoms of whooping cough and to ensure they and their children are vaccinated on time.

Despite almost 95 per cent of infants in NSW now vaccinated against the disease, outbreaks still occur every three to four years as community immunity wanes, and recent high numbers indicate an outbreak might be on the way.

Dr Vicky Sheppeard, NSW Health’s Director of Communicable Diseases, said that in October 2018 almost 800 people in NSW were notified with whooping cough (pertussis), the highest number since October 2016.

Acting director of North Coast Public Health Greg Bell said a similar situation was emerging in Northern NSW where there have been 36 cases of whooping cough reported in the past four weeks.

While these levels of whooping cough across Northern NSW are similar to the averages of the previous five years, pertussis notifications are trending upwards.

The latest Australian Immunisation Register quarterly report shows that at September 2018 90.4 per cent of five-year-olds and 88.9 per cent of 12-month-olds in Northern NSW Local Health District were fully vaccinated.

These figures represent an increase on vaccination rates in 2010 under the-then North Coast Area Health Service, when 84.9 per cent of children aged 5 and 87 per cent of 12-month-olds were fully vaccinated.

Even in highly vaccinated populations it is not possible to eliminate whooping cough…..

 “The aim of whooping cough control is to protect infants, who are at highest risk of severe disease or death if they contract whooping cough. Whooping cough vaccination is effective in preventing severe infection.”

This is the man Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison admires because of his trade policies

Almost everyone could see this coming except US President Donald Trump and he had been repeatedly warned that his imposition of tariffs, using anti-globalisation sentiment as an excuse, would spring back and hit American manufacturing where it hurts.

Almost everyone – but not Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison who on 17 September 2018 was quoted thus:

Spruiking the kind of populist credentials that swept Trump to power, Morrison said many people in both the US and Australia feel left behind by the powerful economic forces of globalisation, which have brought massive wealth to some but left others feeling poorer and disenfranchised.

“That’s what we get. The president gets that. I get it,” the prime minister told the Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

Morrison described Trump as “very practical” and as someone “who’s not going to waste a day”.

“I like that about him. I like that about him a lot, actually.’’

Here is that oh so “very practical” Donald Trump this week.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 November 2018:

On Monday local time, the iconic carmaker announced it would close assembly plants in Ohio, Michigan, Maryland and in the Canadian province of Ontario. The cuts amount to almost 15 per cent of the General Motors workforce.

A big part of Trump's appeal in the so-called "rust belt" in the midwest was his promise to bring back stable and well-paying manufacturing jobs, especially in the auto industry. The General Motors plant at Lordstown, Ohio, is located in a county that recorded a 29 percentage point swing towards Trump at the 2016 election.

So before heading to Mississipi for a campaign rally, Trump said he had expressed his displeasure to General Motors Chief Executive Mary Barra.

"I was very tough," Trump said. "I spoke with her and I said, 'This country has done a lot for General Motors – you'd better get back in there soon.' That's Ohio.

"They say the Chevy Cruze is not selling well. I say, 'Well get a car that is selling well and put it back in' ... I'm not happy about it."

Trump said he expected General Motors to start manufacturing another type of car in Ohio and that it "had better" do so.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Monday, Trump said he told General Motors: "You’re playing around with the wrong person."

Trump will this week travel to Argentina for G20 meetings, where he will hold a highly-anticipated meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping focussed on trade.

At the height of the Global Financial Crisis, General Motors received a government bailout that eventually cost US taxpayers $US11.2 billion ($15.5 billion in today's money).

But the President has slapped a 25 per cent tariff on imported steel from China, which automakers said has already increased commodity costs, and threatened more including on auto parts. Car manufacturers said earlier in the year that tariffs could bring job losses.

Trump has since boasted about a renaissance in the industry thanks to his tax cuts and the removal of environmental regulations put in place by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama.

In a tweet about Michigan in August he said: "Lots of car and other companies moving back!"

In 2017 he said high-quality manufacturing jobs were no longer leaving Ohio.

"They’re all coming back," he said at a rally in the state. "Don’t move. Don’t sell your house."

Australian Politics 2018: let's leave the premises as fast as possible and don't show our LNP faces in parliament until after the federal election

It's official - The Morrison Coalition Government is a lame duck federal government incapable of functioning.

Why?

The Australian Parliament goes into end of year recess on 6 December and does not come back until February 2019.

After the opening Parliament on the later than usual date of 12 February 2019, the House of Representatives will probably sit for no more than seven days in total. There appears to be no plan to conduct parliamentary business after that except perhaps to table the 2019-20 Budget Papers between 2- 4 April.

The Senate is scheduled to sit for two days (11th or 12th and 14th) with four estimates hearings beginning on the 18th. The senate does not sit in March and only sits for one day in early April. 

Parliament needs to be dissolved sometime in early April to comfortably meet the requirements of a 2019 national election timetable for the joint election of the House of Representatives and half the Senate.

As it appears from the article below that interim Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison is ready to go to a general election in May, the parliamentary timetable looks suspiciously as if Coalition Government MPs and senators intend to hide from national scrutiny as much as possible before polling day.

Given that the Morrison Government is now two MPs shy of a majority (having only 74 MPs in the 150-strong House of Representatives), closing down parliament in this way also means that the Labor Opposition and cross benches will not have an opportunity to pass legislation in their own right in a parliament the Lib-Nats government of the day no longer controls.

The West Australian, 27 November 2018:

Scott Morrison has effectively revealed the date of the next election just as one of his backbenchers announced she was leaving the Liberal Party to sit on the parliamentary crossbench.

In a dramatic 20 minutes in Canberra, the PM confirmed the Federal Budget would be brought forward and handed down on April 2 next year.

Saying “you can do the maths”, the date means the Federal election will be held on either May 11 or 18. May 18 was the last available date for a full House and half Senate election.

Mr Morrison said the Budget would show a surplus.

In this year’s Budget, the Government was already expecting a small $2.2 billion surplus for the 2019-20 financial year.

However, a surge in tax revenue and a tight rein on spending is expected to show a bigger than expected surplus. That should be confirmed in the mid-year Budget update that will be released on December 17.