A federal budget for hopeless optimists was delivered by the Morrison Government on 2 April 2019

https://youtu.be/C64ZC-0Oju4

This was Australian treasurer and Liberal MP for Kooyong Josh Frydenberg delivering his first budget speech on 2 April 2019:

Tonight, I announce that the budget is back in the black and Australia is back on track.

For the first time in 12 years, our nation is again paying its own way….

John Howard and Peter Costello paid off Labor’s debt. And tonight the Morrison government sets a path to do it again, without increasing taxes.

This matters because over the last year the interest bill on the national debt was $18bn.

And this was in a low interest rate environment.

This is money that could have built 500 schools or a world-class hospital in each state and territory.

We are reducing the debt and this interest bill.

Not through higher taxes, but by responsible budget management and by growing the economy.

In the actual budget papers he asserts that:

Net debt in 2019-20 is expected to be $361 billion, representing 18 per cent of GDP. By 2022-23, net debt is expected to decline to $326.1 billion (14.4 per cent of GDP). Net debt is then projected to be eliminated over the medium term (2029-30)

So whose debt is Frydenberg complaing about and why is the economic furture so suddenly rosy?

At the end of the month in 2013 in which Tony Abbott became Prime Minister of Australia the gross national debt stood at est. $220.67 billion and net national debt was $174.55 billion. At the time net national debt was in the vicinity of 13% of GDP.

By 2 April 2019 the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government had raised the gross national debt to $534.42 billion. 

That's more than double the national debt left by the previous Labor federal government.

Frydenberg is predicting that gross national will rise to $627.26 billion by end of June 2019 with net national debt coming in at $373.47 billion and net debt predicted to come in at 19.2% of GDP by end of June. 

By 30 June the federal government will have paid $18.15 billion in interest on this debt in the 2018-19 financial year.

I don't know about anyone else but to me it definitely looks as though the Liberal-Nationals Coalition governments have well and truly contribted to the national debt in the last five and a haf years.

According to the 2019-20 Budget that Frydenberg just delivered gross national debt is expected to rise for the next three financial years while at the same time it is hoped that net national debt will decrease.

When it comes to national debt a net decrease in the debt does not always mean the actual government debt is falling - it simply means that the government of the day expects to have enough assets and income to honour the total debt if the entire amount was theoretically called in by the debtors.

However, Frydenberg predicts that both net national debt and interest that the gross debt attracts will fall over the next four financial years, despite federal government expenses increasing and expected tax receipts (including GST receipts) being revised down by $26 billion over those same four years.

Frydenberg also says the Morrison Government will deliver an underlying cash balance of $7.1 billion by 30 June next year even though that underlying cash balance is $4.1 billion in deficit this year. To do that the Treasurer has to pull $11.2 billion out of his back pocket in the next fourteen months.

Months in which it is committed to delivering the cash splash it has included in this pre-election budget.

An ordinary voter like myself has to ask: Where's the money coming from to supposedly get the government books back into the black?

The Morrison Government must be privately asking itself the same question as Budget Statement 7 only gives that government a 70 per cent chance of being able to bring in a $7.1 billion suplus this coming financial year

Budget 2019-20 papers can be found here.

NOTE:

Only one item in the Morrison Government 2019-20 budget is likely to be passed on 3 April 2019 before the Australian Parliament is dissolved to meet the required timeline to issue  writs for the federal election. This means that all the budget promises made by Frydenberg are on the never never and if the Coalition Government wins that election it may change some budget details come 30 June.

Morrison Government still refusing to tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions

The Guardian, 31 March 2019:

Cuts to carbon emissions from vehicle efficiency standards have been left out of government projections for meeting Australia’s Paris climate commitments, indicating the policy has been shelved.

The office of the transport minister, Michael McCormack, said the government had not made a decision on “how or when” standards to cut carbon pollution from vehicles might be implemented.

After almost five years of submissions a spokesman said the government “is not going to rush into a regulatory solution” with regards to vehicle emissions.

New data shows Australia’s emissions from transport are soaring and projected to be 82% higher in 2030 than they were in 1990.

Australia lags behind the rest of the world in setting vehicle efficiency standards, with most countries in the OECD adopting policies to reduce emissions and improve the efficiency of cars.

The ministerial forum on vehicle emissions was set up under the Turnbull government in 2015, and stakeholders are frustrated at the lack of progress.

Fact sheets produced by the government that set out how it intends to reach Australia’s emissions reduction targets under the Paris agreement suggest any policy on vehicle emissions standards has been abandoned.

In 2015, the government produced a graph indicating it expected to achieve cuts of about 100m tonnes between 2020 and 2030 through vehicle emissions standards.

The government’s latest climate package contains no mention of this, and projects only about 10m tonnes of abatement through an electric vehicle strategy, with no reference to vehicle emissions standards....

Serco operated high security prison in Queensland found to be one of two privately run gaols at risk of significant corruption

This is what Serco says of itself at www.serco.com:

Serco is trusted by governments and organisations around the world to transform and deliver essential services. Employing over 50,000 people, we operate across more than 20 countries in Justice, Immigration, Health, Transport, Defence, and Citizen Services.

Serco provides essential justice services in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, from the safe and secure operation of prisons, young adult, and escorting services, to managing the reintegration of ex-offenders into society. We help governments deliver a more efficient and effective justice system, by employing the best people, getting the basics right, championing service innovations, and forming community partnerships. 

By taking a rehabilitative approach to justice, we help to make it less likely that people will return to the criminal justice system, help to rebuild lives, and reduce the financial and wider costs of crime to the public…….

Serco has been operating correctional services in Australia for almost 15 years. As a prison operator, safety and security is always our first priority. The new Clarence Correctional Centre is our most recent contract, which will begin operations in 2020. Once completed, this 1,700-bed state-of-the-art facility will be the largest correctional centre in Australia. 

The Clarence Correctional Centre is being delivered by the NSW Government in partnership with the Northern Pathways Consortium. To learn more about the project visit northernpathways.com.au.

This is the current reality in Australia…..

Sydney Criminal Lawyers, 28 March 2019:

The Queensland Government has announced that it will spend $111million over the next four years, returning two privately run prisons to state management.

The Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre and the Southern Queensland Correctional Centre (SQCC), two high-security prisons, are currently run by private operators. 

However the Government will now take over these contracts in response to recommendations from the Crime and Corruption Commission’s Taskforce Flaxton, which last year conducted an investigation into the entire Queensland prison system.

The post-investigation report was scathing as a whole, finding a string of systemic issues, that put prisons ‘at risk of significant corruption.’

These included over-crowding, excessive use of force, misuse of authority, introduction of contraband and inappropriate relationships all within prison walls. The report also found that the number of assaults on staff was higher at privately run facilities, due to lower staff numbers and therefore less supervision.

The South East Queensland Correctional Centre is run by Serco.....

Serco came under fire in 2017 after the release of the Paradise Papers which detailed that Serco’s UK lawyers expressed written concerns that their client had been engaging in fraud, covering up the abuse of detainees at Australian detention centres, and even mishandling radioactive waste. The firm described Serco as a “high-risk” organisation with a “history of problems, failures, fatal errors and overcharging”.

Internationally, the company runs prisons in the UK and New Zealand. In Australia it has been operating for more than 15 years, managing prisons in Western Australia and Queensland as well as 11 immigration centres. It also holds several defence contracts and is currently building a mega-correctional facility near Grafton in New South Wales.

The Clarence Correctional Centre roughly 12 km from Grafton, NSW is due to open in June 2020.

Hopefully UK based Serco Group Pty Ltd through its subsidiary Serco Australia Pty Limited will by then have addressed all the issues in its chequered past.

Climate Change and Populations: where will you move to?

This graphic looks so far away doesn't it?

Children from a foreign country in the background, impossibly high calendar dates and population numbers as well as the word "Refugees".

But if one looks closely the first calendar date is only 11 short years away, the next just 31 years and the date after that 81 years.

And not all "refugees" will be foreign once climate change impacts accelerate.

There will be literally thousands of ordinary people living in Australia who will at some point be driven inland by rising water making their homes and coastal towns or villages uninhabitable or uninsurable.

There will be years on end where the entire population of inland country towns will be living in temporary accommodation as they try to rebuild what was lost to raging bushfires - if they ever do.

Little village communities supporting families on surrounding farmland will be disappear due to water scarcity which never ends.

These will be this country's home-grown refugees and all states and territories need to start reworking their natural disaster contingency plans to include the need to relocate a great many people on a permanent basis between now and 2100.

The scale of internal climate migration will ramp up by 2050 and then accelerate unless concerted climate and development action is taken. [World Bank Group, 2018, Groundswell : Preparing for Internal Climate Migration]

PROPAGANDA: When Murdoch media asset joins with a hard right lobby group & inhouse commentator to run a line from the Liberal-Nationals election campaign playbook

“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.” [Attributed to Joseph Goebbels, German Third Reich Minister for Propaganda 1933-1945]

Daniel Wild: I think the Greens are much more extreme and a much greater threat to the Australian way of life than One Nation. Why hasn’t anyone from the Labor Party come out saying the Greens are a threat and they will preference them last?

MORE: https://t.co/SHDZ2CeIUB pic.twitter.com/Pil7kKm0pC

— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) March 29, 2019

.@GemmaTognini: The Greens are drunk on their own urine. Thousands of jobs would be lost if their renewable energy targets were met. They are reckless and so ideologically driven that they don’t care about the implications of their policies.

MORE: https://t.co/eus3trsWJH pic.twitter.com/nsHtgUixMI

— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) March 29, 2019

More evidence of Australia’s national extinction crisis

Twenty years ago my garden and the street in which I live rang with the sound of frogs calling after dark - at times it was deafening and drowned out the sound of the television news presenter.

Frogs of different species were in my letterbox, in the garden trees, catching moths on the window sills, hopping about on my patio and frequently in the house.

No more.

Anyone living in urban areas of the NSW Northern Rivers region would be aware that fewer frog species and fewer numbers within those frog species have been part of garden, park and nature reserve landscapes over the last twenty years.

Loss of habitat due to land clearing, drainage or development, depredation by introduced species, over use of herbicides/pesticides by councils and homeowners, decease in available food sources and disease are taking their toll on local frog populations.

When one sees the scale writ large it is terrible to behold.......

The Guardian, 29 March 2019:

A deadly disease that wiped out global populations of amphibians led to the decline of 500 species in the past 50 years, including 90 extinctions, scientists say.

A global research effort, led by the Australian National University, has for the first time quantified the worldwide impact of chytridiomycosis, or chytrid fungus, a fungal disease that eats away at the skin of amphibians.

The disease was first discovered in 1998 by researchers at James Cook University in Queensland investigating the cause of mysterious, mass amphibian deaths.

Chytridiomycosis is caused by two fungal species, both of which are likely to have originated in Asia, and their spread has been facilitated by humans through activities such as the legal and illegal pet trade.

Forty-two researchers worked on the new study, published in Science on Friday, which pinpoints the extent of the disease and how devastating it has been for frog, toad and salamander species.

They found evidence that at least 501 species had declined as a result of chytrid fungus and 90 of those were presumed or confirmed extinct.

“The results are pretty astounding” Benjamin Scheele, a research fellow at the ANU and the project’s lead researcher, said.

“We’ve known that chytrid is really bad for the better part of two decades but actually researching and quantifying those declines, that’s what this study does.”

The scientists identified declines in amphibian species in Europe, Africa, Central and South America and Australia because of the disease.

Scheele said there were no declines in Asia because species had evolved to be naturally resistant.

The impact of the disease has been hardest in Central and South America and in eastern Australia, where it flourishes in cool and moist conditions. It does not survive at temperatures above 28C.

In Australia, chytrid fungus is present in upland areas along the Great Dividing Range, down to the Otways in Victoria, and the edges of South Australia and Tasmania.

It is also found in some of the cooler mountain areas of Queensland.

Scheele said in Australia alone, there were 240 species of amphibian, 40 of which the researchers believed had suffered population declines as a result of chytrid fungus.

Seven of those 40 are believed to be extinct. One of those is the mountain mistfrog, which was last year added to a group of species the Australian government has been assessing to determine whether it should be moved to the national list of extinct wildlife.

Other species, including both the southern and northern corroboree frog, have suffered because of chytrid fungus, but large-scale captive breeding programs have worked to prevent their extinction..... [my yellow highlighting]

In which Clarence Valley Council fails to take due consideration of biodiversity & only pays lip service to potential cultural landscape when voting on an inadequately researched council master plan

Wooded area above the dirt road seen in the bottom right-hand corner of this snapshot was that section of land covered by the Clarence Valley Regional Airport Master Plan which figured prominately in councillors' debate.

When the regular monthly meeting of predominately white, middle-aged male, elected councillors in a NSW local government area again deliberately choose to have the meeting opened with a prayer* by yet another 'ordained' representative of one of the Protestant religious institutions named in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, it can only go downhill from there - and it did.

Predictably Cr. Williamson sought to close down debate at the earliest opportunity with regard to any alternative approach to planning issues surrounding adoption of a master plan on council-owned operational land.

Just as predictably Cr. Baker displayed a level of ignorance concerning everything from how far a 10 km radius surrounding airport land actually stretched (seems he believed it went as far as est. 25kms southeast to Wooli beach) through to the professional conduct of accredited ecologists and motives behind their reports ( a subject on which he sounded more than a little paranoid).

However, the incident that would have had regular council watchers sitting up in their seats occurred when the council general manager rather aggressively inserted himself into the debate uninvited and without permission, by directing a question to an elected councillor. 

Which immediately raised the question - has he caught a bad case of the dreaded Greensill-itis and if so can it be cured?

The Daily Examiner, 28 May 2019, p.1:

Clarence Valley Mayor Jim Simmons has apologised for a procedural error which led to a councillor walking out of the chamber during a heated debate.

At Tuesday’s Clarence Valley Council meeting Cr Greg Clancy accused the council of gagging debate on a proposed Master Plan for the Grafton Regional Airport, before departing from the chamber without seeking leave.

Cr Clancy had moved a motion calling for environmental reports and information about Aboriginal heritage in the area to be included in the plan, which sparked a fierce argument among the councillors.

After about an hour of questions and debate Cr Richie Williamson, moved the motion be put, but this sparked an outbreak of interjections.

“What, are we being gagged right down the line?” interjected Cr Peter Ellem.

Mayor Jim Simmons adjourned the meeting for 10 minutes to seek advice on the matter.

“When the meeting resumed Cr Clancy came in to gather some things and I did apologise to him at the time, but he didn’t stay.”

Cr Simmons said he didn’t think council would act on some strong language Cr Clancy used at the time.

“Greg is a very strong advocate for the environment and I can understand he was disappointed how things were going,” he said.

“I’m very disappointed how things panned out and other than some language about gagging debate, I can’t really recall what was said.”

Cr Simmons blamed himself for the mistaken ruling, which inflamed the situation.

“What I said didn’t help the situation and I take full responsibility for that,” he said.

He said the council code of meeting practice required councillors to seek permission to leave the chamber early, which Cr Clancy did not do, but he did not think councillors would seek to take this further.

“In my view it would have been better for Greg to stay in the chamber,” he said.

“Councillors voted against his motion, 5-3 I think from memory, so it was a close thing.”

Cr Simmons said the meeting did approve the plan on a motion from Cr Ellem, which called for involvement of the Ngerrie Local Aboriginal Land Council in any development planning for the site.

Clarence Valley Council posted the 26 March 2019 podcast of this meeting on its website where it will remain for twelve months and, at approx. 2hrs 4 mins into the podcast the debate of Item 15.031/19 can be heard - but don't expect to hear the entire debate.

Because it appears that at a vital moment in his response to being improperly gagged by the mayor Cr. Clancy did not have his microphone turned on.

I have been given to understand that one of his observations was words to the effect that democracy is dead in the Clarence Valley.

An observation that in my opinion is frequently applicable to both local and state governments.

* It should be noted that Cr. Clancy did not agree with a 2017 change to Clarence Valley Council's Code of Meeting Practice which formally established an opening prayer as well as a rota of ordained Protestant ministers praying over the elected councillors and members of the vistors' gallery at the start of each ordinary monthly meeting.