U.S. Politics 2019

US President Donald J. Trump turning from the cameras with arms outstretched to raise his eyes to the sky at the moment he said "I am the Chosen One", C-Span YouTube account, 21 August 2019. 
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzlxrPC_E_U

Cartoons of the Week

First Dog on the Moon

Alan Moir

Queensland water raiders turn their eyes to the Clarence River once more

Calls to dam and divert water from the Clarence River system resurfaced last year.

ABC News, 25 April 2018:

It is an idea that just keeps bubbling to the surface — pumping water inland from the Clarence River in northern New South Wales. 

The latest group to float the proposal is the Toowoomba Regional Council in south-east Queensland. Toowoomba Mayor Paul Antonio said it would be in the national interest to seriously investigate the plan. 

"I think the Clarence has a fair bit of water in it," Councillor Antonio said. 

"I think a very, very small percentage of the Clarence water would make an immense difference to the parched, dry areas of the Darling Downs. 

"One of the things we have on the Darling Downs, I think we've got some of the best soils that you would find anywhere. 

"As a farmer from this particular region, I think they're the best soils that are available for agriculture in Australia. 

"What they lack is reliable water," he said. A similar idea was successfully put forward by the Griffith City Council, in the New South Wales Riverina, at last year's National General Assembly of Councils.

It called for federal funding of a feasibility study to explore the practicalities of diverting water inland from the Clarence River. 

But Page MP Kevin Hogan, whose federal electorate takes in much of the Clarence Valley, said he would never support the proposal. 

"There's water piped all over the country and there are pipelines that go for hundreds of kilometres, but I don't think for cost or for environmental reasons it's feasible," he said. 

"I have heard many proposals over many decades about this. 

"I think for people out west it will never end. 

"I think they will always flag this idea, but they've been flagging it for multiple decades. 

"It hasn't happened and I don't believe it ever will. 

"There's always if there's a will there's a way, but I don't believe there's a will for that to happen in Canberra. 

Clarence Valley Mayor Jim Simmons said there was no support for the move at a local level either. 

"I can't see the current councillors supporting the diversion of water to Toowoomba or anywhere else from the Clarence River," he said. 

"It's a natural resource for the Clarence Valley, fishermen depend on it, farmers depend on it.".....

Then the wannabee raiders began again this year.

Southern Free Times, Warwick, 16 May 2019: 

Mayor Tracy Dobie addressed the media today, Thursday 16 May, during a meeting in Warwick with Toowoomba Mayor Paul Antonio, Western Downs Mayor Paul McVeigh and representatives of Tenterfield Shire. 

The meeting of mayors was to discuss future water supply security for the Darling Downs and Tenterfield regions, including a plan to pipe water from the Clarence River system in New South Wales which has been talked about for decades.

The Daily Examiner, 19 August 2019, p.1: 

With water supplies dwindling across Tenterfield, Toowoomba, and the Southern and Western Downs, councils across southeast Queensland and western NSW have blown dust off their plans to dam the Clarence River. 
However, Clarence Valley Council Mayor Jim Simmons has said they had not been involved in any of these discussions. 

At a Southern Downs Regional Council Q&A session last week, the Mayor Tracy Dobie said her council was looking into securing a diversion of the Clarence River in the upper catchment. 

Cr Dobie said the four councils of Tenterfield, Toowoomba, Western Downs and Southern Downs were working together on the proposal to receive an allocation of the river. 

“If you look at Toowoomba, they’re going to run out of water in 30 years, they need supplementary water, that’s why we’re looking at the diversion of the Clarence, where only seven per cent of that water is allocated at the moment,” Cr Dobie said. 

While this idea has been raised since the 1980s, Cr Simmons said Clarence Valley Council had not been involved in any discussions to dam the Clarence River. 

“These councils have not involved Clarence Valley Council in any discussions, and we’ve had no input into these discussions,” 

Cr Simmons said. “If they’re looking at it seriously, they need to seriously get the people that it affects involved in their discussions and we’ve not been approached to date, and the Clarence Valley would very much be affected by it. 

“The message we’ve got in the past is that people are opposed to any proposal to dam or divert the Clarence River, it’s a pretty big subject so I would like to see some more details if this is something these councils are seriously looking at.” 

In May this year, the Warwick Daily News reported Cr Dobie joined Toowoomba Mayor Paul Antonio, Western Downs Mayor Paul McVeigh and Tenterfield Shire councillor Gary Verri in Warwick to discuss a plan to secure an allocation from the Clarence River. 

Cr Dobie said a pipeline would be used to move the water to Queensland using gravity. “If you look at the Clarence there’s only a small percentage that is allocated out for urban and industrial use and the rest goes out to sea,” she said. 

Water security in southeast Queensland is a major issue, with many councils enforcing severe water restrictions.

The Daily Examiner, 20 August 2019, p.11: 

OUR SAY 
TIM HOWARD 
Chief of staff  

Calls to redirect Clarence River water inland to save drought-stricken farmers is another example of emotion trumping logic. 

Plans to divert coastal river water inland have been around at least since 1938, when Dr John Bradfield came up with a scheme to drought-proof western Queensland and South Australia by sending the waters of the Tully, Herbert and Burdekin rivers inland. 

The benefits were enormous. Massive areas in Queensland could be farmed under irrigation, it could produce massive amounts of hydro-electricity and cut erosion problems in central Queensland.

It would create beneficial change in central Australia as the cooling effects of a permanently filled Lake Eyre brought higher rainfall and vegetation growth. 

Except none of this would happen because just about everything in the planning was wrong. 

Bradfield’s estimate of the amount of water needed was more twice what the rivers could supply, the evaporation rate was likely to exceed water flows. 

Most damning was the damage the loss of the water would cause to the existing eco-systems, including the Great Barrier Reef. 

The mighty Clarence produces nothing like the flows of those tropical northern rivers. It shows there are many simple answers to complex problems and they’re invariably wrong.

Is it any wonder that local communities are against damming and diverting water from the Clarence River system?

Partly by happy historical accident and partly by good management strategies, the Clarence River system is relatively healthy and its water a sustainable resource for the est. 128,196-strong combined population in the Clarence Valley and Coffs Harbour City local government areas, along with businesses in the 19 industry sectors identified as supplying employment across the two regional economies with a combined worth of est. $5.58 billion in a wider Northern Rivers regional economy worth in excess of $15.64 billion annually.

Clarence Valley communities have a right to feel that they have already done their bit for state water sustainability by supplying water to the Coffs Habour region which is outside the Clarence River catchment area.

The Valley does this in times of high rainfall and in times of drought, such as now  in late August 2019 when roughly half the Clarence Valley land area is officially listed as "Drought Affected" and the other half listed as a mixture "Drought" and "Severe Drought".

Any further water diversion has the potential to place Clarence River water sustainability and water quality at risk, thereby affecting the aesthetic, environmental, cultural, social and economic amenity of local urban and rural communities.

It should also be noted that Native Title exists over the lower Clarence River and estuary and it seems the wannabe water raiders, besides not consulting Clarence Valley Council, haven't thought to approach the traditional owners either. 

How the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) sees Australia in 2019

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD Economics Department Working Papers No. 1539, 14 February 2019, excerpts: 

This paper analyses relative income poverty in Australia of individuals aged 15 or more, based on the HILDA Survey data. 

Australia has above-average poverty rates among OECD countries, but poverty has decreased in the last 15 years. 

Certain groups are more at risk than others. 

People living alone and lone parents are at higher risk of poverty. 

Old people in Australia have a more than 30% chance of living in poverty, which is one of the highest in the OECD. Among those of working age, being employed significantly reduces the risk, while those out of the labour force and the unemployed are at much higher risk of poverty. 

Nevertheless, there is poverty also among people that work, typically casual workers and part-time workers. People with low education are also at risk. 

Those living alone and one parent households face quite a high risk of poverty, even if they are employed. Indigenous Australians are almost twice as likely to be poor than the rest of Australians and they appear significantly poorer than the rest even after controlling for education, age, industry, skill and geographical remoteness, suggesting a range of socio-economic issues, including poor health and discrimination.

16. Women are at a higher risk of living in poverty compared to men (Figure 7), although the risk of poverty has been reduced for both groups over the last 15 years and more rapidly for women. In FY 2015/16, 20% of women lived below the 60% poverty line, and 13% below the 50% line. For men, the shares were 17% and 11%, respectively. 

17. Consider now the risk of poverty by age, shown in Figure 8. It is striking that the age group with by far the highest risk of poverty are the elderly. Prior to 2010 around 40% of individuals of age 65 and above were living in a household with disposable income below 50% of the median. This has since been reduced to 30%, but it nevertheless remains a high figure. For the 60% poverty line, more than half of the elderly lived in poverty until around 2010, with a declining trend to 44% in 2016. The poverty among the elderly in Australia is also very high in international comparison (Figure 9), according to the OECD Income distribution and poverty database. 

18. Very high poverty and social exclusion of the elderly are also reported for Australia in ACOSS (2014 and 2016) and Azpitarte and Bowman (2015). It is noteworthy that ACOSS (2016 and 2014) report similar overall poverty rates as in our data, however, variation across age according to their analysis is somewhat different, driven by the fact that they take into account housing costs. While for older people they still report the highest rate of poverty (except compared to the poverty rate of children below the age 15, which are excluded from our analysis), the difference with the rest of the population is less pronounced. As many older people own their houses and have repaid their mortgages, this provides significant protection against poverty (ACOSS, 2016). Moreover, many pensioners decide to take a significant amount of their pensions (superannuation) as a lump sum at the onset of their retirement, which thereafter does not count as current income and cannot be factored into HILDA measures of income poverty. 

23. We now turn to relative poverty across labour force status. As can be seen from Figure 12, full-time employed individuals have the lowest poverty rates. People employed part-time are about three times as likely to live in poverty as compared to the full-time employed. The unemployed have even higher rates of poverty, about 15% in FY 2015-16, although the rate is quite volatile over time. The highest poverty however is experienced by those not in the labour force, especially the elderly, as we already discussed above. The group “not in labour force of working age” includes students, parents not working, those who otherwise cannot or are unwilling to work. For all groups we can observe a trend reduction in poverty rates over the 15-year period, except for the part-time employed group. 

24. While concern often focuses on groups that exhibit highest incidence of poverty such as the unemployed or those out of the labour force, we should not overlook those who work, even full-time, but still end up being poor. Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that employed individuals represent the biggest group, therefore there is actually a higher number of poor among the full-time employed, compared to the poor employed part-time or the unemployed. 

29. People born in Australia have the lowest probability of living in poverty (Figure 18), followed by immigrants with English speaking background and then the rest. The gap has been closing, in particular over the last couple of years. Indigenous Australians, on the other hand, are almost twice as likely to be poor than the rest of Australians (Figure 19), and recently the gap appears to be widening. Due to limited sample size the poverty rate of indigenous people is quite erratic, therefore the data need to be interpreted with caution.

Full working paper can be accessed at https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/322390bf-en.pdf

One hundred & thirty-three dog attacks have been recorded in Clarence Valley so far in 2019

The Daily Examiner, 20 August 2019, p.6: 

There have been 133 recorded dog attacks across the Clarence Valley this year, with most of the attacks avoidable.

In an attempt to curb the problem, Clarence Valley Council has released a brochure to inform dog owners of their responsibilities.

Council regulatory services supervisor Tim Brenton said if people had taken two simple steps most of this year’s dog attacks could have been avoided. 

The first was to make sure dogs were always on a lead when being taken for a walk and the second was to ensure yards were properly fenced. 

“The seriousness of the attacks varied, but these were the common threads,” Mr Brenton said. “Unless they are in an off-leash area, dogs must be on a leash if they are outside their property. 

“Dog owners need to take all reasonable steps to ensure their dog is confined to the property where it is kept.” 

The brochure, called Take the Lead, will be distributed widely around the Clarence Valley and available at the council’s customer service centres in Grafton and Maclean. 

“Having a dog is wonderful,” Mr Brenton said. “But having a dog comes with responsibilities and this brochure aims to make people aware of those.” 

The brochure also contains a list of off-leash areas around the Clarence Valley and some of the penalties that apply for breaches of the Companion Animals Act.

Australia is the world’s third biggest exporter and fifth biggest miner of fossil fuels by CO2 potential

The Australia Institute, Tom Swann, High Carbon from a Land Down Under: Quantifying CO2 from Australia’s fossil fuel mining and exports, July 2019:

Australia is the world’s third biggest exporter and fifth biggest miner of fossil fuels by CO2 potential. 

Its exports are behind only Russia and Saudi Arabia, and far larger than Iraq, Venezuela and any country in the EU. Yet Australia’s economy is more diverse and less fossil fuel intensive than many other exporters. 

Australia has an opportunity and obligation to decarbonise its exports in line with the Paris Agreement.

Yahoo! Finance, 19 August 2019:

(Bloomberg) -- Australia’s booming coal industry has made it the world’s third-biggest exporter of potential carbon dioxide emissions locked in fossil fuels, placing it only behind oil giants Russia and Saudi Arabia. 

Australia makes up 7% of all global fossil fuel exports by carbon dioxide potential, as it accounts for almost one-third of the world coal trade, according to a report Monday from The Australia Institute, which has been critical of the federal government’s efforts to combat global climate change.  

While China and the U.S. are the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters in absolute terms, the report highlights the role relatively smaller polluters play in selling fossil fuels to other nations.

Australia, which is also one of the biggest gas exporters, supplies economies throughout Asia, including Japan, China and South Korea.

Exports of fossil fuels and supply infrastructure play a crucial role in locking in increased emissions, and their impact is often ignored in climate change policy, The AI said in the report. 

“Australia has a unique opportunity, and obligation, to face up to the climate crisis through policies to limit its carbon exports, starting with a moratorium on new coal mines,” it said. 

“The scale of exports from countries like Australia bring into stark relief why efforts to reduce world emissions must limit both demand and supply.” In terms of its own greenhouse gas pollution, Australia generates 1.2% of the world’s emissions while having just 0.3% of the population, according to the report. 

Domestic emissions have been rising in recent years as a number of giant gas export projects come on stream, while coal-fired power is still the mainstay of its electricity grid.....

Tweed Shire Council abandons its principled stand on foreign multinational Adani's proposed Galilee Basin coal mine

In which Tweed Shire Council decides Australia doesn't need the Great Barrier Reef or the Black-throated Finch......

Echo NetDaily, 19 August 2019: 

The Tweed Shire Council has performed a political back-flip on a 2017 promise to avoid hiring building companies contracted to Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine in central Queensland. 

Councillors voted for the ban two years ago, with Tweed Shire Deputy Mayor Chris Cherry (Independent) saying they ‘wished to represent the views of the community’. Cr Cherry said Adani didn’t have any approvals to mine in Carmichael at the time but people on the Tweed were concerned about potential environmental impacts of the project on the Great Barrier Reef. 

Labor councillor flips anti-Adani ban in favour of jobs 

Last week, Cr James Owen (Liberals) tabled a rescission on the 2017 vote and won majority support, meaning the ban no longer applies. 

Cr Ron Cooper (Independent) was absent from the meeting and had originally supported an anti-Adani stance. 

But a change of heart from Cr Reece Brynes (Labor) was enough to change council policy as he joined forces with Councillors Owen, Pryce Allsop (Independent) and Warren Polglase (Nationals). 

Cr Byrnes told Echonetdaily although he initially voted for the ban and continues to share environmental impact concerns, state and federal government approvals of the Carmichael project mean the council has to ‘accept realities’. 

‘My priority and Labor’s priority is always about creating more local jobs in the Tweed,’ he wrote in an email, ‘I make no apologies that Labor’s priority is always about creating jobs’. 

The council had to ‘move away from a position of protest’ to one that wouldn’t ‘prohibit or hamper future projects and jobs for people in the tweed’, Cr Byrnes wrote.....

BRIEF BACKGROUND

Environmental Defenders Office Qld, Case Explainer: Adani’s North Galilee Water Scheme - Federal Judicial Review

Australian Conservation Foundation, Stop Adani's polluting coal mine

Lock the Gate, Coal Mining: Water Impacts of the Adani Coal Mine

Climate Council, Adani Mine Must Be Stopped

ABC News, What we know about Adani's Carmichael coal mine project