Cartoons of the Week

Reg Lynch

Jon Kudelka

Mark David

Quote of the Week

"Love does no harm to a neighbour,” instructs the Bible, “therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.” The god invoked to oversee the religious discrimination bill avers such radical lefty chat. Instead, Voltaire’s suggestion that “If god [does] not exist, it would be necessary to invent him” describes the Liberals’ preferred “religious” entity with some prescience. It’s a small and petty, vengeful creature that squats in medical trauma and old bigotry, a deity conjured of conservative political resentment, and convenience." [Columnist Vanessa "Van" Badham, writing in The Guardian on 12 February 2020 on the subject of the Morrison Government's Religious Freedom Bills]

A NSW Government independent expert inquiry into the 2019-20 bushfire season providing input to NSW ahead of the next bushfire season is underway - how to make a submission

NSW Government, 3-10 February 2020: 

Dave Owens APM, former Deputy Commissioner of NSW Police, and Professor Mary O’Kane AC, Independent Planning Commission Chair and former NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer, are leading the six-month inquiry, which is reviewing the causes of, preparation for and response to the 2019-20 bushfires. 

Submissions for the NSW Independent Bushfire Inquiry are now open. 

Your response and feedback will help to inform the Inquiry's report...  

Use the online form below to make a submission. You can also provide your feedback by:

• Email: inquiries@bushfireinquiry.nsw.gov.au
• Post: NSW Independent Bushfire Inquiry, GPO Box 5341, Sydney NSW 2001
• Phone: If you have limited computer or internet access you can make a submission over the phone by calling the Bushfire Customer Care program on 13 77 88
• In-person: at any Service NSW service centre(external link) or at a Mobile Service Centre(external link)

The deadline for submissions is 27 March 2020, but this can be extended for those directly impacted by the fires.

Terms of Reference 

The Inquiry is to consider, and report to the Premier on, the following matters. 

1. The causes of, and factors contributing to, the frequency, intensity, timing and location of, bushfires in NSW in the 2019-20 bushfire season, including consideration of any role of weather, drought, climate change, fuel loads and human activity. 

2. The preparation and planning by agencies, government, other entities and the community for bushfires in NSW, including current laws, practices and strategies, and building standards and their application and effect. 

3. Responses to bushfires, particularly measures to control the spread of the fires and to protect life, property and the environment, including: 

• immediate management, including the issuing ofpublicwarnings 
• resourcing, coordination and deployment 
• equipment and communication systems. 

4. Any other matters that the inquiry deems appropriate in relation to bushfires. 

And to make recommendations arising from the Inquiry as considered appropriate, including on: 

5. Preparation and planning for future bushfire threats and risks. 

6. Land use planning and management and building standards, including appropriate clearing and other hazard reduction, zoning, and any appropriate use of indigenous practices. 

7. Appropriate action to adapt to future bushfire risks to communities and ecosystems. 

8. Emergency responses to bushfires, including overall human and capital resourcing. 

9. Coordination and collaboration by the NSW Government with the Australian Government, other state and territory governments and local governments. 

10. Safety of first responders. 

11. Public communication and advice systems and strategies.

Young storytelling in the Clarence Valley: ‘Yaegl Biirrinba' (This Is Our River) and 'River to the Sea'

https://youtu.be/srBp_713-5g

‘Yaegl Biirrinba' (This Is Our River) was created in June 2018, the result of a five day Desert Pea Media storytelling workshop. Co-written by, and starring, an incredibly talented group of Indigenous young people enrolled at Maclean High School, community members and local Elders - with support from DPM staff and local services.

https://youtu.be/sHZlCtpbZgM

‘River To The Sea' was created in December 2018, the result of a five-day Desert Pea Media storytelling workshop. Co-written by, and starring, an incredibly talented group of young people, community members and local Elders from Maclean and Yamba NSW - with support from the DPM team and Maclean High School Staff.

Republican Super Pac hopes to defeat President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box - one attack ad at a time

The Lincoln Project states that its mission is to: Defeat President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box.

A fascinating aspect to this project is that it is a super PAC* which was created by conservative and registered Republican voters.

It has been running strong political attack ads since January 2020.

This one targets Trump and the evangelical Christians who support him.....

https://youtu.be/yoglNFN5-Js

While this ad targets a Republican senator who voted to acquit Trump of both articles of impeachment.......

https://youtu.be/PgmXzmwaDhU

NOTE
* According to the US Federal Election Commission; "Super PACs are independent expenditure-only political committees that may receive unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, labor unions and other political action committees for the purpose of financing independent expenditures and other independent political activity."

Popular Yamba eatery Sassafras Pizza to re-open in March 2020

The Daily Examiner, 14 February 2020

Closed after fire gutted the premises in September 2019, the very popular Sassafras Pizza at 16 Coldstream St, Yamba, is to re-open early next month.

Operating 7 evenings a week from 5.30pm to 9pm. 

All its favourite menu items will return with the hottest pizza on the menu being renamed "Yamba 510" after the "fireys who threw everything they had at it".

Instragram

Has Australia lost another species to climate change?

The Guardian, 15 February 2020:

Drought, bushfires and rainstorms turn Australian rivers black

Luke Pearce had arrived at Mannus Creek for a three-day mission to rescue the Murray-Darling Basin’s last population of Macquarie perch.

For 10 years Pearce had visited this spot on the edge of the Snowy Mountains that, just weeks earlier, was ravaged by fire. There had been rain and the creek was flowing fast.

But as Pearce and his colleagues stood on the bank – nets at the ready – the water turned “to a river of black porridge”.

“We got there at about midday with two teams. But we were too late,” he says.

Pearce is a fisheries manager in the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries. A week earlier, he had caught nine of the endangered perch and taken them to the tanks at Narrandera Fisheries Centre.

But Pearce says nine was not enough to be confident they could breed enough in captivity to replenish the river. About 100 specimens would be be ideal, but Pearce says the fish are in such low numbers that he was hoping for 20. Hence the rescue mission on 20 January.

“It was a front of black water coming down,” Pearce says. “The water was pretty bad to start with, but it went from green to inky black.

“It was a moment of complete despair and, really, a feeling of a missed opportunity. Maybe if we’d got there four or five hours earlier we may have been able to get one or two more.”

An electronic probe in the water monitoring the oxygen levels dropped to show zero within hours, Pearce says.

“Watching those oxygen levels drop like that I had grave fears we could have lost all the fish in that system. It was devastating having worked there for such a long time to then potentially lose all this.”

The river was too black to see any fish, but crayfish, shrimp and mayfly larvae were crawling out.

What happened at Mannus Creek is one example of what scientists have described as a “triple whammy” hitting rivers on Australia’s east coast and inland.

Drought and a long-term drying has delivered a cascade of mass fish kills since late 2018, with low river flows, low oxygen and algal blooms. Authorities and politicians warned repeatedly in 2019 that ongoing drying would see more mass fish kills.

Then Australia’s bushfire crisis struck across catchments. Now heavy rain has washed sludge and ash into rivers, robbing the remaining fish of oxygen.

Hundreds of thousands of fish have died in multiple events – some caused by lack of water, and some caused by downpours running over burned catchments.

At one time, Macquarie perch was one of the most abundant native fish in the Murray-Darling system – prized by anglers and also commercial fishers.

But a NSW government assessment of the fish in 2008 wrote the building of dams and weirs had compromised spawning areas and blocked the fish’s movement. Overfishing, pollution and predation by introduced species like redfin perch had also caused numbers to plummet.

When Luke Pearce returned to Mannus Creek after the fires he was confronted with a scene of carnage. Photograph: Luke Pearce

Read the full article here.