More than 60 per cent of businesses in Byron Bay are now relying on JobKeeper to stay afloat

The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 July 2020:

In Byron Bay, sales of a $9.30 large green G-Force smoothie reveal how the COVID-19 wave has dumped on the NSW tourist town. 

In good times, with 2.4 million visitors a year ranging from backpackers to festival goers and others looking for yoga, surf and a healthy lifestyle, Byron can support six smoothie businesses. 

One of them, Sweet Byron, would sell 19 of these large green smoothies a day.   

Then coronavirus hit, forcing the closure of domestic and international borders. Byron's foreign visitors dried up, and its English language schools nearly emptied. 

 COVID-19 caused the cancellation of weddings and events such as the Writers Festival and the Splendour in the Grass misic festival, which usually provide a boost in the slow winter months. 

Ninety per cent of shops, hotels and restaurants in the town closed. When they reopened before school holidays, the streets were empty and Sweet Byron was lucky if it sold two Gforce Smoothies. 

Those students and backpackers who had remained headed north when the Queensland border re-opened earlier this month. 

More than 60 per cent of businesses in Byron are now relying on JobKeeper to stay afloat, according to a map by data analytics company Taylor Fry released last week. 

This is the most in any local government area in Australia and double the number in capital cities. 

Without JobKeeper Mika Cohen, the owner of the Sweet Byron smoothie shop, said his business wouldn't survive. 

Smoothie sales bounced back during the recent school holidays after coronavirus travel restrictions lifted and the town filled with families who followed the sun north. 

Mr Cohen was back to selling 8 Gforce Smoothies a day, still less than half the number he sold pre-COVID. 

With nearly all of Byron's economy tied to tourism, hospitality and the creative arts, Byron mayor Simon Richardson said the pandemic has delivered a "triple whammy". 

"It is really dangerous times for us," he said. 

Hotel bookings looked healthy for summer, but if the town doesn't get that "fattening" he feared it could "lurch into real danger". 

Hotel owner Christian Millett said Byron had been a stable market all year long, in the past. But after coronavirus shut down weddings and festivals, Mr Millett said he would not have been been able to justify keeping his doors open outside of school holidays if he wasn't receiving JobKeeper.....

Taylor Fry's analysis found smaller firms in retail, hospitality, manufacturing and construction sectors are especially dependent on JobKeeper to retain their staff...... 

When the tourism dried up, it affected the rest of the region with "all the pork and tomatoes, macadamia and the mueslis which aren't being bought".

Cr Richardson said there was a "false sense of affluence" associated with Byron because of its multimillion-dollar beach houses and movie-star residents like Chris Hemsworth. 

"For every $10 million house at Wattegos Beach there are 10 homes that are in some of the poorest areas in NSW," he said. 

Four areas in the LGA are among the most disadvantaged 20 per cent in Australia, and two are among the most affluent..... 

Rents are also high, and Cr Richardson said he has seen more people couch surfing after losing their jobs. A shopkeeper said his landlord wanted to restore rents to pre-COVID levels after providing discounts earlier: "In this time, we can't afford the full rent for the premises ... because there are 60 to 40 per cent fewer tourists." 

Taylor Fry's principal Alan Greenfield said without JobKeeper he was nervous about the future of regional tourist towns, especially if restrictions on travel continued. "If locals can't see a future where they live, they might be inclined to move away." 

Simon Westaway, the executive director of the Australian Tourism Industry Council, said the impact of COVID-19 on his 10,000 members had been "diabolical". Unlike other industries, it had been hard for tourist operators to "pivot" to other business. 

Even if people could travel, the impact of continuing uncertainty over jobs and rising mortgage stress – estimated to grow to $200 billion from $60 billon now – meant visitors were not necessarily buying the most expensive "smoothie". 

"You put all these figures together, and you go wowie kazowie, who is in a mindset to have a decent holiday? Let alone if you are allowed out [by governments]. " 

Although business was down now, surf school director and founder of Let's Go Surfing Brenda Miley said Byron was an aspirational place that will bounce back. "Everyone wants to go there. It is well worn trek from Bondi to Byron, and that all came together last school holidays." 

 She thinks it will be booked out next summer if government restrictions on travel aren't in place. "People who were planning to go skiing in Colorado or France are so happy to go to Byron and surf for a week or two," she said.

Percentage of NSW Northern Rivers Businesses relying on JobKeeper Payments by Local Government Area - as of 22 July 2020 

• Byron 60.39%
• Tweed 47.79%
• Ballina 39.56%
• Clarence Valley 34.52%
• Lismore 35.05%
• Richmond Valley 27.45%
• Kyogle 21.3%

Climate change denier Ian Plimer in the news again

YouTube GWPF video snapshot

Former mining geologist Ian Plimer (left) is nothing if not persistent. 

North Coast Voices has been noting his biased, inaccurate & frequently irrational opinions since December 2008.


This was the fall-out from one of his articles published nine months ago.

The Guardian, 24 July 2020:

An op-ed by Prof Ian Plimer in the Australian, which was condemned as blatantly false by climate scientists, has been found to have breached standards by the Australian Press Council. In November, his column titled “Let’s not pollute minds with carbon fears” argued that there “are no carbon emissions. If there were, we could not see because most carbon is black. Such terms are deliberately misleading, as are many claims.”

The article also referred to the “fraudulent changing of past weather records” and “unsubstantiated claims polar ice is melting”, as well as “the ignoring of data that shows Pacific islands and the Maldives are growing rather than being inundated”.

Despite a chorus of criticism at the time, the former editor John Lehmann defended Plimer’s article, saying “his voice is one of many which are important in the mix”.

In a lengthy adjudication the Oz was forced to publish on page two on Friday, the press council said the article contained inaccurate and misleading material in its claims that the Bureau of Meteorology had fraudulently changed weather records and that Plimer’s claims that there was no evidence polar ice was melting were misleading.

The newspaper breached two of the general principles of reporting: ensuring factual material is accurate (principle 1) and ensuring facts are presented with reasonable fairness and balance and opinion is based on fact (principle 3).

The council found that while it would have preferred Plimer’s links to the mining industry were disclosed in the column, the Australian did not breach guidelines in not disclosing because Plimer’s “past or present directorships of mining companies and advocacy in the debate around climate change were so well known” that it was not required.

Plimer is a professor of geology and well-known climate change denier who has served as a director of a number of mining firms, including Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill Holdings and Queensland Coal Investments.

In reviewing the article last November, University of New South Wales professor Katrin Meissner wrote: “This article is an impressive collation of the well known, scientifically wrong, and overused denier arguments. It is ideologically motivated and, frankly, utter nonsense.”….

A musing on the "guilty"

There was a book written by three journalists in 1940 under the pseudonym "Cato" which accused fifteen prominent men of the appeasement of Adolf Hitler and the failure of British government to rearm in between wars.

The "guilty men" identified as drawing Britain into the Second World War were: Neville Chamberlain, Sir John Simon, Sir Samuel Hoare, Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, Lord Halifax, Sir Kingsley Wood, Ernest Brown, David Margesson, Sir Horace Wilson, Sir Thomas Inskip, Leslie Burgin, James Earl Stanhope, W. S. Morrison, and Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith.

If one were to lay the blame for where the world stands right now who would we decide to blame for the retreat of democracy, increased social & economic inequality, widespread environmental degradation, global pandemics, endless small wars, a rogue banking & finance industry, an untrustworthy fourth estate, world-wide climate change and a plethora of crazy conspiracy theories on any subject imaginable?

There is a cast of thousands to chose from across these categories.

My own list of "guilty" individuals would be much longer than Cato's and from a personal perspective begin but not end with: Queen Elizabeth II, Sir John Kerr, John Malcolm Fraser, John Winston Howard, Richard Milhous Nixon, François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand, William Jefferson 'Bill' Clinton, George Herbert Walker Bush, George Walker Bush, Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, Anthony Charles Lynton 'Tony' Blair, Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Keith Rupert Murdoch, Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer, Johannes Bejlke Petersen, Anthony John 'Tony' Abbott, George Pell, David & Charles Koch, Mark Zuckerberg, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Donald John Trump, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Scott John Morrison, Liberal Party of Australia, U.S. Republican Party and the U.K. Conservative Party.

Supreme Court removes authorised status from a planned protest march from Sydney Town Hall to NSW Parliament House & rally calling for justice for Indigenous man David Dungay Jr. who died in police custody in 2015

NSW Police, Latest News, 26 July 2020:

NSW Police Force statement on Supreme Court decision  

The NSW Supreme Court has prohibited a public assembly planned for Sydney on Tuesday (28 July 2020) due to health and safety concerns associated with COVID-19. 

The protest is now unauthorised. 

Those thinking of attending – despite the Supreme Court decision and health advice – are strongly urged to reconsider their plans. 

While the NSW Police Force recognises and supports the rights of individuals to exercise their right to free speech, large-scale events, such as these, are currently subject to restrictions under the Public Health Act. 

As such, police will not hesitate to take the appropriate action, if required.

The NSW Supreme Court case in question was Commissioner of Police, New South Wales Police Force v Padraic Gibson (OBO Dungay Family) - 2020/00213575.

A Northern Region NSW Police officer charged over alleged neglect of duty with regard to a domestic violence incident

Destroy The Joint: Counting Dead Women, 15 July 2020

NSW Police, Latest News, 22 July 2020:

A police officer has been charged following an investigation into alleged neglect of duty. 

In January 2020, an investigation was commenced by officers from a northern region police district after an officer allegedly failed to appropriately investigate a reported domestic violence incident. 

Following inquiries, a male senior constable was issued a Future Court Attendance Notice yesterday (Tuesday 21 July 2020), for neglect of duty. 

He is due to appear before Newcastle Local Court on Thursday 3 September 2020. 

The officer is currently suspended with pay.

Byron Central Hospital fever clinic has confirmed two new positive COVID-19 cases following testing of a couple aged in their 60s who presented on 24 July 2020

Northern NSW Local Health District, media release, 25 July 2020:

Byron Central Hospital fever clinic has confirmed two new positive COVID-19 cases following testing of a couple aged in their 60s who presented yesterday. 

The couple had recently returned from Sydney and their cases have been associated with a series of funeral gatherings and a church service attended by a woman in her 40s from the Fairfield area, in Sydney. 

NSW Public Health Unit is conducting relevant interviews and contact tracing to ensure all steps are being taken to manage the risk. The couple are currently self isolating at home. 

This now brings the total number of cases in Northern NSW to 58.

NNSWLHD cases by likely source of infection: 

Source                                                                                                 
Overseas or interstate acquired  53 
Locally acquired – contact of a confirmed case or in a known cluster 4 Locally acquired- source not identified 1 
Under investigation 0 
Total 58 

We encourage anyone with even the mildest of symptoms to come forward for testing to help contain community spread of COVID-19. 

The symptoms of COVID-19 include fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose, headache, loss of smell and taste. 

Even if minor symptoms develop, please seek testing and self-isolate. 

Clinics are located at The Tweed Hospital, Byron Central Hospital, Lismore Base Hospital and Grafton Base Hospital, or other GP or pop up clinics in the region. 

A full list of testing clinics can be found at: https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/covid-19/Pages/clinics.aspx

Big Ted talks about the ABC, Australia's public broadcaster

https://youtu.be/d9WFjJqdLYM