Knitting Nannas across Northern NSW appalled at the decision of NSW Government agency, the Independent Planning Commission, to give Santos approval to develop an 850 well gasfield in the Pilliga Forest and surrounding farmland near Narrabri

 

Letter for Publication

NARRABRI GAS PROJECT DECISION

The Grafton Knitting Nannas Against Gas are appalled at the decision of the NSW Independent Planning Commission (IPC), a NSW Government agency, to give Santos approval to develop an 850 well gasfield in the Pilliga Forest and surrounding farmland near Narrabri.

For years there has been strong opposition to this enormous project – both in the immediate area and further afield.

The Gomeroi people are concerned about the threat to aboriginal heritage; farmers fear the impact of the project on local aquifers and the recharge zone of the Great Artesian Basin; and some opponents are worried about the safe disposal of the saline water produced as the gas is extracted.

As the gasfield expands, clearing for roads, pipeline routes, well surrounds and ponds for produced water in the ecologically important Pilliga Forest, the largest temperate woodland in NSW, will cause devastating fragmentation of natural habitat creating problems for many local fauna species - including threatened species such as Black-striped Wallabies, Koalas and Eastern Pygmy-possums.

While the Grafton Knitting Nannas oppose this damaging project because of the impacts on the local area, they are also very concerned about its impacts beyond the north-west of the state.

At a time when Australia needs to urgently reduce its carbon emissions, we have mindless governments pushing for expansion of a dirty fossil fuel industry and its emissions and indulging in porkies about the necessity for this expansion.

Politicians obsessed with fossil fuels claim more gas is needed to reduce the price of gas for domestic consumption and say gas will super-charge the economy after COVID, provide huge numbers of jobs and act as a transition fuel as we move to a clean economy.

The Nannas are appalled that the three man panel of the IPC has ignored the local concerns and the climate issues and has accepted the dubious economic claims of Santos and the politicians.

We agree with those opposing this disastrous development. We say, “This fight is not over yet.”

Leonie Blain

The Grafton Knitting Nannas against Gas

October 1, 2020.

ENDS

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Despite Santos Ltd presenting itself as an Australian company it is worth noting that by 2018 est. 76% of its shareholder voting power was controlled by subsidiaries of foreign multinational banks and foreign investment corporations.

Nationals MP for Clarence is jumping up and down about the Clarence Valley being left out of the NSW-Qld border bubble. Well the fact of the matter is that the O'Farrell-Baird-Berejilkian Government has had 9 years to reverse the error that led to the current problem & neither he, his party or the government have addressed the issue

 

Sometime in the 21st Century the New South Wales Government invited a bee into its bonnet concerning a need to amalgamate regional local government areas with a view to eventually creating mega-councils and, when that policy was not greeted with enthusiasm (indeed sometimes with open rebellion) it decided to create communities of interest containing clusters of local government areas 'sharing' resources.

Down in Sydney - somewhere between Macquarie Street and Macquarie Towers - the state government decided to overturn the genuine Northern Rivers community of interest built up over the last 179 years and reclassify the Clarence Valley as "Mid-North Coast". 

Although many in the Clarence Valley fought back against being lumped in with 'southerners' who did not share a good many of our values, aspirations or concerns, the state government kept insisting.

By 2006 only the Australian Bureau of Meteorology consistently referred to the Clarence Valley as being in the Northern Rivers region and much later the valley was included with the other historical Northern Rivers areas in the one state health district.

When it came to NSW Government agencies generally, they tended to gather data about the Clarence Valley, its communities and residents as part of the newly defined "Mid-North Coast".

We were frequently merged with Coffs Harbour when it came to recording crime, unemployment  levels, transport infrastructure and, at a regional planning level we were lumped with Coffs Harbour, Belligen, Nambucca, Kempsey, Port Macquarie-Hastings, Greater Taree and Great Lakes local government areas. 

Now the National Party members of the O'Farrel-Baird-Berejiklian Government were well aware of the fact that Clarence Valley communities never considered the reclassification was anything but a political move by a city-centric government and were instinctively refusing to turn their eyes south.

However, I do not recall any individual or combined push by Chris Gulapatis, Geoff Provest or Ben Franklin to reverse that "Mid-North Coast" label before the global pandemic intruded into the state.

So it should not come as a surprise that when the Queensland Government began to look for information about where the Clarence Valley was both geographically and socially when considering its response to COVID-19, it found us in what appeared to be a large population cluster which was too close for comfort to the outer fringes of heavily populated areas like the Hunter-Newcastle and Central Coast.

Former surveyor Chris Gulaptis can go to the newspapers calling the Clarence Valley's exclusion from the Northern Rivers border bubble "ridiculous", "bizarre, perplexing and unnecessary" but he has sat on his hands for almost nine years happily ignoring what locals had been telling him during those years - that the time would come when we would all rue the day that the NSW Government on paper ejected us from the Northern Rivers.

Cartography based solely on political ideology is a b*tch, Mr. Gulaptis. 

NSW Berejiklian Coalition Government effectively gets its public sector wage cuts in the middle of a global pandemic

 

An est. 400,000 public sector workers throughout New South Wales, including health workers and teachers in the regions, received a slap in the face this month.

According to the Headnote in NSW Industrial Relations Commission, Application for Crown Employees (Public Sector – Salaries 2020) Award and Other Matters (No 2) [2020], 1 October 2020:

Between 9 March 2020 and 29 May 2020 the Public Service Association and Professional Officers’ Association Amalgamated Union of New South Wales, the New South Wales Nurses and Midwives’ Association, the Health Services Union of New South Wales and the Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation (New South Wales) (collectively, “Applicants”) filed in the Commission a total of 43 applications seeking orders for the making of awards to replace, or to vary, 41 existing awards. In each case the application calls on the Commission to confer on employees covered by the existing or proposed awards an increase of 2.5% to their salaries and salary-related allowances to take effect from the first pay period on or after 1 July 2020…..

A decision not to award any increases for the year commencing 1 July 2020 may see employees under the relevant awards suffer a reduction of 0.3% in their real wages over the two year period to 30 June 2021…..

The evidence, in particular the economic evidence, adduced in the proceedings calls for restraint in the particular circumstances of the current financial year. At the same time, in the exercise of the Commission’s discretion and having regard to all of the economic considerations the Full Bench does not accept that an outcome that would see a decrease in the real earnings of employees would be fair and reasonable.

The Full Bench proposes to make awards and variations to avoid such a reduction, by awarding increases of 0.3%.....

Decision: Determination that salaries and salary-related allowances in the awards the subject of the applications should be increased by 0.3% with effect from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2020.

In this matter the position of the Berejiklian Government was as follows; The position of the Employers [represented by the NSW Crown Solicitor] can be summarised as contending that the Commission should award no increases to salaries and salary-related allowances, whether by making a new award or varying an existing one. Instead, the Commission should make an award or a variation in respect of each of the Joined Applications which has a nominal term of one year, which awards no increase to salaries and salary-related allowances and contains a no extra claims clause.

President Trump's Finances: living on borrowed money and avoiding income tax

Ed Wexler

The New York Times, 27 September 2020:

The Times obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.

Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.

As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.

The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.

The New York Times has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office. It does not include his personal returns for 2018 or 2019. This article offers an overview of The Times’s findings; additional articles will be published in the coming weeks…...

Read the full article here.

663 people have died from #COVID19 in aged care facilities in Australia.

My direct question to Health Secretary: Were any of these deaths avoidable?

The short answer we got: Yes - if the Federal Gov had acted quicker in Victoria. #auspol pic.twitter.com/A0Hrom5NJQ

— Katy Gallagher (@SenKatyG) September 29, 2020

Cartoon of the Week

David Pope

NSW Labor MLA Janelle Saffin supports rail trail and keeping options open for a return to rail

 

Office of the NSW Member for Lismore, media release, 30 September 2020:

Saffin supports rail trail and keeping options open for a return to rail

LISMORE MP Janelle Saffin has always supported a rail trail for the Northern Rivers as well as a Regional Integrated Transport Plan which includes keeping our rail corridor in public ownership for future rail services – light rail or a Very Fast Train.

Ms Saffin said she had never shied away from this dual position and it was a shame that some commentary on the Transport Administration Amendment (Closures of Railway Lines in Northern Rivers) Bill 2020 was causing division across the community.

“My focus in Parliament last week was on ensuring that the Bill maintained the rail corridor in public hands, able to be brought back to train use without obstacles,” Ms Saffin said.

“I negotiated two amendments with NSW Minister for Regional Transport and Roads Paul Toole (who introduced the Bill) that strengthened this so I find it perplexing that some people feel the need to attack me and plan to protest outside my office.

“These amendments passed in the Legislative Assembly. The view I had heard many express was that the one-page Bill contained nothing unexpected.

“The Bill is now with the Legislative Council which in October will review and debate it in detail.”

Ms Saffin said that when she was Federal Member for Page, rail trail advocates came to her, and even though it was a State issue, she told them that sounded fine but the rail corridor must remain in public ownership no matter what.

The then Page MP ran a community petition which achieved this goal and while Ms Saffin could not promise to bring back the train, she helped secure funding for a Regional Integrated Transport Plan which included rail transport as an option for the Northern Rivers and the Mid North Coast.

Ms Saffin said she went to the 2019 State election on the public record as supporting the rail trail so this was ‘no big secret’ and she had clearly restated her long-standing commitment to ensuring the rail corridor was protected.

While a few Greens Party members are predicting Ms Saffin will lose the next State election in 2023 because of her support for the Rail Trail Bill, Ms Saffin said this sounded more like political posturing.

“New South Wales has a preferential voting system. Yes, The Greens and Labor exchange preferences but I am not a Green; I shape and make Labor policy based on Labor values of fairness and equity,” Ms Saffin said.

“I meet with and listen to all sides and try my hardest to do what is best for our region.”

There were two Labor Opposition amendments put to the NSW Legislative Assembly with regard to the Transport Administration Amendment (Closures of Railway Lines in Northern Rivers) Bill 2020. Both were agreed to.

Amendment c2020-137A made clearer the bill's intent that the land within the rail corridor between Crabbes Creek and Condong and between Casino and Bentley remain in public ownership and, Amendment c2020-131B outlined the uses to which the land could be put.

The bill passed the NSW Legislative Council on 23 September 2020 with these amendments intact.