Concerns Raised By The Intent And Wording Of Local Land Services Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2020

Draft copy of a letter sent as an email by two Clarence Valley residents to 24 members of the Legislative Assembly, so that none of these honourable members can plead ignorance in the future if they pass this piece of environmental vandalism into law.

The letter was not sent to Liberal and Nationals members of the Upper House given it concerns a government bill originally presented to NSW Legislative Assembly by their confederates there and, therefore were thought not inclined to lend an ear to residents from affected regional areas. 

Members of the Legislative Council

Parliament of New South Wales

Macquarie Street

Sydney NSW 2000

8 November 2020

ATTENTION

Mark Banasiak MLC, Robert Borsak MLC, Abigail Boyd MLC,

Mark Buttigieg MLC, Anthony D’Adam MLC Greg Donnelly MLC,

Cate Faehrmann MLC, Justin Field MLC, John Graham MLC,

Courtney Houssos MLC, Emma Hurst MLC, Rose Jackson MLC,

Mark Latham MLC, Daniel Mookhey MLC, Tara Moriarty MLC,

Fred Nile MLC, Mark Pearson MLC, Peter Primrose MLC,

Rod Roberts MLC, Adam Searle MLC, Walt Secord MLC,

Penny Sharpe MLC, David Shoebridge MLC, Mick Veitch MLC.

Dear Members,

Re: Local Land Services Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2020

SUMMARY: Passing bad law does not produce good outcomes. It is not in the public interest to extinguish state protection of the Koala from the bulk of public and private land in New South Wales. Neither is it advisable to extinguish on those same lands the protections afforded to persons and native wildlife by other existing state legislation.

On or about 10 September 2020 the media reported that the NSW Parliamentary National Party was strongly opposed to that version of the State Environmental Planning Policy (Koala Habitat Protection) 2019 in force on 3 September 2020.

However, within a matter of weeks an agreement had been reached with the NSW Parliamentary Liberal Party that this state environmental planning policy would be amended to ensure that the policy did not impinge on the rights of farmers “to farm without encumbrance from new koala planning laws”.

This was how changes to NSW koala habitat protection policy was consistently put to the state electorate by government spokespersons at the time.

Indeed, State Environmental Planning Policy (Koala Habitat Protection) 2019 was amended on 16 October 2020.

The amended State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP):

• Retains its new commencement date of 1 March 2020;

• Doesn’t apply to - (b) land dedicated under the Forestry Act 2012 as State forest or a flora reserve. An exemption also contained in the previous 3 September 2020 version of this SEPP;

• Only applies to 83 named local government areas out of a total of 128 local government areas and to - (a) in the koala management area specified in Schedule 1 opposite the local government area, or (b) if more than 1 koala management area is specified, in each of those koala management areas. Clauses also included in the previous version of this SEPP;

• Only applies to land classified as core koala habitat which is over 1 hectare in size. This applied to land in the previous version of the SEPP as well;

• Doesn’t apply to any land on which a development application has already been lodged, as was the case under the previous version of this SEPP;

• Tightens the definition of core koala habitat so that a higher level of proof is required at this clause - “(a) an area of land which has been assessed by a suitably qualified and experienced person in accordance with the Guideline as being highly suitable koala habitat and where koalas are recorded as being present at the time of assessment of the land as highly suitable koala habitat”;

• Made more land exempt from its provisions - “(c) land on which biodiversity certification has been conferred, and is in force, under Part 8 of the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016”;

• Allows larger buildings or buildings on a different part of a post-bushfire residential lot by repealing - “(b) the replacement dwelling house is within the existing building footprint”.

The NSW Government decided to introduce a separate Bill which sought to go further than the amended SEPP and which the government members of state parliament misrepresented at the time as only removing that SEPP from farmland

This bill, Local Land Services Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2020, seeks:

(I) to remove all local government areas from the protection of State Environmental Planning Policy (Koala Habitat Protection) 2019 with the exception of core koala habita in just 5 of the original 28 local government areas covered by the current version of the SEPP. These are Ballina, Coffs Harbour City, Kempsey, Lismore and Port Stephens;

(ii) to extinguish State Environmental Planning Policy (Koala Habitat Protection) 2019 on all public and private land in the state, with the exception of land within the NSW National Parks estate, declared wilderness areas, dedicated flora reserves, declared heritage land, land declared to have outstanding biodiversity, declared World Heritage properties and, certain dedicated or reserved lots of Crown Land;

(iii) to establish as law clauses in the bill which allow the commercial logging of native trees to continue unimpeded on private land and which extend the life of private forestry agreements to 30 years duration, thereby effectively circumventing a planned government review of the private forestry system;

(iv) such logging on private land to be constrained only by a private forestry plan whose conditions may be altered over time. The NSW Government has decided not to renew the NSW Forest Agreements for the Upper North East, Lower North East and Eden regions lapsed on 4 March 2019.;

(v) to define as “allowable activity land” suitable for native timber clearing as landholding which:

“(a) is in an area of the State to which Part 5A applies, and

(b) is or was wholly or partly in a rural land use zone and the whole or part of which has been

rezoned as Zone E2, Zone E3 or Zone E4, and

(c) is used for primary production”.

(vi) to permit clearing of native vegetation for allowable activities specified in Schedule 5A even if there is no approval or other authority for the clearing required by or under another Act or if it is in contravention of a provision of another Act, including the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 and Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016;

(vii) to allow rural land zoned E2 (Environmental Conservation), E3 (Environmental Management) or E4 (Environmental Living) under an environmental planning instrument to be cleared of native timber, even if all or any sections of such land was previously protected under provisions in Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 or the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016, provided the land owner/lessee asserts the land will be used for primary purposes; and

(viii) to allow clearing of native vegetation on land to which State Environmental Planning Policy (Vegetation in Non-Rural Areas) 2017 would normally apply if under this bill such landholding is now classified as “allowable activity land”.

Concerns Raised By The The Intent And Wording Of Local Land Services Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2020

The major concerns can be found in the NSW Parliament’s Legislation Review Committee report of 20 October 2020, which in itself appears to imperfectly understand the impact of logging of native timber on private land:

“The Bill seeks to remove several requirements for land owners to obtain development consent under Parts 4 and 5 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (the EPA Act).

In doing so, the Committee notes that the Bill would remove local councils' ability to assess development applications, engage with relevant neighbour and community stakeholders, and make recommendations regarding the proposed development changes. It may thereby impact on the rights of these stakeholders to participate in such processes and be consulted about issues that may affect them.

[My yellow highlighting]

However, the Committee acknowledges that these changes are to streamline the approval process of private and native forestry clearing for landholders, who are also required to obtain separate approval from Local Land Services. In the second reading speech, the Minister also noted that private native forestry is a low-impact activity occurring rarely on agricultural land and is not a permanent land use change. Under these circumstances, the Committee makes no further comment.”

It is a significant concern that the Local Land Services Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2020 will deprive local councils, ratepayers and residents of the ability to sustainably manage land development in rural and regional New South Wales.

It is noted that the Legislative Review Committee is reporting on the clearing of native timber aspect of the bill without commenting on the extinguishing of State Environmental Planning Policy (Koala Habitat Protection) 2019 on agricultural land and other land on which private forestry agreements exist or are sought.

It is also noted that although the Legislative Review Committee report states that approval for land clearing is required from Local Land Services it is not clear that the Review Committee took into consideration the number of exemptions from its provisions are provided to landholders under the Local Land Services Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2020.

This raises another very significant concern because clearing of such land when it exists within 100 -150 kilometres inland from the NSW coastline will in all probability represent a permanent change in land use.

Land in this area contains the entire estimated range of koala habitat land.

It also contains the bulk of land identified by Forestry NSW as suitable for logging under future private forestry agreements and all the exisiting timber mills in the state.

The land indentified as good logging land on the North Coast stretches for est. 286 kms from Coffs Harbour to the NSW-Qld border and up to 100-135 kms inland.

Extent of harvestable timber on private land and operating timber mills prior to June 2019

It is of some concern in a region where sudden torrential rainfall can occur to note that this map indicates that much of the harvestable timber is on higher sloping land. Given this timber is also spread across thousands of individual holdings this concern is amplified by the ability of Land Services or the Environmental Protection Agency to adequately police the level of land clearing and/or logging the Bill before the Legislative Council appears to allow.

Prior to the devastating bushfires of 2019-2020, the NSW North Coast had a diverse array of forest types and most of the tree cover was estimated to be between >20 to <30 metres and >30 to <40 metres in height across an est. 20,706 square kilometres, according to the NSW Dept. of Primary Industries (DPI).

Extent of forest cover in north-east New South Wales prior to 2019-2020 bushfires

Of the estimated 6.30 million hectares of North Coast forest which was thought to be standing in 2018-19 this is how much was impacted by fire:

Basemap from ArcGIS Online GEEBAM v3.0 (03/02/2020) © State Government of NSW and Department of Planning, Industry and Environment 2020

At least half the forest canopy overall was partially or fully affected in these fire grounds according a NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment report.

Mapping of bushfire affected forests and properties prior to these bushfires which had a ‘High’ to ‘Very High’ suitability for timber production are located within the same est. 286 kms long by 100-135kms wide area of north east New South Wales.

It is of great concern that both the depleted forest landscape and what might remains of harvestable timber both occupy the same land area clearly identified as koala habitat.

Joint EPA-Dept. of Industry Forest Science Unit predictive mapping of remaining NSW koala habitat based on sighting records, vegetation, soils and climate.

Koala Habitat

Koala habitat exists across much of North East New South Wales. It is of varying quality and quantity.

Core koala habitat is not consolidated. Pockets of core koala habitat are frequently scattered amongst non-core habitat.

Koalas travel between these core areas – often using non-core habitat as travel routes which supply shelter and feeding opportunities.

In North East New South Wales non-core habitat is also used by koala on a permanent or semi-permanent basis.

Local communities in the Clarence Valley, which is being removed form the protection afforded by the current Koala Habitat Protection SEPP by the proposed Local Land Services Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2020, is a case in point.

Take Iluka on the banks of the Clarence River. It is fringed by and includes within the village area undeveloped open forest in a mix of Crown and private land.

Here are some of koala sighted there in the last 10 years:

Photograph supplied by Iluka resident Gabrielle Barto

Photograph of a koala in search of a tree at Iluka supplied

Another Lower Clarence area where koalas are easily found is the village of Lawrence and here are koalas snapped in 2019:

Photograph of Lawrence koala supplied

Photograph of koala mid-canopy & circled in black supplied

Elsewhere in the Lower Clarence in 2017:

We respectfully ask the twenty-four members of the Legislative Council listed at the top of this letter to consider the provisions of Local Land Services Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2020 in light of:

• the shrinking boundaries of the forested landscape in North East New South Wales from Coffs Harbour to the NSW-Qld border;

• the potential loss of local government control of significant aspects of development of forested land and the rolling impacts that may have on koala habitat and koalas numbers; and

• the potential for local extinction of koala in the Clarence Valley because land in this local government area was deliberately removed from the protection afforded by the current Koala Habitat Protection SEPP under provisions in Local Land Services Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2020.

In anticipation and appreciation of your assistance with this matter.

Yours sincerely,

[two signatures redacted]

Donald Trump in defeat

Donald J. Trump returning to the White House after American media declared he had lost the presidency because the majority of votes in Pennsylvania went to Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. 

IMAGE: www.afr.com, 8 November 2020

As Trump threatens to pull down and trample upon US democracy, Australia and the world watches.....

https://youtu.be/aBQ3yGBF6c8

Due to the inflammatory and dangerously untruthful nature of the video contents U.S media platforms ceased broadcasting it within the first few minutes.

President Trump just spoke at the White House, as key states continue to count votes.
Shep has the facts: “What the President of the United States is saying, in large part, is absolutely untrue.” #Election2020 https://t.co/E6DBt6OodD pic.twitter.com/HVa87qUCzB

— The News with Shepard Smith (@thenewsoncnbc) November 6, 2020

However, it is worth noting the substance of what U.S. President Donald Trump is alleging before the final official vote count is completed and announced.

As a precaution against the YouTube video also being removed, the following is a basic partially corrected and incomplete text of what Trump said at this White House press briefing on Friday 6 November 2020 (Australian time) and readers are warned that this is a wildly inaccurate speech which is apparently meant to deliberately mislead and deceive the American people:

Thank you very much. Good evening. I'd like to update the American people [on] our efforts to protect the [integrity of our very important 2020] election. If you count the legal vote, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us. If you count the votes that came in late, we're looking at them very strongly. A lot of votes came in late. I've already [decisively] won many critical states, including Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, [to name just a few]. We've won [these and many others victories despite historic] election interference [from big media, big money and big tech]. As everybody saw, we won by historic numbers. And the [pollsters] got it knowingly wrong, [they got it knowingly wrong. We had polls that were] so ridiculous and everybody knew it at the time. There is no blue wave that they predicted. They thought there was going to be a big blue wave. That was false. [It was done for suppression reasons. But] instead, there was a big red wave and it's been properly acknowledged by the media. I think they were very impressed, but that was after the fact. That doesn't do us any good. We kept the Senate, despite having twice as many seats to protect as Democrats. And [in a] really, much more competitive states, we did a fantastic job with the Senate. I think we're very proud of what's happened there [with many more seats to defend]. They spent [almost 200 million dollars] on senate races in South Carolina and Kentucky alone, two races and hundreds [of millions of dollars overall] against us. [At a national level] our [opponents] major donors were Wall Street bankers and special interests. Our major donors were police officers, farmers, and everyday citizens. [Yet] for the first time ever, we lost zero races in the house. I was talking to Kevin McCarthy. He said he couldn't believe it. [Zero races, very unusual thing, zero. And actually] won new seats, with many more on the way. This is also the year of the Republican woman. More Republican women were elected to congress than ever before. That's a great achievement. I won the largest share of non-white voters of any Republican [in 60 years], including historic numbers of Latino, African-American, Asian American, and Native American voters, the largest ever in our history. We grew our party by 4 million voters, the greatest turnout in Republican Party history. Democrats are the party of the big donors, the big media, the big tech it seems, and Republicans have become the party of the American worker, and that's what happened. And we're also the party of inclusion. As everybody recognizes, media polling was election interference in the truest sense of that word, by powerful special interests. These really phony polls -- I have to call them phony polls, fake poles, [were] designed to [keep out voters at home,] create the illusion of momentum for Mr. Biden and diminish Republicans ability to raise funds. They were what's called suppression polls. Everyone knows that now. [And it's never been used to the extent that its been used on this last election.] To highlight just a few examples, the day before the election, Quinnipiac, which was wrong on every occasion that I know of, had Joe Biden up by five point in Florida. And they were off by 8.4 points and I won Florida easily, easily. So, they had me [losing] Florida by a lot and I ended up winning Florida by a lot. Other than that, they were very accurate. They had him up four points in Ohio, and they were up by 12.2 points. And they also won Ohio, the great state of Ohio, there easily. They had Joe Biden up 17 points in Wisconsin, and it was basically even. They were off by about 17 point. And they knew that. They were not stupid people. They knew that, suppression. There are states yet to be decided in the presidential race. The voting apparatus of this state are run, in all cases, by Democrats. We were winning in all the key locations by a lot, actually, and then our numbers started miraculously getting whittled away, in secret, and they wouldn't allow, legally permissible observers. We went to court in a couple of instances and we were able to get the observers put in. They wanted them 60, 70 feet away, 100 feet away, [or outside the building] to observe [people inside the building]. [And we won a case, a big case and we have others happening. Lots and - there is lots of litigation even beyond our litigation]. There is tremendous amount of litigation because of how unfair this process was. And I predicted that. I talked about mail-in voting for a long time. It's really destroyed our system. It's a corrupt system. [And it makes people corrupt, even if they aren't] by nature. [But they become corrupt.] It's too easy. [They want to find out how many votes they need and then they seem to be able to find them.] They wait and wait and [then they find them. And] you see that on election night. We were ahead in North Carolina by a lot, tremendous number of votes. And we're still ahead by a lot, but not as many because they're finding ballots all of a sudden. It's amazing how this mail-in ballots are all one-sided. I know it's supposed to be to the advantage of the Democrats. But in all cases, they are one-sided. We were up by 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania. I won Pennsylvania by a lot. And that gets whittled down to, now we're up by 90,000 votes. They will keep coming and coming and coming and they don't want us to have observers, although we won a court case. And they're appealing. Actually, they're appealing. We won a case we want people to watch, and they're appealing. That's interesting. I wonder why they're appealing. Likewise in Georgia, I won by a lot, a lot, with a lead getting close to 300,000 votes on election night in Georgia -- and by the way, got whittled down, and now it's getting to be to a point where I'll be winning by a lot by perhaps even being down a little bit. In Georgia, a pipe burst, totally unrelated to the location, and they stopped counting and a lot of things happened. The election apparatus in Georgia is run by Democrats. We've had margins of 300,000. Michigan, we won the state. In Wisconsin, we did likewise, fantastically well. And that got whittled down. In every case, they got whittled down. We're on track to win Arizona. We only need to carry 55% of the remaining vote, 55% margins, and that's a margin that we've significantly exceeded, so we'll see what happens with that. Our goal is to defend the integrity of the election. We will not allow the corruption to steal such an important election, or any election for that matter, and we can't allow silence [or] anybody to silence our voters and manufacture results. I've been doing a lot of public things for a long time. I've never had anything that's been as inspirational by people calling, talking, sending things to us. I've never seen such love and such affection and such spirit as I've seen for this. People know what happening and they've seen what's happening. There are many instances, which will be reported very shortly. There is tremendous litigation going on. And this is a case where they are trying to steal an election. They are trying to rig an election. We can't let that happen. [....Detroit and Philadelphia known as two of the most politically corrupt places anywhere in our country - easily -] cannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of the presidential race. [A very important presidential race.] In Pennsylvania, Democrats have gone to the state supreme court to try to ban our election observers very strongly. We won the case, but they're going forward. They don't want anybody [in there, there don't want anyone] watching them as they count the ballots. And I can't imagine why. There is [absolutely] no legitimate reason why they would not want to have people watching this process. Because if it's straight, they should be proud of it. Instead, they are trying obviously to commit fraud. There's no question about that. In Philadelphia, observers are kept far away, very far away. So far, that people are using binoculars. There's been tremendous problems caused, paper on all of the windows so you can't see in, and the people that are banned are very unhappy and have become somewhat violent. The 11th circuit ruled that in Georgia, the votes have been in by election day, that they should be in by election day, and they weren't. Votes are coming in after election day. And they had a ruling already that you have to have the votes in by election day. To the best of my knowledge, votes should be in by election day. Democrats never believed they could win this election honestly. I really believed that. Tremendous corruption and fraud going on. That's why they mailed out tens of millions of unsolicited ballots without any verification measures whatsoever. And I told everybody that these things would happen. Because I've seen it happen. I've watched a lot of different elections before they decided to go with this big massive election with tens of millions of ballots going out to everybody, in many cases totally unsolicited. This was unprecedented in American history. This was by design despite years of claiming to care about election security. They refuse to require signatures, identities, or to make sure they are eligible or ineligible to vote. People are walking in, they have no idea. They are writing down things, doing a lot of bad things, we have a lot of information coming that you'll see, will shake even you people up. The officials overseeing the counting in Pennsylvania, all part of a corrupt democrat machine that you've written about for a long time. You've been writing about a corrupt democrat machine. I went to school there. It hasn't changed. It's gotten worse. In Pennsylvania, partisan democrats have allowed the ballots to be received three days after the election, and we think much more than that. And they are counting those without any identification whatsoever. So you don't have postmarks, you don't have identification. There have been a number of disturbing irregularities across the nation. Our campaign has been denied access to observe any counting in Detroit. Detroit is another place. And I wouldn't say the best reputation for election integrity. Poll workers in Michigan were duplicating ballots. When our observers attempted to challenge the activity, they jumped in front of the volunteers to block their view so they couldn't see what they were doing. And it became a little bit dangerous. One major hub for counting ballots in they covered up the windows with large pieces of cardboard. So they wanted to protect and block the counting area the final batch did not arrive until 4:00 in the morning. So they brought it in. And the batches came in and nobody knew where they came from. We've been denied access. Counting was halted for hours and hours on election night with results with held from major democrat-run locations only to appear later and they all had the name Biden on them or just about all, which is a little strange. I challenge Joe and Democrats to clarify that they only want legal votes. I think they should use legal votes. We want every legal vote counted. We want openness and transparency. No secret count rooms. No mystery ballots, no illegal votes after election day. You have election day and the laws are very strong on that. You have an election day. We want an honest election and an honest count. We want people working back there because it's a very important job. That's the way this country will win. We think there's going to be a lot of litigation because we have so much evidence and so much proof, but we think there will be a lot of litigation because we can't have an election stolen like this. I tell you, I've been talking about this for many months with all of you. I've said strongly that mail-in ballots are going to be a disaster, small very easy elections were disastrous. This is a large scale version and it's getting worse and worse every day. We're hearing stories that are absolute horror stories. And we can't let that happen to the United States. It's not a question of who wins, Republican, Democrats, Joe, myself. We can't let that happen to our country. We can't be disgraced by having something like this happen. So it will be hopefully cleared up, maybe soon. I hope soon. But it will probably go through a process, a legal process. As you know I've claimed certain states. He's claiming states. So we can both claim the states. But ultimately, I have a feeling that the judges will have to rule. There have been a lot of shenanigans and we can't stand for that in the country. [This transcript was compiled from uncorrected Closed Captioning by https://www.c-span.org/ with additional missing dialogue inserted from briefing exerpts found on @realDonaldTrump]

Trump statement released to the media on 8 November 2020 after the U.S. media had declared the 2020 U.S. presidential election won by Joe Biden:

This is one response from Australia.....

An Irish response.....

Image found on Twitter, 7 November 2020

Rural & regional NSW needs practical support with QR codes to accommodate customers without smart phones and businesses with poor mobile coverage

 

Office of Labor MP for Lismore, media release, 5 November 2020:

Lismore MP Janelle Saffin has called on the Berejiklian-Barilaro Government to do more to help small businesses establish Quick Response (QR) code check-in systems in country areas where telecommunications remain sketchy.

Ms Saffin said she agreed with the general policy of rolling out QR code check-in systems to support COVID safety plans, particularly in the hospitality industry, ahead of the busy Christmas-New Year holiday season.

“However, I am fed up with city-centric policies that do not take account of the reality of life in the country, including the fact that the Federal Government has yet to provide full mobile phone coverage in parts of the Northern Rivers and Northern Tablelands,” Ms Saffin said.

“Many residents don’t own a smart phone but they still like to get out and socialise with family and friends at their favourite café, restaurant or pub.

“These people might require a manual sign-in system and any statewide policy should be flexible enough to make some kind of allowance for this demographic.

“The fact that the current policy is not inclusive makes the long-standing digital divide between city and country cousins even worse.”

Ms Saffin said the NSW Government should work with business owners in towns and villages located away from the coast to assist them to comply rather than wave a big stick by threatening them with fines or closure.

“I have made representations to NSW Minister for Customer Service Victor Dominello on behalf of affected businesses in the Electorate of Lismore,” Ms Saffin said.

“Business are trying their best to do the right thing so the Government needs to provide them with clear instructions, and in some cases, more hands-on assistance for those who are less tech-savvy.

Cartoons of the Week

 

Alan Moir

Peter Mark Lewis

David Rowe

Meme of the Week

A mega petition is about to be considered by the Australian House of Representatives

 

The only direct means by which an individual or group can ask Australian parliaments to take action is by means of a written petition.

Australians have always had a right to petition parliament.

One of the most famous petitions would have to be the close to 30,000 signature petition presented to the Parliament of Victoria in September 1891 which asked that “Women should Vote on Equal terms with Men”. This petition played a part in Federation which in 1901 gave women the national right to vote and stand for parliament.

Another petition which isn’t always remembered is the February 2014 Pharmacy Guild of Australia’s petition asking federal parliament “to take whatever action is needed to ensure that community pharmacy receives the funding support it needs to stay in business, serve patients, employ staff and remain open after hours”, which had 1,210,471 signatures.

In 2016 the Australian Parliament introduced the e-petition alternative to paper petitions.

Until recently these e-petitions have contained signature numbers ranging from single figure to 4 figure totals.

However the following e-petition appears to have struck a national chord and its signatures are in the hundreds of thousands……..

Petition EN1938 - Royal Commission to ensure a strong, diverse Australian news media

Petition Reason

Our democracy depends on diverse sources of reliable, accurate and independent news. But media ownership is becoming more concentrated alongside new business models that encourage deliberately polarising and politically manipulated news. We are especially concerned that Australia’s print media is overwhelmingly controlled by News Corporation, founded by Fox News billionaire Rupert Murdoch, with around two-thirds of daily newspaper readership. This power is routinely used to attack opponents in business and politics by blending editorial opinion with news reporting. Australians who hold contrary views have felt intimidated into silence. These facts chill free speech and undermine public debate. Powerful monopolies are also emerging online, including Facebook and Google. We are deeply concerned by: mass-sackings of news journalists; digital platforms impacting on media diversity and viability; Nine Entertainment's takeover of the Melbourne Age and Sydney Morning Herald; News Corp’s acquisition (and then closure) of more than 200 smaller newspapers, undermining regional and local news; attempts to replace AAP Newswire with News Corp’s alternative; and relentless attacks on the ABC’s independence and funding. Professional journalists further have legitimate concerns around unjust searches, potential prosecution, whistle-blower protection, official secrecy and dispute resolution that should be comprehensively addressed. Only a Royal Commission would have the powers and independence to investigate threats to media diversity, and recommend policies to ensure optimal diversity across all platforms to help guarantee our nation’s democratic future.

Petition Request

We therefore ask the House to support the establishment of such a Royal Commission to ensure the strength and diversity of Australian news media.

Number of signatures: 501876 [as at 11:59pm AEDT, 4 November 2020]

Closing date for signatures: 04 November 2020 (11.59pm AEST)

The petition will now be presented to the House of Representatives where MPs already cowed by media monopolies may or may not decide to refer it to a Morrison Government minister who, in his or her turn, will in all likelihood take up to 90 days to boot it into political oblivion - in a show of support for News Ltd/NewsCorp and the Murdoch family who have been political donors to the Liberal Party since at least 1998.