Tweet of the Month

 

Best reaction yet pic.twitter.com/2Y777hprQJ

— jonathan Slater (@slater_paul) September 13, 2024

 

NSW Police officially launch "You Should Be a Cop In Your Hometown" recruitment campaign designed to attract applicants to 12 regional areas, specifically targeting applicants to become an officer in their home town

 

NSW Police News, 18 September 2024:

NSW Police have today officially launched two initiatives at Port Macquarie aimed at identifying and recruiting future police officers.

You Should Be a Cop In Your Hometown is a recruitment campaign designed to attract applicants to 12 regional areas, specifically targeting applicants to become an officer in their home town.

The target regions include: Albury; Bathurst; Coffs Clarence; Dubbo/Wellington; Griffith; Hunter Valley; Mid North Coast; Moree; Nowra; Richmond; Tamworth and Wagga Wagga, with placements dependent on operational needs.

Assistant Commissioner Brett Greentree, People and Capability Command, said the goal is to able to provide greater certainty for recruits, giving them confidence they can join the NSW Police Force and work in their hometowns.

“We know that becoming a police officer and moving away from home can be a big ask, especially if you have family and enjoy where you live. This new initiative will give those who apply to be a police officer a higher level of confidence on where they’ll work,” Assistant Commissioner Greentree said.

“As well as being paid to train and starting your career with NSW Police, when you join, you can identify where you would like to work and if an applicant is from a regional area not listed, we will still look at positions available in the area.”

The recruitment campaign is in Port Macquarie today (Wednesday 18 September 2024), before visiting Lismore on Friday 20 September 2024, Coffs Harbour on Saturday 21 September 2024 and then Muswellbrook on Sunday 22 September 2024.

The You Should Be a Cop Youth Program was also launched today at Port Macquarie PCYC, and is a work experience program, designed to create interest in becoming a police officer, as well as educate young people and reduce barriers which may commonly delay their entry into the force.

Following pilot programs at Sutherland Shire Police Area Command, Oxley Police District and south west Sydney, the initiative will be expanded next year state wide, and include students on the Mid North Coast.

Each ‘class’ will include approximately 20 students, with participants from Years 10 to 12 identified by their school careers counsellor.

As part of the initiative, students will gain a better understanding of policing by participating in a four day program, which will see them experience a variety of specialist commands, as well as potentially visit the Police Academy at Goulburn.

Assistant Commissioner Gavin Wood, Capability Performance & Youth Command said the pilot program is designed to not just find the next generation of police, we want to inspire students and show them there’s much more to being a police officer.

“This is an opportunity to showcase a career in policing for young people, who may have not previously considered joining the police force,” Assistant Commissioner Wood said.

“We are hoping to attract young people from big and small regional towns, metropolitan areas and culturally diverse backgrounds, because it will help us better serve the community.”

For more details on You Should Be a Cop In Your Hometown visit: https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/recruitment.

[my yellow highlighting]

ABC presenter David Marr & journalist Rick Morton discuss in depth the cultural rot within the Australian Public Service 2019-2023

 

The #Robodebt Five

via @jmill400

ABC National Radio, Late Night Live, podcast, 17 September 2024:

Robodebt scheme was ‘a failure of government’ – but who paid the price?

A report by the Australian Public Service Commission has found twelve public servants, including two former departmental secretaries, Kathryn Campbell and Renée Leon, breached the Public Service Code of Conduct in their handling of Robodebt. Commissioner Dr Gordon de Brouwer said the inquiry confirmed "a sad and shameful succession of public servants failing to demonstrate the behaviour expected of public service."

Guest: Rick Morton, journalist, The Saturday Paper.

APSC Commissioner Gordon de Brouwer said the Robodebt Scheme saw members of the public service "lose their grounding, feel under pressure from Ministers and senior officials, and caught up in busyness and self-absorption." (ABC News: Lewi Hirvela)

30 minute discussion, focussing on the public service during the Scott Morrison years as Minister for the Public Service, Minister for Social Security, Treasurer and Prime Minister, at:

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/latenightlive/rick-morton-robodebt/104363362?utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared

CLIMATE CHANGE STATE OF PLAY 2024: “Now we are finding that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing faster than ever. We must recognize that these are clear signals of the damage carbon dioxide pollution is doing to the climate system, and take rapid action to cut fossil fuel use as quickly as we can.”

In a month where Australia is breaking the lowest seasonal temperature records in parts of Australia just weeks after setting maximum temperatures records in another seasonal extreme - while some countries in Europe are either experiencing heatwaves or wildfires at the same time others are experiencing heavy snowfalls or catastrophic flooding - it is no longer being whispered but shouted out that "global warming is now becoming so extreme and non-linear that combined with habitat destruction, pollution, and overkilling of species it threatens collapse in the natural world including human systems within years not decades" [Ben See, climate activist, September 2024].

This is happening because although for decades now global heating of the Earth system has been unequivocal, detected acceleration of Earth heating has never been so sharply evident as it has become in the last two years.

2024 is also the year when evidence suggests that the rapid increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere being recorded may now be independent of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions being released into the atmosphere by human activity. In other words, global warming's effect on the Earth may have passed a tipping point from which there is no return to a pre-industrial era global climate for millennia.

16 September 2024:

"The global temperature according to NASA data. Anyone who is still wondering about #ExtremeWeather and flooding has either missed out on several decades of climate research or deliberately repressed it. #Flood" **

Click on graph to enlarge

Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf, (@rahmstorf) Head of Earth System Analysis, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research & Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University

** Text of tweet translated from German to English by Google Translate

U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), News Release, 6 June 2024:

During a year of extremes, carbon dioxide levels surge faster than ever

The two-year increase in Keeling Curve peak is the largest on record

June 6, 2024 — Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than ever — accelerating on a steep rise to levels far above any experienced during human existence, scientists from NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego announced today....

From January through April, NOAA and Scripps scientists said CO2 concentrations increased more rapidly than they have in the first four months of any other year. The surge has come even as one highly regarded international report has found that fossil fuel emissions, the main driver of climate change, have plateaued in recent years.

“Over the past year, we’ve experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record and a seemingly endless string of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “Now we are finding that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing faster than ever. We must recognize that these are clear signals of the damage carbon dioxide pollution is doing to the climate system, and take rapid action to cut fossil fuel use as quickly as we can.” ....

STATE OF PLAY NSW 2024: On 3 September 2024 the NSW Minns Government released data showing that the state lost 45,252 ha of native vegetation to agriculture, native timber logging & infrastructure in 2022 and a total of 428,594 ha since 2018

 

NSW SLATS Insights Dashboard
Click on image to enlarge

Nature Conservation Council NSW

Urgent interim action needed as NSW clears 570 football fields of habitat each day

MEDIA RELEASE

13 September 2024

The Nature Conservation Council of New South Wales (NCC), the state’s leading environmental advocacy organisation, has called on the NSW Government to act on its commitment to stop the runaway land clearing that is continuing to decimate NSW bush.

NSW remains in the midst of an extinction crisis which will continue to gather pace until the root cause – widespread and unregulated destruction of our habitat encouraged by the former government – is addressed.

The latest vegetation clearing data shows that clearing continues to devastate large swathes of habitat every year. In NSW, an equivalent of 300 times the Sydney CBD is cleared annually, or 570 football fields per day.

The annual Statewide Land and Tree Study (SLATS) data released today shows, yet again, a shocking amount of habitat was cleared across the state, taking the average to 84,000 hectares of native vegetation (defined as trees, shrubs or woody vines, or understory and groundcover plants that have been relatively undisturbed since 1990[1]) being cleared every year for the past five years.

Habitat clearing is, alongside climate change, the most significant threat to species in NSW[2], the worst ranked state in the country for protecting and restoring trees.

Statements attributable to NCC Chief Executive Officer, Jacqui Mumford:

“These new figures still show the urgent need for reform. Every day of inaction means more species are at an ever-growing risk of going extinct.”

“Our nature laws in NSW are broken and unable to protect habitat.”

“The government has asked the Natural Resources Commission to come up with new options to stop runaway habitat clearing and protect critical species. We are heartened by this process but concerned about the slow timeframe – interim action to protect critical habitat must be taken given the numbers we are seeing today.”[3]

“Protecting critically endangered ecosystems is urgent and needs to happen yesterday.”

“The existing Native Vegetation Code is an inappropriate regulatory tool for managing impacts on biodiversity in rural areas. It permits a completely unsustainable amount of clearing without any robust environmental assessment or approval requirements. The new data shows that we don’t know the circumstances under which nearly half of the non-woody vegetation clearing happened in 2022. It may be illegal clearing – we just don’t know.”[4]

“Clearly the scope of ‘allowable’ vegetation clearing activities is too broad and open to misuse.”

“We need urgent interim action to immediately protect critically endangered ecosystems. These precious places and the critters than rely on them cannot wait while the scale of reform we require is nowhere to be seen.”

Statement ends

References

[1] As defined in the NSW Vegetation Clearing Report 2021 https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/animals-and-plants/native-vegetation/landcover-science/2021-nsw-vegetation-clearing-report

[2] https://www.soe.epa.nsw.gov.au/all-themes/land/native-vegetation#vegcover

[3] See the Government’s NSW Plan for Nature in response to the review of the BC Act and native vegetation provisions of the local land services act here.

[4] In 2022, 46.6% of the total of non woody vegetation clearing is unallocated, and 11.8% of woody clearing is unallocated. Unallocated clearing is vegetation clearing for which the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water has not been able to identify a formal authorisation or is unable to presume authorised or allowable using visual cues in the imagery. See here

Further information can be found at

2022 NSW vegetation clearing data

This spreadsheet reports on figures of detected woody and non woody (grasses, small shrubs and groundcover) vegetation clearing that has occurred from 2018 to 2022, statewide and on Category 2 regulated land.

https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/research-and-publications/publications-search/nsw-vegetation-clearing-data-2022

Ballot counting resumes in the seven local council elections in the NSW Northern Rivers region this morning, Monday 16 Sept 2024

For the latest count updates commencing after 9am this morning go to:

CLARENCE VALLEY

https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/LG2401/clarence-valley/results

RICHMOND VALLEY

https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/LG2401/richmond-valley/results

CITY OF LISMORE

https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/LG2401/lismore/results

TWEED SHIRE

https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/LG2401/tweed/results

BYRON SHIRE

https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/LG2401/byron/results

BALLINA SHIRE

https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/LG2401/ballina/results

KYOGLE SHIRE

https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/LG2401/kyogle/results

For the list of all NSW local council elections go to 

https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/LG2401/index

Four of the seven local governments in the NSW Northern Rivers region directly elect their mayors. Here is a brief look at the voting so far in the 2024 NSW Local Government Election

 

Four of the seven local governments in the NSW Northern Rivers region directly elect their mayors. Here is a brief look at the voting so far.

PLEASE NOTE: No local government election for mayor or councillors in the Northern Rivers region has been officially called.

All numbers and percentages set out below are as at close of counting on NSW local government election night, Saturday 13 September 2024. Counting resumes on Monday 16 September.

Byron Shire

In the Byron Council’s mayoralty election, with 17,660 formal votes counted, The Greens Sarah Ndiaye is in the lead with 6,129 first preference votes & 34.71% of the formal vote. Followed by the ALP's Asren Pugh with 5,363 first preference votes & 30.44% of the formal vote.

At close of counting last night in the Byron councillor elections, with only 7,504 formal votes counted it would appear that 5-candiate The Greens Group led by Sarah Ndiaye held 3,018 first preference votes & 40.22% of the formal vote. Followed by the 6-candiate ALP Group led by Asren Pugh with 2,097 first preference votes & 27.95% of the formal vote.

The full vote count can be viewed at

https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/LG2401/byron/results

Ballina Shire

In Ballina Council’s mayoral election with 16,110 first preference votes counted so far Independent Sharon Cadwallader is in the lead with 7,263 first preference votes & 45.08% of the formal vote. Followed by The Green's Kiri Dicker with 4,154 first preference votes & 25.79% of the formal vote.

There are three Wards in the Ballina councillor elections. The full vote count can be viewed at https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/LG2401/ballina/results

City of Lismore

At close of counting last night in Lismore Council's mayoral election with 18,621 formal votes counted, the nominally Independent Steve Kreig leads with 8,969 first preference votes & 48.17% of the formal vote. Followed by The Greens Vanessa Grindon-Ekins with 3,957 first preference votes & 21.25% of the formal vote.

Big Rob is coming in second to last in the mayoral election with 2,244 first preference votes & 12.05% of the formal vote.

In the councillor elections witn18,621 formal votes counted the 11-candidate Independent Group A led by Steve Kreig held 4,551 first preference votes & 42.39%. Followed by the 6-candidate The Greens Group D led by Adam Guise with 2,874 first preference votes & 26.77% of the formal vote.

The 5-candidate Independent Group C led by Big Rob with 1,180 first preference votes & 10.99% of the formal vote ranked last on election night.

The full vote count can be viewed at

https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/LG2401/lismore/results

Richmond Valley

At close of counting last night in Richmond Valley Council's mayoral election with 7,439 formal votes counted, Independent Robert Mustow lead with 2,896 first preference votes & 38.93% of the formal vote. Followed by Independent Lyndall Murray with 2,021 first preference votes & 27.17% of the formal vote.

In the Richmond councillor elections with 3,305 formal votes counted, the 4-candidate Independent Group D led by Robert Mustow led with 1,369 first preference votes & 41.42% of the formal vote. Followed by the 7-candidate Independent Croup C led by Lyndall Murray with 849 first preference votes & 25.69% of the formal vote.

The full vote count can be viewed at

https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/LG2401/richmond-valley/results