Another Electric Vehicle Charging Station for the NSW Northern Rivers

 

Earlier this year in May 2024 the NSW Minns Labor Government announced that 671 new EV public kerbside electric vehicle charging ports at 391 sites are to be installed across NSW, in what is expected to be the largest rollout in the country.

These new chargers are to be installed over the next 12-months and be open to the public 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

However, looking at the NSW Transport Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Map it looks a though there are only around 31 stations across the entire 20,758 sq kms of the Northern Rivers region - from the Clarence Valley up to the NSW-Qld border and, many of these tend to be relatively clustered.

So it was good to read that another electric vehicle charging station had been added to the mix in north-east New South Wales.

ECHO, 1 November 2024:

A new electric vehicle (EV) charger has been installed at 44 Cherry Street, Ballina in the heart of the Ballina’s CBD, close to Northern Rivers Regional Art Gallery, shops, cafes, and other tourist destinations.

For anyone driving an EV the installation of new chargers, particularly in regional areas is a definite bonus as the number of EVs on the roads increases. The Australian Automobile Association’s EV Index shows that battery electric (BEV) and plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) sales represented 9.6 per cent of new light vehicles sold in the second quarter of 2024.

‘Ballina Shire Council is thrilled to celebrate the installation of new electric vehicle charging stations on Cherry Street in Ballina. This fantastic collaboration with Essential Energy and EVX reflects our dedication to working hand-in-hand with the community and industry to seek innovative and sustainable solutions for our region,’ said Ballina Shire Council Mayor, Sharon Cadwallader.....

The cost of being a woman.....

The horrifying reality of being a woman, perfectly summarised by @_CaitlinORyan

If you give even the slightest shit about women, watch it all. This is what it’s like. pic.twitter.com/1KKAJY9VPt

— Supertanskiii (@supertanskiii) October 18, 2024

@_CaitlinORyan: Caitlin 'Cat' O'Ryan, from Scotland by way of Manchester in England's north, comedian, improviser and actor, graduate from The Oxford School of Drama.

Tweet of the Week

🎶"IT MASTIFF BEEN LOVE, BUT IT'S ROVER NOW"🎶 pic.twitter.com/XBeqXb7PUP

— Paul Bronks (@SlenderSherbet) October 19, 2024

NIMNMBY
Not ln My Neoclassical McMansion Backyard @theage pic.twitter.com/RFaNBGf9iJ

— MattGolding Cartoons (@GoldingCartoons) October 26, 2024

 

CLIMATE CHANGE STATE OF PLAY 2024: we have entered a grim millennia of climate consequences

 

According to the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO biennial report, State of the Climate 2024.......

Australia, on average, has warmed by 1.51°C ± 0.23°C since national air temperature records over the land mass of the continent began in 1910. While sea surface temperatures have increased by an average of 1.08°C since 1900.

Australia is not so slowly and very noticeably cooking.

There has been an increase in extreme heat events associated with the warming over land and in the oceans.

Australia’s warmest year on record was 2019, and 8 of the 9 warmest years on record have occurred since 2013.

This is what Australia's collective experience looks like expressed as a graph

State of the Climate 2024, 22 October 2024, p.2

Every decade since 1950 has been warmer than preceding decades. The warming in Australia is consistent with global trends, with the degree of warming similar to the overall average across the world’s land areas.

There has been an increase in extreme fire weather, and a longer fire season, across large parts of Australia since the 1950s. This has resulted in catastrophic bushfires in 1967, 1974-75, 1983, 2006-07, 2009 and 2019-20. Wildfires burning across millions of hectares, changing landscapes and communities, driving many native plant and animal species closer to extinction.

The track record with regard to rainfall has shown that:

Sustained heavy rainfall and associated flooding in much of Australia, particularly the east, is most common during La Niña, as illustrated by the multiple floods that occurred in eastern Australia in 2022. The 11 wettest years on record in eastern Australia were all influenced by La Niña, and many of eastern Australia’s most significant flood years, such as 1974, 2010−2011 and 2021–2022, have occurred during strong La Niña events, although significant flooding can sometimes occur in non-La Niña years.

Global concentrations of all major long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to increase. Global annual mean carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations reached 419.2 parts per million (ppm) in 2023 and the CO₂ equivalent (CO₂-e) of all greenhouse gases reached 524 ppm. These are the highest levels on Earth in at least 2 million years.

While global fossil fuel CO₂ emissions, the principal driver of the growth in CO₂ 

concentrations, are continuing to increase.

In Australia the latest Quarterly Update of Australia’s NationalGreenhouse Gas Inventory: March 2024 shows emissions were 440.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO₂-e) in the year to March 2024. On a quarterly basis, this means that national emission levels for the March quarter 2024 increased 0.6% (0.6 Mt CO₂-e) in trend terms.

National emissions are preliminarily estimated to be 441 Mt CO₂-e in the year to June 2024.

Actual and trend greenhouse gas emissions have not meaningfully decreased in the last four years according to data collated by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

These inescapable global & national facts mean that Australia's future now holds these scenarios:

Future

In the coming decades, Australia will experience ongoing changes to its weather and climate. The changes are projected to include:

• Continued increase in air temperatures, with more heat extremes and fewer cold extremes.

• Continued decrease, on average, in cool season rainfall across many regions of southern and eastern Australia, which will likely lead to more time in drought.

• More intense short-duration heavy rainfall events even in regions where the average rainfall decreases or stays the same.

• Continued increase in the number of dangerous fire weather days and a longer fire season for much of southern and eastern Australia.

• Further sea level rise and continued warming and acidification of the oceans around Australia.

• Increased and longer-lasting marine heatwaves that will affect marine environments such as kelp forests and increase the likelihood of more frequent and severe bleaching events in coral reefs around Australia, including the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo Reef.

• Fewer tropical cyclones, but with higher intensity on average, and greater impacts when they occur

through higher rain rates and higher sea level.

• Reduced average snow depth in alpine regions, but with variations from year to year.

Here in coastal north-east New South Wales the response to our changing climate by successive federal and state governments is: (i) to crowd more urban development onto land that is projected to be amongst the first dry land to experience tidal and/or permanent sea water inundation due to rising sea levels; and (ii) to coat building materials in heat reflecting paint while ignoring the fact that building design is now inadequate due to the fact that the north-east can now expect tropical hurricanes to form offshore on a 1 in 10 year basis.

Cabbage Tree Island families now have permission to rebuild their community after more than two years of forced flood exile

 

Cabbage Tree Island is on the Richmond River in Ballina Shire, Northern Rivers region. This area is within Nyangbul country of the Bundjalung Nation. In 1892 the NSW Aborigines Protection Board gazetted the island as an Aboriginal reserve.

According to Bundjalung oral tradition, during the 1890s a group of Aboriginal people in north-eastern New South Wales (NSW) walked from Wyrallah near Lismore and crossed to Cabbage Tree Island. They aimed to take possession of the land and clear the thick scrub to begin cane farming.

They quickly became self-sufficient. Kitchen gardens provided fresh vegetables; orchards and banana plantations provided fresh fruit and the rearing of cattle provided fresh meat and milk. The establishment of cane farms on the island gave the community a sense of independence.

The rivers, and the estuarine, wetland and sand dune environments on and around Cabbage Tree Island provided an abundance of wild food. There were always plenty of resources to share among the community:

‘… In those days, it was nothing, you know, to go out there [and] get pipis and bring them home. There was plenty to eat … when they’d go, the men used to go up the creeks and early in the morning in the boat, and come back with all these wild foods … they’d have koala, kangaroo, water lily bulbs and swans’ eggs and ducks’ eggs … but everything was shared, that was the beauty of everything.’ Aunty Yvonne Del-Signore, interview 26 January 2005, Boundary Creek. [Planet Corroboree, 28 September 2016]

By the time the February-March 2022 record breaking floods swept across Cabbage Tree Island it had been resettled for the last 137 years and, there were 24 families living on this river island. Many of whom are directly descendent from the original Ngangbul people who had resettled this traditional land around 1885.

ABC News, 29 October 2024:

An Aboriginal community in northern NSW has voted to rebuild its island home almost three years after it was abandoned due to flooding.

Nineteen houses will be rebuilt on Cabbage Tree Island near Ballina at a cost of $30 million, funded by the New South Wales Reconstruction Authority and the National Emergency Management Agency.

A further $13 million has been allocated to the rebuild of community infrastructure including the Cabbage Tree Island Public School and local health centre.

Jali Local Aboriginal Land Council said the decision marked a momentous turnaround from 12-months ago when the state government and the land council deemed the island too high risk for habitation.

At the time the NSW Planning and Environment Department wrote to the land council saying the "risks are so high they cannot in good faith financially support a rebuild on the island for residential purposes".

Chairperson Kylie Jacky said the community had worked together since then to revisit the consultation process and ensure everyone's voices were heard.

"It's been too long, and our families and community members from Cabbage Tree Island have suffered," Ms Jacky said.

"We were not listening to the collective voices of our community. I really feel we lost our way in relation to that.

"Government and other agencies need to hear this. If you are only listening to one, two, or five or six voices you are not listening to the collective community.

"You need to listen."

Ms Jacky said residents were keen to move out of a temporary housing village in nearby Wardell as soon as possible and would be working to renovate and retrofit their homes using flood-resilient materials over the next 12 months.

She said phase two of the island's rebuild would be to apply for development applications to raise the houses above the one-in-100 year flood level.

"We will build back better," she said.

"We are a community that experiences and knows floods. It's in our old people's DNA.

"Moving forward we will be a flood-resilient community and we will work with government and other agencies about what that means."

"I just want to get back to seeing the kids roam and enjoying the outdoor space as much as they can."

Resident Maddison James said he could not wait to get his family out of the pod village at Wardell and back onto the island where he grew up.

"Connecting to country, go out fishing with them, do things that we did as kids and build memories," he said.

Jali Local Aboriginal Land Council is working to get residents back into their homes within the next 12 months (ABC North Coast: Hannah Ross )

The full article can be read at

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-29/land-council-votes-to-rebuild-flood-prone-island-home/104531922

Commonwealth Government "COVID-19 Response Inquiry Report" released on Tuesday, 29 October 2024.

Then Australian prime minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott John Morrison, his ministers and the 'National Cabinet' he created at the start of the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 global pandemic fared reasonably well in the Commonwealth Government "COVID-19 Response Inquiry Report" released on Tuesday, 29 October 2024.

That is, fared reasonably well in comparison to other countries. The general public and other interested parties appear to have expressed other opinions to the Inquiry and the inquiry report itself is not without pointed criticisms.

"The fear in the community, and wider impacts on children and young people, could have been mitigated through more proportionate decisions based on a balanced approach that used evidence on the risk of viral spread in school settings and the effectiveness of in-school measures. Earlier communication and greater transparency around decisions, and improved engagement with experts and advocates to feed into government decision-making, would also have minimised the long-term harm caused by the suspension of face-to-face learning.

There was a strong sense that people with disability were not a priority, despite many being at a higher risk from COVID-19 infection and pandemic-associated disruptions to their usual supports. Poor planning, inadequate communications and a lack of transparency around prioritisation decisions in the vaccine rollout exacerbated a sense of being forgotten by government......

The initial strengthening of trust in government did not continue for the duration of the pandemic response. By the second year, restrictions on personal freedoms were less accepted across Australia as outbreaks tended to be short lived and infection rates remained low. The decrease in levels of trust reflects the complexity of the relationship between trust and engagement – trust is vital to ensuring adherence to life-saving restrictions, but those same restrictions could risk increasing distrust the more effective they are and the longer they are in place.

The Inquiry heard that there were many reasons for the decrease in trust. These varied within and across jurisdictions, but common drivers included concerns about the lack of transparency in and supporting evidence for decision-making, poor communication, the stringency and duration of restrictions, the implementation of mandated measures, access to vaccines and inconsistencies in state and territory responses.

During the pandemic, the advice underpinning the imposition or extension of control measures and the evidence that the measures were working or set at the right level were rarely made public. This fed the perception that the government did not trust the public to understand or interpret the information correctly and contributed to the decrease in trust....."

["Commonwealth COVID-19 Response Inquiry Summary", 29 Oct 2024, pp. 16, 39]

Office of Prime Minister & Cabinet, 29 October 2024:

On 21 September 2023, the Prime Minister the Hon Anthony Albanese MP announced an independent inquiry into Australia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The inquiry reviewed the Commonwealth Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic to identify lessons learned to improve Australia’s preparedness for future pandemics.

The report includes nine guiding recommendations that are aligned with nine pillars of a successful pandemic response. The report identifies 19 immediate actions for the next 12-18 months, and a further seven medium-term actions prior to the next national health emergency.

Commonwealth Government "COVID-19 Response Inquiry Report" (full report DOCX 11.03 MB) at

https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/resource/download/covid-19-response-inquiry-report.docx

"COVID-19 Response Inquiry Summary: Lessons for the Next Crisis", released 29 October 2024 at

https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/resource/download/covid-response-inquiry-summary.pdf

Conclusion (at page 61)

Almost five years since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, for most Australians there is a collective desire to move on and forget what was an immensely difficult period. There is undoubtedly much to forget, but there is also much to be proud of as a nation.

Our hope is that this Inquiry will ensure that the immense body of work undertaken by individuals, community organisations, businesses, universities and research organisations, and government will be recognised into the future. There is also, importantly, much to learn from our collective experiences.

Our objective in undertaking this Inquiry was to document what worked and what could be done better for a future crisis, and to ensure that the lessons are learned so that we are better prepared for the next pandemic. With individuals and communities less prepared to change their behaviour we will not be able to simply rely on what worked during COVID-19, and must learn the lessons to ensure a future response is effective.

We heard from many individuals across government and in the community about the toll that the pandemic response had taken. People worked beyond normal limits, and many of the public health professionals, frontline community service and health staff, political leaders, health experts and public servants we relied on to get through the pandemic are no longer in their positions. This poses risks to our resilience to face another crisis.

Trust has also been eroded, and many of the measures taken during COVID-19 are unlikely to be accepted by the population again. That means there is a job to be done to rebuild trust, and we must plan a response based on the Australia we are today, not the Australia we were before the pandemic.

The CDC will be an important part of rebuilding that trust and strengthening resilience and preparedness, providing national coordination to gather evidence necessary to undertake risk assessments that can guide the proportionality of public health responses in future crises. However, as we continue to face more complex and concurrent crises in the years ahead, there is a need to build broader resilience in our systems.

We have focused our priority actions on building that resilience now, but it will need to be maintained over time. We cannot predict when the next global health crisis will occur – it may occur at any time – in 12 months, in a decade or beyond our lifetime – but human history tells us that it will occur, and it will once again test us in ways that are hard to imagine. Acting today will ensure in the future we are better prepared, benefiting from our learnings of what worked well and what didn’t during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ms Robyn Kruk AO, Chair

Professor Catherine Bennett

Dr Angela Jackson

"Things we need to do to get ready for the next pandemic" at

https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/resource/download/easy-read-recs-actions.pdf

Laffing at #Führertuber Dutton......

 

 Deputy Sussan Ley & Liberal Party Leader Peter Dutton
Mark Knight

The Shot, 28 October 2024, excerpts:

34 thoughts I had while watching the Liberal Party conference

Ronnie Salt

To the ballroom of the Sydney Hyatt, (were you expecting West Wyalong?) where the Liberal Party’s 64th federal council conferencefestmeet is in full swing in June. I’m at home on a Sunday afternoon watching it back on Facebook and reading along with the comments from Brian and Raelene and Irene and Ron, who enjoys writing his comments in all capitals......

1. And we’re off. Sussan is wearing a fetching navy blazer to match all the other navy blazers at the two bridal tables on the stage full of white people. So very, very white. And navy – lots of navy.

2. Sussan says something about Peter being a leader and then does that head toss thing that reminds me of horses when their fly veil isn’t sitting on their head right.

3. No matter, Sussan has mercifully finished telling us all about Peter’s entire life story which nobody in Australia has ever heard before. Did you know he used to be in the police force? Stop it.

4. Sussan scurried back to her chair and here he comes, Peter Dutton, the Andrew Tate of Australian politics. Like Tate, hair-free and boring, he likes waggling the ToughMan persona-dildo in your face while nothing of any substance ever comes along to back it up.

5. Ron doesn’t seem to be bothered by that, GET RID OF THE GREENS!!

6. Oh, Peter is telling us that Sussan is a great friend of Women-In-The-Liberal-Party and a very good friend of something called Women-In-General. Not sure what Women-In-General he means, but it probably doesn’t include the attention-seeking missile Jacinta Price, who loves a good women’s uterus policing.

7. Immediately after Peter tells us how good Sussan and the Liberal party are for Women-In-General, he thanks the Liberal party president and the Liberal party treasurer and the Liberal party managers, who are all men called John and Charles and Andrew. Guess Sussan ain’t that great a friend of Women-In-The-Liberal-Party and Women-In-General after all.

8. He thanks yet another man, Jeremy Rockliffe, for being Tasmanian but I miss the part where he mentions the Rockliffe Government delaying charges in child sexual abuse cases that happened within the Tasmanian government, however Pete does tell us how exciting the Rockliffe Government will be for young people, and oh goodness what a clanger you dropped there Peter.....

10. Peter’s only seven minutes in and already the lady in the second row with one of those Prude & Trude black velvet hairbands (they must be compulsory) is checking her phone for emails. Have a fistful of mints Judith, cos Pete’s due to talk for 45 minutes and not even a bowl of blow is going to help you through this.

11. Apparently Australians cannot afford to buy a home, says the man who’s been in Parliament for 23 years and in government for 17. Did everyone know Peter and Mrs Peter sold one of their homes on the Gold Coast in 2022 for $6 million? Peter forgets to tell the audience this, too.

12. Yay. Here we go. Law, order and unity get their first call out and we’re only 10 minutes in. Peter has not yet referenced his nine years in the police, but there’s still time yet.

13. Peter is alarmed. There are radical Greens activists in the Teal’s midst. Why have the Teals never noticed them? Get Ron in the comments on the case. He’s seen them. Ron knows.

14. An annoying young journo is in the way of Judith the hair-band lady. She’s leaning over and giving him a good Karening.

15. Our Peter owns a little collection of Australian industries too, it seems. He’s talking about our miners, our farmers, our fishers and our foresters, but sadly no mention of our property developers, our $6 million Gold Coast apartment owners, and our billionaires who live in Singapore for tax purposes (wave to Gina everyone).

16. I’m worried about the journo. He’s a young’ish sort of fella. He’s not seasoned enough for the wrath of Judith from Double Bay. Run little journo boy, run.....

18. At 29:29 we hear, a Prime Minister cannot conduct themselves as somebody who is only there for sexual interests, and I’ve played it back and I think he might mean ‘sectional’, but ‘sexual’ is what Peter has said and I really don’t know what to say about that.

19. Peter has recently spoken to a man in the Cunter, which worries me until I replay it and realise it’s a man in the Hunter (Valley) and I’m not sure if Pete needs to see a speech therapist, or he’s just deathly tired, but this speech is getting very out there.

20. Peter thinks Anthony Albanese does not have a robust handle on nuclear. Does nuclear energy have a robust handle? And if it does, Peter sure doesn’t have one either. What in the name of stale conference room odour does it even mean? One day God herself is going to have to answer that one.

21. Nuclear! Nuclear! Nuclear for all! We will have so many jobs in the Cunter that people will be lining up to live there due to all the nuclear power stations that people want to live next to and somehow I think Peter’s telling us a bit of a fib here.

22. Peter is telling us the Liberal party will speak to Australians about nuclear power and consult with Australians about nuclear power and do costings with Australians about nuclear power and have meetings about nuclear power and lots of other sentences that include the words nuclear power, but sadly no information follows about the construction of stations for nuclear power or the timelines and money involved or where to read the full policy on nuclear power. What was that about Andrew Tate?

23. Aspiration dies where crime thrives. He looks very pleased with himself after that hilarious quip and so does the lanyard guy at the end of the bridal table who obviously wrote it cos he’s got that used-up radio ad man look about him....

25. The camera shows us the full room and they all have free Liberal Party travel mugs, so now you can recognise these people when they’re out in the wild at their lawn bowls clubs.

26. Judith is out of mints.

27. Raelene in the Facebook comments wants us to, Ask Albo what happens to all the waste of solar panels, batteries and turbines when they reach their use-by!? I assume Raelene has never seen the toxic wasteland of abandoned mines across the globe and the rising temperatures that are cooking the planet from those mine’s fossil fuel emissions, but you do you Raelene. (Narrator: it’s also clear these comments have been heavily censored, because every single comment is rejoicing in Sussan and Peter and everything Liberal. Either that or they’re handing out free nangs as well as free travel mugs.)

28. Peter is shifting to terrorism and immigration, which he says in the same sentence because that’s Peter’s safe place. But you go off king, while your ship is sinking, keep going.

29. Peter’s looking excited, which means he’s circling back to CRIME and LAW AND ORDER again. He gets a little glint in his eye when he’s talking about crime, like a penguin at feeding time.

30. Sorry, I dropped my laptop on my face because Peter’s just told me that highly credentialed politicians “like Dan Tehan” will help “restore Australia back to what it once was”, and even Judith looks like she ain’t swallowing that one, unlike the mints.

31. We’re working up for the big finish because the little journo boy and his camera are back, bravely facing danger in the untamed jungle of navy blazers and privilege and personalised travel mugs.

32. BORDERS, BORDERS, LAW AND ORDER, POWERS TO POLICE, CRIME, KNIFE SALES, GANGS, STOP AND SEARCH, INTERNET BADDIES, SOCIAL MEDIA BAD, CHILDREN COMMITTING CRIMES FOR LIKES, (unlike politicians), BAD BORDERS, SARAH HENDERSON IS IN CLASSROOMS WORKING AGAINST EXPLICIT SEXUAL THINKING (I have nothing to add there) BAD PEOPLE ARE EVERYWHERE, EVEN IN CLASSROOMS (probably get Sarah out of there then)......

Read the full article at

https://theshot.net.au/uncategorized/34-thoughts-i-had-while-watching-the-liberal-party-conference/