NSW local government elections: there's to be no party politics, unless ...

A correspondent writing in The Coffs Advocate (Wednesday, 1 August) has caught the local member Andrew Fraser with his pants down.

It seems Fraser doesn't want candidates in the September council elections to have any political affiliatiions. If that's to be the case, Fraser should have added a retrospective factor to his comments and called for a number of his parliamentary coalition mates to be shown the door. Chris Gulaptis, the local member for Clarence who is still on trainer wheels would have to go. Hey, that idea has some merit! Plus, Steve Cansdell would never have got a guernsey in the chamber. Oh, by the way, what's happening on the Scansdellsgate scene? Have federal authorities finally got their act together? Are they going to throw the book at Cansdell? Or, has that matter vapourised into thin air?

Here's John Vernon's letter in yesterday's Advocate.

Coffs Harbour MP Andrew Fraser said people interested in running for local government should not have political affiliations - "Coffs MP wants 'independent' future councillors" - ABC posted July 6, 2012.

How many current National Party MPs started their career in politics as an "independent" councillor? Chris Gulaptis, Stephen Bromhead, John Barilaro and Paul Toole come to mind as "independent councillors" who have graduated to being a National Party MP. There are many more examples from past governments and many councillors who are National and Liberal party members although they have campaigned as "independent" councillors.

Why would Andrew Fraser make these comments? Is he concerned the Greens believe in honest and transparent government and are calling for all prospective councillors to pledge to abstain from voting when they have a conflict of interest, pecuniary or otherwise? The O'Farrell government has of course changed the law so abstention from a vote when a councillor has a personal interest is no longer required.

Is it because the O'Farrell government is pushing through new planning laws that will severely restrict the right of residents to oppose inappropriate planning developments? Indeed the deadline for submissions on these proposals will be an astonishing, restrictive six days after the local government elections. The same date is also the restrictive deadline for submissions on the future of local government. That review opens the door to further local government amalgamations.

Greens' councillors will work to maintain council's powers and protect residents' rights in regard to planning. It is therefore no surprise a National Party MP is stating that "people interested in standing for local government should not have political affiliations".

JOHN VERNON

Will the Chinese Government eventually dominate the NSW electricity transmission network?

One 26 July 2012 Nationals MP for Clarence Chris Would I Lie To You? Gulaptis told The Daily Examiner that there are no plans to sell poles and wires as part of the O’Farrell Government’s plan to fully privatize the NSW power industry.

Yet government is in the process of consolidating all poles and wires networks into a single corporation and, on 26 October last year the Premier told a Budget Estimates committee hearing that there had been no election promise to retain poles and wires in public ownership.

It cannot be clearer than this exchange from the hearing transcript; The Hon. Luke Foley: Did you not give a commitment in Lithgow that poles and wires would be retained in public ownership? Mr Barry O'Farrell: No.  

The Premier then went on to claim that he had been misquoted by Lithgow media on 28 January 2011 when one paper attributed this statement to him; We have absolutely no plans to privatise either the generators or the poles and wires.

By March 2012 the O’Farrell Government had legislation in place which would allow privatisation of state-owned power generators which is expected to bring in between $3-$4 billion in total when eventually sold.

Here on the NSW North Coast privatisation of state-owned assets is a sensitive issue given that historically such state sales are often accompanied by job losses or price hikes to consumers. One estimate is that up to two hundred jobs would be at risk in the Clarence Valley alone.

So it is with some trepidation that I read this in the Business Spectator on 31 July 2012:

The NSW Liberal government is devising a plan to attract greater foreign investment in the state's assets that will see more than $40 billion worth of infrastructure assets made available to Chinese state-owned companies, according to The Australian.

On a tour of China, NSW Liberal Premier Barry O'Farrell said that Chinese state-owned companies would be able to bid on asset sales that will be outlined in an infrastructure blueprint due in September.

Will the NSW Liberal-Nationals Coalition Government decide to offer North Coast poles and wires to the Chinese Government if it shows an interest or to sweeten a deal?

An alternative perspective on the NSW Planning and Assessment Commission

According to the Mid-North Coast Greens, an analysis of 461 development applications considered by the supposedly independent NSW Planning and Assessment Commission (PAC) since the O’Farrell Government came to power in 2011 shows:

In 97.6 per cent of cases the PAC approves the development;
- In 98.87 per cent of cases the PAC ticks off on the recommendation of
the Planning Department bureaucrats; and
- In 98.64 per cent of cases the planning department bureaucrats
recommend approval of the development.

This would appear to be a remarkably high number of complying applications and, an unusual number of developers fervently embracing the Environmental Planning & Assessment Act 1979 and other relevant planning instruments.

Perhaps Brad Hazzard as Minister for Planning and Infrastructure and, current Commission members Gabrielle Kibble AO (Chair), Donna Campbell, John Court, Lindsay Kelly, Garry Payne AM, Dr Neil Shepherd AM, Emeritus Professor Kevin Sproats, Janet Thomson, and Richard Thorp ( along with Dr Lloyd Townley, Emeritus Professor Jim Galvin, Dr Steve Perrens, and Dr Graeme Batley), might like to explain this almost unnatural behaviour on the part of developers of projects as diverse as coal mining and high-pressure natural gas pipelines through to shopping centres, residential subdivisions and marinas.

Their explanations would make for fascinating reading.

Are Clarence Coast homeowners becoming too greedy?

National Australia Bank (NAB) Quarterly Australian Residential Property Survey: June 2012:
"According to the survey, national house prices fell -2% in the June quarter, from -1.3% in Q1’12, with all states reporting price falls in the 3 months to June.
House price declines were most pronounced in Victoria, down -2.9% (-1.8% in Q1’12). Heavier falls were also seen in NSW (-2.3%), compared with -0.4% fall in Q1’12. Capital values held up best in WA, although they also fell -0.6% (-0.1% in Q1’12). Marginally slower price declines were recorded in Queensland (-1.7%) and SA/NT (-1.6%).
The housing sector is expected to remain under pressure in the next year, with property professionals expecting national prices to fall by -0.7% (-0.2% forecast in Q1’12). There is, however, wide variance between the states.
Prices are expected to continue falling in Victoria (-2.1%), NSW (-1.5%) and SA/NT (-0.5%), but grow in WA (1.6%) and Queensland (0.5%)."
ANZ Research is slightly more optimistic; "prices, capital values and property market confidence in NSW should edge gradually higher through the second half of 2012 in the absence of further deterioration in the global economy."
These reports might explain why First National Real Estate Yamba in its July 2012 property update flyer is stating “some vendors pricing does not reflect the current market” as contributing to the fact that only forty-five homes have been recorded as sold in Yamba in the last six months.
Apparently many of those million dollar plus waterfront ‘mansions’ are only worth a million dollars plus in the eyes of their owners at the moment. Which might explain why they have been very publicly languishing in online property listings representing around three hundred and twenty Yamba properties currently for sale.

Australian Carbon Price Liable Entities - 24 July 2012 Update

The Clean Energy Regulator has released an updated list of corporations and councils liable to pay a price for their greenhouse gas emissions in the financial year 2012-13.

Clarence Valley Council appears to be the only Northern Rivers local government on this list, presumably due to landfill emissions.

Full list here.

Update:

As usual the Federal Nationals local Cassandra Luke Hartsuyker is yelling the sky is falling over the issue and making sure not to mention Council's new residential and business waste management scheme which will divert 60% of the valley's domestic waste away from landfill and see greenhouse gas emissions begin to reduce from 30 July 2012.

Residential supply customers carrying the can for gold-plated electricity industry infrastructure upgrades

Granny Herald points out the blindingly obvious on 27th July 2012:

"If any further evidence were needed to demonstrate how the power companies, both state-owned and private, have been foisting unnecessary price hikes on their customers, it can be found in the industry's own energy forecasts.
Forecasts of demand for electricity have a significant impact on the price of electricity. The higher the forecasts, the more money earmarked by industry for network upgrades in order to cater for this supposed increase in demand. In turn, the higher the financial returns for the industry players.
Ironically, as the transmission and distribution companies earn a regulated return on their assets, they have a perverse incentive to spend for the sake of spending.
Yet the great conundrum of the radical rise in Australian electricity prices
- up 70 per cent in six years and poised to ratchet another 30 per cent higher this year and the next - is that consumer demand has actually been falling, and falling for years.
Actual consumption in the National Electricity Network has been way out of whack with forecasts. For the past three years, the industry has had to downgrade its forecasts, and by a considerable margin. Still, they persist with forecasting large rises in energy consumption, even in the face of a clear downtrend in actual demand - and huge price rises at the retail level to boot.
Not only has the electricity industry failed to recognise a change of trend in total demand, but in peak summer demand and peak winter demand too."

The Daily Examiner insults bloggers everywhere

Hidden away on Page 9 of last Saturday’s edition of The Daily Examiner was yet another example of the mainstream media’s ignorance about blogs, blogging and bloggers.

I could feel the indignation burning up the email I received that same day, which pointed out this sentence from the pen of APN journalist Emma Pritchard and added red highlighting as emphasis:

Edible Bloomer's, an online suggestion through the Daily Examiner website from popular blogger "Yambaman".

Now a weblog aka blog is either an independent or hosted online publication created and controlled by the blogger or bloggers who write the regular posts thereon.

People whose only cyber presence is on Facebook, Twitter or similar sites are not bloggers.

Readers who comment on discussion boards, forums, under online newspaper articles or under blog posts are not bloggers.

To call “Yambaman” a blogger is to insult the entire blogosphere by attempting to stretch the genuine definition beyond all credibility.

Emma should have known better - so here is a 2007 link to a K.I.S.S. style video about blogs just for her.

The story of mining in pictures

Click on cartoon to enlarge

Women, Work & $$$$$ in NSW

From the Women in NSW 2012 report [NSW Family & Community Services, July 2012]:

Women in NSW are likely to live in cities, come from diverse cultural backgrounds and speak many languages.

Aboriginal women make up 2.1 percent of the female population of NSW, which in 2011 was 3.68 million women or 50.4 percent of the state’s population. In 2006, nearly two-thirds of NSW women lived in Sydney, with most of the remainder in regional areas and less than one percent in remote areas of the state.

Nearly a quarter of NSW women were born overseas, and one in five spoke a language other than English at home.

The median age of women in NSW in 2011 (38 years) is nearly two years older than that of men. Women are more likely to live longer than men; however, the gap is closing.

Women are far more likely to be at the head of a single parent household than are men. One in five families in NSW is headed by a single parent, and 88 percent of single parents are women.

Over a third of women over 65 years live alone. Women between the ages of 80 and 84 years are more than twice as likely as men to be living alone.

72% of girls in NSW completed year 12 in 2011 compared with 63% of boys.

In 2010, women made up 57 percent of NSW undergraduate students (117,382 in total). Men made up 43 percent (88,954) of undergraduate students. Some 28,400 more NSW women than men commenced an undergraduate higher education course in 2010, a 14 percentage point gap in women’s favour.

In 2011, the median starting salary for women aged less than 25 with a bachelor’s degree in their first full-time job was $50,000 per year, 7.4% ($4,000) less than men.

As at November 2011, NSW women working full-time ordinary hours each week earned on average $1,212, compared with men, who earned $1,404 each week.  

Men earned on average 14 percent more each week than women.

41,600 women in NSW commenced an apprenticeship or traineeship in the 12 months to September 2011, compared with 51,000 men.

22% of all apprenticeship and traineeship commencements in NSW are within traditional trades.

In the 12 months to September 2011, 13% of women (2,629) who commenced an apprenticeship or traineeship did so in a traditional trade. Fifty of those women commenced a construction trade compared to 5,140 men. Similarly, only 116 women commenced an Automotive and engineering trade compared to 5,259 men.

Click on images to enlarge

41 percent of employed women work part-time and 28 percent are engaged as casuals

In the private sector, as of April 2012, 17 percent of all NSW directorships were held by women (compared to 14 percent nationally).

Around 29 percent of board members are women within the not-for-profit sector; in the NSW public sector, 37 percent of board and committee members are women.

The professions of law and education are approaching a gender-balanced workforce, but women form a distinct minority in senior roles.

NSW women’s status and experiences are very similar to those of Australian women more widely.