Contemporary Northern Rivers artists - a visual feast

Sharon Muir of Mullumbimby from her Shields series.
Noel Hart blown glass work Modest Parrot.
Garth Lena of Fingal Heads "Three brothers"

When blogs begin to breed like rabbits in the night

Being a novice blogger who views the world-wide web as something akin to 'magik' (don't ask - it's a generational thing), it didn't take long before I was overwhelmed by the number of Australian blogs out there in hyperspace.

It almost seemed that, whenever I turned my PC off for the day, blogs of all varieties began to multiply inside the idle monitor while I slept.

I tried keeping a list of sites I liked, but was often diverted by the strange and obscure and lost my way in an evergrowing blog maze.

So it was some relief to find these two compilation sites. Kwoff which posts what interests readers with an immediacy I like, and Club Troppo's The Missing Link Daily which has a fine eye for the interesting or quirky comment and can deliver an email version.

Think I'll ditch that printed list from now on and check these sites first.

Otherwise I'll have to lay a couple of steel-jawed traps on my desk each night to keep those blog bunnies under control.

The 'compassionate' Coalition in action

Here is Tony Abbott at his hypocritical best .

"The Federal Opposition condemned any move by the Rudd Government to scrap bonus payments to seniors.
Opposition families and community services spokesman Tony Abbott today said the seniors' payments had helped more than two million pensioners last year and should be preserved.
"The Howard government thought this was an important way of allowing less well-off people to share in our economic prosperity. This was the social dividend of the economic boom,'' he said.
This year's budget surplus was predicted to be huge, he said, and it was only fair that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd give something back.
"This year, there's going to be an even bigger budget surplus - $20 billion - and yet the Rudd Government is not going to give carers bonuses and now it's not going to give seniors bonuses either,'' Mr Abbott said.
"Kevin Rudd criticised John Howard as being mean and tricky, but as soon as he gets his hands on the levers of power he starts taking things away from the most vulnerable people in society.
"Kevin Rudd has been parading his Christian virtue, yet he's taking away from the most vulnerable that little bit extra the government was giving as some way of sharing in the good times.'' 

Sounds good doesn't it. Tony wants the seniors bonus payment preserved.

Which begs the question as to why the former Howard Government only implemented this payment as a one-off bonus.

First grabbing the initial give-away money from the Dept. of Employment and Workplace Relations budget and then failing to confirm it in any forward estimates. 
As evidenced by the DEWR Supplementary Additional Estimates Statements 2006-07.

 

Tony also sounds quite good when he rails against the abolition of the carers bonus.

Which calls up a recollection of the May 2007 second reading of the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-08. This reading had former Treasurer Peter Costello admitting (of the now increased bonuses) that "Both the seniors and the carers bonuses will be paid by 30 June 2007."

So, in fact neither type of $500 bonus was included in the last Howard Government budget.

Ergo, it was never going to happen in 2008 for there was no budget allocation.

So much for the suddenly 'compassionate' Tony Abbott and friends.

 

Now the Coalition is howling about these bonuses and insisting that these remain even though they had apparently ceased to exist on the Howard Government books.

A "bonus" is never a payment on solid ground anyway and to repeatedly attack the Rudd Government, when it had signalled that it was considering translating these lapsed payments into permanent Centrelink benefits/allowances, was foolish in the extreme.

The resultant panic among the elderly in response to the Coalition's half-truths now means we have a situation where these bonuses continue as a one-off to be delivered at the whim of the government of the day, and who do we have to thank for this uncertainty.

Why, Tony Abbott and friends.

"Mean and tricky" - I think that appellation now applies to Mr. Abbott.

No political experience required to help Obama win Pennsylvania

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama rides victorious from Mississippi and heads for Pennsylvania.
Here is the latest e-mail from the Obama for America team.

"Dear [redacted],
My name is Jeremy Bird, and I'm the Field Director for the Obama campaign in Pennsylvania.
Barack has won twice as many states, more delegates, and more votes than Senator Clinton. But the Democratic race is still very close, and the Pennsylvania primary is the biggest remaining contest.
The primary is still six weeks away, but another important deadline is coming up soon. Anyone who wants to vote for Barack in Pennsylvania must be registered as a Democrat by Monday, March 24th.
Supporters from all across the country are coming to Pennsylvania in the next two weeks to help register voters. Help build our movement and our party by joining us.
Sign up to come to Pennsylvania to register voters before March 24th:
http://my.barackobama.com/CometoPA
If one thing is clear from this campaign, it's that every vote and every delegate matters.
Here in Pennsylvania, hundreds of thousands of unregistered voters are ready to support Barack -- but we have only two weeks to reach out to them all.
That's why people from all over the country are traveling to Pennsylvania to make sure every potential Obama supporter is registered and eligible to vote in the primary on April 22nd.
No prior political experience is required. Sign up to grow this movement and bring thousands of new people into the political process.
Join us in Pennsylvania to register voters and support Barack:
http://my.barackobama.com/CometoPA
All across the country, we've seen people getting involved in politics for the first time or returning to politics after years of frustration.
I hope you'll come to Pennsylvania and keep this momentum going.
Thank you,
Jeremy
Jeremy Bird
Pennsylvania Field Director
Obama for America"

Update:
Highlights from this morning's e-mail.
"When we won Iowa, the Clinton campaign said it's not the number of states you win, it's "a contest for delegates."
When we won a significant lead in delegates, they said it's really about which states you win.
When we won South Carolina, they discounted the votes of African-Americans.
When we won predominantly white, rural states like Idaho, Utah, and Nebraska, they said those didn't count because they won't be competitive in the general election.
When we won in Washington State, Wisconsin, and Missouri -- general election battlegrounds where polls show Barack is a stronger candidate against John McCain -- the Clinton campaign attacked those voters as "latte-sipping" elitists. And now that we've won more than twice as many states, the Clinton spin is that only certain states really count.
But the facts are clear.
For all their attempts to discount, distract, and distort, we have won more delegates, more states, and more votes.
Meanwhile, more than half of the votes that Senator Clinton has won so far have come from just five states. And in four of these five states, polls show that Barack would be a stronger general election candidate against McCain than Clinton.
We're ready to take on John McCain.---
As the number of remaining delegates dwindles, Hillary Clinton's path to the nomination seems less and less plausible.
Now that Mississippi is behind us, we move on to the next ten contests. The Clinton campaign would like to focus your attention only on Pennsylvania -- a state in which they have already declared that they are "unbeatable."
But Pennsylvania is only one of those 10 remaining contests, each important in terms of allocating delegates and ultimately deciding who our nominee will be.---
The key to victory is not who wins the states that the Clinton campaign thinks are important. The key to victory is realizing that every vote and every voter matters.
Throughout this entire process, the Clinton campaign has cherry-picked states, diminished caucuses, and moved the goal posts to create a shifting, twisted rationale for why they should win the nomination despite winning fewer primaries, fewer states, fewer delegates, and fewer votes.
We must stand up to the same-old Washington politics. Barack has won twice as many states, large and small, in every region of the country -- many by landslide margins.---"

Pension Bonus: Don't forget disability pensioners live on God's earth too

 

MEDIA RELEASE

12 March 2008

 

Pension bonus:

Don't forget disability pensioners live on God's earth too

 

"CPSA welcomes Treasurer Wayne Swans reassurance that pensioners and carers will receive their additional payments, but calls on the Government to extend the pension bonus to disability pensioners to help them cope with the cost of disability", said CPSA Policy Coordinator Paul Versteege.

 

"Ninety per cent of disability pensioners cannot work and most have no additional income.

 

"What disability pensioners as a rule do have are large bills for disability equipment and medical consultations.

 

"Disability pensioners deserve not to be left in the lurch. They, too, live on God's earth."

 

Contact: 

Paul Versteege

Policy Coordinator

Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association (CPSA)

Level 9, 28 Foveaux Street, Surry Hills  NSW  2010

Phone 02 9281 3588

Mob 0410 612 182

Fax 02 9281 9716

The Member for La Trobe will be sent somewhere....(Quesion Time aside by the Speaker)

Parliament resumed sitting this week and right away the noise level coming from the Opposition benches was high, with enough decibels generated to stop the Speaker of the House of Reps from hearing the reply from a minister having the floor during Question Time yesterday.

Still, no matter how boorish the Coalition pollies became, there was no stopping the Deputy-Prime Minister from dropping this little gem into Hansard concerning the Howard Government attempt to address the national skills shortage by training more manicurists.

Ms GILLARD—I thank the member for her question.

This nation does face a skills crisis which is adding

to inflationary pressures. We have been warned

about it, and the former government was warned about

it by the RBA on 20 occasions. I know that in this

place there are members opposite who simply do not

understand the dimensions of this crisis. I refer them to

the words of Suncorp Chairman and Tabcorp Director,

John Story, who is also the Chairman of the Australian

Institute of Company Directors, who delivered this

damning assessment of the former government's approach

to skills shortages:

We should have been addressing infrastructure issues. We

should have been addressing skills shortages five years ago. I

mean, we talked about it. These issues were discussed

around board tables like this for the past 10 years, and the

chickens are coming home to roost and there is no short-term

fix.

That is a message from business about the dimension

of skills shortages. Whilst business is delivering this

message, members opposite live in denial. We have

had the shadow minister for training saying that skills

shortages were 'just a matter of where we are in the

business cycle'—a denial that there is even a skills

crisis. And the shadow Treasurer has been quoted as

saying:

The truth is ... Australia does not have a chronic skills

shortage ...

This is the opposition in denial about their legacy and

in denial about a contemporary problem facing the

Australian community and its economy. Today's Grant

Thornton survey shows that 58 per cent of the businesses

surveyed identified skills shortages as the biggest

constraint to their growth. Whilst the former minister

for vocational education and training may not

have done much about it, at least he was prepared to

acknowledge that there was a skills crisis when he said:

We have got a problem with skills shortage. I mean, we

knew it was coming, but it has arrived with force and, you

know, it is only going to get worse.

How were these skills shortages created? If we look at

where the former government put investment in skills

development, we see some remarkable things. We saw

$3 million invested in the provision of training and

qualifications in nail technology. Mr Speaker, you

might well think to yourself: 'That's good. Hammering

nails into wood, building things—skills shortages in

the construction industry—$3 million into skills training

for nail technology.' You might be thinking that

that is a good thing. It is not those sorts of nails that we

are talking about. We are talking about fingernails. We

are talking about $3 million being invested in skills

training so that people can have manicures—a file and

paint; a set of acrylics. That is what the former government

invested in: $3 million in nail technology.

Mr Rudd—Really?

Ms GILLARD—Really, Prime Minister. I accept

that the Leader of the Opposition is a man of the world

and he probably understands the merit of a manicure.

He probably particularly understands the merit of a

manicure in a party room that is beset by claws that are

unsheathed and out. But I would ask the Leader of the

Opposition and those that sit on the opposition front

benches: when in government, how did they come to

the conclusion that with skills shortages besetting the

Australian economy the most important thing we

needed was 1,232 more Australians qualified to provide

manicures and 700 more Australians qualified to

apply make-up and cosmetics—a total cost of $3 million

for the manicures and $1.5 million for the makeup

and cosmetics? This was their investment in training.

Whilst the mining sector and the construction sector

were calling out for skilled workers, you might not

have been able to get a house built but you could always

go down to the beauty parlour and make yourself

feel better about it. That was their contribution to training

in this nation—hardly meeting the needs of working

families, who need the real skills shortages in this

economy fixed. I am not denigrating the occupations of

providing manicures and providing make-up services

—

Opposition members interjecting—

The SPEAKER—Order! The Deputy Prime Minister

has the call.

Ahoy, Northern Rivers shire councillors!

In the face of growing evidence of the negative impacts of climate change and how these are likely to affect the NSW North Coast, both the NSW Minister for Planning and Northern Rivers shire councils continue to cave-in to pressure from developers to allow housing on vulnerable coastal and estuary land.

 

Hopefully this report will give them pause for thought.

 

"IN a portent of how climate change could transform town planning along the nation's coastlines, the South Australian Supreme Court has ruled that predicted sea level rises are a valid reason to reject beachfront housing developments.---

The South Australian Supreme Court cited local sea level rises of 30cm over the next 50 years in ruling yesterday against Northcape Properties' plans for 80 holiday homes at Marion Bay, 150km west of Adelaide.

The changes - which the court ruled was expected, not merely a probability - would encroach on the proposal's "erosion buffer and coastal reserve".

Earth Hour March 2008

On March 29 it's time to switch off the electricity at your house for one hour, to show the world that action against climate change is important to you and demonstrate how people can reduce energy consumption in their own homes.

The global warming initiative began as an environmental event in Sydney last year and has expanded to include 24 cities from around the world.