Changing and lengthening the Australian minority years

I see the media has been reporting on the idea of extending the school leaving age.

Last year Victoria increased leaving age to 16 years of age. Matching South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania.

In West Australia it went up to 17 this year.

Now there's talk of raising it to 18 in New South Wales, so that all students would leave high school and become legal adults all in the same year.

Across the board there also appears to be a debate about raising the legal drinking age to 21 years. Which would leave the young adult in the strange position of being trusted with a right to vote in governments but not to drink an alcoholic beverage.

I'm not knocking the desire to see the young receive a reasonable level of education or discourage alcohol abuse, but it almost looks like we are trying to extend our concept of what childhood is again.

If we keep this up a 'child' will be anyone under 30 years. Rather a tiring thought for all those working parents out there.

North Coast action group speaks out on NSW coastal freight corridors

Climate Change Will Make the NSW Coastal Freight Corridors Unsustainable

On 27th November 2007 in the case Walker v Minister for Planning [2007] NSWLEC 741, Justice Peter Biscoe of the Land Environment Court ruled against a coastal development at Sandon Point, on the NSW south coast on the grounds that it will be likely to suffer from coastal flooding as a result of Climate Change. He found that the NSW Planning Minister had failed to consider "whether changed weather patterns would lead to an increased flood risk in connection with the proposed development in circumstances where flooding was identified as a major constraint on development of the site".
A part of his judgement relating to Ecologically Sustainable Development Principles
covers 49 pages and follows the history through the United Nations and other world forums of these principles which relate to, inter alia, preserving biodiversity and taking inter generational responsibility to ensure current developments are sustainable and will not impose an unnecessary burden on future generations.
An area of coastal vulnerability noted in the case was land within 3 kilometres of the high tide mark and under the 6 metre contour.
When we look at the current transportation policy in relation to road and rail freight corridors between Sydney and Brisbane we find that both the rail line which transports mainly bulky goods and the road freight corridor (Pacific Highway) which transports mainly non bulky goods both run within 1 kilometre of the coast when they pass through Coffs Harbour and both are situated under the 6 metre contour.
Lands within 3 kilometres of the coast and under the 6 metre contour have been recognised by planners and the Insurance Council of Australia as being vulnerable to severe weather events and coastal inundation.
A CSIRO report to the Victorian Government suggested that 1:100 severe weather events could occur every 5 years by 2070.
Buffer zones at Hearnes Lake (calculated for the Sandy/Hearnes Lake Estuary Management Plan) where the proposed motorway will run within 600 metres of the High Water Mark take into account rising sea levels and it has been suggested by WBM Oceanics (authors of the EMP) that planning horizons should cover the next 100 years and that the creation of major infrastructure within the coastal zone should be avoided.
The Environmental Assessment for the Sapphire to Woolgoolga section of the Pacific Highway indicates the cost of the new 6 lane motorway upgrade will cost close to $850 million by completion.
Given that $450 million has been invested in the Sydney Brisbane rail line recently and about $850 million will be spent on the 25 kilometre Sapphire to Arrawarra section of the Pacific Highway alone one has to wonder why is so much money being spent on ecologically unsustainable motorways.
The Tourism Transport Forum Ltd claims responsibility on their web site for lobbying the Howard Government into committing AusLink funding for the Hexham to Tweed upgrade of the Pacific Highway to tolled motorway standard and having it declared a national road freight corridor.
SHAG wonders if its members like the NRMA, the RTA, Toll Transport, Macquarie Bank and the AbiGroup who profit from motorway building will ever display the same awareness of Justice Peter Biscoe and others who embrace Ecologically Sustainable Development Principles and face the challenges of Climate Change and Peak Oil and the responsibility to future generations with wisdom and courage.
It is alarming to think that since the WBM Oceanics paper was written, the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets have been found to be melting at a rate of 150 billion cubic metres every year (Refer Appendix F).
Climate Change expert with NASA, Dr James Hansen (Appendix F), predicts that if the Earth’s temperature increases by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius this century that ocean levels could rise by up to 1 metre every 20 years. He claims the last time the Earth was 2 to 3 degrees warmer sea levels were 25 metres higher than they are today.
The Planning Minister Frank Sartor, should adopt the Precautionary Principle, refuse Pacific Highway upgrade works in the Northern Beaches of Coffs Harbour and get on with securing a "fit for purpose" rail freight network between Sydney and Brisbane as well as returning road freight to the New England Highway.

Wayne Evans
Sandy Hearnes Action Group (SHAG)

*Guest Speak is a new North Coast Voices feature airing serious or satirical comment by local individuals or groups.

It can't be all bad if Tim Blair dislikes it

Poor Tim Blair of do-you-know-the-truth-or-do-you-read-the-Telegraph fame.

Almost everything that even hints at being slightly green or mentions the possibility of climate change seems to turn this journalist markedly dyspeptic.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that he was also a green legume anorexic as a child. :)

Popped on to his 'personal' blog early last night and around a third of the posts on his home page contained a dig at Earth Hour in one form or another.

With Earth Hour likely to occur again next year and climate change just as likely to be remain a topic of discussion, perhaps Tim will have to consider breaking out the Mylanta.

Here's laughing at you, kid.

 

Look who's going to Rudd's 2020 summit

Take a gander at this piece on Kevin Rudd's Australia 2020 summit coming to a comic strip near you this April.

I'm sorry, Kev, but you don't really expect me to take your bit of fluff seriously do you?

First it was Canberra and now wannabe talkfests are springing up everywhere.

So help me - there's even one scheduled for the Clarence Valley. A real piece of busy business allowing government and council staff (along with non-government agency employees and local business operators) to justify their existence. 

The whole national box and dice has all the hallmarks of a camel in the making.

Larvatus Prodeo pointed out some of the problems weeks ago.

Whales of the NSW North Coast in pictures

A slideshow of whale photographs can be found at the North Coast's Southern Cross University Whale Research Centre website here.

This image shows a whale breaching off Byron Bay.

Whale song from ABC's Whale Dreams.

Obama team lashes out: Clinton will "do and say anything" McCain wants "100 years of war"

With the racial attitudes issue muddying waters in the US presidential nomination race, Barack Obama now refocusses attention on his opposition to the war in Iraq.

Pity that this much publicised opposition didn't include voting in the US Senate to starve George W's war machine.

 

Here is the latest email from the Obama camp, with its usual bottom line request for more money.

 

Senator Clinton and Senator McCain are reading from the same political playbook as they attack Barack on foreign policy.

They have both criticized Barack's commitment to act against top al Qaeda terrorists if others can't or won't act.

And they have both dismissed his call for renewed diplomacy as naïve while mistakenly standing behind George Bush's policy of non-engagement that just isn't working.

But most of all -- after five years of overwhelming evidence that we are less safe, less able to shape events abroad, and more divided at home -- Senator Clinton and Senator McCain are failing to address the consequences of a war they both supported that should have never been authorized and never been waged.

We need a leader who had the judgment to oppose this war before it began and who has a clear plan to end it.

But Barack is facing a two-front battle against Senator Clinton and Senator McCain. Make a donation of $25 to support this campaign today:

https://donate.barackobama.com/twofronts

We knew at the beginning of this campaign that we'd be up against the full force of the conventional thinking that grips Washington.

But no one could have imagined it would go on this long, or that we'd have to fight this battle on two fronts at the same time.

Senator Clinton's campaign, with her chances of winning dwindling and our delegate lead even larger than it was before her so-called comeback on March 4th, has adopted a "kitchen-sink" strategy to throw everything they can at us. Her campaign has made it clear they will do and say anything to win this nomination.

Senator McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, is already running his general election campaign. He's so eager to justify another 100 years of war in Iraq and drum up conflict with Iran that he and his campaign have been making sloppy and woefully false assertions about links between Iran and al Qaeda in Iraq.

We've got to take on both Senator Clinton and Senator McCain at the same time.

Your support now is more important than ever -- please make a donation of $25:

https://donate.barackobama.com/twofronts

Yesterday, Barack laid out a clear plan to make America more secure and end the war in Iraq.

Today, he laid out the economic costs of the war that Senator Clinton and Senator McCain supported.

In both speeches -- and in his speech on race in America earlier this week -- Barack Obama demonstrated that he is the candidate with the courage and judgment to tackle the challenges we face.

The choice Americans have in this election is clear -- and your support right now sends a message to those who support the status quo that it is time for a new kind of leadership.

Please do what you can to help fight this two-front battle for change:

https://donate.barackobama.com/twofronts

Thank you,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Libs have more hide than Jessie the Elephant

Yesterday The Daily Telegraph let the world know that Brendan Nelson, Julie Bishop, Joe Hockey, Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott and friends would like more money please.

The parliamentary salary scale for Opposition MPs was fine by them when they held the more financially lucrative government benches, but now they don't they want more money for shadow ministers who currently receive the base salary of about $127,060 per annum plus $30,000 in electoral allowances.

With Nelson as Opposition Leader getting a total package of around $262,00 a year and Bishop as Deputy Leader getting an extra $73,000.

These lord high poobahs just cannot get their heads around the fact that they are now the plebs of the Australian Parliament. Their greed and arrogance appear to know no bounds.

With many on the NSW North Coast scratching to find their next meal, keep a roof over their heads and afford medical treatment, whining Libs will find little sympathy hereabouts. 

Oi, Tony - if your wants were weeds you'd have a paddock full!