NSW Parliament: when saying sorry isn't enough

When I opened yesterday's newspaper one of the first things I would normally have expected to see wouldn't have been a piece on Nats MP for Coffs Harbour Andrew Fraser shoving a female colleague in the NSW Parliament on Tuesday night.
Though I have to say there was little surprise in reading that policial argy bargy had again turned to biff.

That's the second time in three years that this NSW North Coast state parliamentarian has become angry and violent.
His physical attack on Joe Tripodi in October 2005 caused his second suspension from the House (being previously marched out by the Serjeant-at-Arms in May 2004) and now he's missed out on a third by a whisker because Parliament is nearing recess for 2008.

Kartrina Hodgkinson may have accept his personal apology just as Tripodi did.
However, saying sorry just doesn't have the same impact with the electorate if you're well on the way to becoming a serial offender.
Especially when Fraser admits that he had been drinking earlier in the night.

The NSW Opposition and the North Coast Nationals need to get their houses in order and Speaker Richard Torbay needs to exercise some control over that self-indulgent kindergarten in Macquarie Street.

Cooee! Calling all international bloggers

The Australian Government intends to impose mandatory national censorship on the Australian Internet.
It will decide what websites and blogs we may read or post comments to in the future.
The ISP-level filtering it intends to impose may slow the Internet so badly in this country that many online sites may no longer be able to reliably publish.

Please join us Down Under and petition the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy so that this draconian form of filtering is not introduced.

Remember your rural cousins on the New South Wales North Coast who already struggle to keep in touch across cyberspace via some of the slowest broadband and dial up systems in the developed world.

Support your fellow bloggers who may be removed from Australian view if they are on hosted sites like Blogger.com if just one of its many, many blogs is deemed to have content of which Senators Conroy and Fielding disapprove.

Go to GetUp! and sign the Save the Net petition here.

There are now 220 lobbyists on the Australian Government register

At least 32 new lobbyists went onto the Australian Government Lobbyists Register since 1 November 2008.
Edelman Public Relations Worldwide Pty Ltd registered on 17 November.

Edelman has a small but seemingly innocuous client list named for the register.
However, it must be remembered that the Edelman group also acts for GM seed giant Monsanto.

It has taken Edelman's over two months to decide to register after North Coast Voices mentioned its absence from this register.

I wonder how long it will take before it decides to fully list its client base in Australia?

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

The Brand Names Gazette, Est 1859

Maud up the Street has been having a word in my ear about a local rag she calls The Brand Names Gazette.
At first I couldn't bring to mind the newspaper she was griping about - then she mentioned the number of advertising inserts falling out of the middle of most issues and I realised she was talking about The Daily Examiner out of Grafton.

Maud like most of us has noticed that the number of 'advertorials' seem to have increased since Peter Chapman became editor - to the point where he is no longer game to label his comment as an editorial.
What really galls however, is the number of news articles which contain clumsy attempts at brand placement or are naked puff pieces on behalf of local real estate agents, developers and businesses.
Though I swear that the birds are worse than the blokes on this moan - Clarencegirl is almost apoplectic when she talks about those puff pieces, although she swears that three retired blokes in Yamba beat her hands down when it comes to loathing how the newspaper reports lately.

While he's busy wrecking an historic regional paper, Chappie is also failing to win friends and influence people in his new home town as this little gem below shows.
What do they say about pets and their owners?

Click on image to enlarge