A heart as big as Phar Lap's........... brave, beautiful... a hero [ASTI communities please note that this post mentions someone who has passed away]

An important leader in the Yamba Aboriginal community, in northern New South Wales, has died.

Christine Ferguson, 52, died a week ago.

She was the chief executive officer of the Birrigan Gargle Land Council.

The chairwoman of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, Bev Manton, says she was a pioneer in the fight for justice.

"Christine's been involved with the lands rights network since its inception and I guess she has kind of grown up with that political background and fighting for the rights of her people," she said.

"She was just one of those lovely people who could negotiate and not be aggressive about it, but still be forceful and obtain the results that were required."

Christine Ferguson is survived by her son Jason and three granddaughters. She was also guardian to a young boy. (Indigenous Community News Network)

The authors of North Coast Voices will miss her friendship and, along with the rest of the Clarence Valley and the Northern Rivers region, mourn her passing.

** Post title is composed of excerpts from the many eulogies at the funeral service on Friday 27 March 2009 in Maclean, NSW.

What bird is that? Channel 7 finds out the hard way

This week an item on efforts to rid the North Coast of the Indian Mynah, an introduced species, hit a hiccup when Channel 7 Prime News showed the wrong photo of the feathered miscreant.
See if you can spot the difference (besides species, height, body shape and weight, plumage).
Yes - one is a noxious pest and the other a protected native species. Oh, dear. Apologies all round from Channel 7.















TOP: Indian Mynah
BOTTOM: Masked Lapwing Plover

North Coast Area Health Service "stealing from your child's Christmas account": Steve Cansdell

It's not often I find myself in agreement with the NSW Nationals MP for Clarence Steve Candsell, but when he likened the North Coast Area Health Service's fund transfers - from special purpose and trust funds holding money raised by the community for specific hospital services - as being like "stealing from your child's Christmas account" he was spot on. (Clarence Valley Review on 18th March 2009)
The fact that the NSW Auditor General has called for a formal review of how the NCAHC is handling these funds is little comfort for the region.
The health service has been sprung doing this before and will do it again, because the sad fact is that overall lack of adequate health funding plus slapdash management has meant that public health services on the NSW North Coast are operating on a wing and a prayer.
The situation makes the Rees Government's talk of a billion dollar upgrade for the Sydney Opera House look heedless and heartless.

Initial response to Conroy's response to Q&A

Senator Stephen Conroy's appearance on ABC TV Q & A program last night was either a masterstroke of political obfuscation or a demonstration of just how little understanding the Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy has of his own portfolio.

Conroy was given ample opportunity to put the case for national mandatory ISP-level filtering.

In the course of doing so he inadvertently made a few matters abundantly clear:

• Lists of banned URLs compiled by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) are open to human error.
• These errors can and do exist for sometime before being corrected.
• The owners of banned URLs are not made aware that they are on any blacklist.
• Once on the blacklist it is unlikely that a banned site will be removed, even if the offending material is removed from the website in question.
• The official ACMA blacklist contains more than just content that has been refused classification or is unlawful under Australian legislation.
• The blacklist can and does contain political content, using a commonsense definition of the term political.
• The ACMA list of banned URLs is not monitored by an independent agency and has little or no ministerial or parliamentary oversight.
• On their own initiative ISPs are capable of further expanding the blacklist provided to them by ACMA. Such expansion is not monitored by the Department of Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy.

Unfortunately Senator Conroy made something else abundantly clear.
He is willing to tell a great many glib half-truths to the electorate in an effort to defend the Rudd-Conroy plan to censor the Australian Internet.

Q & A espisode for Thursday 26 March:
download episode WMV MP4 (average size 200MB)