Rudd's 11th Community Cabinet meeting coming up in WA

The Rudd Government will be holding its 11th Community Cabinet meeting at Ballajura Community College, Illawarra Crescent, Ballajura, Western Australia on Wednesday 22 April 2009.

If you want to have a 10 minute chin wag with a minister or listen to Rudders address the forum you need to get your moniker on the list before 4pm on April Fool's Day.

Mate, if you are going to this meeting perhaps you might ask the PM a question for me:
When is the federal government going to hold one of these cabinet meetings in the NSW Northern Rivers?

Australian Government website blacklist is so passe

I almost (but not quite) feel sorry for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Stephen Conroy - matters just go from bad to worse whenever their grand plan to censor the Australian Internet rates a mention.

The latest Wikileaks expose of the March 2009 Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) blacklist of banned websites revealed a URL for a certain dot com gambling site.

It appears that in September last year the Commonwealth of Kentucky seized this online gambling site and its domain name, along with 140 others, under an interim order from the Franklin County Circuit Court.

However, amended order and later ruling in another court has meant that this site is not only still active but, along with its fellow allegedly illegal gambling sites, is listed on the Internet for all to see along with the various legal arguments surrounding their seizure.
Just Google "illegal gambling" and up it they come.

So the purpose of this werry secret ACMA blacklist is?

From my perspective this is a rather interesting question because the blacklist is supposedly composed entirely of URLs which have been banned by direction of ACMA/Censorship Board

On its website ACMA displays the approved Internet service provider and online content and mobile provider codes of practice.
The Authority clearly states that failure to comply with such codes may amount to an offence under the Broadcasting Services Act.

However, one researcher informs me that URLs on the blacklist can be successfully accessed using common search engines via a number of Australian Internet service providers (ISPs).
This includes blacklisted content which is hosted in Australia.

So if some ISPs currently ignore legislation, regulations and the risk of significant penalties for non-compliance and/or publishing illegal content; why would Senator Conroy believe that all ISPs will obey any new legislation imposing a larger blacklist?

Julian Rocks flaunts its underwater colours

Julian rocks is situated within the Cape Byron Marine park in northern NSW, on the east coast of Australia.
It is home to over 1000 marine species including wobbegongs, rays, turtles, fish, nudibranchs and many more. It is an aggregation site for the endangered Grey Nurse Sharks, Carcharias taurus, who visit in winter. Leopard sharks visit Julian Rocks over summer.
This is where warm and cool waters meet, hence the enormous biodiversity. A minority of species are endemic to this area. Most are found over a wide area of the Asia-Pacific region.

Find out more about this wonderful underwater playground at www.julianrocks.net

The Daily Examiner continues to go downhill

The Daily Examiner continues to go downhill in its 150th year.
Which is a bit hard to do when you are in the middle of a rather flat Clarence Valley flood plain, but this newspaper is managing the feat.
Tabloid headlines, advertorials, articles which are nothing more than vehicles for product placement, pages in the first half of an issue which are so chocka with paid advertising that it is easy to miss the single news item - and now changes to its website which mean that local news is crowded out by interstate (dominated by Queensland) and international news.
These days if you want Northern Rivers news online then you'd be wise to link to anywhere other than APN newspapers.
It's no wonder that the Far North Coaster online magazine is becoming a popular read.
It fills a niche which Northern Rivers newspapers have obviously abandoned.