Planning Minister Keneally please note that Clarence Valley's mayor has accidentally highlighted one of the many reasons West Yamba development is a dumb idea

Channel 10 State Focus on Sunday 31st May ran a telephone interview with Clarence Valley Mayor Cr. Richie Williamson in which he admitted that 6,500 people in Yamba were cut-off by flooding for almost seven days.

This is the same shire councillor who voted to send down to the NSW Minister for Planning a draft plan to put another 2,000 to 2,500 people in Yamba on flood-prone land.

Only one councillor, Margaret McKenna, held out against the well-heeled North Coast and Queensland developers driving this flawed development agenda.
The rest of Council only seeing floating visions of additional rate revenue and disregarding risk to life and property.

The question many in the Clarence Valley are asking; "Is Kristina Keneally also in the pocket of developers?"

Picture of Endeavour Street, Yamba in May 2009 from ABC North Coast.

Those media moguls ain't getting my readies!

Last week the Australian public broadcaster ABC via its online website told us that a couple of dozen media execs met in a Chicago hotel to "discuss ways newspapers can protect their internet content and in some cases, charge web surfers to read it".

Previously both ABC News online and free-to-air television had informed us that Rupert Murdoch had plans to make his online media a pay-for-view affair.

So why would I pay for (as an example) News Corp's The Australian 26-line puff piece on the technology Rupert wants us to buy so he can charge for online 'news'?

Ah yes, because Rupert wants me to! {falls about laughing hysterically}

Look who's a big user of the OpenAustralia website...

OpenAustralia did a bit of digging into its user profile and came up with a surprisingly large number of government PCs using its website.


It looks as though OpenAustralia is easier to use than Hansard records as it comes with the added feature of email alerts.
Perhaps MPs whose staffers use this website might consider whether a donation or two would be in order to keep this handy site going.

Truth in advertising missing from Turnbull's debt and deficit advertisement

Liberal Party advertisment May-June 2009

This week I saw a news clip on the teev showing Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull spruiking the former Howard Government's financial record and bagging the Rudd Government's level of public debt.
There was even a snippet from a coming Liberal Party advert on the subject.
"18 months ago we had no debt and cash at the bank."
And there's the rub - Mal was so foolish as to say that the Howard Government went out on zero debt.
How stupid does he think the average punter is?
Does he really think no-one was watching the growing current account deficit, outstanding Treasury bonds, level of government borrowing and interest payments before November 2007?
For heaven's sake - in 2006 total public sector gross foreign debt was 9.1% of GDP, in 2007 it was 7.7% of GDP and a big chunk of that was general government & Reserve Bank borrowing.
As for total gross national public debt.
Well, let's look at that graph again.







A history of public debt in Australia

See a 2006 0r 2007 zero there anyone?
The fact that Turnbull appears to be bragging about a lack of net public debt by 2006-2007 doesn't mean that there is absolutely no Commonwealth debt.
It simply means that government liabilities (mostly in the form of debt) were matched with financial assets which it could if needed sell-off to meet outstanding debt and interest obligations.
However, I suspect that with Costello as Treasurer these net figures became a trifle rubbery over time. Commonwealth unfunded superannuation liabilities and net claims were an ongoing problem in the final Costello budget.
As a millionaire ex-merchant banker, Turnbull can't pretend that he doesn't know that the Libs are trying to pull the wool over voter's eyes and he can't walk away from the fact that he is telling a political whopper in that first advert of a blatant disinformation campaign.
Who could honestly feel comfortable with the thought of this man's hands on the national helm?