The plural possessive which sinks Malcolm Turnbull

Image from The Australian

In an effort to extricate himself from a political debacle of his own making Liberal Party Leader Malcolm Turnbull released a series of emails over the last few days.
What is very telling in the email above is the use by disgraced public servant Gordon Grech of the term "we".
It points to longer contact than Turnbull admits to when it comes to details of the OzCar project and a comfortable relationship between both parties to the correspondence.
Big Mal claims he was duped, but this "we" clearly shows that he was already in a Conspiracy of the Willing.

Neither Turnbull or Senator Abetz are seen as credible in their protestations of innocence since Grech was exposed as a probable long-term Coalition mole within Treasury.

Time for both to do their party a favour and resign?

Otherwise Utegate will be a monkey on the party's back right through to the next federal election.

Pic from dumville

Hallam speaks out against latest push to raid Clarence River catchment water

From A Clarence Valley Protest this week:

Jack Hallam comes out with a fighting "No" to new Clarence water diversion proposal

Former NSW Labor Minister for Agriculture & Fisheries and current Uki resident Jack Hallam (who started his career as a Riverina rice farmer) has come out strongly against the latest push to divert Clarence River catchment water, according to ABC News today:

But a former state agriculture and fisheries minister says the proposal would be a total disaster.Jack Hallam, who served on the front bench for the Wran Government, rang ABC Local Radio today after hearing of the latest campaign by the Murray Darling Association.Mr Hallam says floodwaters play a key role in maintaining one of the coast's most important fisheries."Flood is a good thing," Mr Hallam said."We are concerned about the damage of floods very often because of extremely bad planning 30 and 40 years ago, but if you don't have these events you don't have the fish spawn," he said."The fish, the prawn fishery, other major fisheries are totally dependent on these flood events," Mr Hallam said."It (the diversion plan) would be an absolute total disaster," he said.

Well said, Jack.

Photograph from the Tweed Shire Echo

Australian Communications Minister prepares to rig results of Internet filtering trial?

Hello? The Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and his department contracted with Enex TestLab to undertake a live pilot of national ISP-level Internet filtering and prepare a report to government.

Now this week IT News reports that:

Senator Conroy has committed to the public release of a report based on the data gleaned from the Federal Government's trial of ISP-level internet filtering.

"The Government has committed to publicly release the trial report prepared by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy on the results of the live pilot trial," a spokesman for the Communications Minister told iTnews.

The report will be prepared internally by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) and based on data collected by Enex TestLab during the trial it has conducted with nine Australian internet service providers (ISPs).

Does Senator Conroy really imagine that no-one will harbour dark suspicions that the first draft of the report Enex presented did not meet his expectations and fear he is now preparing to spin the data?

If the content is good enough, people will pay says News Digital Media

If the content is good enough, people will pay says News Digital Media's Richard Freudenstein in a guest post over at mUmBRELLA.
Short reply, Dick - bollocks!

Northern Rivers EDO public meeting on Transgrid proposal for new high-voltage transmission lines, Tenterfield 6pm 7 August 2009

The Environmental Defender's Office Northern Rivers is providing legal and other advice to the Upper Dumaresq Action Group on the TransGrid proposal to build new high-voltage transmission lines between Bonshaw, Tenterfield and Lismore.

The EDO is holding a public meeting THIS FRIDAY to

· give a different perspective on the justification for the project

· inform affected residents about their rights

· address community concerns

School Hall

Tenterfield High School

High St, Tenterfield

Friday 7 August

5.45 for 6 pm sharp start – 7.30 pm

For more information, please call Mark Byrne at the EDO Northern Rivers

on 1300 369 791 or Lyn Lacey on 67375477

Possum Comitatus does June 2009 Australian labor force statistics by region

Map showing changes in unemployment rate by region since the 2007 election

Click map to enlarge

1. Where the derived unemployment rate has actually reduced since the last election (yes, as surprising as it might sound, such places do exist!). We'll represent these regions with a cross-hatch.

2. Where the unemployment rate has increased by between zero and 3% since the last election. We'll represent these areas with vertical horizontal lines (Ha! Sorry about that…)

3. Where the unemployment rate has increased by more than 3% since the last election. We'll represent these areas as vertical lines.

Once again Possum shines a light on statistics and gives an easily digestible representation of the growing mountain of numbers which now come our way thanks to the cyber highway.

This year the NSW North Coast continues showing an positive picture when it comes to falling unemployment rates.

The Tweed-Richmond & Mid North Coast showed a regional unemployment rate of 7.1% for the May quarter - a fall of 1.1% on the same quarter in 2008 and a regional rate of 6.3% for the June quarter 2009.

However, it must be remembered that this region starts from a chronically high rate compared to the New South Wales average and as people become discouraged by a lack of local employment prospects the workforce participation rate continues to be relatively low.

Kevin 07 re-election gig gossip

PS News had this little snippet of gossip:

"PS-sssst...!
Ad hocked!
Even geniuses have their day – at least in the advertising industry.
Accomplished adman Neil Lawrence must be wondering what it takes to keep a service contract after being overlooked by the Australian Labor Party for its next big re-election gig.
You see, Neil was the whizz-kid who ran the vote-winning “Kevin 07” campaign that so endeared our then-plucky PM-wannabe (and former Public Servant) K. Rudd into the election winning Prime Ministerial seat of power. Spurned by Labor, Mr Lawrence is now free to make his way into the Coalition camp to pay back the favour and put his undoubted talents to work for them. Could that be a “Welcome Malcolm” slogan I see bubbling up?"

Update:
Seems that public service gossip is not all it's cracked up to be.
Apparently Neil withdrew from the fray rather than got the push.