The Big Joke Comedy Festival returns! 18-21 March 2010 at Bangalow NSW

The Big Joke Comedy Festival brings the laughs to the Bangalow A and I Hall. Featuring international headline acts, stand up comedy by kids, emerging comics battle it out for the Village Idiot crown and a women's comedy breakfast. The best comedy experience outside a capital city, No wait, better. No traffic, no long waiting lines, village atmosphere with a holiday begging to be taken, the funniest comedians on the planet WHOM actually want to have a beer and chat with the audience after the show, autographs, photo's, parking, relaxed and painless but really, really memorable.

When: 18 March to 21 March 2010 starting at 11:00 AM
Where: A and I Hall, Bangalow, NSW

Contact: Tel: 02 6629 1457 Email: jonathanallison@rocketmail.com

Web: http://www.thebigjoke.com.au/
Festival program details and online booking details here

Rudd Government and Woolworths partner in 2010 Food Rescue Campaign

Food Rescue Campaign

Woolworths supermarkets, together with the Federal Government, have launched a year long campaign to rescue a record amount of surplus food from the waste stream and turn it into meals for the needy. With a target to provide two million meals for those in need and $2 million for those food relief charities who serve them, the campaign aims to address an underlying social problem in Australia. The Australian Government will partner with Woolworths to advise on the allocation of the funding. The Woolworths Fresh Food Rescue campaign will support food relief charities at two core levels: Expanding food rescue and food donation schemes from Woolworths stores to charity groups. With 687 supermarkets already participating in some kind of food rescue program, Woolworths wants to substantially increase its partnerships with local food relief charities or soup kitchens. Woolworths' target is to turn its food surplus into two million meals for the needy in 2010. Building additional capacity amongst charity groups through a major grants scheme Woolworths will contribute $2 million to help charity groups expand their operations and ensure thousands more people can access healthy, nutritious food. Each year households, retailers, restaurants and businesses throw out millions of tonnes of food which then finds its way into landfill sites. Although not always fit for sale, much of it is good quality and could easily be rescued and turned into nutritious, healthy meals for the needy or vulnerable in our society. Organisations such as Foodbank, OzHarvest, FareShare, Food 4 Life and SecondBite and others work hard to turn excess food into nutritious meals for the homeless, the vulnerable and the needy. These charities are primarily staffed by volunteers and only have limited resources to provide the help that is required. Food is not the only thing they need, the sector is also crying out for vehicles, storage, refrigeration and other facilities to maintain and expand their operations. FareShare CEO Marcus Godinho says there's no shortage of quality surplus food in Australia, however sadly local charities have lacked the means to handle the food donations on offer. Godinho says the program will help charities to receive, store and hand out hundreds of tonnes of quality food and help the growing number of Australian families who are struggling to afford three meals a day, seven days a week. OzHarvest Founding Director Ronni Kahn says the unwanted food is there and Australians in need are there. OzHarvest is only limited by lack of funds to enable us to collect more food from more stores to deliver to more people. An injection of funds like this to the food rescue sector helps all of us to share the surplus food with those in need. SecondBite also supports the Woolworths initiative to expand the provision of surplus fresh food and donate $2million dollars to the food relief sector. Food Program Manager Russell Shields says that with SecondBite's focus on providing recipient agencies with fresh food and innovative food relief programs that provide long term preventative solutions to families in crisis, this funding will help us to collect and redistribute over 900 tonnes of fresh food in 2010 across Victoria and Tasmania. Foodbank CEO John Webster describes the initiative as a wonderful adjunct to the current Woolworths' program to capture and distribute surplus packaged goods from individual stores and distribution centres. He says Woolworths is already their single largest national food donor and this will assist in expanding donations as they strive to meet the demands of the 2,200 welfare agencies that they provide food to across the country. Woolworths says it is working toward an ambitious target to reduce organic waste to zero by the year 2015. In 2009 the company was one of Australia's largest food donors, providing 1.35 million kilos of consumable food which is the equivalent of 1.5 million meals. Woolworths will be consulting with a number of current charity partners to understand how the grant scheme can best address their needs. Further details, criteria and eligibility will be released later in the year. Enquiries can be made by email - freshfoodrescue@woolworths.com.au (From Northern Rivers Social Development Council Feb/March newsletter)

Flying foxes - let's get it right

It is disturbing that incorrect information about the bats in Maclean has been widely circulated. The management of urban flying-foxes is complex.

The community is entitled to be presented with information that is free of hysteria, stereotypes and political manoeuvrings.

Research, that can be verified, indicates that most efforts to relocate flying-foxes in Australia, including Maclean have been unsuccessful e.g., despite over 10 years of disturbance at Maclean the flying-foxes return annually, and due to their fidelity to camp sites are likely to return for many more years, maybe indefinitely.

Relocation attempts are often extremely costly e.g., over $400,000 at Maclean since 1999 and $3 million at Melbourne. Relocations need to be considered by the broader community, not just immediate communities, as relocations have the potential to shift the flying-foxes to other urban areas.

It is highly probable that the flying-foxes from Maclean have relocated to Iluka causing conflict with those residents. Further relocations at Maclean have the potential to increase conflict again in Iluka and fragment the animals into other urban townships such as Ashby and Yamba.

Given the high costs and uncertainty of relocation, it is very clear that other options such as community education, revegetation of buffer zones and modifications to buildings are also considered.

Flying-foxes are a native species and they are responsible for the propagation of our iconic forests. It is important that we recognise the intrinsic value of our Australian wildlife. To do less is a sad indictment on all of us.

Imelda Jennings

Secretary, Wildlife SOS

* GuestSpeak is a feature of North Coast Voices allowing Northern Rivers residents to make satirical or serious comment on issues that concern them. Posts of 250-300 words or less can be submitted to ncvguestspeak at live dot com dot au for consideration.

Bravo Patricia! Proud Yaegl woman socks it to Sydney media in defence of Yamba

In The Daily Examiner on 24 February 2010:

THE riot in Yamba on February 14 has attracted plenty of unwanted attention for the holiday town. A report in the metropolitan media at the weekend pointed the finger at Yamba's Aboriginal population as the cause of the town's problems. Today, Yamba Aboriginal leader and NSW Aboriginal Land Council member PATRICIA LAURIE responds.

IN the past week, mainstream media reporting of my community of Yamba has been inaccurate, sensationalised and ridiculous.

The reports relate to the arrest of 15 people on February 14 following a party at an industrial area on the edge of town.

During the incident several police were allegedly assaulted and two vehicles damaged.

Some media are calling it the Valentine's Day riots.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported over the weekend, 'Holiday haven one day, riots the next'.

'A thin strip of barbed wire running along a high fence-top behind The Sands resort says everything Yamba residents will not: this is a town divided', the report read.

'On one side of the street is a three-storey, gated complex of luxury villas and apartments with a lap pool, tennis courts and spa, and spacious private houses with neat gardens behind tall wooden barriers.

Across the road is a derelict moonscape; a barren paddock of dishevelled brick homes and abandoned weatherboard cottages.

Welcome to Yamba, one year ago declared Australia's best tourist destination ahead of Byron Bay and Port Douglas.

Last weekend the once sleepy North Coast fishing village at the mouth of the Clarence River was the scene of a riot in which party-goers allegedly danced on a police car, pelted it with bricks, then set it alight after being asked to turn music down at a shed on the fringes of town.

Publicly, locals put crime down to the sporadic police presence.

A dozen officers are expected to cover a population of roughly 20,000 spanning three towns and can take more than an hour to respond to triple-0 calls.

Privately, two groups are blamed: the local Indigenous population and the children of low-income seachange families.'

Unfortunately, the facts of this incident have gotten in the way of a story.

So here are a few inconvenient truths for media planning to visit Yamba in the future.

Firstly, of the 15 people arrested by police on the night, only three were Aboriginal.

Of the three arrested this week, only one is Aboriginal.

That means 14 of the 18 are non-Aboriginal.

Secondly, figures from 2008 from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOSCAR) reveal that the Clarence Valley Local Government Area – which takes in Yamba – has an assault rate below the state average.

Our region is not racked with violence. Our town is not divided.

It is calmer and more peaceful than most of the state.

The figures also reveal that assaults against police are below the state average in the Clarence Valley. But where's no news in that.

The headline 'Yamba a safer town than state average' is nowhere near as interesting as 'Community in crisis' or 'Town divided' or 'Beautiful one day, rioting the next'.

Here are a few more inconvenient truths.

The Bega Valley, way down on the Far South Coast of NSW, has almost precisely the same relative crime statistics as the Clarence Valley.

Can Merimbula – another coastal tourist town – expect the arrival of busloads of Sydney journalists determined to prove it's a community divided by race wars and juvenile delinquency?

The assault rate in Cessnock is higher than it is the Clarence Valley.

It's higher in Coffs Harbour.

It's higher in the Cooma-Monaro region which takes in the Sydney crowd heading to the snow in winter.

It's higher in Glen Innes, a sleepy country town due west of Yamba.

It's twice as high in Inverell, another sleepy country town due west of Yamba.

The rate of assaults is also almost twice as high in Campbelltown; in Manly on Sydney's lower north shore; in the Byron Shire.

But wait for it: the rate of assaults in the Botany Bay area – where the resident MP is the premier of NSW, Kristina Keneally – is higher than in the Clarence Valley.

Where are the headlines about NSW burning?

Surely our state's a tinder box?

A powder keg of racial violence waiting to explode?

Or maybe the media is just looking for something sensational to report, rather than wade through piles of crime statistics which tell different tales to those reported.

The rate of assaults on police in the Clarence Valley is identical to the rate in the Wingecarribee Shire, home to the wealthy Bowral community.

But there's no 'Bowral divided' story in the weekend edition of the SMH, just a piece about some shopkeepers lobbying to keep St Vinnies out of the main street.

In the Mosman area – another of Australia's most privileged regions – the number of 'liquor offences' is more than three times the rate of the Clarence Valley and four times greater than the state average.

So why no media campaign for a Federal Government intervention to stop the rivers of grog on the lower north shore?

It would have more factual basis than the rubbish we're being dished up about Yamba.

The facts are, the mainstream media coverage of the 'Yamba riots' has mostly been garbage.

It's designed to sell newspapers or improve ratings. Yamba has the same tensions all average Australian communities face.

Nothing more, perhaps a little less. The real beat-up is the mainstream media's coverage of our community.

Yes, there are occasional tensions in the town, just as there are in all Australian communities.

And, yes, those tensions sometimes run along racial lines.

Yes, Yamba has its share of assaults just like every other community in Australia, coastal or otherwise.

But is there room for improvement? Of course there is, just like there is in every other community in Australia.

And that's precisely what Yamba residents are working to do.

On the whole, our community is peaceful and cohesive.

Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people work hard at maintaining respectful, meaningful relationships.

The media will be disappointed to learn that no amount of misreporting is likely to change that.