Seasons Greeting from all at North Coast Voices in 2010

Season's Greetings

To all our readers

And to those Australian and overseas bloggers

we regularly read ourselves

From everyone here at

North Coast Voices

Have a happy and safe time during this year's festivities

As is our usual custom we will be taking a holiday break from

Christmas Day 2010 until New Year's Day 2011.

Animated image from fanpop!

More rubbishing.....

Are we too late to add Maccas rubbish in Yamba today to the North Coast Voices online pile before Santa comes tonight?

Anony-mice
Yamba

Last puzzled word on the state of Australian sedition law in 2010

Remember the Anti‑Terrorism Act (No. 2) 2005 (weakly amended in 2006 in order to protect mainstream media and professional journalists) which contained new draconian sedition law introduced by the Howard Government which virtually made every blogger, letter to the editor writer, whistleblower and protester potentially vulnerable to political charges of sedition and/or treason in certain circumstances? Were you one of those outraged by its provisions?

Recall the 2006 Australian Law Reform Commission Inquiry which in Fighting Words: A Review of Sedition Laws in Australia (ALRC Report 104) recommended conservative changes (including the removal of Schedule 7–Sedition) which would ease the more punitive effects of this legislation and, the fact that in 2008 the Rudd Federal Government formally supported 25 of these recommendations and two others in principal?

Can you bring to mind this undertaking made in the Australian Parliament:

Review of Security, Counter-Terrorism and Sedition Laws
Mr Ciobo (Moncrieff) asked the Attorney-General, in writing, on 24 February 2009: When does the Government plan to introduce legislation to: (a) establish the statutory office of National Security Legislation Monitor; and (b) implement the recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission's review of sedition laws.
Mr McClelland (Barton) (Attorney-General) —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: (a) As I announced on 23 December 2008, as part of the Government's comprehensive response to the reviews of Australia's security and counter-terrorism laws, the Government is progressing legislation to establish the statutory office of the National Security Legislation Monitor as a matter of priority. The legislation is being developed by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in consultation with the Attorney-General's Department. (b) As I announced on 23 December 2008, as part of the Government's comprehensive response to the reviews of Australia's security and counter-terrorism laws, the Government will introduce legislation to implement the recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission with respect to the federal sedition laws. The Government is planning to release exposure draft legislation in the first half of 2009. This will provide an opportunity for public input prior to the introduction of any legislation into Parliament.

Well the exposure draft was published in 2009 and, the National Security Legislation Amendment Bill 2010 (finally introduced in September 2010) which allegedly intends that Schedule 1 contains proposed amendments to the treason and sedition offences in Division 80 of the Criminal Code in response to recommendations from various reviews apparently does not really remove those wide sedition provisions across the board. Instead they have been rebadged as treason.

Indeed, under the current Australian Attorney-General this bill will expand the existing sedition offences (to be renamed offences that 'urge violence') to also cover urging force or violence on the basis of 'ethnic' or 'national' origin and it will also add to Part 5.1 (Treason and Sedition ) of the Criminal Code Act 1995 so that an Australian citizen, resident, corporation or accepted refugee can be imprisoned for life if found to have materially assisted another person considered to be taking part in an undeclared war which the Commonwealth in its turn considers itself to be party to.

While Senator Ludlam's private members bill Anti‑Terrorism Laws Reform Bill 2009 which (among other matters) actually proposes to remove rather than rebadge the offence of sedition, after a Senate Inquiry has morphed into the Anti-Terrorism Laws Reform Bill 2010 and now idles during the parliamentary silly season holidays.

I seem to recall that in the second half of 2007 the Australian Labor Party began to tell the electorate that it would remove those constraints on free speech and freedom of association which could be implied from Howard's draconian legislative measures.

I don't know about the rest of Australia, but I am ending 2010 confused as to the actual state of play, highly suspicious of the political process and, never quite sure if I'm being seditious or not - either verbally, in writing, waving a placard or making a donation to a charity with international programs.

Orams falls foul of yet another Daily Examiner reader

Even the Federal Member for Page (whose electorate covers part of the Clarence Valley where The Daily Examiner is situated) disagrees with that newspaper's über conservative journalist, Graham Orams, on occasion and went so far as to write this letter to the editor published on 21 December 2010:

Supporting patches

I DISAGREE with Graham Oram's editorial (DEX, December 12) critical of the Federal Government making nicotine patches available through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. I actively lobbied for this to happen.

My disagreement is based on the primary principle that health care must be made available without discrimination.

If we start to ration it based on blame, where does that lead? Do we say you have to pay if your illness or injury is self-inflicted, through smoking, drinking, over eating, abuse of legal and illegal drugs, dangerous sports, driving too fast etc?

Public policy should be directed to a number of things and the primary aim is about service and helping people, and should be done on the basis of being effective. In health policy the government promotes healthy behaviours as well as providing treatments.

Nicotine patches are effective.

If someone wants to use them, they are well on the way to giving up smoking.

Let us support them.

JANELLE SAFFIN,

Member for Page

Background:

Australian journalism continues to attract blinkered conservatives into its ranks

Is there an annual award for foot-in-mouth journalism?

Now who has been loose with the facts in the Clarence Valley rate debate??

Orams Returns! (groan)

One of the Clarence Valley's resident "opinionated jerks" is at it again

The Battle of the Rates continues in The Daily Examiner as Orams gets trounced

The last polling I'll inflict on readers this year - I rooly trooly promise!

From the folks at Essential Research on 20^th December 2010:

Click on images to make them grow

I'm off to do a bit of camping and fishing - if I can find a dry spot to pitch the tent - see you all in February 2011.

McDonald's rubbishing Yamba in December 2010

Clarencegirl sent me these pics of McDonald's branded litter in Treelands Drive within 100 metres either side of this hamburger joint's driveway at 11am on Monday 20th December 2010.
Not yet open a month in this small coastal town and this is how McDonald's Australia and the franchisee say Merry Christmas?

What is truly mind boggling is that McDonald's litter is now turning up near the corner of Baker Street and River Road, Maclean - at least 16 kilometres away as seen by this pic of what was picked up there by a local at around noon on 21st December 2010.

And this final pic is of litter retrieved from Admiralty Park in Yamba - a good 5 minutes walk from messy Maccas.

More McDonald's Yamba branded litter pics here.

In 2007 Monsanto gets US Government to run heavy-handed interference in Europe?

If you thought that Monsanto & Co doesn’t 'own' successive U.S. governments, this excerpt from a diplomatic cable from the American Ambassador to France concerning the GMO maize variety Mon810 and forwarded to Washington may change your mind.

The highlighting is mine.

¶1. (C) Summary: Mission Paris recommends that that the USG reinforce our negotiating position with the EU on agricultural biotechnology bypublishing a retaliation list when the extend "Reasonable Time Period" expires. In our view, Europe is moving backwards not forwards on this issue with France playing a leading role, along with Austria, Italy and even the Commission. In France, the "Grenelle" environment process is being implemented to circumvent science-based decisions in favor of an assessment of the "common interest." Combined with the precautionary principle, this is a precedent withimplications far beyond MON-810 BT corn cultivation. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices. In fact, the pro-biotech side in France -- including within the farm union -- have told us retaliation is the only way to begin to begin to turn this issue in France. End Summary.

¶2. (C) This is not just a bilateral concern. France will play a leading role in renewed European consideration of the acceptance of agricultural biotechnology and its approach toward environmental regulation more generally. France expects to lead EU member states on this issue during the Slovene presidency beginning in January and through its own Presidency in the second half of the year. Our contacts have made clear that they will seek to expand French national policy to a EU-wide level and they believe that they are in the vanguard of European public opinion in turning back GMO's. They have noted that the member states have been unwilling to support the Commission on sanctioning Austria's illegal national ban. The GOF sees the ten year review of the Commission's authorization of MON 810 as a key opportunity and a review of the EFSA process to take into account societal preferences as another (reftels).

¶3. (C) One of the key outcomes of the "Grenelle" was the decision to suspend MON 810 cultivation in France. Just as damaging is the GOF's apparent recommitment to the "precautionary principle." Sarkozy publicly rejected a recommendation of the Attali Commission (to review France's competitiveness) to move away from this principle, which was added to the French constitution under Chirac

¶4. (C) France's new "High Authority" on agricultural biotech is designed to roll back established science-based decision making. The recently formed authority is divided into two colleges, a scientific college and a second group including civil society and social scientists to assess the "common interest" of France. The authority's first task is to review MON 810. In the meantime, however, the draft biotech law submitted to the National Assembly and the Senate for urgent consideration, could make any biotech planting impossible in practical terms. The law would make farmers and seed companies legally liable for pollen drift and sets the stage for inordinately large cropping distances.
The publication of a registry identifying cultivation of GMOs at the parcel level may be the most significant measure given the propensity for activists to destroy GMO crops in the field.

¶5. (C) Both the GOF and the Commission have suggested that their respective actions should not alarm us since they are only cultivation rather than import bans. We see the cultivation ban as a first step, at least by anti-GMO advocates, who will move next to banor further restrict imports. (The environment minister's top aidetold us that people have a right not to buy meat raised on biotechfeed, even though she acknowledged there was no possible scientific basis for a feed based distinction.) Further, we should not beprepared to cede on cultivation because of our considerable planting seed business in Europe and because farmers, once they have hadexperience with biotech, become its staunchest supporters.

¶6. Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits. The list should be measured rather than vicious andmust be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect a nearly victory.

PARIS 00004723 002 OF 002Stapleton

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.