Wahluu: Australia's premier car racing circuit

While much debate continues to rage about how to pronounce the name of the NSW city that hosts Australia's premier car racing event, Aboriginal man Bill Allen is pushing for Mount Panorama at Bathurst to be given duel names in order to recognise its Wiradjuri name, Wahluu.

Mr Allen will be taking his case to the local naming authorities and is hoping for a positive decision by October when the city hosts the NSW Aboriginal Rugby League Knockout, just prior to the next Bathurst 1000 motor race.

Speaking on ABC North Coast local radio, the Koori Mail's Darren Coyne remarked that people readily acknowledge Wollumbin and Mt Warning are one and the same thing.

So, there shouldn't be a problem using Wahluu and Panorama in the same breath, should there?

All that's needed will be an educational program for television and radio broadcasters, especially those from the Old Dart (and their cronies), to add Wahluu to their lexicon. Admittedly, that task will be a bit difficult, but not impossible.

Source: The Koori Mail

Help Yamba Go Plastic Free

Live in Yamba? Visit on weekends? Holiday there?

Then you can help Yamba keep its environment litter free by spurning plastic shopping bags in favour of the environmentally friendly variety. Bring your own or buy them in the town.

Since 2009 the Yamba Chamber of Commerce and a committee of concerned local residents (in conjunction with Clean Up Australia, Australian Retailers Association and the Australian Government) have been promoting sustainable shopping by selling hemp shopping bags.

These large, durable, attractive cloth bags sell for $5 each and, money raised will be used to purchase more of these bags for sale in the town.

For more information email: info@yambaNSW.com.au

SAY NO TO PLASTIC

PCEHR opt-in provision expected to allay privacy concerns. Pull the other one!

Sometimes I wonder exactly where on the globe this LaLa Land pollies live in is to be found.
Because no-one could seriously believe that the e-Health initiative (laughing called the voluntary Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) System) that Roxon and Co are intent on saddling Australia with is not part of a national database which will be packed with inerasable and sometimes error-riddled records.
A system which will allow every nosey parker, from police through to the local chemist, access to someone else's personal information if they decide to class their data crawl as an 'emergency' request.
To make the entire situation a little more bizarre; it seems that if an emergency request goes in on someone whose does not yet have a digital health record in this system (and perhaps never wanted to opt-in) then one is created without that individual's knowledge or consent.
Once created this new record can be hidden from view but can't be eradicated.
Even death won't see your record disappear; so be prepared for the possibility that eventually these records will turn up in the National Archives for your great-grandkids entertainment. Just as anyone can now find out if their dead Anzac grandpa contracted the clap on the way to the front in WWl by looking at a copy of his military record online.
And apparently this e-Health system can be accessed after July next year by Roxon's nosey parkers on the move using iPhone and Blackberry.
The potential for abuse is enormous.

Dodgy 'carbon tax' claims using the Coalition's favourite North Coast butcher as an example

The one thing about public life that remains constant is that eventually all politicians who purvey dodgy claims get found out – unfortunately it’s not always in their own lifetimes.

However, in this case two Australian politicians – Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and the Nationals MP for Cowper Luke Hartsuyker – have been discovered trying to slap suspect meat on the bones of their argument against putting a price on carbon pollution.

In February 2010 Hartsuyker rose to his feet in Parliament to wail about the sad plight of a Coffs Harbour butcher who paid $7,400 per quarterly electricity bill, which would see his annual power cost coming in at $29,600.

While in April 2011 Abbott fronted the media with the claim that the very same butcher was now paying around $22,000 per year for electricity, which works out at $5,500 each quarter.

Now this would mean either the figures quoted in Parliament by Hartsuyker were blatantly false or that (despite rising electricity costs) the butcher will probably now pay considerably less for electricity this year than he did in the previous year.

If it is the latter, then based on current carbon price rise projections for 2012-14 this butcher would see next year’s electricity bill come in at about $3,600 less than his stated total 2010 power costs for the business.

Couple that with Lenore Taylor’s observation that (using the butcher’s admissions concerning annual turnover) any post-carbon price electricity costs passed on by the butcher in 2012-13 would mean T-bone steak at $22 a kilo would now cost … wait for it … . $22.04. Minced meat at $11 a kilo would now cost $11.02 and the Abbott-Hartsuyker argument about future prices spiraling because of a ‘carbon tax’ falls apart.

Major stuff up by NSW Police a candidate for Ripley's Believe It Or Not

From the pen of The Daily Examiner editor, David Bancroft, on Page 8 of the 12^th April 2011 newspaper issue:

“IT is almost beyond comprehension that no-one has been convicted of anything more serious than a misdemeanour following the Valentine's Day riots in Yamba last year.

It is beyond dispute that a police car, probably worth in excess of $100,000, and another vehicle were set alight and that police from all over the North Coast were pelted with a variety of missiles, including bricks and rocks.

It is conceivable someone could have been asleep in the second car to catch fire, with disastrous consequences.

All this was caught on police video and from the mobile phones of those attending a loud, late night party in the Yamba industrial estate.

Scores of people were there and witnessed the action.

But despite there being enough evidence to keep a trial going for six weeks, no riot convictions were recorded.

In fact, the only charge that stuck was that of failing to comply with a noise abatement order and, because of his previous good record, the occupier of the premises, Craig McNeill, was released on a good behaviour bond. One of the difficulties in prosecuting a case where there are multiple accused is that almost everyone has a different interpretation of what occurred and, in the court's mind, that can be enough to create the reasonable doubt required for acquittal.

This trial has already cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars for no result, but that figure could climb substantially higher if those who have now been released (remember some spent months in jail) pursue compensation.”

The Daily Examiner article “Yamba riot accused set free” on Page 1 of the 12^th April 2011 issue:

“In handing down his findings, Mr Andrews questioned why police held a debrief on February 17 before they prepared their statements.

“It is difficult to believe why experienced police officers would undertake a process that would lead to their evidence being criticised by the defence,” he said.

He then went on to question the honesty of police evidence.

“If police are prepared not to be honest in such matters, how can a court be prepared to consider their evidence seriously?” he said.

“There is little doubt that the various police witnesses have collaborated with their evidence.”

NSW Northern Rivers region one of the tourism industry's solid earners

Joint media release from Federal Minister for Tourism Martin Ferguson, Justine Elliott MP for Richmond and Janelle Saffin MP for Page on 12 April 2011:

The Economic Importance of Tourism in Australia’s Regions report released today by the Federal Minister for Tourism, Martin Ferguson reveals the Northern Rivers economy is one of the largest tourism earners as well as one of the most tourism dependent regional economies in Australia.

The value of the tourism output to the Northern Rivers in 2007/08 was $1.2 billion. This was 6.1 percent of the overall output from the region, making it the fourteenth largest tourism earner and twentieth most tourism dependent region in Australia.

“Tourism is the lifeblood of many regional areas; it creates jobs where people live. Tourism is a source of employment in the Northern Rivers for many people including hospitality professionals, uni students, travellers, and older Australia’s looking for part-time employment,” said the Minister for Tourism, Martin Ferguson.

Page MP Janelle Saffin said the Northern Rivers is rightly proud of its tourism industry.

“We know regional areas see 46 cents in every dollar of tourism spending. So our local industry isn’t just important to the people who work in it – it’s important to everyone who lives here.

“Government is working across ministerial portfolios to strengthen the tourism industry. Employer Brokers is a good example, operating across the Richmond-Tweed and Clarence Valley areas. This scheme helps hotel and catering managers to find the staff they need,” Ms Saffin said.

“The Northern Rivers region has a great tourism story to tell,” said Justine Elliot MP. “We’re part of the Legendary Pacific Coast Tourism Initiative, an Australian Government TQUAL Grants project which stretches from Sydney to the Queensland border. It includes signposting, website development, branding, innovation and project management. It aims to encourage visitors to stay longer and to spend more widely across the region.”

Tourism ministers from all jurisdictions meet in Darwin later this week to discuss a two-year work program to drive greater regional tourism resilience under the National Long-Term Tourism Strategy.

The Economic Importance of Tourism in Australia’s Regions is at http://www.ret.gov.au/tourism/tra/Pages/default.aspx

A 'man drought' is declared? It must have been a slow news day.

Jules Faber cartoon, The Daily Examiner 6 April 2011

At 30 June 2010, the sex ratio of the total population for Australia was 99.2 males per 100 females. At age 0, the sex ratio for Australia in 2010 was 105.3 males per 100 females. This excess of males in the earlier years contrasts with the opposite situation in the older years and for the total population which can be attributed to female longevity. [Australian Bureau of Statistics, 21 December 2010]

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in the 2006 Census (held on 8 August 2006) there were 48,146 persons usually resident in Clarence Valley Local Government Area, of which 49.6% were males and 50.4% were females or in raw numbers 23,875 were male and 24,271 were female.

That represented an undifferentiated gender imbalance of 396 more females than males spatially distributed across 44 towns, villages and city environs over approximately 10,440 sq. kms.

Of the 38,597 residents 15 years of age and over; 51.4% were married, 26.8% never married, 13.8% separated or divorced, 8.1% widowed and about 4,893 stated they lived alone.

A fairly typical regional profile in the coastal sea-change cum tree-change belt I would have thought and one that was not all that remarkable. So imagine my surprise when I woke one day last week to find that there was a ‘man drought’ occurring in Grafton which is the main commercial centre in the Clarence Valley.

On the basis of a newspaper table showing that for every 95 Grafton men aged 20-29 there are 100 females in the same age bracket and for every 80 Grafton men aged 30-39 there are 100 similarly aged females, an unidentified local journalist has stoutly issued the drought declaration.

Now I’d be the first to admit that in 2006 the Grafton statistical area showed the resident population was 48.9% male and 51.1% female.

However in 2006 when it came to Graftonian adults in the 20-29 age range there was only one more female than there were males and, in the 30-39 range there was only 41 more females in total than males. Making the overall gender imbalance between 20 and 39 years of age in Grafton City and environs a mere 42 extra females.

When looking at presumed ‘availability’ of the unmarried then there were 2 more females who had never married than total males in that same category and, probably around 11 more "not married" women between 20 and 34 than there were men of the same age who had no wife or de-facto partner.

However, if a man drought is really occurring then Grafton women have to have lost the ability to socialise outside city boundaries because there are 10,000 plus people without spouses or partners living in the Clarence Valley local government area and some of those have to be males of the species.

Of course the possibility exists that many of those 20 to 39 year-old women mentioned in the newspaper article are quite happy being footloose and fancy free and, are chortling over the idea that a ‘man drought’ is something to seriously worry about.

A little background on the MSM's love of the notion of a man drought.