Ludwig partially bans live export to Indonesia but fails to follow Saffin's well-grounded lead

The Australian Online 31 May 2011:

caucus erupted after Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig announced a ban on exports to 11 Indonesian abattoirs, which many MPs felt did not go far enough.

About 20 Labor MPs spoke on the issue, with many saying they had been besieged by phone calls after a confronting Four Corners documentary showed graphic images of Australian cattle being whipped, beaten and dismembered in dozens of prolonged and painful slaughters last night.

Backbench MP Janelle Saffin presented a notice of motion to caucus, seconded by fellow MP Kelvin Thomson, proposing a complete ban on live exports to Indonesia to be discussed at the next meeting in a fortnight.

Saffin says no more excuses for live exports

Page MP Janelle Saffin says there are no more excuses for industry, governments or anyone to continue supporting the live export trade.

Following last night’s Four Corners program, Agriculture Minister, Senator Joe Ludwig today called for the complete suspension of live animal exports to the Indonesian facilities identified in the footage gathered by Animals Australia.

Ms Saffin today said she approves the suspension of live animal exports to the Indonesian facilities identified in the Four Corners program.

“Along with other Labor MPs, I met with Minister Ludwig on the live exports issue yesterday, and following today’s Caucus meeting, the Minister announced the action.

“And yes, I have put forward the view that we have a cessation of live exports.

“I first raised the issue in Parliament early last year and this year my private members motion calling for the phasing out of live exports and an increase in chilled and frozen meat exports was debated in Parliament.

“I’ve been leading this debate with colleagues for some time, particularly promoting changes within our Labor party, in terms of policy.

“Like so many people, I could barely watch the footage from Animals Australia that was screen on last night’s Four Corners program. 

“There is now a groundswell of support within the Labor Party to change the practices of live export on the humanitarian grounds, and also because it exports jobs.

“There has been an incredible response to the Four Corners program, and I have had farmers contacting me saying that if this is what’s happening, it has to stop.

“We as Australians have a way of treating animals, and if we export animals we expect those standards to prevail.

“I’ve been told by the Meat and Livestock Association and Livecorp that they operate with best practice, but seeing last night’s program put paid to that.

“I don’t have faith that they, as industry bodies, are looking after those they represent, let alone the public interest.

“We have a responsibility to make sure that animals are treated in the same way that we treat them here.

“Some years ago when confronted by the same scenes of cruelty in Egypt, the trade was stopped almost overnight.

“I am pleased that Minister Ludwig has taken the action he took today,” Ms Saffin said.

The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator the Hon Joe Ludwig and the Government, have undertaken the following actions:

-       asked the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to conduct an investigation into the footage

-       announced an independent review to investigate the complete supply chain for live exports up to and including the point of slaughter

-       asked for orders to enforce the suspension of live animal exports to the facilities identified by the evidence provided by RSPCA and Animals Australia

-       the Minister will add further facilities to the list of banned facilities in future, if required

-       Implemented a moratorium on the installation of the restraint boxes, seen being used in the footage. This will apply to the instalment of any new boxes with Commonwealth funds across all global markets and

-       Asked the Chief Veterinary Officer to co-ordinate an independent, scientific assessment of the restraint boxes used in Indonesia.

Media Release, 31 May 2011

Saffin justified over call for more frozen beef exports instead of high level of live exports from Australia

LiveCorp, Meat & Livestock Australia, Cattle Council of Australia and the Dept. of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry have been found severely wanting in their attitude to animal welfare with regard to Australia's live animal export industry, given the ABC Four Corners episode A Bloody Business aired on 30 May 2011.

By the same token; these recent revelations have justified NSW North Coast Federal Labor MP for Page, Janelle Saffin, raising concerns about live exports in her 16 March 2010 House of Representatives motion in support of Halal frozen meat exports.

A motion which saw her publicly attacked at the time by the Nationals for Regional Australia's Senator Fiona Nash.

Those having some oversight of the live animal export industry apparently only began to stir over current welfare concerns once they were approached by the Four Corners investigative team and, the Australian beef industry will have no-one to blame but itself for any negative impacts felt by its members.

Following a report published January this year by industry and government, painting a positive picture of conditions in Indonesia, animal welfare campaigners took their own cameras into abattoirs to record the conditions for themselves. That footage reveals that Australian training of the slaughtermen in Indonesia has been grossly inadequate. Animals smash their heads repeatedly on concrete as they struggle against ropes, take minutes to die in agony after repeated often clumsy cuts to the throat. In some cases there is abject and horrifying cruelty - kicking, hitting, eye-gouging and tail-breaking - as workers try to force the cattle to go into the slaughter boxes installed by the Australian industry, with Australian Government support. [Excerpt from transcript of A Bloody Business,30 May 2011]

A Bloody Business video on demand*
* Warning this video contains graphic images

A new YAMBA group. Want to join up?

This group is meant for xxxx brothers with a reasonable level of fitness, where they can be involved in active team sports, like basketball, soccer, flag football, etc.

YAMBA says, "There is clearly a need for a social association for xxxx brothers to simply get out and be active in somewhat high numbers amongst one another on a regular basis, so here it is.

"The group is open to non-xxxx's as well, just don't expect any "beer kickball" games to be scheduled :)"

Read more details of YAMBA here.

Australian Liberal Party supporting the tobacco industry?

British American Tobacco website on 27 May 2011:

We have a clear policy and compliance procedures on political donations, set out in our Group-wide Standards of Business Conduct. Contributions from our companies to political parties and organisations, their officers, elected politicians and candidates for elective office are generally not encouraged.

Such payments can only be made for the purpose of influencing the debate on issues affecting the company or Group and not to achieve any improper business or other advantage (such as to secure a government contract), must not be intended personally to benefit the recipient or his or her family, friends, associates or acquaintances and must be permissible under all applicable laws….

We collate information centrally on contributions to political parties and to individual politicians that are made for the benefit of their party. Payments in 2010 were as follows:

Where there's smoke there's money (2004) in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine in December 2004:

Voting records of 527 members of the 106th U.S. Congress were obtained for 49 tobacco-related bills between 1997 and 2000. Tobacco industry political action committee (PAC) contributions for each member were summed from 1993 to 2000. A cross-sectional, multilevel model was constructed that predicts voting behavior based on amount of contributions, political party, home state, and amount of state tobacco agriculture. The data were analyzed in 2002, 2003, and 2004.....

A total of $6,827,763 was received by the legislators from 17 tobacco industry PACs, an average of $12,956 per member. Senate Republicans received the most money (mean $22,004), while Senate Democrats received the least ($6,057). Republicans voted pro-tobacco 73% of the time and Democrats voted pro-tobacco only 23% of the time (p <0.001). Pro-tobacco voting percentage varied significantly by state (intraclass correlation coefficient=0.27, p <0.001). The amount of PAC money received by a member of Congress was positively associated with voting pro-tobacco (p <0.01), even after controlling for political party, state, and state tobacco farming. For Democrats in Congress who voted pro-tobacco, for every $10,000 contribution they received, they were 9.8% more likely to do so. On the other hand, for Republicans who voted pro-tobacco, for every $10,000 received, they were only 3.5% more likely to do so....

Tobacco industry contributions, political party, and state-level factors influence the voting behavior of Congress members. In the 106th Congress, Republicans voted pro-tobacco over three times as often as Democrats. However, for those Democrats who voted pro-tobacco, the relationship between receiving tobacco industry PAC money and a pro-tobacco vote was stronger than it was for Republicans.

Tobacco funding: time to quit (2010) in The Drum in May 2010:

The Australian Electoral Commission website reports that in recent years both the Philip Morris company and British American Tobacco have been generous donors to the Liberal Party and the National Party. During the year 2008/9 Philip Morris contributed $158,000 to the Liberal and National parties around Australia.o:p>

Tobacco industry donations to the Liberal Party of Australia at national level in 2009-10 according to the Australian Electoral Commission:

British American Tobacco $19,800
Phillip Morris Limited $15,000 and $16,500

Tony Abbott:

2009 - I was a child that was regularly imprisoned in a car with heavy smokers. My parents both smoked heavily when I was a kid. Now has it done me any harm? Well, yes, you be the judge, you be the judge. I mean maybe but for that I would have been six foot six, and I would have had much greater intelligence, who knows.

2010 -

2011 - Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has defended his anti-smoking credentials amid criticism that the Liberal and National parties were influenced by donations from tobacco companies.

The federal government says the fact 97 per cent of British American Tobacco's political donations worldwide last year went to the Liberal and National parties proved the Coalition "on the drip".

Mr Abbott said tobacco companies "wasted their money" if they thought it would influence the Liberal Party and said when he was health minister he helped reduce smoking rates.

Mr Abbott, a former health minister who beefed up the health warnings on cigarette packets, says he is not convinced the plain green packets with graphic health warnings will help reduce smoking. Other Liberals argue tobacco is a legal product and the companies have intellectual rights over their brands.

Obama acting like Nixon - how disappointing

“Two weeks ago, a grand jury meeting in a courtroom in the Eastern District Court of Virginia heard testimony for at least two days from at least three people subpoenaed by federal prosecutors, several sources tell The Huffington Post. The jury has been convened to consider whether to approve the prosecution of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. A subpoena delivered to a Manning associate in the Boston area says that prosecutors are investigating "possible violations of federal criminal law involving, but not necessarily limited to, conspiracy to communicate or transmit national defence information in violation of" the Espionage Act, as first reported by Salon's Glenn Greenwald.…… "To the extent that we can find anybody involved in breaking American law who has put at risk the assets and the people that I have described ... they will be held responsible," Attorney General Eric Holder said last November. "They will be held accountable."……The potential prosecution of WikiLeaks and Assange alarms First Amendment advocates, who say that though it might be common for government leakers to be prosecuted, it would be unprecedented for a recipient of classified information to be indicted for espionage……The Nixon administration's effort to halt the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, for example, led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling that affirmed First Amendment rights. More recently, two lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee were charged with violating the Espionage Act after a Pentagon analyst gave them classified military information about potential attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, but the charges were later dismissed.” {HuffPost Politics on 26^th May 2011}

Moggy Musings [Archived material from Boy the Wonder Cat]

 

An it defies understanding musing: For a few months now a North Coast resident has been busy pretending to be a well-known former NSW Police Commissioner. A couple of my four-legged friends say their owners have received copies of some of his strange epistles which allege wrongdoing on the part of the Local Court. Yuk.

An I swear it's true musing: I was reading over my house slave's shoulder the other day and had to chuckle at one EEFector email displayed on the monitor which made me suspect someone in Frisco had been nibbling on catnip at the end of another long day fighting guvminn intrusion into teh internetz - EFF filed an amicus brief supporting online free speech today, asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourteenth Circuit to affirm a permanent injunction blocking a federal law that would violate the First Amendment by imposing penalties on website operators that publish indecent material without also using technological measures to block access by kittens. The Kitten Internet Protection Act of 2008 (KIPA) was passed after the Supreme Court struck down its predecessors, the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (COPA) and the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA). The government had argued that narrowing the law's scope to young felines would make the restrictive law pass constitutional muster. In the district court, EFF successfully argued that the law unduly restricted websites, and that supervision of online activities was best left to Ceiling Cat, not the government.

A Maccas musing: My little canine friend Veronica Lake tells me that McDonalds in Yamba is making itself even more unpopular in that small town by beginning to throw its money around in an effort to squeeze its fast food competitors out of Treelands Drive. Trouble is the other fast food chain franchise it is targeting happens to be run by a young and popular local family. The Westlawn Group doesn't come off too well in this scenario either, as it bumped Subway off its 'Yamba Fair' main road signage in favour of Maccas which isn't even a tenant in its shopping complex. Typical!

A loitering in the halls musing: With prosecution evidence in some disarray in an ongoing Clarence Valley trial, I had to laugh when I heard that one cocky defense barrister solicitor has been heard quietly singing during proceedings; "10 green bottles sitting on the wall and if one green bottle should accidently  fall ..."