Carbonageddon: nobody believes Tony

 

Stock and  Land on 16^th July 2012:

“VOTERS believe that the carbon tax will not be scrapped by a Coalition government despite Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's "pledge in blood" to move on his first day as prime minister to repeal it, private polling by the major parties has found.

Focus group research, which both major parties have conducted since the carbon tax started on July 1, has found that voters are highly sceptical that the tax will ever be dumped.

Details of the focus group research conducted by the Labor Party indicate that voters believe Mr Abbott's "blood pledge" is a political tactic and that he would find a reason to abandon it after he became prime minister, The Australian Financial Review reports.

Coalition sources confirm that Mr Abbott's pledge is doubted by voters who have become even more sceptical about promises made by political leaders in the wake of Labor's broken promises not to introduce a carbon tax. According to Labor sources, focus group participants believe overwhelmingly that once a new tax is in place it is there to stay.

When Mr Abbott's promise is put to them, typical responses are "he would say that, wouldn't he", "he's just saying that to win the election" and "when has a new tax ever been scrapped?"  

Anybody else smell a whiff of McDonalds 'greasy PR?

 

This was up on The Daily Examiner website on 13^th July 2012:

“Can Maccas come back?

IT WAS a Whopper of an argument that may have been solved by a Big Mac.

Police have responded to a call about a dispute over the price of a Whopper burger at a Hungry Jacks store in Rockhampton.

Initial reports indicate the issue was resolved by the aggrieved customer going to a nearby McDonald's store.”

The one thing I smell is APN head office doing a transfat-laden Clayton’s advertising deal with Maccas Australia.

 

U.S. Presidential Election 2012: Mitt Romney Skewered

http://youtu.be/Ud3mMj0AZZk

The Nationals spin on Grafton Gaol closure now closely resembles a grand lie?

This email arrived in my Inbox this morning. If it is genuine copy, then NSW Nationals executive committee members have collectively lost their political minds and decided that comprehensively lying to their own membership is an acceptable proposition.

In order to remain calm Clarence Valley voters will possibly need to sit down with a restorative beverage before reading this arrant nonsense:

From: NSW Nationals [mailto:email@nswnationals.org.au]
Sent: 17 July 2012 10:17
Subject: A message from the State Chairman on the Grafton Gaol issue

Tuesday 17 July

A message from the State Chairman on the Grafton Gaol issue

Dear members,
I would like to take this opportunity to provide you with some insight to the Grafton Gaol issue. It is evident that this issue has struck a chord with many of our members and has been a very difficult period for the Grafton Community.
Obviously any decision to remove jobs from a local community is difficult and one that is only a last resort, however I am disappointed that some within our party have questioned the ability and relevance of The Nationals to fight for the Grafton community and that is something I would like to address.
The way in which the announcement was made and the manner in which it was delivered is regrettable. It placed the local member Chris Gulaptis in a very difficult position from the outset.
Chris took a stand for his local community and was quickly supported by his parliamentary colleagues, both state and federal who were in constant contact with messages of support and advice.
Head Office was also in constant communication with Chris and his office and also sent Ross Cadell to Grafton to provide on the ground support.
The Parliamentary leadership team led by Andrew Stoner met with a delegation from Grafton led by Chris and commenced discussions with the Premier on the issue.
I cannot understate the level of support and work that was carried out by all within the Party, largely behind closed doors, to try and rectify this issue for the people of Grafton.
I too was in constant contact with Chris and our Federal Candidate for Page Kevin Hogan over the last fortnight.
Although the original decision stood and was not delayed as requested by many, The Nationals were able to convince the Premier to determine what Government Department or jobs can be decentralised to Grafton and report back within eight weeks, in addition to the North Coast Jobs action plan which the Deputy Premier announced last week. This will result in a net increase in the number of Government jobs in Grafton in the near future.
There have been many lessons learnt from this exercise, but contrary to some of the comments from a number of sources (disappointingly even from some of our own members) The Nationals have made a difference in fighting for the Grafton community.  We need to remember that it was the previous Labor Government that commissioned the construction of the Cessnock correctional facility, clearly with the view to relocating prisoners from older prisons like Grafton to Cessnock.
Although we would have preferred not to go through the last fortnight, Grafton will benefit in the long run due to the hard work that The Nationals have done throughout this difficult issue.
I truly believe that if it was not for The Nationals the jobs that will be lost due to the Gaol being reclassified to a remand centre would have been lost with no other opportunities provided.
While the Grafton community faces some immediate challenges, the future for jobs in the region is stronger as a direct result of The Nationals' actions over the past two weeks.
Yours sincerely,
Hon Niall Blair MLC
State Chairman

Some background to the issue:
http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/on-how-not-to-win-friends-and-influence.html
http://www.dailyexaminer.com.au/story/2012/07/04/mp-disputes-claim-prison-key-to-regions-economy/
http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/clarence-valley-calls-on-local-mp-chris.html
http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/gulaptis-admits-he-stuffed-up-then.html
http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/grafton-gaol-picket-line-8-july-2012.html
http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/robertson-at-grafton-gaol-picket-line.html
http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/staff-at-grafton-gaol-say-thank-you-to.html
http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/now-official-nsw-ofarrell-government.html
http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/sssssssnake-mp.html
http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/nsw-nats-continue-to-blame-others-for.html

NSW Nats continue to blame others for Grafton Gaol closure

 

"The public service has shown it can't be relied on to have the community's interests at heart"; cries former Vice-Chairman of the NSW National Party and current Grafton Chamber of Commerce president Jeremy Challacombe in The Daily Examiner on the 17th July 2012.
Barely 5 days after the NSW Liberal-Nationals Coalition Government acted on its own executive decision and removed prisoners from Grafton Gaol leaving only a 60-bed remand facility to serve prisoners being held for local court appearances.
Suddenly Barry O'Farrell, Andrew Stoner, Greg Hunt and Chris Gulaptis’ sly betrayal of the Clarence Valley community didn’t happen.
Now it’s all the fault of the 107 people who lost their jobs when the last of the prison transport vans rolled out of Grafton and on to Cessnock.
The Nats are proving once again that they are nothing but a political nest for gutless rodents vipers idiots fools men of uncertain moral fibre and weak intelligence.

US Presidential Election 2012: A matching pair of political liars?

Australian Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is on record as cheerfully admitting that he lies to Australian voters at the drop of the hat.
It seems he has a mate in America, because Republican presidential canidate Mitt Romney has been discovered making his resignation for Bain Capital 'restrospective'.
Something he neglected to tell the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
CNN News 13th July 2012:
"The documents, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, place Romney in charge of Bain from 1999 to 2001, a period in which the company outsourced jobs and ran companies that fell into bankruptcy.
Romney has tried to distance himself from this period in Bain's history, saying on financial disclosure forms he had no active role in Bain as of February 1999. Obama has labeled Romney a job killer in hopes of undercutting the Republican's claim that his private business experience gives him the ability to turn around the struggling economy.
But at least three times since then, Bain listed Romney as the company's "controlling person," as well as its "sole shareholder, sole director, chief executive officer and president." And one of those documents — as late as February 2001 — lists Romney's "principal occupation" was as Bain's managing director."
If Tony Abbott and Mitt Romney are both leaders of their respective nations in 2013, will anyone be able to trust official foreign policy announcemnts about the Australian-US alliance for the next four years or more?

Federal Labor MP Janelle Saffin on the subject of her state counterparts

Letter to the Editor in The Daily Examiner 14 July 2012:

I write to express my feelings of shock and dismay at the loss of jobs and other impacts caused by the New South Wales Government's downsizing of the Grafton Jail.

At the picket line on Ramornie Day, I was both inspired by the strength of the community's support for the workers, their families, the families of inmates and for Grafton and Clarence Valley, and saddened as I knew the trucks were in transit to take remaining inmates away, the final act in axing local jobs.

The NSW Government and the National Party representatives, including, and I hate to say this, the local State Member, got everything wrong - the downsizing, the immediacy of it, refusing to talk to locals directly, and no plans put in place for the workers, their families, and the city.

On site at the picket I met with local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, who were there protesting the jobs going and deeply worried for inmates, up to 70% of them Indigenous, being moved to Kempsey, Cessnock or other faraway jails.

Despite what we know from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which recommended inmates have regular contact with family members, there were no transition plans in place either.

There are many cruel impacts caused by this callous treatment; teachers who are offered a redundancy but then told they cannot go into teaching elsewhere for 12 months under some State Government rules. These rules could have been relaxed for them.

When the South Grafton Abattoir closed late last year, a State Government Rapid Response was deployed. Why couldn't there be a similar response for the jail?

We were told it cannot apply to the public sector, but this public service closure, is ripping the guts out of Grafton. Again, these can be fixed by political decisions.

Like all locals, the question we are asking is how much more can the Clarence Valley take?
Grafton is a great city and the Clarence Valley is stocked with solid and stoic people, who will rebuild and pick up the pieces, but this betrayal is hard to accept.

I know Grafton Chamber of Commerce president Jeremy Challacombe said we should not be political, and I understand where he is coming from, but I am political and proudly call myself a politician, and one who speaks up for us locals.

That is my job, nothing more, nothing less. This is political and it was a political decision of the NSW Liberal Premier Barry O'Farrell and his Deputy, National Party Leader Andrew Stoner, to downsize Grafton Jail.

It could have easily been a political decision to not downgrade the jail to a remand centre, and at least, do what the local community kept calling for, 'to push the pause button'.

Where to from here? We must work together to ensure we attract whatever support we can to Grafton and the Clarence Valley, so that all can continue to not only survive but flourish.

We need to take advantage of all opportunities and openings, and go for them. This is what I shall be doing with the local community.

Janelle Saffin MP
Federal Member for Page

Are O'Farrell, Stoner and Gulaptis lying to the Clarence Valley again?

This was NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell on the subject of his under the radar April 2012 decision to close Grafton Gaol:

"In response to a request, a very forceful request from the Member for Clarence Chris Gulaptis and in line with our commitment to devolving public sector jobs out of Sydney to regional areas, Andrew Stoner, who chairs the Rural and Regional Subcommittee of Cabinet has been asked to come back within eight weeks to identify public sector jobs that are suitable".

In the 2012-13 NSW Budget the Coalition Government committed itself to  a reduction in the size of the public service, predicted to eliminate in excess of 10,000 positions over the next four years in the primary industries, corrective services, legal/courts, education, health, aged care/disability, child protection, roads & maritime, industrial relations and environment sectors.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that; An internal email from a NSW Treasury official dated June 12, obtained by the Herald, says ''there is no floor or cap on redundancies'' and government departments should look to privatising more services.

On 13 July 2012 there were 313 government jobs across the state advertised by Jobs NSW in the previous 28 days.

Of these; 227 were positions based in the Sydney region and 48 were in regional NSW – only two of these (both area health service jobs) were possibly situated in Grafton.

Few of these jobs appeared to be of a category which were not location specific. In other words, most would not be the type of job likely to come into the Clarence Valley.

In fact, the O’Farrell Government’s previous attempts to encourage people to move to regional NSW have been monumental flops so far.

Less than 700 Regional Relocation home buyers grants have been taken up since July last year. What is obvious is that few (if any) people living in the Sydney region are moving to Northern NSW under this scheme.

So how many of these as yet to be identified jobs in the reduced public service pool will actually come to Grafton under the vague promise given by the Premier?

Do O'Farrell and Co. not understand that, as these are not vacant positions, what jobs may actually come will not give employment to local residents who lost their jobs at the gaol or lower the Clarence Valley LGA unemployment rate?

Is the Clarence electorate being treated like fools and lied to again?