Abbott Government makes a mockery of Southern Ocean air surveillance

This is what the Coalition parties promised.

Media Release announcing the Coalition Whale and Dolphin Protection Plan on  23 August 2013 during the federal election campaign:

Snapshot taken 22 December 2013

This is what the Abbott Government said it would put in place instead.

ABC News 22 December 2013:

The Federal Government will send a plane to the Southern Ocean in an effort to step up its monitoring of Japanese whaling fleets early next year. Customs will send an A319 during the whaling season, which begins in January and ends in March.

While this is what it actually delivered – one flyover in an aircraft with a limited flight range and unsuitable for surveillance tasks.

Excerpt from evidence given to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee during Senate Estimates, 26 February 2014:

Senator WHISH-WILSON: I was actually going to ask about the P-3Cs under section 1.4, but could I just ask now whether they would have better capacity than the current airbus that is being used by customs to monitor the Japanese whaling fleet and the illegal whaling activity in the southern ocean.

Gen. Hurley : I will get someone who knows more about planes than I do to address that.

Air Marshal Brown : If you are looking at the whaling fleet specifically as the surveillance task, one of the problems is that they are very far south, right off the coast of Antarctica, and a P3 cannot get there. The A319 is not suitable for that task. It is used for the Antarctic division to supply into Antarctica. The recent announcement of the P8 will certainly give us the capability to get down there because it is air-to-air refuelable, which the P3 is not....

Senator WHISH-WILSON: The reason I asked about the airbus is that it has been used this whaling season for surveillance of the Japanese fleet, but I understand there has only been one flyover at a fairly significant cost to the taxpayer. I was just wondering whether you had been consulted on the use of other aircraft, and clearly you have.

Air Marshal Brown : We have. We have had a look at C-17s and all of our fleet at the moment as to whether they are suitable. The word surveillance can mean many things—surveillance out of a passenger aeroplane is a pretty limited operation.

Political Cartoon of the Month

David Pope's work can be purchased at www.scratch.com.au/

Hogan postures on social media

There are 90 Coalition members of the Australian House of Representatives.

Even if Labor, minor party and independent members all voted against any legislation put before the House which supports the coal seam gas industry, the Coalition would have a voting majority of 29 in any division called.

Which makes Hogan's promise to cross the floor nothing more than a hollow gesture as his government would still comfortably win the vote.

About those multiple votes....

Mainstream media has been making much of the fact that at the 2013 federal general election 1,979 Australians have admitted to voting more than once. The Guardian went so far as to run with the highly misleading headline: AEC uncovers 19,000 cases of multiple voting in last federal election.

However in relation to the 18,770 ‘recorded’ multiple votes, ongoing processing has so far found that 8,291 of these multiple votes are due to clerical error on the part of electoral commission employees.

Still be processed are another 8,500 electors.

Of the admitted 1,979 multiple voters - 1,602.99 of these are either elderly, have poor literacy skills or do not fully understand the electoral process.

That leaves approximately 377 people of whom 128 may not have a reliable explanation for multiple voting.

Statistically I doubt whether these 128 people would have influenced the election outcome. 

Unless miraculously they were all registered as residing in for example the Fairfax or Indie electorates and cast their votes exclusively in favour of the Liberal and National parties - thus giving the Abbott Government an even bigger majority.

The likes of the  H S Chapman Society might get into a lather about 463 ballots papers out of a total of 13,726,070 ballots cast, but I cannot see such a small number being a good reason to switch the current voting system to either the highly problematic electronic voting or the very hackable online voting systems.

Senate Estimates, Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee, 25 February 2014:

Excerpt from evidence given by Tom Rogers, Acting Electoral Commissioner –

As you know, after the election not every multiple mark on a certified list is actually a multiple vote. So we go through a process of filtering those out...

We sent inquiry letters to 18,770 electors who had multiple marks recorded beside their names.

Replies are still being processed after that process. To date, 8,291 multiple marks have been confirmed as being

caused by official error, such as the wrong name being marked off when electors with similar names attend the

booth or even, on paper lists, people pressing too hard so that the pen goes through the sheet.

A total of 1,979 electors have admitted to voting more than once, with the greater majority of those—over 81 per cent—being elderly, with poor literacy, or with low comprehension of the electoral process....

I think you will find that for some of the elderly voters it  will be that they might have received a vote from one of our mobile teams and also a postal vote, for example...

 There are 128 electors who have more than two marks recorded beside their names...

That is 92 [with three marks recorded beside their names]...

22 [with four marks recorded beside their names]...

Four [with five marks recorded beside their names]...

With six marks, there are six electors; seven marks, one elector; nine marks, one elector; 12 marks, one elector; and 15 marks, one elector...

What I can tell you is that we are currently working with the AFP and the DPP about this issue. We take it very seriously....

First home-grown dumb idea of the year

The Daily Examiner on 24 February 2014 at Page 1:

Welcome to the Green Coast, home to a host of natural wonders and winding rivers.

Where is the Green Coast you ask?

It could be right here, if NSW Business Chamber's Northern Rivers regional manager John Murray's proposal to re-name the Northern Rivers region gains traction.

Something for Australian 'welfare bashers' to think about

http://youtu.be/-rtySUhuokM