Saturday 15 January 2022

These days people are getting rather 'chatty' on Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's Facebook page


On 10 January 2022 the Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison held a press conference accompanied by Lt. General John Frewen Co-ordinator General of Operation Covid Shield and Honorary Professor ANU Dr. Paul KellyChief Medical Officer, Australian Government Department of Health.

At this press conference Morrison spoke on the subjects of COVID-19 public health rules, vaccination and booster programs, hospitalizations, death rates, transportation & supply, need for additional workers and the national economy. He answered around 11 questions from journalists concerning some of those subjects.

On the same day Morrison posted a video on his Facebook account.
All screen shots taken by Ronni Salt























It appears there were 5.8k comments received to this post of which only est. 2,226 were made visible by Morrison's social media team. 

Here are just a few of those in no particular order......







 

Friday 14 January 2022

A fact sociologists worth their salt know, the better economists remember & conservative politicians can never accept – it is units of labour which drive production & productivity in any economy


The Conversation, 12 January 2022:


Australians are getting a stark reminder about how value is actually created in an economy, and how supply chains truly work.


Ask chief executives where value comes from and they will credit their own smart decisions that inflate shareholder wealth. Ask logistics experts how supply chains work and they will wax eloquent about ports, terminals and trucks. Politicians, meanwhile, highlight nebulous intangibles like “investor confidence” – enhanced, presumably, by their own steady hands on the tiller.


The reality of value-added production and supply is much more human than all of this. It is people who are the driving force behind production, distribution and supply.


Labour – human beings getting out of bed and going to work, using their brains and brawn to produce actual goods and services – is the only thing that adds value to the “free gifts” we harvest from nature. It’s the only thing that puts food on supermarket shelves, cares for sick people and teaches our children.


Even the technology used to enhance workers’ productivity – or sometimes even replace them – is ultimately the culmination of other human beings doing their jobs. The glorious complexity of the whole economy boils down to human beings, using raw materials extracted and tools built by other human beings, working to produce goods and services.


A narrow, distorted economic lens


The economy doesn’t work if people can’t work. So the first economic priority during a pandemic must be to keep people healthy enough to keep working, producing, delivering and buying.


That some political and business leaders have, from the outset of COVID-19, consistently downplayed the economic costs of mass illness, reflects a narrow, distorted economic lens. We’re now seeing the result – one of the worst public policy failures in Australia’s history.


The Omicron variant is tearing through Australia’s workforce, from health care and child care, to agriculture and manufacturing, to transportation and logistics, to emergency services.


The result is an unprecedented, and preventable, economic catastrophe. This catastrophe was visited upon us by leaders – NSW Premier Dom Perrotet and Prime Minister Scott Morrison in particular – on the grounds they were protecting the economy. Like a Mafia kingpin extorting money, this is the kind of “protection” that can kill you…...


Read full article here.


There is a question now hanging over Morrison & Frydenberg's 2022-23 Budget, geared as it is to fulfill the Coalition's yet to be revealed election promises rather than buttressing the nation against the adverse economic winds blowing through countless CBDs around the country. 


An estimated 50 per cent of the national workforce are currently absent from their employment on any given day due to COVID-19 - either workers have contracted the virus, are home looking after a dependent family member/s who is ill with it, have become a "close contact" and are isolating because of it, or their place of employment has temporarily closed due to lack of customers who are afraid of catching it.


It's not just a question of how far household consumption is likely to fall as this situation continues through at least another six weeks. 

Note: as an example, two previous Household Final Consumption Expenditure falls during the pandemic have been 12.2% June Qtr 2020 & 4.8% September Qtr 2021. Periods in which infection growth intensified. 


Neither is it all about the financial pain being felt by small businesses after every Coalition public policy error compounds economic distress at community level, sweeping away hope and income.


It is also about how much will the inevitable loss of production and productivity carve off the value bottom line of states and territories' State Domestic Product (SDP) and what impact that has on Australia's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or the level of eyewatering public debt government has to service. 


Does the Australian economy have the resilience to withstand a full year of  SARS-CoV-2 running unchecked in the general population due to the Coalition's political policy of 'living with COVID'?


Thursday 13 January 2022

e-Petition and vigorous, sustained community lobbying saw 200ha of NSW core koala habitat protected in the last month of 2021

 

147 The Ruins Way, Port Macquarie NSW
IMAGE: realestate.com.au















On 24 November 2021 an e-Petition signed by 24,970 NSW residents was presented in the NSW Legislative Assembly by Greens MLA Tamara Green.


To the Speaker and Members of the Legislative Assembly,


The coastal region of Port Macquarie Hastings LGA has one of the largest remnant populations of koalas in NSW. This was mapped as a koala hotspot for the NSW Koala Strategy 2018 by the Office of Environment and Heritage.


In the Port Macquarie LGA, most koala habitat lies within private land, outside protected areas such as National Parks. The koala population suffered huge casualties with the 2019 bushfires. The remaining unburnt core habitat around Lake Innes has become critical to sustain those individuals that survived the fires. An assessment by DPIE’s Biodiversity and Conservation Division concluded that post-fire, the urban population of koalas is now critical to Port Macquarie-Hastings Council LGA overall population if it has any hope of recovery. However, their habitat is shrinking rapidly because of ongoing land clearing for greenfield urban development.


147 Ruins Way, at 200ha, is the largest piece of privately-owned unburnt core koala habitat east of the Pacific Highway and is currently on the market for residential development. The property also provides habitat for numerous other threatened species including the critically endangered Swift Parrot and Regent Honeyeater, plus threatened forest owls, Square-tailed Kite, Little Lorikeet, Varied Sitella, Glossy-Black Cockatoo and Grey-headed Flying Fox.


We request that the NSW government purchase this land (e.g. with the $193 million set aside for koala population recovery) and protect it in perpetuity via a Nature Reserve or other secure, non-reversible tenure.”


On Christmas Eve, 24 December 2021 the NSW Minister for Environment and Heritage James Griffin formally responded that the former minister Matt Kean had purchased this vital koala habitat at 147 Ruins Way. The completed purchase from property developer Vilro Pty Ltd, being jointly funded by Koala Conservation Australia (KCA) and the NSW Government, with KCA supplying $3.5 million towards purchase cost and government the remainder believed to be in the vicinity of $7 million.


The e-petition is scheduled for debate on Thursday, 17 February 2022.


147 The Ruins Way, Port Macquarie NSW
IMAGE: Yahoo! News




Wednesday 12 January 2022

On 11 January 2022 Australia's cumulative total of COVID-19 cases reached 1,042,293 infected men, women and children since the global pandemic began



State of Play in Australia on Day 716 of the COVID-19 Scourge.



 

"Outbreak management has failed" [Professor Mary-Louise McLaws, UNSW, Twitter, 11 January 2022]

Professor Mary-Louise McLaws (UNSW), is an epidemiologist with expertise in hospital infection and infectious diseases control. Her COVID-19 related activities include: member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Program Experts Advisory Panel for Infection Prevention and Control Preparedness, Readiness and Response to COVID-19 and member of the NSW Clinical Excellence Commission COVID Infection Prevention and Control taskforce. She is the Focal Point for the WHO Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) in the School of Population Health.

A reminder that Grafton & Lismore air quality monitoring stations produce readings on an hourly basis and DPIE issues alerts for windblown dust or bushfire smoke as necessary


Rural air quality according to North Coast Local Land Services -  Pollutants (concentration unit: μg/m3) at 1-hour average, 6-7pm on 11 January 2022:


GRAFTON   Particles PM2.5 = 2 GOOD, Particles PM10 = 8 GOOD, Total Suspended Particles = 9*.


LISMORE Particles PM2.5 = 3 GOOD, Particles PM10 = 15 GOOD, Total Suspended Particles = 16*


* Total Suspended  Particles (TSP) are generated by a variety of sources - such as combustion and non-combustion processes, including windblown dust, sea salt, earthworks, mining activities, industrial processes, motor vehicle engines and fires. 


Air quality in the Northern Rivers is monitored on an hourly basis and can be checked at https://www.dpie.nsw.gov.au/air-quality/rural-air-quality-network-live-data.


Air quality categories can be found at 

https://www.dpie.nsw.gov.au/air-quality/understanding-air-quality-data


NSW Air Quality Alerts are issued on days when pollution levels are forecast to be unhealthy or very unhealthy. For information on other related health matters please visit the NSW Health website


Air Quality by Region in an easy to read form at 

https://www.airquality.nsw.gov.au/.


You can sign up to receive daily SMS or email updates with air quality ratings and forecasts, for your selected locations within New South Wales.

 

Tuesday 11 January 2022

When & where in New South Wales can I report my rapid antigen positive test result


In NSW as at 8pm Monday, 10 January 2022 the COVID-19 test positivity rate was est. 24.06%


However, as total test numbers are no longer accurate due to the fact that during the Christmas-New Year period the NSW Government began to direct people to use a rapid antigen home-test kit to self-diagnose rather than attended a government or private testing centre and a significant number of persons appear to be following that direction even though NSW Health to date has no way of recoding the results of home-testing.


On 10 January the NSW government said that later in the week it will be allowing rapid antigen test (RAT) results to be voluntarily registered through the Service NSW app and these results will count towards the state's daily COVID-19 case tallies. Presumably at the same time giving access to whatever limited health services which remain available to those people required to isolate and self-manage their infection at home.


The Service NSW app can be installed at:

https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/campaign/service-nsw-mobile-app


Australia 2022: so when does the count down to the federal general election begin?

 

The timing for national general elections is determined by a combination of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 and the Australian Constitution and elections are required to be held approximately once every three years. 


The government of the day decides on the actual date and the prime minister advises the governor-general accordingly. The clock starts ticking once the House of Representatives is dissolved and writs are issued, with a minimum 33 day to a maximum 58 day countdown to polling day.


If the Morrison Government intends to hold a normal (House of Representatives and half-Senate) general election, this year polling day must be no later than 21 May 2022.


Mismanagement of the federal public health response to the global COVID-19 pandemic has barely paused for breath since Day One in January 2020 and commenced a journey towards catastrophic on 15 June 2021 with the Delta Variant Outbreak, compounded on 28 November by the Omicron Variant Outbreak.


The rolling litany of errors made the possibility of writs being issued for a 2021 election campaign a high risk venture for the incumbent government.


By November 2021 it was clear that the earliest a federal election could be scheduled was in the first half of 2022.


However, not only is January & February this year ruled out because governments have tended to avoid those traditional 'holiday/back to school' months, these particular months are currently shaping up to continue recent national record-breaking daily new COVID-19 case numbers.


March doesn't appear to offer the possibility of what Coalition MPs & senators would consider a low risk election either -  as SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant infection growth may not have peaked or may still be considered unacceptably high by the general public and COVID-19 related hospital admission numbers may not have fallen far enough to ease the strain on the public health system. 


The draft 2022 parliamentary sitting calendar as at 9 December 2021 showed the Morrison Government intended to present the Budget on 29 March 2022.


If Morrison & Co adhere to this plan then that appears to leave only three suitable Saturdays to hold an election according to the Australian Parliamentary Library - 7, 14 & 21 May 2022, with the early voting period now reduced to no more than 12 days in length.


By then, a national voter pool - stressed by two years and three months of a pandemic which never seems to end, coping with uncomfortable levels of uncertainty and, about to enter winter after a summer & autumn with weather that frequently alternated between wet or humid - will tiredly drag itself to the polling booths.


Of course, if Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison consults his inner-Trump, there is always an excruciating outside possibility that he will call a half-Senate election by 21 May 2022 and a separate House election as late as 3 September 2022.


Thus marking out 2022 as Australia's fourth consecutive annus horribilis.


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