Thursday 12 May 2022

"Australia’s fun makers battle 300% insurance rise & Liberal Govt backflip on support" - Morrison & Co turn their backs on folk who add the sparkle to our country shows


Cardinal Spin, media release, 11 May 2022:











FURTHER RIDE STOPS PLANNED AT SHOWS ACROSS NSW & QLD


12.00pm Saturday May 14th


Australia’s fun makers battle 300% insurance rise & Liberal Govt backflip on support


Following a ride stop at Hawkesbury Show, Australia’s largest regional show, last weekend - attended by 150 Sydney industry protestors and their families – operators at Shows across New South Wales and Queensland will this Saturday May 14th stage another ride stop to highlight the catastrophic consequences of a failed insurance market which includes the escalation in insurance costs over the last twelve months and scarce availability, and to put the spotlight on the Morrison Government’s renege on promised support.


Shows that will be impacted by the planned fifteen minute ride stop, under the banner of the Australian Amusement, Leisure and Recreation Association (AALARA) and the Showmen’s Guilds of Australia include:


NSW


Bingara Show - 13th to 15th May


Coffs Harbour Show - 13th to 15th May


Bourke Show - 14th May


Orange Show - 14th to 15th May


Yeoval Show - 17th May


QLD


Gympie Show – 12th – 14th May


Ipswich Show – 13th – 15th May (Which includes ‘The Beast’, one of Australia’s $3 million rides)


Charleville Show – 12th – 14th May


Brookfield Show (Brisbane) – 13th – 15th May



The ride stop will happen at midday this Saturday.


And it’s not just travelling show ride operators who will be impacted. The rising insurance costs will also impact owners of trampoline parks, go kart tracks, ice rinks, bowling alleys, family entertainment centres, theme parks and more.


It’s a huge industry employing more than 7,000 people and contributing $1.84 billion to the economy annually that will be killed off if these insurance rises aren’t addressed and some support offered,” said President of the Australasian Showmen’s Guild, Aaron Pink.


We have ticked every box and jumped through every hoop the Liberal Government have asked of us to gain support – as we were advised the support would come if we followed the process, and yet it wasn’t included in the recent budget – and last week we received an official rejection. We did it all, and at a significant cost to our membership, and we’ve been left high and dry. Our insurance costs have gone up by an astronomical 300% in just twelve months which is totally unmanageable for our members, some unable to achieve any insurance. We’re talking about a lot of Ma and Pa operators who have struggled through Covid with mass cancellation of fairs, shows and attractions, as well as bushfires and floods. They don’t have the fund behind them to take on such a huge insurance cost increase, it’s just another kick in the guts from Government,” said AALARA President Shane McGrath.


Until last week Scott Morrison’s Government had been working with the peak industry bodies and commissioned ASBFEO to report into the proposed solution and make a recommendation.


The solution put forward was a Discretionary Mutual Fund, as recommend by Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bruce Bilson. The Ombudsman’s forty-two-page report into the insurance crisis facing Australia’s amusement, leisure and recreation sector presented a clear argument for support of the struggling sector, saying ‘the clear and present danger is real’.


After working with the Federal Government for fourteen months on a solution we feel like they’ve just picked up the hammer from one of our high strikers and dropped it on us. If we can’t gain support this will mean the end of the line for thousands of people who work in our industry. And this will trickle down into the community. Imagine the Royal Easter Show or Ekka, or the hundreds of country shows without a sideshow alley and rides? Or iconic amusement parks like Luna Park or all the hundreds of local bowling alleys and family entertainment centres having to close their doors? The Government will effectively kill the fun for everyone if they don’t step up to help us find a solution. We all feel like they’ve taken us all for a ride,” added Shane McGrath.


Wednesday 11 May 2022

Australian Federal Election 2022: so who are NSW Northern Rivers voters and how do we compare with the other 16.98 million enrolled voters?


An est. 17,793,140 Australian citizens are eligible to vote at the federal election on 21 May 2022 and at least 96.8% (17.22 million) of these citizens are on the current Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) national electoral roll.


Est. 5.44 million of these enrolled voters live in New South Wales and 4.41% of the state's voters hail from the Northern Rivers region of the state.


NSW Northern River region
from Clarence Valley in the south to Tweed Heads on the NSW-Qld border
IMAGE: Google Earth snapshot 


In the two Northern Rivers federal electorates, Page has 122,915 enrolled voters and Richmond has 118,652. In both electorates there are more female than male voters – with est. 51.4% of all voters being female in Page and est. 51.1% being female in Richmond.


There are now 5,472,469 young voters between 18 to 24 years on the national electoral roll.


An est. 8,796 of these younger voters are in the Page electorate and another est. 7,627 younger voters are in the Richmond electorate. In this age group in both electorates there are also more females than males.


Based on AEC age groupings, nationally the largest voting bloc is people 70 years of age and older at 2,948,739 people.


The largest voting bloc in the Page electorate in 2022 is people 70 years of age and older at 27,834 individuals, with 51.1% being female. When it comes to the Richmond electorate in 2022, based on age groupings the largest voting bloc is also people aged 70 years of age and older at 28,396 individuals with 53.7% being female.


By 9 May 2022 there had been almost 2 million postal vote applications received and processed by the Australian Electoral Commission. That’s in addition to those already permanently registered as General Postal Voters.


As of 9 May a total of 1,648 of these new postal vote applications were made by people living in the Page electorate and 1,405 new applications were made by people residing in the Richmond electorate. By 10 May application numbers had risen to 2,117 and 2,359 respectively, but as yet no completed postal ballots have been listed by the AEC as "returned".


An AAP Bulletin Wire on 10 May 2022 reported that on 9 May “More than 300,000 people have already turned out for pre-polling on just the first day of early voting.


The number of Northern Rivers enrolled voters who were recorded as having pre-polled on 9 May was 1,581 in the Page electorate and 3,305 in Richmond electorate.


At a federal general election all 151 of the House of Representatives seats and those Senate seats where the set term of a senator has finished (which is usually around half the Senate total of 74 seats) are contested.


A breakdown of the candidates standing for election on 21 May 2022 show that 1,203 candidates are vying for seats in the House of Representatives and 421 for seats in the Senate. These figures represent an increase of 147 House of Representatives candidates since the 2019 federal general election and a decrease of 37 Senate candidates since that same 2019 election.


A total of 10 candidates are listed on the House of Representatives ballot paper for the Page electorate and another 10 candidates on the House of Representatives ballot paper for the Richmond electorate. This represents an increase of 3 candidates on the Page ballot paper and an increase of two on the Richmond ballot paper since the 2019 federal election.


The New South Wales Senate ballot paper contains the names of 75 candidates across 24 political designations.


In 2022 can the Northern Rivers meet or pass its 2019 voter participation numbers?


At the 2019 federal general election 91.9% of all Australian enrolled voters cast a vote at that election. 


In 2019 in the Page electorate 113,548 people voted in the federal election, with 95.25% of these votes recorded as formal & 4.45% informal. Page voter participation was 92.5% of all enrolled voters.

In the same year in the Richmond electorate 108,381 people voted in the federal election, with 92.56% of all votes recorded as formal & 7.44% informal. Richmond voter participation was 90.8% of all enrolled voters.


PRINCIPAL SOURCES


https://aec.gov.au/Enrolling_to_vote/Enrolment_stats/

https://aec.gov.au/election/downloads.htm

https://www.aec.gov.au/election/candidates.htm

https://aec.gov.au/media/files/aec-federal-election-reporting-guide-digital.pdf

https://results.aec.gov.au/24310/Website/HouseDivisionPage-24310-138.htm

https://results.aec.gov.au/24310/Website/HouseDivisionPage-24310-145.htm


Tuesday 10 May 2022

It's far too early to count Australia's 2022 federal election chickens


Since 13 February 2022 there have been 11 voter intention surveys published by the four major political survey companiesNewspoll, Ipsos, Resolve and Morgan Research.


None of these 11 surveys predicts that the Morrison Government will get re-elected in 2022.


However, investing in the idea that surveys indicate exactly what est.17,228,900 voters will decide as their pencils hover over ballot papers is dangerous for all concerned.


Nothing is a foregone conclusion. Every voter needs to make a well considered choice, because every voter has to live with the consequences of their vote.


On Saturday 18 May 2019 the national electorate went to polling booths all around Australia to elect a federal government.


The Australian, 8 May 2022
Click on image to enlarge













The day before “The Australian” newspaper published a Newspoll voter intention survey result which indicated that there was a 3 percentage point difference between Labor and the Coalition which – given the consistent poll results since 4 February 2018 favouring Labor – was considered by many political pundits to firm up the likelihood that Labor would form government the next day.


That didn’t happen. The Liberal-Nationals Coalition formed government with 77 out of the 151 seats in the House of Representatives, leaving the Labor Party Party holding 68 seats, Independents 3 and The Greens, Centre Alliance & Katter’s Australia Party all holding one seat each.


Right now the nation is just 11 days out from the 21 May 2022 federal election and, since 27 June 2021 consecutive Newspolls have developed a wide gap between Labor and the Coalition similar to the gaps that existed on Newspoll graphs in the lead up to the 2019 election.


Thirteen days out from the 2022 federal election there was an 8 percentage point difference in Labor’s favour in the Newspoll survey published last Sunday.


Expect the difference to tighten as election day gets closer.


Expect the predominately right-wing mainstream media (with a few shining exceptions) to take leave of its collective senses over the next 11 days as it fights to keep Scott Morrison in government.



Monday 9 May 2022

Australian Federal Election 2022: after eight and a half years the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government has still not delivered a reliable NBN high speed broadband network


(Cartoon by Mark David / @MDavidCartoons)
INDEPENDENT AUSTRALIA, 16 February 2022














It’s been eight and a half years since the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government came to power and took a wrecking ball to key policy initiatives of the Rudd & Gillard Governments – solely on the basis that these were programs initiated by the Labor Party.


Even in Opposition, one of the Coalition's targets had been the National Broadband Network (NBN).


However, unlike the price on carbon, it could not erase the NBN but was forced to tolerate its existence.


By 23 September 2020 the Morrison Government and NBN Co had declared the initial rollout of a national high speed broadband network complete and fully operational. Apparently the only thing remaining was to plan for future increases in demand.


NBN Co then closed the door and, to all intents and purposes, walked away from most of the issues both it and the Coalition Government had created by using a patchwork of different connection types to supposedly meet the needs of over 25 million people in homes and businesses scattered across est. 7.692 million square kilometres of widely varying terrain.


In 2021 in response to Internet connection problems in his own electorate a member of the Morrison Government, 

Liberal MP for Berowra Julian Leeser, tabled a private members bill - supported by seventeen MPs and senators - which attempted to make NBN Co more accountable, build better infrastructure and improve customer service.


Julian Leeser, Telecommunications, retrieved 9 May 2022:


In response to the Bill, Choice’s Alan Kirkland said: ‘It’s unacceptable for people who live in a major city like Sydney not to have mobile coverage in their home, and even worse in a bushfire-prone area. We find it puzzling that the telco industry, particularly Telstra, has been able to get away with substandard service for so long.’


Professor Alan Fels, former chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, agreed that more needs to be done. He said: ‘For many years the telco industry has failed to make access to mobile phone services universally available, even in a number of suburbs. Yet such access is an essential service and vital in emergencies. After waiting for so long, it is clear that the only solution is legislation, backed by sanctions compelling it.’


That particular private member’s bill appears to have withered on the vine.


Also in 2021 a five-member panel conducted a review of regional telecommunications in Australia. One could be forgiven for wondering about the independence of this panel given a former Nationals MP for Cowper and, a business person who worked on the 2013 Nationals election campaign and previously derived consultancy work from a WA Liberal Government are among its members.


It came as no surprise that there were 16 key findings contained in the December 2021 review report, along with twelve recommendations. Although Finding 10 (highlighted below) raised an eyebrow.


Key Findings


1. Increased coordination and investment between the Australian, state and territory governments is needed to address a ‘patchwork quilt’ approach to connectivity in the regions.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 2


2. Local councils and other regional stakeholders are increasingly expected to facilitate telecommunications service delivery, but are not appropriately resourced to identify connectivity need and support the deployment of suitable solutions.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 5


3. Supply side issues, including backbone fibre and spectrum access, are barriers to competition and innovation in regional telecommunications markets.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 2


4. There is an urgent need to consider the future of the Universal Service Obligation in order to provide reliable voice services to rural and remote consumers.

Relates to Recommendations: 7, 8


5. There are significant issues with the maintenance and repair of telecommunications networks, particularly copper landlines, in regional, rural and remote areas.

Relates to Recommendations: 7, 8


6. In instances of natural disasters and emergencies, connectivity is significantly impacted by power and network outages. This reduces access to recovery and support.

Relates to Recommendations: 3


7. Mobile coverage continues to improve, but expanding reliable coverage to priority areas is becoming more difficult.

Relates to Recommendations: 9, 10


8. Increased ongoing demand for data on regional, rural and remote mobile and fixed wireless networks is not always being met, causing network congestion issues.

Relates to Recommendations: 6, 9


9. Although Sky Muster Plus has improved access to data, Sky Muster users are frustrated by insufficient data allowances, high latency and reliability issues.

Relates to Recommendations: 6


10. Current minimum broadband speeds are mostly adequate, but will need to increase over time.

Relates to Recommendations: 8

There is a certain irony in Finding 10 given that less than one month before the report was delivered to the Minister, review panel member Prof. Hugh Bradlow was tweeting the NBN on 1 November 2021 with this complaint: "Hello @NBN_Australia my Internet at Sandy Point, Vic has been out for 3 full days. Instead of all the excuses on your website (and don't blame the power - it is working just fine) can you actually give a committed time to get it fixed?


11. There are emerging technology options to meet the demand for data but their service performance has not yet been validated.

Relates to Recommendations: 4


12. Regional consumers, businesses and local governments experience difficulty in resolving telecommunications issues and providers are not adequately addressing the complex needs of regional users.

Relates to Recommendations: 5, 7


13. Regional consumers, businesses and local government need access to independent advice and improved connectivity literacy to support them in making informed connectivity choices.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 5


14. Predictive coverage maps and other public information do not accurately reflect on-the-ground telecommunications experience. There is significant misinformation about the availability of 

telecommunications services.

Relates to Recommendations: 5, 9


15. The cost of telecommunications services remains high for vulnerable groups in remote Australia. This is impacting on their access to essential services.

Relates to Recommendations: 11, 12


16. Continued engagement with Indigenous Australians in regional, rural and remote communities is needed to address ongoing issues of access, affordability and digital ability.

Relates to Recommendations: 5, 11, 12


Over a year after the Morrison Government declared the high broadband network a success it was very evident that it was far from having that status.


Indeed, in some quarters opinion had been scathing.


InnovationAus.com: Public Policy and Business Innovation, 4 November 2021:


This week, Telstra claimed its 5G home broadband service will offer average speeds of 378 megabits per second to homes and businesses. In contrast, the average maximum speed on Fibre to the Node is 67 megabits per second, and up to 200,000 premises on the copper NBN can’t even get 25 megabits.


Imagine spending $50 billion on a copper dominated network, that’s not delivering minimum speeds required under law, and already losing its competitiveness.


That is the anti-genius of Liberal-National Party. Deceive. Implement bad technology policy at higher cost. Then spend more money to correct their mistakes. They led us down this path on broadband, and now want to do it with energy.


In 2013 the Liberals produced “modelling” known as the NBN strategic review. This elaborate sham had a sole purpose: provide political cover for abandoning fibre.


This document was then used to claim a multi-technology mix of second-rate technologies was going to be $30 billion cheaper than a full-fibre NBN.


This untruth, repeated at nauseum, relied on two tricks.


The first was pretending the copper dominated network being rolled out costs $41 billion. False. It is costing $57 billion.


The second was to claim the original plan to deploy a fibre network to 93 per cent of Australia would cost $72 billion, rather than the near $50 billion forecast under Labor.


The latter claim, which the Liberals clung to desperately, was decimated in a front-page report in the Sydney Morning Herald in February 2021.


It revealed that in late 2013 the Liberals were explicitly told deploying Fibre to the Premises was dramatically cheaper than what they claimed in public.


That advice was redacted and kept secret for seven years, and it is clear why.


If the redacted costs for fibre, along with real-world interest rates, were fed back into the strategic review “modelling”, the original fibre rollout would have cost around $53 billion.


Notably, Minister Fletcher stopped repeating his $30 billion claim since the unredacted extracts appeared in print, because he always knew it to be false.


The NBN copper rollout has now become a business case liability and looks increasingly uncompetitive against 5G.


The NBN HFC network, which relies on Foxtel Pay TV infrastructure, is arguably the most expensive and unreliable deployment of its sort in the world.


Tens of thousands of Fibre to the Curb modems across the country are also frying during storms because lightning is being conducted over the copper that leads into the home.


The government is now saying Fibre to the Curb technology will not deliver gigabit speeds, despite promising it would only a year ago.


Every fixed-line technology deployed by the Coalition is beset by technical or business case problems, except for Fibre to the Premises – Labor’s original technology of choice.


As the 2022 federal election date drew nearer the Morrison Government on 23 March bestirred itself enough to announce that:


The Morrison Government has welcomed NBN Co’s announcement that 50,000 homes and businesses will be able to order an upgrade to their NBN connection, delivering ultra-fast speeds at no upfront cost.


These are the initial customers to have access to upgrades that will allow 8 million homes, or 75 per cent of premises in the NBN fixed line footprint, to access to ultra-fast speeds by 2023.


Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts, the Hon Paul Fletcher, said the on-demand upgrades will give more Australians access to the fastest broadband speeds available on the NBN.


There is no mention of ongoing costs and pricing which remain an issue.


I am honestly not sure that this is anything more than a typical election year 'announceable' which will sink down into the pile of past unmet expectations raised concerning NBN high speed broadband.


Regardless of whatever media releases the Morrison Government is sending out, the dissatisfaction with the NBN high speed broadband network remains 12 days out from election day…..


The Guardian, 8 May 2022:


The NBN rollout may have been completed, but Richard Proudfoot is still using an old ADSL internet connection, and he has to juggle his Zoom meetings around his partner’s work.


He runs a small IT business from his home in Maleny, on the Sunshine Coast, about 100km north of Brisbane, while his partner is a part-time university lecturer.


Due to their property’s terrain, NBN Co has told him he is not able to connect to fixed wireless or fixed line. While he has the option of satellite, many users have reported poor speeds and reliability. He has stuck with ADSL for the time being because he believes the tree cover and weather would adversely effect his service.


We are very, very dependent on a reliable internet ADSL connection. To make it work for us given the limitations, we schedule internet use based on need ... we cannot do concurrent Zoom meetings so we rearrange diaries in order to cope.”


The Coalition and NBN Co declared the rollout of the then $51bn network complete in 2020. There are now 12.1m homes able to connect, and 8.5m homes on the NBN.


The high-speed network was meant to resolve the digital divide in Australia, but two years on from its completion there remains a stark difference between the haves and have-nots; those who have a decent internet service and those still waiting or suffering from poor speeds and reliability on their NBN service.


The Liberal MP Julian Leeser wrote a scathing review of the NBN in a submission to the federal government’s regional telecommunications review last year, describing it as “too slow with countless delays”.


Leeser’s northern Sydney electorate, Berowra, is a mix of suburban and semi-regional locations, meaning his constituents are living with the spectrum of NBN technologies, from fixed to wireless and satellite.


There is too much variability in the quality of coverage across the various NBN technologies,” he said.


The pandemic forced many people to work from home and rely on their home internet more than ever before.


Leeser said that teachers had been forced to work out of McDonald’s car parks to leech the wifi for online classes, people were unable to work from home or undertake telehealth appointments, and some had even been forced to move out of the area due to their poor NBN connection…...


Many Guardian Australia readers raised problems with the project when asked what their major concerns were ahead of this month’s federal election.


One reader, Cate, who lives in Killarney Heights in the Sydney electorate of Warringah, missed out on full fibre or cable that some nearby suburbs have access to.


She says she was originally connected via the Optus internet cable but was moved over to fibre-to-the-node (FttN) on the NBN.


Using Optus cable we rarely had dropouts. I could count on one hand the number of times over five years that we lost internet for any noticeable length of time,” she says.


Now she says they experience daily interruptions.


Our modem takes five to 10 minutes to reconnect so this can often mean at least 25 to 50 minutes a day of disruption to our service and this is still considered acceptable by NBN and they will do nothing to fix it.”


She says she is rarely able to get the top speeds promised. In speed test results Cate provided to Guardian Australia taken between 2pm and 3pm on a weekday, the results ranged from 1.3Mbps to 40Mbps, compared to 100Mbps on her previous Optus cable…..


Around 119,000 premises that are connected to the NBN via FttN still can’t get the minimum 25Mbps download and 5Mbps upload speeds. Due to the ageing copper and environmental conditions, FttN connections will continue to get worse over time.


In February, the NBN CEO, Stephen Rue, admitted the bit rate – the number of bits that can be transferred across the network per second – would degrade between 2% and 4% every year on average across the 4m FttN connections.


The other looming factor is people switching the NBN off. Customers frustrated with the NBN might look to 5G or another service like Elon Musk’s Starlink, and threaten the ability of the network to make a return on the taxpayer investment.…...


Something to think about standing in line at the polling booths on Saturday 21 May 2022.


Sunday 8 May 2022

Mocking #ScottyFromMarketing is the latest way to while away the countdown to polling day