May 16 2008
Law and Justice Part Company – Tasmanian Pulp Mill Assessment Act 2007
Lukas
Peter Henning
In Tasmania, by any standards of decency and basic democratic values, Section 11 of the PMAA is unjust. In this case, as Julian Burnside has said of unjust laws in general, “we are betrayed” by our representatives, and “democracy fails”. This needs to be remedied. It is important that Section 11 of the PMAA be repealed, and that similar statute bars that interfere with basic human rights, where they appear in other pieces of legislation, also be removed. It has been suggested that one way to achieve these ends and to prevent the further deterioration of democracy in Tasmania is to petition the Governor of the State to use his reserve powers. Another way is to exert pressure on the Tasmanian Parliament, especially through the small number of current parliamentarians (that is, those not committed to preserving their personal careerist ambitions within a party caucus, which they see as more important than their representational responsibilities), such as those who opposed the PMAA, to fight for the repeal of the Act, and to fight for the implementation of “A Charter of Rights for Tasmania”, which already exists.
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Atrazine poisons humans
Tim Morris
THE TASMANIAN Greens today called for a ban on the herbicide Atrazine in Tasmania
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Gunns and roadkill
Tasmanians Against the Pulp Mill MR
Significantly TAP has identified and independently confirmed fifteen carcasses belonging to threatened species out of a total of 656 specimens. Gunns on the other hand, have only recorded five out of 272 specimens.
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Broadband … positive steps from Basslink
Andrew Connor Digital Tasmania MR
“This is the kind of commercialisation timeframe we would have expected back in 2006 when Basslink was commissioned. This two and a half year delay on the part of the State government and the cable’s previous owners is simply inexcusable.”
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May 15 2008
How do you write a constitution?
Daniel Pedersen Mae Sot, Thailand
How do you write a constitution?
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May 14 2008
New ANZ forest policy … and the mill
Download reserve summary: oostingLinking_Landscapes_Reserve_summary.doc
Download sticker image: oostingNO_ANZ_PULP_MILL2.pdf
AND, Rally and march to stop the mill, Download details: bayleyanzpdf.pdf
Paul Oosting Wilderness Society MR
The wood supply deal for Gunns’ pulp mill rules out a range of coupes from being feedstock for the pulp mill. However, high conservation-value forests, including areas that are habitat for endangered species, can and will be logged to feed the pulp mill. As this analysis shows that Gunns’ pulp mill will log important areas of high conservation-value forests, we are calling on the ANZ to stand by their new forest policy and refuse to finance the pulp mill.
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May 13 2008
The Budget
News, Analysis
Bartlett and the poisoned chalice
Matthew Denholm The Australian
FROM the smoking wreckage of yet another Tasmanian political train wreck has emerged a figure many see as state Labor’s best hope of ending years of self-harm and sleaze. David Bartlett was chosen by caucus last month to become the island state’s third deputy premier in less than two years. The 40-year-old former information technology guru must have had mixed feelings, despite his naked ambition. The job could easily be seen as a poisoned chalice. Read more here
Council axes plantation bid
Nick Clark Mercury
A TASMANIAN council has rejected a plan for a forestry plantation on the boundary of a small country town, saying it believed the move would affect its amenity. Opponents of the Forest Enterprises Australia plan at Lilydale ran a major campaign against the proposal, including a rally on Saturday, and had made 123 submissions to the council. Read more here
The Generals’ lies
Daniel Pedersen in Mae Sot, Thailand
And after all, he only had to drive across town, tell some lies and go home. And Burma’s military junta buys another day of life.
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The logging of Bruny Island
John Tolhurst Adventure Bay, Bruny Island
So there it is. Forestry Tasmania won’t change its plans, without an Act of Parliament, and will keep us in the dark about the real situation. We have to be content with the smash and grab of our treasures, and be grateful for any crumbs that should fall our way.
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The Asthma Foundation
Background: The Burning of Tasmania
Clive Stott
What a cosy little nest we have. The CEO of the Asthma Foundation and the Premier playing golf with people’s health.
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Democracy’s Tipping Point
James Dryburgh
Whatever the case, the intensity of disgust at the Lennon Government is growing almost by the day, as almost by the day we receive further reminders of the their contempt for democracy and a shared future on this island. They are losing traditional support and apathy is being stirred.
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Culture of Fear and Intimidation
Richard C. Butler
Attached is an image of a man who would not be photographed for fear of being assaulted. I accepted his explanation and produced the image below. Im sending it into Tasmanian Times - as a reminder to all who read this page that a young man was brutally assualted in Lilydale last week for allegedly errecting a sign that opposed forestry practice in Lilydale.
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May 12 2008
It’s time to petition The Governor
Dr Warwick Raverty
Even if His Excellency were loath to take that unusual step, what a message such a petition would send to the State ALP and to Mr Rudd in Canberra. And it would not really matter greatly if all these letters failed to prompt the Governor to sack Mr Lennon’s Government. I would remind you that the Gallipoli campaign that we have just celebrated and honoured was one of the great failures of military history. And yet, despite the fact that all of the courage and sacrifice made by the men and women who served at Gallipoli ended in military failure, today their actions form a major element in our Australian culture and our collective psyche. In the same way, your much smaller sacrifice of time in sending a single letter like this to the Governor could become major stand for the rights of ordinary Australian people that would be honoured by future generations. Just imagine headlines in the New York Times and The Times of London saying ‘100,000 Tasmanians Ask Governor to Sack Government’.
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Governors, Democracy and the Rule of Law
Sir Guy Green His Excellency the Honourable Sir Guy S Green AC KBE, Former Governor of Tasmania, 29 October 1999 Menzies Oration on Higher Education
University of Melbourne
One of the conditions of our liberties is the existence of the rule of law and a system which ensures that power is not unduly concentrated in one place but is distributed amongst a number of individuals and institutions, each exercising a restraining influence on the others. In Australia today that system of mutual constraints is being eroded by amongst other things an increase in the power and influence of the executive arm of government and a corresponding reduction in the power and influence of Parliament as a distinct institution, a diminution in the strength of the conventions governing ministerial accountability and responsibility to Parliament and the politicisation of some sections of the public service. I make no judgment or comment about those developments but simply note their impact upon the traditional system of checks and balances.
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PM backs culture of disclosure
Jano Gibson SMH May 9, 2008
GOVERNMENT agencies will be encouraged to adopt a pro-disclosure culture under changes aimed at giving the public - and journalists - greater access to secret documents, the Prime Minister has pledged. Speaking at the official opening of Fairfax Media’s new headquarters in Pyrmont, Kevin Rudd said he was committed to reforming the much-derided Freedom of Information Act. Under the changes, which were pushed by an alliance of media organisations including Fairfax, ministers would no longer be able to overrule FOI laws. An FOI commissioner would be appointed to promote a pro-disclosure culture across government agencies and fees would be reviewed “to ensure they are compatible with a culture of disclosure and transparency,” Mr Rudd said. “Labor is committed to a culture of greater disclosure and transparency in government by implementing each and every one of the commitments we made in response to the Right to Know Coalition.” Read more here
And: Time for Rudd to put his promise into practice
Tamar Residents Will Fight On
Rick Pilkington
I don’t believe it is in the nature of Australians to be polite when they smell bullshit. And let’s face it, at Tuesday night’s meeting in the Tamar Valley Jeremy Rockliff didn’t deal well with the predictable bollocking he received. In his first meeting with this community Rockliff actually yelled at the audience with real venom as they cried foul over his support for Paul Lennon and John Gay’s pulp mill ruse and Rockliff’s irreconcilable politically opportunist calls for an anti-corruption watchdog. As Rockliff stood and berated the audience like John Howard did the Aboriginal community a few years back, I wondered whether Rockliff like many of his parliamentary compatriots had been building up animosity towards this anti-pulp mill community for some time. Rockliff’s opinion in regards to the pulp mill seemed to reflect a long held view propogated by a minority of powerfully bound and well-connected Tasmanian business and poitical mates that Tasmanian communities like the Tamar Valley should be grateful that corporations like Gunns are willing to allow them to host their big heavy industrial projects. This is a line of thinking that has prevailed amongst Tasmanias business and political elite for a long time in the State of Tasmania.
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When Democracy Turns to Kleptocracy
Buck Emberg
By seemingly quiet and covert cunning, many of our present politicians, male and female, have changed the political rules while telling each other that they operate openly as democrats who believe in the rule of law. The problem is that they say they are “democrats” so often that they believe themselves, which is the most insidious step to self-deception. Checks and balances have been shattered. Democracy has been lost. Kleptocracy, or government by stealth, has replaced the former system. The government of Tasmania assumes that with their “mandate” they are given the rights to do what they wish until the next election. In Tasmania we are being confronted by a new type of government. I call this a “Kleptocracy” or, “a democracy by theft”.
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Who can prove how the dead voted?
Daniel Pedersen in Mae Sot, Thailand
But in real life, perhaps more than 100,000 people are dead, the victims of a devastating storm and the latest catastrophe to impose itself on this strategically-critical South East Asian nation. And its ruling military regime is doing nothing to help the people. The dead are being cast aside by the truckloads in today’s Burma. But as CNN footage shows bodies being thrown into rivers it is a simple fact the dead may have been registered and voted “yes” to a new constitution that will give the military overwhelming power, with 25 per cent of lawmakers’ seats reserved for the armed forces. And who can prove how the dead voted?
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Climate Crisis Demands Mindshift
Peter BoyerClimate emergency demands changed mindsets, pacts with enemies.
Facing a crisis of unprecedented proportions, we are headed for disaster unless we can break out of old mindsets and cast aside old antagonisms. In the context of climate change, these are suffocating, futile – and dangerous.
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Revenge of Gaia
Susan McMahon
Atrazine: the final review
Dr Alison Bleaney
APVMA seem dismissive of community input and a post-normal science approach, and reports in their last comment on pg 59 Minister Llewellyn, Department of Primary Industry and Water, as saying in 2006: ‘The broader community can and does have confidence in the tranparency of the program and its role in further understanding the nature and extent of the impact of chemical use in primary industries on Tasmanian water quality.’ That this is the final comments of the APVMA 2008 Atrazine technical report is quite disconcerting.
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The Chronicle (28): The naughty sub and other drunks
Don Knowler A story of journalism … once!
Number 28 in a series of short stories by Don Knowler on his journalistic life and observations told through imaginary newspaper The Chronicle. He explores not only journalism but what Knowler terms the sacred covenant hacks have with their readers to put truth above all else, even if it means leaving the comfort of the bar to do so … His musings appear regularly grouped under the Category Don Knowler
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Take a Dipso like you
Alexander Waugh Kingsley Amis’s advice on all matters alcoholic may not be helpful, but it is always lively Alexander Waugh via Bookforum
Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.
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Do not forgive them for they know precisely what they do. Them. Or us.
Neil Smith
Leunig’s example ( Do not forgive ... ) was not the blackened clearfell but the jet airliner flying above the (non-flying) caged bird. What neater indictment of the mainstream attitude that says it’s OK to take over the skies for the momentary pleasures of a few, whilst simultaneously keeping the traditional owners of the air downtrodden - or even on captive display, again just for our casual pleasure. By extension, what applies to the sky applies to the rest of the biosphere.
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TMAG development frustration
MJ Latham
IT continues to frustrate. The Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery, as part of a $30mill project, are preparing under their own State auspice a proposal that seriously requires a project-specific whole-of-community approach to the character of the Dunn Place area.
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The Oregon plume and smokestack
A plume of effluent water off Nye Beach is shown in this photograph taken on April 23, 2006, by Santiago Perez, a pilot out of Oregon State University. The primary outfall from the mill is located 3,800 feet off the beach. The plume of black to magenta colored water is visible year-round and can be viewed on “Google Earth and Maps” or from many of the hotel rooms along Newport’s shoreline.
Jim Fossum News-Times, Oregon
“They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, but until most people see the plume in pictures, this issue really doesn’t resonate with a lot of them,” Charlie Plybon, Surfrider’s Oregon field coordinator, said. “Our members and other concerned citizen groups have been waiting a long time for this reconsideration. “It’s a big deal for local surfers, ocean users and businesses in the community. The mill is important to our community, too, which is why we are seeking solutions for DEQ. For those of us who live in this town, we don’t want to see it have a black eye. We just want clean water.”
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Wish it’d rain!
Margot Giblin
Who decides?
Alison Bleaney
There is now substantial evidence that certain chemicals (e.g. estradiols, nonylphenol, bisphenol A, PCBs and some pesticides) can impact on the health of wildlife, influencing hormonal and reproductive functions. Chemicals that interfere with the normal functioning of endocrine systems are generally referred to as Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs).
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