Topic: aust govt
Inman as Mr. Humphries in Are You Being Served?
Yes it's Mardis Gras time, festival of tolerance, diversity and creativity in Sydney this weekend.
We are fond of this time ever since we as "distribution manager" unintentionally made Lawrence Gibbons, owner/editor of gay friendly mag Sydney City Hub, deliver 9,000 copies of his own newspaper on Mardi Gras weekend 2007: A small problem of the cover being tacky, undeliverable in family outlets, subjudice of a criminal case underway regarding sex shop products putting our solicitor's qualification at risk, and possibly conflict of interest with his partner's planning work for ... the sex industry.
And being this time of year perhaps explains the rumour indirectly via Northern Beaches Liberal Party source that a certain federal Opposition MP and pugilist has allegedly left his wife and "moved in with a man" in Canberra.
Let me count the real politik explanations of this latest rumour mongering:
1. If true so what? Sorry for his spouse, kids, life goes on. Private lives are officially irrelevant. Well no, perception on that side of politics is just as powerful as any other side so not irrelevant, more's the pity:
2. 'Move in with a man' is cute ambiguity given all kinds of rough tough hetero MPs share houses to deflect rental costs while in Canberra;
3. Promotion of Christopher Pyne MP as manager of Opposition Business over Tony Abott is bound to cause uncomfortable frictions - as distinct from enjoyable ones (?). We suggest the Abbott rumour mongering could well be a bit of gay community whispering payback for Abbott sledging Pyne and being forced into a groveling apology last week. Indeed leader Turnbull has surely consolidated his own vote in the Eastern Suburbs with the promotion of Pyne, whom 7's press gallery man (married, kids) Mark Riley compared to John Inman aka Mr Wilberforce Clayborne Humphries in Are You Being Served comedy show in his last Sunday roundup on family friendly Sunday Sunrise.
Riley Diary 1 MarchPla
4. The rumour gathers some pace from the real life recent blackmail criminal conviction and suppression of male MP identity as reported from Victoria recently. Who is it hardly matters, it's the synchrony of the thing which all devilishly effective rumours build on as pure fiction:
22 Feb 2009 MP blackmail attempt on gay sex film - National - BrisbaneTimes A MAN attempted to blackmail an Australian politician after secretly filming them having sex
................................
Indeed we know about adverse rumours. Jeff Smith the director of the NSW Environmental Defenders Office rang last Monday after 6 pm as if to apologise that this writer didn't get an interview for 2 solicitor positions there. They had 45 applications apparently and he wanted to acknowledge the past work together and collaboration.
We took it on the chin, but are left wondering all the same what past political and policy and indeed moral conflicts over corruption in my own sector have done to place one pretty firmly on a blacklist.
We are good enough to beat the high priced lawyers at Coca Cola Amatil last year in the Land & Environment Court with a pair of twos in our hand so to speak (as per this decision under what's known as the Double Bay Marina Rule at paragraph 23 before Pain J, and this decision where we participated on a narrow basis including cross examination of CCA's Director of Corporate Affairs - Alex Wagstaff) but not good enough to be paid for it. Yet it's the path we choose no point crying victim.
..................................
Which brings us to Peter Costello lecturing the G/greens about getting serious on nuclear power in the SMH today 'if they really want to tackle climate change which can only be done with techno fixes':
Perhaps Obama can convince the holdouts | smh.com.au Perhaps Obama can convince the holdouts. Peter Costello; March 4, 2009
Like all lawyer politicians and indeed like another former treasurer Paul Keating, one has to read down his self interest: Costello needs the numbers of the hard right - that's Julie Bishop's people in WA and Nick Minchin people in SA, all gungho uranium miners. And given the recession and jobs tub thumping one potential growth sector is uranium exports.
But we are reminded of another big mining company Woodside and one of their staffers Lisa Hamilton based up north west Port of Dampier way - as far away from her home town of Devonport Tasmania as you might possibly get. As we took our nostalgic mid life web surf we first noticed another student 'colleague' now acting NSW Solicitor General Karen Ferris. Quite an achievement. Then we came to Lisa Hamilton pictured in a Woodside annual report looking the same ANU Law student, computer science double degree of the 1980ies plus 20 years. Was she happy? Certainly well paid. Does she still follow the ruthless Ayn Rand philosophy?
Serendipidy is an amazing thing. Because back in the mid eighties Hamilton's honours thesis around 1986 was on the innovative approach of common law actions in industrial relations. In short union busting. Indeed the kind of legal action that Peter Costello took in the famous Dollar Sweets Case that Melbourne based Crikey regularly refers to in relation to Costello. The union busting case that made Peter Costello the national politician he is today.
Only we suspect the brains behind the Dollar Sweets common law cause of action busting the union was not Costello but Hamilton's honours thesis. Is Costello actually derivative, grabbing the fame from a successful female legal graduate? Should he really be lecturing folks in the Green movement on intellectual and moral rigour? Folks like Senator Christine Milne in strategic alliance with Opposition Leader Turnbull on climate change/ETS senate inquiry? Turnbull being a sincere rival to Costello's leadership aspirations?
Costello is also seriously weighed down by his active Cabinet support of the Australian Government for what Nobel prize winner in economics Joseph Stiglitz calls the $3 trillion Iraq war. A war that surely has contributed to the USA 'leadership' of the world into a globally synchronised recession. Again is Costello really able to lecture anyone about intellectual rigour on his own preferred turf of the national accounts?
We think Peter's time has passed for him to have lost his way on green matters so badly. And we thank Lisa Hamilton for the whole line of inquiry/narrative all these years later. And we hope she is happy too.
.............................
Which brings us to the loud green baiting by this week's Inner West Courier suburban freebie, strong hold of the Green Party with tragic picture of Vic bushfire destruction and headline "Passions inflamed/Ashfield Liberals blame Greens for massive bushfire death toll - Page 9."
There is nothing probative in the story. It's stock standard smear and green baiting. Indeed it's profoundly ignorant not least from the reality of the logging industry having converted whole landscapes of wet old growth and rainforest to dry sclerophyll: The tinder box of the megafire today. A point well made in effect by bushfire expert Phil Cheney below in this precious quote provided via Jill Redwood of green group Environment East Gippsland below in Forestry Tasmania (2001), Thinning Regrowth Eucalypts - Native Forest Silviculture Technical Bulletin No. 13 Second Edition, Forestry Tasmania.
And a prefacing explanation of the relevance: The firestorm at Kinglake and Marysville etc monstered up mainly on state forest with high intensity logging history, as well as existing cleared farmland and also forestry plantation. This is the taboo that state and federal governments dare not declare responsibility for because that's 50-100 years of false land use policy steering the wet areas of national forest estate to megafire in the age of drought via a predominance of dry sclerophyll forest types.
Notice especially the reference to alteration of the humid microclimate as a result of logging and increase in fuel loads:
"Planning Considerations
Fire Risk
One of the major planning constraints associated with thinning is the higher level of fuel present after the operations. It is not considered feasible in Tasmania to carry out fuel reduction burns in thinned coupes because of the high fuel loads and the sensitivity of the retained trees to fire. The location of thinned coupes amongst conventionally logged coupes is problematic, as it is not recommended that any regeneration burn take place within two kilometres of areas with high levels of flash fuel within two years of harvest (Cheney 1988).
Tree crowns (heads), bark, and other harvest residue make up the fuel load. The climate on the floor of the forest is altered by thinning, with higher wind speeds and temperature, lower humidity, and lower moisture content in the fuel itself. Understorey vegetation characteristics change because of these changes to the microclimate, especially increased light. Bracken ferns and cutting grass may grow vigorously, each having a far higher flammability than the replaced woody species (Cheney and Gould 1991)."
Maybe the Ashfield Liberals are Ayn Rand supporters too, and hope to drive a wedge between Turnbull and Milne on the deceptive Emissions Trading Scheme? To assist the Costello leadership aspiration?
When the Liberals like Peter Costello, or the Ashfield Liberals, start lecturing the logging industry - on destruction of wet old growth and Tasmanian rainforest leading to tinder box dry sclerophyll over landscapes encouraging megafire risk - then we know they will be serious on the environmental challenges of the 21C. Moral high ground indeed.
............................................
Thank heavens for the David Penberthy balancer over 2 pages today about bee stings killing more people than sharks despite press panic:
Penberthy: Get tough on bees, Rees
Penberthy: Get tough on bees, Rees
I'VE got shark fever, an obsession with sharks is hard-wired into my brain. Blog live with David Penberthy from 1pm.
The same newspaper and other media could report the same concerns about increased shark sightings and attacks without going the Jaws style movie rhetoric. But selling panic is the name of the game. Which is only slightly less obnoxious than publishing this letter below:
As Greg Barnes wrote on crikey.com.au recently regarding Miranda Devine a refugee from the same Sydney Daily Telegraph now with Fairfax Sydney Morning Herald: Encouraging people to political violence is a breach of anti terrorism laws. The letter writer and the newspaper are probably in criminal breach of that law here. Like in cricket all it would probably take is an appeal to the umpire.
