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Topic: local news
Another not so cryptic photo from a grovelling lawyer's existence:
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Another not so cryptic photo from a grovelling lawyer's existence:
If there is no evidence of a sinister crime, could a 3 year old child walk such a long way and die of dehydration? Trying to find where the planes fly? Or even be abducted and released get lost and similarly die of heat and dehydration?
From our uni science classes we always recall the surface area volume ratio of living things. Smaller volume (as for a small child) means relatively bigger surface area to lose heat and perspire. Some UN and other web pages discuss dehydration mainly in respect of global problems of Acute diarrhoeal diseases:
The symptoms become increasingly severe with greater water loss. One's heart and respiration rates will increase to compensate for decreased plasma volume and blood pressure, while body temperature may rise because of decreased sweating. Around 5% to 6% water loss, one may become groggy or sleepy, experience headaches or nausea, and may feel tingling in one's limbs ( paresthesia). With 10% to 15% fluid loss, muscles may become spastic, skin may shrivel and wrinkle, vision may dim, urination will be greatly reduced and may become painful, and delirium may begin. Losses of greater than 15% are usually fatal. [1]http://rehydrate.org/dehydration/index.html
We actually walked from Melbourne Airport in January 2010 all the way to the first tram stop which must be about 5 km. It was hot dry flat country. We did find a tap along the way. We had bad shoes we threw away the next day.
Our purpose was to learn more about the layout of Mebourne complete with compass. We walked to and from Kingsford Smith airport in Sydney same trip partly to avoid the outrageous premium on the train ticket.
We've done similar at Avalon to train line at Lara in Victoria in 2006 or so. A bit eccentric but it's also quite interesting.
Child death is a terrible thing.
Here is this story leading the web press today:
Boy drowns walking dogs
SHANNON TONKIN Luke Selwyn, 6, fails to return after going for a walk with his family's two dogs as police find his body in a dam.
The blurb sent through reads:
"According to Peita Gardiman, the founder, one of the main aims of Ethikl is to promote and support the ethical consumer movement and encourage shoppers to make positive buying decisions, such as favoring ethical products, be they fair trade, cruelty free, organic, recycled, re-used, or produced locally.
"One of our goals is to change the way the economy works and begin to change people’s consumption habits. Many people are tired of mass produced, chemically- packed products and want to get back to basics,” says Peita.
“We live in a culture of excess, we want more and more and then throw it away faster and faster. When you buy something from Ethikl, there’s a story behind it. There’s a person behind it. If people start to rediscover handmade, natural products, they will learn to treasure them and become more ethical consumers.”
While there is nothing like the experience of going to a farmer's market, smelling the fresh produce, tasting samples, and interacting with producers themselves, not everyone can afford the time, leisure, or access to do so , but now you can explore Ethikl’s online marketplace and discover handcrafted jewellery, clothing, homewares, unique gifts, specialty foods and more at www.ethikl.com.au"
SAM is agnostic about this commercial enterprise except it does look idealistic (and beyond our humble budget). We do like industrial hemp products as a concept and rainbow coloured nappies are novel (shown above).
As previously reported here, Rod Day aka Dimmy, an Australian has the world record for arcade game Pengo, now available since 2004 as a PC game. Dimmy has 1M plus if you go to wikipdedia, and refer down the bottom of the listing.
Adding to the difficulty is keyboard directional keys instead of a retro joystick from those 1980ies dissolute student days. Not sure if our chuckles are nostalgia or the current sport of the game.
After a week or so we have a score board of 50K plus, not counting all the crash and burn. With a top of 102K above (this morning listening to the news, Macca Australia All Over radio show - our version of Prairie Home Companion. Notice the speedo turns over at 100K but our top score really is 102K. Shoulders and hands have had a heavy workout offsetting swimming laps at the local pool to offset the screen time.
We have discovered a free download of Pengo onto PC format, first discovered around 1984 at our university residential college as a video table game.
It actually requires a retro joystick via USB socket to really appreciate (not available in any modern computer store it seems). We have been madly teaching our selves the directional keys of a standard keyboard to kill those carnivorous snow bees. And we even played around with some home made toggle assemblies but its just not responsive enough.
It's a superior maze game for so early in the arcade genre. For those new to the experience, kick the wall, it freezes the snowbees temporarily. Kick the blocks around. Kick a block to crush it. Extra points for squashing multiple bees with one block. 10K bonus for 3 diamond blocks in a row. 5K if on the side.
Just think of them as politicians.
We are pleased to see one Australian fellow Rodney Day, whom we recall as Dimmy way back at Ursula College, Australian National University, in the official wikipedia entry as the world record holder at 1 million points plus. Given we are struggling to get 20K on said keyboard set up that's a big score.
PS Special note for Mr First Dog OTM - we know there is no such thing as real snow bees.
PPS Curious that freeware Linux operating system developed around 1991 also features a ... penguin as the hero. Could these disparate factoids be connected?
Precocious talent and upstart tennis player Bernard Tomic says it's "rediculous" to be playing competitive tennis at 1 or 2 am in the morning during the Australian Open.
Bingo. You are so right young talented Mr Tomic. You may be a brat. You may be loud. You may be a star.
But children say many true things. The emperor has no clothes: Professional tennis and camp followers want us to believe that tv driven tennis events are in the category of ocean yacht racing, and mountaineering, where the sport dictates night time action. (Yachting because there is no clock off in the middle of the sea, and mountaineering because the ice is more stable and safer in the cold of night, less avalanche danger).
Every other sport, Olympic, World Cup, AFL football here, and so on don't do this. No one schedules for the middle of the night. Get over yourself Big Tennis.
What a joke. Tomic gets our vote. It is rediculous. And the big media who joined in the press conference scorn are w*nking and honking like gooses.
Don't you love democracy. Now the accusation has been levelled by 17 year old Tomic the words can't be unspoken, mainly because its true.
We did get on talk back radio and suggest it's agist and bad form to be promoting 17 year olds up at 2 am in the morning, but on reflection comparison with other world sports tells the real story.
Who gives USA press baron Rupert Murdoch permission via The Australian to decide our annual honours? No one. Just as no one here gives the house of Windsor the right to call themselves royalty.
It's all hierarchical nonesense and chutzpah. So why not join in the fun here at SAM micro news?
On the weekend The Australian pictured PM Kevin Rudd as "Australian of the year" for amongst other things preventing Australia from falling into recession after the Global (really western) Financial Crisis (as per Gittins economics editor Sydney Morning Herald).
Trouble is Rudd was just doing the bidding of Treasury Secretary Ken Henry who has more economic credibility than any minister in the federal govt including Rudd himself: Hence the personalisted targetting of Henry by the coalition Opposition. So Rudd as choice is gross sycophancy by a broadsheet on the media policy make - not least a future 24 hour ABC news service which will further cramp their influence.Even if it must have caused Rudd's rival Tony Abbott to groan with heartburn at the front page last Saturday.
No the real heroes of 2009-10 are Australian taxpayers and by this we mean all goods and services tax payers from the unemployed to the rich mansion dwellers. Because it's that regressive 10% impost on most, but not all, consumables that has boosted the public coffers from 1998 or so putting the federal budget in good shape. Yes over the same time we have seen major increase in private debt (along with economic expansion) even as public debt was slashed but crucially it provided the funds for the huge stimulus #1 and #2. And this prevented widespread social pain and suffering.
So Australians who go shopping and pay GST this last 10 years - take a bow. You saved the economy in Oct 2008-Jan 2010. Only the structural unsustainability of affluenza remains and there can be no more big stimulus payments, not for another 10 years of GST payments anyway. Meanwhile the structural debt burden is right now not 10 years away.
We lived in Bondi 8 years and noticed some things on a recent visit. Unusually a chunk of the main strip shop area on Campbell Pde was missing in December 2009, like front tooth missing. It must be 20 years since a gap like this has appeared so we thought to record the scene.
This site is next to Bondi Hotel and takes in the previous rear drive in bottle shop - no great loss. One assumes a big set of units possibly like that pictured further below.
We also had a picture of the proverbial black dog surveying the scene but in this case you can see it's about as happy, well fed, and docile as a pooch with 3 legs can be:
[Picture: A pilgrimage to a crime scene. We were shocked to see this prescient mural figure from Greek mythology not unlike sadly missed crime victim classmate, lawyer Brendan Keilar: As if clothed in funeral shroud ascending out of body, as he died in the street nearby the same building 15 William St Melbourne CBD June 2007. The 'levin flash' reminds of the hot bullets into warm flesh. RIP hero.]
I was going to send this on to Harry Parkinson in Sydney at firm Salomon Smith Barney (took over CitiGroup if memory serves). But I don't have his email.
Picture above: Melbourne Federation Square with hi tech 'laptop man' in distinctly low tech cushion cubby house to shade his screen under cushions to avoid sun glare. Raising the question - why bother dude? (Perhaps we are just jealous as our clunky laptop crashed and burned on the same trip.)
Picture: Footscray business - so called hot shots pool hall ....with broken windows!
Picture: The ominous News Corp building seen from Federation Square in Melbourne.
Picture: Unintended juxtaposition: Banks as hustlers?
Picture: Into the maw? Crown Casino car park where no doubt many sad and sorry people enter hopeful and exit in financial pieces?
Picture: The historic FoE Australia newsletter archive rescued from the badly unravelling FoE Sydney local chapter in 2003, which folded about 2005, to be rebooted by Ms Verco et al new broom in current form today.
The SAM editor spent 7 struggling years trying to reboot the under powered Friends of the Earth Sydney group 1995-2002. We became a student of it's structure and history during this time. This was well before now famous Natasha Verco's involvement we understand to be from about the mid noughties.
References to Copenhagen climate protester Verco as "founder of Friends of the Earth here" in the big media (eg ABC) recently need some clarification: No doubt referring to the Sydney rather than national chapter, and Sydney version 2, not version 1 established from the 1970ies or 80ies. Indeed if it was otherwise she would be a grey haired retiree.
This local FoE group itself has a significant history: Originally sharing office space with nascent Greenpeace (Australia), and Movement Against Uranium Mining (the evocative acronym MAUM) here in Sydney early 80ies. The story as told to us by Steve Broadbent, aka Stevie Bee today, was that GP got acquisitive and pushy as it grew, causing an office dispute and lock out. The resolution came as GP decided to moved into new space. Jumped or pushed is lost in the mists of time. GP was just another aspirational small greenie group.
The massive operation of GP now is a matter of history after the Rainbow Warrior and lots more, but it was all in the balance back then.
That history of the Sydney green movement is prescient in some ways regarding FoE Sydney pathway, which as we understand it has always been a separate incorporation entity within the FoE Australia network.
In our time we failed (heroically?) to get FoE Sydney on a healthy basis in the face of closed shop tactics by 3 aged males in the group: From our perspective they seemed to have perfected the method of co-opting the place for exclusive territory. Mmm. Details of functioning alcoholic, porn addict using public resources, bipolar character with tunnel vision, are not necessary here but every community group will know the experience. It's great working with the public - except for the public (!) We've since learned a green vocation as policy analyst and media rep should be distinct from social work.
The last we heard most of FoE Sydney office was being loaded into a giant industrial dumpster in 2005 at Turella old ice cream factory 3 years after we made out escape to concentrate on saving a large chunk of the Andes (another story). But not before we saved the newsletter archive held by FoE Sydney pictured here 1975 to 2002.
We reached the conclusion more in sadness than anger version 1 of FoE Sydney needed to be killed off so it could be rebooted fresh. This indeed happened by about 2003-4 including a swing through the NSW Supreme Court over a lease dispute where this author won comprehensively.
We predicted FoE Sydney version 2 would inevitably re-seed via the dominating FoE Melbourne head office. This is where Natasha Verco in the news today has been reported "as a founder of Friends of Earth" ( actually Sydney version 2 around 2005, 30 years after version 1 was commenced).
Version 1 of FoE Sydney included respected and successful campaigners like Stuart White (now UTS), John Denlay, Joe Wacher, Mim Bucchorn and others too. Many had moved on by our time of there. We would like to think we also had some success like:
- closure of $40M dioxin spewing Waterloo Incinerator,
- expose of Enron style power industry privatisation agenda in 1997, and
- gruelling expose' of Carr Govt policy failures on woodchipping, and indeed other planning corruption.
With some consequent reputational blowback by the ALP slime machine in NSW including inside and outside the green movement to this day.
By the looks the energetic sisterhood via Ms Verco et al are running FoE Sydney from the mid noughties - and it's a good thing too. Good luck Ms Verco, onwards ....
It was always a big ask. Hawkesbury into Bondi Beach, then back out to Canberra’s National Gallery 4 hours away for their show of Post Impressionists. All in one day.
The trip was partly self interest after walking for hours through European galleries mesmerised back in 2002. The Prado in Madrid and the Louvre in Paris.
But it was also a reward for Carol after a 2 year journey navigating the Guardianship Tribunal and NSW Supreme Court for 4 days mid December 2009. Carol has special needs ably supported by her CBD lawyer Pam Suttor, and barrister Chris Simpson (SC). There is nothing Carol likes better than a gallery of paintings and social day out. She can ride in a car trip watching the world forever. 12 hours with a few breaks – no sweat. It’s the driver who is under the hammer, with or without free coffee from the SES bloke at Lake George.
A quick drive by and a short break at Subway for lunch at Manuka shops, while getting vaguely lost then back for the main event.
So how was the show? Well we read the art critic in the SMH just now and the 2 page feature in the Review in The Australian. This is what we thought for better or worse: Yes, the carpark is a dogs breakfast of construction but we got a place close by immediately and the underground parking was open – we never found out if it was free.
A half hour wait in the ticket queue, yet it was under cover, in a cool place inside, surrounded by other art works, with cheerful well to do casual dressed Australians in summer shorts and shirts nearby. There’s a lot worse places to be on a hot Saturday. The concession entry at $16 was reasonable.
The first of 6 rooms of affluent portraits was not worth much of our time, merely to set the scene for what followed. The next room of pointilists while bright and gracious and mildly interesting seemed a somewhat perverse sidetrack from the main course in room 3.
There we saw Van Gogh and his contempories. I got to thinking he drank with these peers nearby, aspiring to a deep authenticity that Vincent achieved most of all? Somehow VV’s flowers, self portrait, starry night over the Rhone turned other respectable works back towards the cartoon end of the spectrum. We felt an involuntary smile. So deep and textured outrageous and endearing. I wanted more.
Only Gauguin had his orange variants. And Bonnard and Vouillard their striking vibrancy. I got the feeling however that the exhibition was a bit skinny. There was only one Rousseau as dramatic as it was. The overhead lights on the panel sized decorations by Bonnard in room 6 glared - did they have overhead lights in 1890?
The glass protecting the works was virtually invisible, cleaner than any window I’ve seen. The crowd was full of beautiful people, presumably art students. The audio commentary seemed a bit of a gouge so we skipped it, perhaps unwisely having travelled so far. The merchandise shop was busy like the obstacle course it was meant to be.
The images are very vibrant again in the press reviews back in Sydney. They contrast with black and white newsprint. One realises most of the works could sit on your wall and keep on giving for many a long year. Carol had a great time too.
As we got back to Sydney the southerly storm burst. We took the cheapskate Cowpasture Rd alternative to the M7 in a surreal combo of sunglasses and windscreen wipers at full bore. Carol then took the ride back on the rail to finish a satisfying gallery adventure.
Images of festival here which doesn't do justice to the busy schedule of events in various locations including church hall, community college, outside stalls, council chambers, local library.
Here is the "High Noon" debate notable for its big attendance, ABC presenter Tim Holt as moderator and excellent diagrams presented by local Dr Matthew Nott (medicine) and convenor of local Clean Energy for Everyone group. The critic of Global Warming also had a witty style about him and local property and business identity Rob High.
We managed to note in the Q & A session the potential role of global dimming (refer abc 4 Corners doco about 5 years ago) re aerosol particulates out of China and India massive industrialisation could be playing a role in dampening temperature rise without altering the underlying forcings from green house gases.
Some images of first day of 3 day event on the NSW South Coast. Moderate to small turnout Friday 20 Nov 2009 as NSW more broadly suffered a heat wave. However the cooler weather late same evening suggested a great day to follow, which did in fact prove the case.
Some images of our experience follow: Including press catchup in the directors chair next to the billboard display, with a distinctly biblical environmental theme in the Big Media:
This song with the luscious base synthesiser played yesterday on Penrith commercial radio, satellite city to Sydney Australia. We were listening to it in 35 degree heat all around mesmerised.
American-Jewish guy and big tv entertainer based here in Australia, called Don Lane, died the day before in Sydney. Apparently he was highest paid tv star in his time 70ies and 80ies in Australia. Perhaps the mutual love in was that he chose us all the way from modern Rome, so we Austalians chose him (though this writer not so much). Perhaps he just didn't believe in the Vietnam war?
So you see the craft of this song captures the emotion again and again for people in the entertainment industry. Nice one DJ, nice one. We grabbed this image of Don Lane looking for all the world like an Andy Kaufman character. May he rest in peace.
And Nightshift refers to two departed artists the year before in 1984. One the famous Marvin Gaye. The other Jackie Wilson here on YouTube. And the parallel with Jackie is even more spooky. Lane was laid down with dementia. Wilson was in a coma 9 years after a heart attack while performing at a benefit concert according to the wikipedia entry.
Jackie Wilson looks and sounds very much like the original 'Elvis Presley' here on YouYube - without the due credit. We know better now it was always going to be a coffee coloured future, ain't that right Mr President.
Following our post yesterday, a source at Addison Rd Centre - biggest community centre in Sydney if not Australia - suggests the 40th Anniversary of Che Guevara's death (and recent film?) was behind the fire bombing by extreme right wingers. Actually Guevara is quoted by wikipedia as having died 42 years ago as here not 40.
Here are the images we took yesterday Tuesday 13th October, 48 hours later.
We also notice this event earlier that Saturday night:
We have another view of all this. A certain feature by Greg Bearup in The Sydney Morning Herald about 3 weeks ago featuring a certain Far Right political campaigner and ex convict based not so far away in Tempe. Are they connected, described by a political colleague as a 'voyeur of violence'? We wonder. It was a devastatingly good write up. Enough to create a motive for backlash?
Our spanish interpreter colleague advised last night this icon of 2 decades or more, favourite social point of diverse Sydney based South Americans, has burnt down 2 am yesterday Sunday 11 October 2009. The Casalatino as it's known is a social gathering point for Latin Australians from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay etc and this fire will be a big loss for them.
Casalatino is located within Addison Rd Centre in Marrickville as per this web page:
We are concerned here given the unsolved fire at the Chinese Budhist temple a year or so back in Glebe. Another icon of multiculturalism is the Marrickville Library which was flooded out and closed for a month, also about a year ago.
We made pictures of the Latin House a few years ago here in our work as a web page builder:
Near Hawkesbury City Council Waste Management Facility is a privately run Junkyard also known locally as the Two Trains for obvious reasons when you see the frontage of the place over 4 hectares or more.
After some 15 years knocking about recycling and environmental issues we were very surprised to come across this place recently set in fairly rural location: Go 4 km south west on George St out of Windsor then north westerly on Blacktown Rd after the main roundabout/3 way junction then first left into Bennett Rd.
This place is well known to Hawkesbury and western Sydney type people but not former inner city folks more used to the humble Bower at Marrickville for comparison. The model is obviously different not least rental variations and this place is quite huge by comparison. The 2 Trains place is distinctive for having many sheds and converted buses full of stuff by theme, whether AV entertainment, clothes, kitchen, auto, furniture, then outdoors for mowers, baths etc etc. They pay a scavenger fee by weight to Hawkesbury Council and get fair custom for their sorted throwouts.
Here are a few pics above and below for the recycler and budget hoards to slaver over, with apologies for the glare and shadow effects on some images taken late afternoon into the west.
A google search for "NSW Total Fire Ban" brings up the relevant NSW Govt website from the Rural Fire Service. Here is a screenshot from today with link embedded:
The general awareness in NSW after the tragedy in Victoria earlier in 2009 has certainly increased, but one wonders by just how much.
Picture: Private enterprise promoting bushfire bunker on Comenara Parkway in the Hills district of NSW, taken by the editor Sept 2009
AAP, SMH and Yahoo news seem to be carrying the stories high on the google search also. As here:
Total fire ban issued for NSW
at
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/total-fire-ban-issued-for-nsw-20090930-gct0.html
September 30, 2009 - 9:49PMThe NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) warns the "bushfire season has arrives" and his declared a total fire ban for parts of the state on Thursday.
Forecast hot and windy conditions have also resulted in a "severe" fire danger rating for Sydney, the Greater Hunter, Illawarra, the south coast, northern Riverena and lower central west plains.
It is the first time the "severe" rating has been used, after the system was overhauled in the wake of February's Victorian bushfire tragedy.
A new top category of "catastrophic" has also been introduced.
It will be used for days when weather conditions exceed the current top level of extreme, when major loss of life and property is deemed likely.
Severe is third in the danger sequence, and when in force, people are advised to leave their homes early.
RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons says the "severe" warning will be used for the first time on Thursday when temperatures are expected to reach the mid-30s in parts of the state.
"At severe, leaving early is your safest option for your survival. Your home will only offer safety if it and you are well prepared and you can actively defend it during a fire," he said.
"So our advice is very clear to the community. Prepare your home and prepare yourself, by ensuring you and your family knows what to do if a fire does start."
Mr Fitzsimmons said NSW had already seen significant fire activity on the north coast and further inland in the past few days.
"If people need a reminder that bushfire season is here, this is it," he said.
"Now is the time to prepare and make sure you have a plan for what to do in a bushfire."
© 2009 AAP
Picture: An amateur bushfire bunker constructed on a property in the Hawkesbury region this year by this writer relying on the concrete walls of an old water tank with soil barrier on the ceiling. We don't say this is a guaranteed survival measure because we have read it should be airtight and maybe last a 5 hour intense burn (K Tolhurst Victorian bushfire academic reported in Sydney Morning Herald) worse case scenario. But it provides a little reassurance.
The front pager report of the court decision here
and
'Land bribe' exposes Labor's coziness with property developers
and editorial here
Della Bosca's quick exit … focuses minds on the real shemozzle
and "withering" decision of the court by Lloyd J here at their homepage:
relates to our backgrounder back in December 2008 re turn of events back in 1997 where the SAM editor was an uncomfortable witness. This was about the time the creeping corruption of environmental ngo movement by the Carr state government started taking hold one year after the death of leader Milo Dunphy - at least in our humble opinion:
When we first read Henry Reynolds - Law of the Land published 1987 - we were shocked by the reference to 'sado masochistic Sunday afternoon hunting parties', and of 'childrens skulls smashed in'. This was Tasmania of 19th and 18th century colonial times that Julia Gillard euphemistically calls "settlement" surely not realising the unintended fiction - at the hands of brutalised convicts doing the British Govt's dirty work. As eloquently argued by many since it would take a triumph of willful blindess for we the Australian ancestral benefactors of the active theft or inheritors via disease and violence to quiet the whispering in our hearts, just as the UK Govt with the remoteness of distance might effectively ignore the truth.
We wove that 1987 book into our honours law thesis in 1989 called A Legal Foundation for Aboriginal Land Rights around the nascent concept of Native Title which was in fact recognised by the High Court of Australia 3 years later in Dec 1992. The famous Mabo Case and surely a hero of the age. But in 1989 we never quite nailed down what Australia was legally because the British empire had officially 'conquered' some of their global dominion in which case local people's land law continued in some form say under a treaty like Waitangi in NZ, and 'settled' other 'empty' land. But Australia seemed to be "sui generis" which is latin meaning "one of a kind" mentioned in some of the writings in dusty old common law cases from India and South Africa.
Now we conclude Australia was neither empty/settled or peopled/conquered in the minds of the UK seat of government. We personally have no doubt it was a covert creeping invasion and consquest using convicts as the catspaw of the Empire. It was invaded by convict criminals sent in with sickness and violence to clear out whatever they came across. All very convenient and racist to not even formalise an international legal categorisation for the hapless Aborigines who lived so very close to nature.
In 1993-4 we played an active role at least here in NSW in reforming The Wilderness Society's national approach to such issues into a quite strong and ethical Land & Rights Policy which prefaced alliances over such campaigns in Starcke and Jabiluka of the 1990ies with Traditional Aboriginal owners of land. (We were not the instigator of such a reform, rather this was a couple Larry and Marg from memory, but we loved the change.) This was in a time when Noel Pearson was pretty friendly to the non govt group too.
The essence of the TWS reformed policy was to recognise large intact natural areas known as wilderness under the NSW 1987 legislation as in fact Indigenous land, and secondly while never walking away from the goal to conserve such lands, to never seek to pre emtively extinguish that traditional, custodial Indigenous history in any deal making with other stakeholders in land such as govt, agri or other resource extraction industries.
One implication of that huge symbolic shift was that it could theoretically involve the TWS both supporting a native title holder's ownership and at the same time campaigning against them if they sought to act as a vandalistic black developer of crucial conservation values. This was a risk deemed essential in a new moral path for the green movement and for the nation post Mabo. It felt right and it was right.
5 years later 1997 we realised the game of covert extinguishment was still under way in NSW but this time by the NSW Govt Depts, farmers and also either using or willingly with the aid of certain green groups.
Indeed the name of the game in conservative politics under the federal Howard govt was extinguishment of the Mabo legal test of 'ongoing physical connection with the land' and in the most redneck parts of the nation it looked like the bulldozer was the preferred method as here in Qld:
And not just the bulldozer to ensure extinguishment of native title with ongoing agri industry pressure on govt for corporate welfare via freeholding of govt leasehold land to the non indigenous squattocracy of the Western Division here:
And the farmers had their reasons to seek out their "bucket loads of extinguishment" as the Howard Govt proudly expressed in Federal Parliament, if they didn't care about the morals, because they knew they were being stalked legally after Mabo and after the Wik case earlier like this report dated April 2000:
This particular legal saga was trashed by the High Court of Australia in August 2002 as explained here [pdf file]
Native Title and the Western Division of NSW
eventually raising the question whether all that pre emptive land clearing was really needed in either NSW (see one report of the sorry landclearing detail here) or Qld (above) up to that point.
In 1997 the green groups were not to know how the legals would work out not least after the Federal Court decision in favour of the native title claim relevant to a huge areas of western NSW.
It was in this context that the 'leaders' of the NSW green movement were summonsed to this:
We particularly remember Jeff Angel blessing these endeavours by Jamie Piddock and being "very impressed" for franchising the idea of "clearing tradeoffs" by farmers. Jeff's blessing some 10 years ago is in stark contrast to some quotes in the press last Saturday Dec 15th 07 (below). Not a mention of native title extinguishment. Not a mention except by this writer as confirmed by the contemporaneous notes of the time. Here is Piddock's briefing note of this 'environmental' initiative to keep the farmers happy, and sideline the Blacks altogether (and note our very bad handwriting):
Our alarm at this attempt to promote trade offs of one area of native bush for another, after 200 years of land clearing and a general scientific understanding that no more land clearing was desirable in Australia at all, let alone to extinguish critical historical native title rights, and with a green stamp on them was pretty much ignored. This was a shameful day for the NSW green movment with Jeff Angel ascendant. Hence the careful notation of the documentation and signature and dating by hand above. Angel in particular should account for this (while Jamie Piddock is God knows where). Not least because he was busy on ABC radio last Saturday morning Dec 15th and in the Sydney Morning Herald with pretty much the direct opposite view against exactly this kind of 'bio banking tradeoff land clearing in favour of regional conservation outcomes' which the govt jargon for green lighting, greenwashing developer bush clearance.
In principle 1997 good, 2007 bad? Western NSW 'Black Land' good. Sydney urban bushland bad? Go figure. This may be what Jeff Angel said on 702 on air to be 'good in principle, its the implementation that matterrs'.
Angel is clearly right in 2007. But he was woefully wrong in 1997 so what's changed? Bob Carr is no longer premier is one significant factor. The ascendancy of the far more independent and fiesty Green Party is another.
Are you reading this Warren Mundine, prominent in the NSW ALP?
Some of us have a long memory about such things and we can prove it. Here is some of our confidential briefing notes of that shameful May 12 1997 cave in to redneck land clearing deal to further oust the Blacks from the Western Division:
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