Miscellaneous comments from 22 May 2011

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The government is under pressure to prove its commitment to scrapping the Growth Areas Authority. Victorian Planning Minister Matthew Guy said the priority for the authority was to release 50,000 lots of land this year. The development industry is a very powerful lobby growth, and is dictating public land availability and had the greatest control of the land market. It's all a political ploy to make it seem that government had control over growth, but they don't! Mr Guy last week announced a review into the possible expansion of the Urban Growth Boundary. There will never be a "solution" to demand for land while our population continues to increase. Already Victoria has the most land in private hands, and it the most environmentally damaged State. With all the global threats we are encountering, why are we growing our population? What does land get "released" from? Land is not an inexhaustible commodity with no value unless it is developed! It is then denied its ecological life-functions that services that support our lives. Instead of a whopping carbon tax, why aren't we actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We should be planting trees and investing in renewable energy. Instead, we have an economy based on growth, and it continually demands more land, more people and more mega-stores springing up. Our government is running an Economy, a big global corporation instead of actually governing us. The time of growth is over! We should be stabilizing our population and our government should be changing their modus operandi towards a stable economy. The economy should be serving us, and supporting us, not driving us towards unsustainable population numbers and massive costs involved. Obviously, "big Australia" well need nuclear power. A perpetual population growth-based economy is NOT sustainable.

Many Australians are aware that sheep in Australia are subjected to the cruelty of live export and mulesing, but few are aware that they have become the latest tragic victims of factory farming. This is about to change. Footage provided by Animals Australia will underpin an exposé on the ultra-fine wool industry to be aired this coming week on 6.30 with George Negus (on Channel 10). Animals Australia has been campaigning against the cruel individual penning of sheep since in Victoria showed sheep chewing on the wooden slats and strands of wire of their pens due to stress, frustration and boredom. Sadly new footage from the Wool Factory not only confirms that conditions for these animals have not improved, but that a second shed with similar individual pens has been built — doubling the capacity. With increasing numbers of sheep being subjected to the cruelty of factory-farmed wool production it is imperative that this practice is banned. This coming week's 'battery sheep' story on 6.30 with George Negus will show never before released footage. Animals Australia's Executive Director Glenys Oogjes has been interviewed as well as other animal welfare experts. Though we cannot confirm which night the story will run, it could air as early as Monday night. Please watch this important exposé and then to find out how you can help end this cruel practice. Lyn White Campaign Director

One of the nation's richest businessmen is urging Aussies to "make love tonight and create another baby for Australia". This is exactly the sort of pressure to build our population growth comes from - these wealthy elite who have massive influence on our government. They want the economic benefits of more people and are simply ignoring the big picture. Fox urged governments to build more roads, bridges and railways. "(Inadequate) infrastructure is a big problem," he said. Does he release that it is the tax-payer that must pay these massively costly projects? Already household costs are soaring! Population growth keeps outstripping funds and new infrastructure. We have climate change, declining oil supplies, an energy crisis about to unfold, threats of water and food security, and conflicts due to overpopulation and poverty. Such shallow and reckless policies are being made by those who will benefit from more population growth. Animals are being denied paddocks due to human population pressure. More and more are confined to small cages and sheds, and must undergo mutilations and deprivations to feed and clothe more people. Wildlife are losing habitats, and losing their rights to survival as a species. The greed of human expansion has not limits? We humans must the most selfish and self-centred species ever! Sheep do not belong in sheds, and neither do pigs or hens. People also are being forced to live more in intensive housing. Our evolutionary drive to consume and propagate is still driving us to reproduce and gain, and the herding instinct will also cause our own demise - ultimately!

Originally posted on 27 May 2011 . -  Ed The non-white population of the England and Wales has crept up to almost 1/6th of the population. The white British population has basically stayed the same since 2001. The non-white population have added 2.5 million people in the same period. Other "white" people from Europe and Australia have also increased from 1.4 to 1.9 million people. The mixed-race population is up nearly 50% to almost a million for the first time – up from 672,000 in 2001 to 986,600 in 2009. London has a large mixed-race, Asian, black and Irish communities making up the rest. Low-skilled workers from Eastern Europe are heading to the UK in their droves to look for work as net migration hit its highest level in more than five years. Sir Andrew Green, of MigrationWatch UK, said: "If immigration continues at this rate, our population will hit 70 million within 20 years and immigrants will account for half of new households". He said the shock figures showed firm measures were now "absolutely essential". It's a tribal race to divide and conquer by subversion. The net migration of 242,000 was nearly 100,000 higher than the previous year beside David Cameron's vows to cut immigration. The fragmentation of societies from immigration means that the host nation become eventually overwrought by the new-comers. It' a reverse colonisation, with permission. They obviously have no border controls!

The following comment was posted to ABC Radio National's on Friday 27 May 2011. The post was in response to a discussion. Too fast, too furious: why industry opposes a carbon tax of the previous Friday 20 May.

Wasn't the "free market", that is, serving the greed of a small minority rather than the wishes of the sovereign majority, supposed to hold all the answers to society's problems when it was imposed upon Australia and much of the rest of the world back in the 1980's?

How is it that, three decades later, it still hasn't worked out how to protect the world from global warming and other environmental threats?

Why is it that 'government', held to be so fundamentally flawed by the "free market" ideologues whose prescriptions have been so unquestioningly accepted by our political leaders, must spend so much of its time and energy trying to find a way to persuade the "free market" not to destroy our environment?

If the "free market" was all that Howard, Keating, Hawke, Fraser et al had held it out to be, it would have surely found a way to save the world from global warming a long time ago.

But it has not and no amount of tinkering with incentives from Government is any more likely to prevent the "free market" from causing calamity now than it has to civilisations in the past - the Mayans, Angkor Wat, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mesopotamians, the Anasazi of the Chaco Canyon and numerous earlier civilisations. This has been documented in books such as Jared Diamond's "Collapse" and David Montgomery's "Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization".

The only difference we face this time, is that if the sovereign peoples of the world don't take back from the "free market" the right to decide their futures, the catastrophe won't be confined just to some regions of the earth. It will affect the whole world and be unimaginably more terrible.

If, as one example, we don't act now to stop the greed of the "free market", from digging up Australia's vast deposits of coal for export to be burnt in China and India, then we will have shown that we have learnt nothing from history.

Brahmans are intelligent, inquisitive and shy. That's more than can be said of those who support the brutality of the live export industry to Indonesia! The live animal export industry has gone into damage control, following the release of graphic footage of the inhumane slaughter of Australian cattle in our largest overseas market. The Australian government began supplying the boxes to Indonesian abattoirs in 2000 because local plant workers were having difficulties restraining Australian cattle prior to slaughter. They don't want to use stunning because their religion demands suffering and a prolonged death! Four Corners' graphic depiction of suffering and bloodshed and sadism was gross and disgusting. Thanks to Animals Australia for taking on the horrific task of filming and exposing these horrors. Lyn White is a wonderful trouper and as an animal lover, the sights of such bloodshed and horror must be hard to endure. She is a credit to Animals Australia. There is no justification for these atrocities, and Australia has blood on its hands! These workers obviously enjoy their work as dominance over these big animals. They don't use stunning because of religion? No concept of "god" would endorse suffering or such sadism! They are hiding behind religious dogma to support their brutality. The industry is feigning horror at animal cruelty. They know this goes on - it's all been revealed before. Money cannot justify such suffering, and neither can religion.

We'll present this petition tomorrow at Parliament House in a press conference with the RSPCA, Animals Australia, and the Australasian Meat Industry Employers Union (AMIEU). Please add your name now and share this campaign with friends and family. ABC's Four Corners program last night showed graphic footage provided by Animals Australia and RSPCA that shows Australian cattle being mistreated in Indonesian slaughterhouses. There, cattle are often maimed and cruelly mistreated before slow and painful deaths that take agonising minutes after a cow's throat is cut. What's more, the callous slaughter is done using equipment paid for by Australian taxpayers. PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION The torture of animals cannot be tolerated. These third-world abattoirs are not accountable to anyone. The sadism and horror are not "isolated incidents" as Joe Ludwig and the industry claim with the pretend shock and horror. So much of these atrocities have been revealed before. They just want to keep it quiet, away from public eyes. Even billions of dollars profit cannot justify such horrific treatment of our gentle long-suffering animals. Four Corners and Animals Australia should be congratulated for having the courage to film this bloodbath!

""Australia should understand that the level development of Indonesians is different from the level of development of Australians" says Indonesia's Vice-Minister of Agriculture, Bayu Krisnamurthi, Animal cruelty is animal cruelty, no matter what language. What has "development" got to do with it? Is this guy saying Indonesia is a primitive country full of savages with no empathy or compassion? Next they'll be crying "racism" - another new meaning to the word for political convenience and manipulation. Animal suffer when they are butchered while still conscious - and animal welfare MUST transcend politics, diplomacy and profits.

Recruited from the Master Builders Association to head the ACT Government's affordable housing strategy, Mr Dawes says he is fighting for development on all fronts, from every back street of Canberra to Commonwealth legislation to protect the environment. Mr Dawes said the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act Commonwealth protection of nationally and internationally important flora, fauna, ecological communities and heritage places was causing him grief. He said he had not realised the ACT harboured so many endangered critters. In the past 5 years, the average property price in the ACT has grown from just on $400,000 to $550,000. On one hand there is the need to live sustainably within the constraints of our environment and infrastructure, and on the other the need for further growth to enhance the services expected by the community. The "need" for growth needs to be questioned. The illogical fear of kangaroos when the real threat to our environmental integrity is human developments and urban sprawl is a case of blindness and arrogance. Kangaroos are native animals, they don't emit greenhouse gases, they are able to peacefully co-exist with other native flora and fauna, and do not need housing or bulldozing of land. It seems that anything is tradeable and destroyable when it's in the path of growth of people!

Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. members and friends I Public Meeting - Save St Mary's Paddock : Our Open Space for Children's Farm and Abbotsford Convent 10:30 am Saturday 4 June 2011 Good news is that Heritage Victoria has refused an application for a school in the Abbotsford Convent Precinct to expand and build classrooms on St Mary's Paddock. So the event will be a celebration. CARA (and all of us) thanks the 2,400 objectors. The meeting will consider plus to consider "where to from here." When: 10:30 am Saturday 4 June 2011 Where: The Farm Building Abbotsford Convent. Enter Clarke Street, off Johnston Street Collingwood into St Heliers Street.(Melways Map Reference: 2D B9) Transport: Parking off St Helier's Street in Abbotsford Convent Precinct. Johnston Street Bus. Contact: C.A.R.A (Collingwood and Abbotsford Residents Association) See Website: Facebook Fan Page: 'Save St Mary's Paddock: Our Open Space for Farm and Convent' PO Box 304 Abbotsford 3067

The latest costs from last summer's Queensland floods and Cyclone Yasi have climbed to $6.8 billion, $1 billion higher than the State Government's February estimate.

As well as loss of lives and livelihoods, there has also been enormous damage to infrastructure and significant costs incurred in managing the response and recovery process. Queensland will end up being liable for around $1.8 billion in damage costs when the loans provided are redeemed. It illustrates just how fragile our economy is to natural disasters and human error. Julia Gillard's "big Australia" will mean that far from ensure a bigger tax base and more prosperity, there will be more potential risks and damage especially in a nation prone to droughts and flooding rain.

The second line of "Advance Australia Fair":

For those who've come across the seas
We've boundless plains to share;

... needs to be revised!

Read Global Research (http://globalresearch.ca) by and .

During the day, one can see several hundred working class demonstrators against the cutbacks at the postal service near Syntagma Square (the parliament), with the fear that the government will privatize it and sell it to a German company which will lay off large numbers of postal workers (perhaps over 50%). At 6 o’clock in Syntagma Square, a crowd starts to gather under a banner which says "no to apathy – direct democracy (amesi demokratia)." It is the ninth day of such gatherings and discussions. There is an open mike for speeches and proposals. By 8, some 50,000 people have gathered (I am with some friends near the speaker on the edge of the people seated, the crowd surges around, and up the high steps to the road that separates the Parliament and may extend over in front of it. The woman who moderates (one of several moderators) calls for a continuation of a discussion proposed the previous night (that meeting ended at 4 AM), and takes hands for 20 speakers (eventually there is a vote which approves hearing from all of them before continuing).

Most of the crowd is young, the people in their twenties. The European Union, to which the Greek government is obsequious, even though headed by a Socialist (George Papandreou, who is reputed - a rarity among leading Socialists - an honest man), has demanded that the Greek parliament vote on June 15 on a maximum salary for every young worker before she reaches the age of 25: five hundred – 500 - euros a month. This is a poverty, near starvation wage for a young Athenian (barely enough to pay rent – perhaps if 4 people share an apartment - let alone eat).

The Greek parliament has been a weak institution, limited by fascism and a military coup and tyranny (1967-74). It is a series of small desks (one has to hunch in to sit in them, as I discovered when I took my students to see it three years ago). There is no space for an audience. Parliament in Greece is confined, and behind closed doors. A generally discussed proposal in the crowd is to block the parliamentarians from entering the parliament, prevent a vote, get them to drop the proposal. 

In what comes as a surprising admission from one of our Big 4 Bank's CEO's, Phil Chronican has come out questioning whether negative gearing on investment properties is healthy for the nation. Negative gearing, which provides billions of dollars of tax breaks and is used by about 1.7 million property users, has correctly been identified as a major cause of spiralling real estate prices.. ''Governments might want to look at whether the current extent of negative gearing tax breaks are fostering an unhealthy focus on housing as an investment vehicle, thereby compounding affordability issues,'' Chronican told a business lunch in Sydney. He said real estate should not be regarded as speculative investment vehicle but as ''a place to live in, sleep, eat and raise your family''. Go Mr Chronican!!

Yes, negative gearing is a tax shelter for those with enough wealth to invest in property at a time of un affordable housing, mortgage stress and homelessness. However, it does provide some rental accommodation for those who choose to rent. Negative gearing should at least be limited outer and regional areas to give first-home buyers some access to more inner-urban "cheaper" housing, but competition from investors is exacerbating the housing "shortage" - but the root source of the problem is really population growth! Economists and politicians deliberately set out to create the Australian housing bubble in order to boost the banks and property development industries' wealth. It's about redistribution of wealth from average wage-earners and families into the hands of the elite. The population growth needed for these industries has caused a massive redistribution of wealth, and it has been an easy way for banks to make profits due to a guaranteed increasing demand - through immigration. Cheap housing has been eradicated by our government. Australia used to be the "Lucky Country" - something that is fading into history! We had the highest rate of home-ownership of any nation, and the envy of the world. The real problem is that our (engineered) population growth continually outstrips housing, public funding and public spending. At a time of planetary depletions and decline, we should be in the consolidation stage of our community's life-cycle, not still pumping up our growth! This growth-push puts enormous pressure on our society, with the threats of urban sprawl and high-density living impinging on our green wedges, parklands, our sustainability, our quality of life, and our heritage areas. To add injury to insult, we are expected to pay a carbon tax? Why should the public be forced, financially, to reduce power consumption and greenhouse gas emissions while our government continues "business as usual" with growth, mining and coal exports? Anthropogenic climate change can't be mitigated while at the same time a large part of our economy relies on population growth - it's a cruel contradiction.

I completely agree with Vivienne's points about population growth and its effect on housing supply. To my mind, the housing affordability crisis in Australia could be solved quite quickly with three policy changes: 1. Immediately reduce net immigration to a level designed to stabilise Australia's population at a sustainable level. 2. Invest in genuine decentralisation initiatives to encourage people out of the major cities and into declining rural centres, and, lastly 3. Scrap negative gearing (NG) for investment properties. On the third point, I understand that there is a perception that negative gearing adds to the pool of available rental properties. To some small extent, that might be true, but I do wonder about whether it really does as much good as its advocates claim? You might remember that in 1985, Paul Keating as PM scrapped NG on investment properties, but then quickly restored it. The story goes that this was because without NG, rents skyrocketed and tenants were forced onto the street. This story is now unassailable and repeated as fact by the HIA and REI's every time someone questions negative gearing. The trouble is, the story's not true. Some years ago, Ross Gittins explained why in an excellent (Pollies tell fibs about negative gearing by Ross Gittins, 25 August 2003) in the Sydney Morning Herald. Gittins rightly points out that the real message that pollies are giving when they tell this story is, 'if someone as tough as Keating got beaten by the real-estate agents, why would you expect a wimp like me to take them on?' The other thing to consider is whether many current renters would prefer to buy a house, but can't afford to? Scrapping NG may mean that in the short term, some investors sell off their properties - and probably at lower prices than they'd hoped for. But this will be self-limiting because the pent up demand for reasonably priced residential homes will absorb those properties that do come onto the market. Other people (like me) who have a house that's rented out but get no benefit from NG will continue to rent their places out for the same price.

Also need to remember the 50% capital gains tax concession for real estate held for at least 12 months before selling. Why should a real estate investor get 50% income tax discount when an ordinary wage earner is never entitled to an equivalent discount. CGT gains are unearned income? This type of unearned income just a form of rent on resources (land and housing). There is also a total CGT exemption for owner occupied housing. This should be adjusted so the first $500,000 is tax free and then a concessional amount above that depending on how long it has been occupied, the greater the length of time the greater the concession. This change will effect only the top end of the market. Lastly, death duties. It would be easy to set it at a level which wouldn't effect most people. Say first $750,000 of an estate is exempt and every dollar above that is taxed at say 30%-40%. Most of the value of estates are in real estate, in the form of unrealized capital gains. Death duties will capture lost tax revenue of unrealised capital gains especially for multi-property estates. There would be exemptions for agricultural land if it was continued to be run as a farm business. By discouraging speculation in real estate, we can divert investment income into productive enterprises, instead of rampant and useless speculation which has the consequence of transferring wealth from low and middle income earners to those who own property.

Graphic footage of cattle cruelty not shown on television has been given to Prime Minister Julia Gillard by an MP in a bid to force her to act on live animal exports. One MP has sent her footage that was not shown in the programme to persuade her to support a total ban that would be phased in over the next three years. Some Labor MPs including Victorian Kelvin Thomson have urged the Prime Minister to suspend all live exports to Indonesia while an investigation is completed. Cattle will only be exported to the 25 "best" abattoirs in Indonesia. Butchers are reporting a drop in beef sales of 10-15% since last week's programme featuring graphic footage of animals being slashed and whipped. People forget that meat comes from animals. Incredibly, abattoir workers are likely to be vegetarian! If Julia Gillard has any heart, any compassion and any integrity she will be shocked and appalled by the brutality and sadism in the horrific slaughter of the poor animals betrayed by Australia. No amount of profits or economic benefits can justify what happens in these abattoirs, hell-holes, and she must agree that the live export trade in untenable and must end.

I just heard Jon Faine ask Wayne Swan "what business is it of ours how the Indonesians run their abattoirs. I know he has to ask provocative questions- but to me that is like asking what business is it of our how the Germans run their concentration camps. This is important because he is, for better or for worse, a leader in Australian debate.

By 2050 Catholic latinos (many Mexican) are likely to be the dominant population in the USA. This article tells how Obama plays to this crowd for fear they will vote him out if he doesn't. And apparently Pres Reagan once said that Latinos are republicans; they just don't know it yet. These are conservative voters with larger families than many other Americans. They have already driven up the US birth rate. Peak oil and peak catholic population. Bad moon, folks.

Don't miss this Sunday Night on ABC TV 1 at 8.30PM

I think the series is great, although it would be hard for any producer not to make a good series given the subject matter. I don't know yet how it will treat, on Sunday 12 June, the subject of his murder, about which has been made a taboo topic by both the establishment newsmedia and much of . Even if the show fails to grasp that nettle, it will has still been well worth watching so far simply for showing how John F. Kennedy got to become President of the United States, what he achieved as President with the help of his brother Bobby and why he took the choices he did.

Jackie to her daughter: "Your daddy just saved the world!"

Last week JFK's wife Jacqueline Kennedy told her daughter, "Your daddy just saved the world!" after JFK had found a way to defuse the in 1962 as many of his generals (and some of their opposite numbers in the Eastern bloc) were doing their utmost to inflame it.

JFK was a courageous and selfless hero in every real sense: in wartime as commander of PT109 and in office when he successfully stood up to the military-industrial complex the former President Eisenhower warned against in January 1961. His example puts to shame most other world political leaders before and since.

Aboriginal elders and rival politicians have urged Premier Ted Baillieu to reconsider his decision to drop at official events the mandatory acknowledgment of traditional land custodians. Australian's indigenous peoples are not convenient to recognise any more for their traditional land and their culture. They are to melt away while our land continues to be occupied and consumed by developments, farms and population growth. Australia's history apparently is not relevant and wanted any more. We are to be remodeled as a modern, generic nation and our history forgotten. Federal member for Wills Kelvin Thomson said the acknowledgment showed Australians came from a number of traditions. Australia of the past is under threat, our indigenous and Colonial history, and so is the Lucky Country we once knew! With the fragmentation of society due to ongoing immigration, it is only the older people and baby-boomers who remember Australia patriotically. Indigenous peoples are a reminder of the real Australia, our heritage, and our pre-Colonial past, and are now just another part of our multicultural minority groups. The thrust to generalise Australia in line with Asia, especially China, means that Australia is to be globalised as part of a conglomerate of nations with tied economic dependencies. The ongoing hatred of kangaroos and the massacre in Canberra, despite the science supporting their contribution to grasslands and ecology, is also evidence of the generalisation of Australia. There is little connection with traditional Australia. Australia is being disemboweled and stripped of assets and identity to make way for China's growth. Are Aborigines, along with wildlife, not welcome here?

Following on from Bandicoot's comment -Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu, says that Government ministers are no longer forced to acknowledge the original custodians of the Australian continent at major functions. Well wouldn't anyone with the remotest sense of Australia's history want to do this as much as they would want to sing the national anthem? With this thin end of the wedge Baillieu announcement, our history is blurred and will be gradually forgotten. It is with repetition of this at events that younger people and people new to the country come to incorporate our history into their own psyches whether of not they read history. With Baillieu's attitude now set in law it is both the indigenous and non indigenous people who lose.

Not only are our traditional owners under attack, but also our Colonial history. Australia is becoming a generic land, manipulated to being devoid of history, culture and heritage due to us being multicultural, a global entity. It's about having our sovereignty also weakened by ongoing immigration and "diversity". It assumes that we are still considered terra nullius, or devoid of any culture or historical identity, or previous "baggage", and just a carte blanche to write upon. Australia is just a blank canvas to imprint upon and use. The urge to spread and consume and dominate is well entrenched in us humans, and the urge to take hold of "vacant" land and transform it into something for our use, and capitalize on it, is well and truly developed and encouraged in our modern times.

GroundswellSA, a group of farmers and food producers opposed to building developments engulfing valuable agricultural land, will be launched tomorrow with a guerrilla gardening event at Seaford Heights. As many as 200 "guerrilla gardeners" will build and plant a garden on an undisclosed plot in the area earmarked for housing development. The group is based at McLaren Vale, but has strong interest in the Adelaide Hills. They say they are not "anti-development" but just protecting farming land. Why don't they just admit to being "anti-development"? The paradigm of constant growth needed for our economy is not sustainable, and is actually fatalistic. When does growth stop? We are like bacteria growing in a closed system. What happens when all our fertile and arable soils become covered over and concreted with housing? What if Australia's agriculture, once we stop being able to fertilize soils, can't produce enough food? Future generations won't be able to support an economy based on growth. There is nothing "sustainable" about it. Food and wine growing areas should be protected, and our growth-based economy needs to be replaced with one based on stability. Our population growth is not due to excessive fertility or due to a natural growth rate. It is deliberately manipulated through our immigration numbers, and baby bonuses. Our government is running an Economy primarily, one that demands constant population growth. It's short-term-ism at its worst! Our descendants obviously won't be able to rely on such a misanthropic economic model. "Sustainable" development is a lie. Populations grew and spread due to cheap oil and technology, and it is in decline, like other non-renewable natural resources. Peak oil and peak soil will make our food security paramount. "Big Australia" must be avoided, and can be, for our sake and that of our descendants.

The government’s chief energy adviser predicts household bills will jump 30 per cent by mid-2013, as companies move towards the 20 per cent renewable energy target by 2020. People will have to pay the extra carbon tax on top of these already significant rises. The heavy infrastructure needed is for our existing population, but at the same time must keep abreast out outstrip the demands of a population boom. $11 billion in subsidies will be given to fossil fuel industries, including coal, each year, that would be better spent on renewables, directly. In Victoria, where the market is privatized and retailers are free to move rates as they see fit every six months, prices have risen an average of 8 per cent during the past year. Gas prices are also predicted to rise in coming years. "No amount of sugar-coating can disguise the fact that this tax on electricity and petrol will hit Australian families right now" said Shadow Climate Change Action Minister Greg Hunt. The carbon tax is a bribe to go towards reducing carbon emissions, but the costs will be poured onto the public, with no guarantees "market forces" will bring the desired outcome.

The Northern Territory coroner has declared a cattle station in the territory a restricted area after finding that a 17-year-old boy who worked there died of suspected arsenic poisoning. The teenager may have been exposed to the arsenic through groundwater or from treated timber. The tests are inconclusive as yet. It appears that authorities may have ignored recommendations for bore water testing in the Northern Territory. There's arsenic poisoning of at least eight cattle station residents. A report identifies the area surrounding Mount Bundy Station as being at high risk of arsenic concentrations above Australian drinking water guidelines. Up to 60 people, including a dozen residents, were advised on Saturday night that they would have to leave the station. The NT coroner has declared Mt Bundy Station, on the banks of the Adelaide River, a restricted area and has asked all residents and visitors to leave. The source of the arsenic was "unknown". According to Dr Gavin Mudd from Monash university: Basically the exposure of a lot of what used to be effectively crystalline rock that wasn't very leechable, by mining it, by blasting it and crushing it whether it becomes the tailings after say gold processing or the waste rock that is associated with say an open cut mine, that allows more water and oxygen and so on to get into that rock and help accelerate the chemistry of leeching the arsenic out of that rock.

Up to 500 stakeholders from northern Western Australia's cattle industry will meet in Broome today (16th June) with the aim of reviving live cattle exports to Indonesia as soon as possible. They are concerned about their financial futures. There's little concern about the horrific pain and grief caused to cattle exported during 10 years. They are concerned only for their own welfare. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said that the Australian ban on live export should serve as a challenge to become self-sufficient. Australian Farmers and pastoralists have set up their businesses, relying in government integrity and sound administration. They are betrayed too. Though eastern Indonesia's "Spice Islands" country's cuisine as a whole, developed largely as a result of spice-seeking immigrants. Ancient meals consisted of fish, fruits, and vegetables, including bananas, yams, coconut, and sugar cane. Although meals are generally simple, the plentiful use of various roots, spices, grasses, and leaves adds zest to most dishes. Beef products are consumed mostly by urbanites. Rural consumption of beef is kept in check by the need to maintain buffalo as draught animals and cows as milk producers. These animals are accustomed to being handled, and so their slaughter is not fraught with struggles like that of Australia's wild and free range Brahman cattle. Chicken remains the meat of choice – Indonesians generally eat twice as much chicken as beef. Soya-based tofu and 'tempeh' are an important part of the daily diet throughout the archipelago. The poor in Indonesia are periodically experiencing low scale famines. Due to the expected growth of world population until 2050 and the need to face climate change, the world will have to produce more food in the years to come. Lack of oil and fertilzers will mean that each nation must learn to be sustainable, and grow local crops. If farmers knowingly kept sending their animals to overseas developing nations knowing that they have no animal welfare standards and that the atrocities against them must be kept secret from the Australian public, then their economic foundations were based on false security and unethical foundations. Crying poor after 30 years of animal activist lobbying against the live export industry, and the revelations of sadism in hell-hole abattoirs, does not help us to feel sorry for the farmers. Industries boom, and bust. Many people lose job to overseas markets and when industries become outdated and unsustainable. Australia must come to terms with food security, soil depletion and sustainability issues of long-term livestock farming.

This is your opportunity to be involved in shaping Victoria’s economic reform agenda by contributing your views on important issues affecting the states productivity, participation and competitiveness. The Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission have today released an issues paper outlining a series of questions and topics the Commission would like to explore. A report into Victoria’s productivity, competitiveness and labour participation prepared by ACIL Tasman to inform the issues paper has also been released. An issues paper has been released to assist those wishing to participate in the inquiry. Submissions are invited by 29 July 2011. The issues paper outlines: • how to make a submission • issues on which the Commission is seeking feedback and further information • the Commission’s consultation processes, including the inquiry’s key dates. In addition, the report provides a preliminary assessment of Victoria’s competitive position in the areas of: • regulation and red tape reduction • infrastructure, including transport, water and waste-water, and energy • state taxes • education and skills • innovation • quality of living. Maybe reminding our politicians and administrators that there is more to our lives than economic growth, and that the basis of our economic and State's holistic welfare depends on environmental health, integrity and outputs. This means protecting our diminishing ecosystems, our wildlife, our soils and our waterways. By mail to: Victorian State-Based Reform Inquiry Victorian Competition & Efficiency Commission GPO Box 4379 Melbourne VIC 3001 OR By facsimile to: 03 9092 5845 By email: You can also register your interest by emailing your name and contact details to and include ‘Registration of Interest – State-Based Reform Agenda Inquiry’ in the subject heading.