(We) can do better

Today is the 95th Birthday of President John F Kennedy. JFK was a kind and selfless leader every bit as great in substance as his strikingly good appearance and charming personality. Amongst his other achievements, JFK literally saved the world from devastation on no less than three occasions when he over-ruled the wishes of his military Joint Chiefs of staff to launch all-out nuclear war. Contrary to lies peddled by phony left wing intellectuals, he strived to end the Vietnam War, just as he had used his influence as a Senator in the 1950's to stop the French colonial war against Algeria.[1]

The world was enormously fortunate in the extraordinary turn of events, both lucky and unlucky, that enabled Kennedy to rise to power.

During the Second World War in spite of back injury that would have disqualified just about anyone else, Kennedy volunteered for military service. He became Commander of a Patrol Torpedo Boat, PT 109, in the Solomon Islands north of Australia during the Second World War. On 2 August 1943 PT 109 sank after being rammed by a Japanese destroyer. Two crew members were killed and two others badly injured. In spite of his injured back, Kennedy was able to pull one of the injured seamen to a nearby island. After the surviving crew were ashore, Kennedy swam back to where he hoped to draw the attention of passing US warships with a lamp in order to seek help in the middle of the night. He fell sleep at one stage and was lucky not to drown. The crew were eventually rescued.

Because Kennedy had shown such selfless heroism, the rise in his political fortunes were unstoppable after he launched his political career in the US House of Representatives upon his return in 1946. In 1961, after narrowly winning the 1960 Presidential election, he became the youngest US president ever to serve at the age of 43.

As president, he lived up to all the highest expectation that others had placed in him. Tragically, JFK's presidency ended with his murder on 22 November 1963. The conspiracy to murder him was covered up by the Warren Commission, set up to supposedly investigate his killing. Since then, the corporate as well as phony left and phony alternative newsmedia have upheld the lie that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin who murdered JFK. This lie was demolished by,
amongst things, Oliver Stone's movie JFK of 1991. However, the establishment gatekeepers have, so far, far been able to hold back the harm that would be done to vested interests by widespread public knowledge of the truth and significance of JFK.

Footnotes

[1] As examples see, from "A Savage War of Peace" of 1977 by Alistair
Horne:

Page 247 of in a section within Chapter 11 entitled "Support from Senator John F. Kennedy": "Then in July Abdelkader Chanderli's influential friend in the Democratic Party, Senator John F. Kennedy, rose to make an important pronouncement in the United States Senate. He challenged Eisenhower and Dulles 'to place the influence of the United States behind efforts ... to achieve a solution which will recognise the ndependent personality of Algeria and establish the basis for a settlement interdependent with France and the neighbouring nations.' He accused United States policy of representing 'a retreat from the principles of independence and anti-colonialism'; and, elsewhere, that it furnished powerful ammunition to anti-Western propagandists through Asia and the Middle East. No speech on foreign affairs by Senator Kennedy attracted more attention, both at home and abroad, and under such pressure United States official policy on Algeria began to shift. Henceforth, instead of backing France at the United Nations, the United States would abstain."

Page 417: "By November it was almost a positive relief to watch the struggle of young Senator Kennedy for the presidency of the United States; though even he had launched his campaign with some pointed remarks about the necessity for France to withdraw from Algeria."

Page 463: "Both at home and abroad the pressures had been mounting on de Gaulle to make peace. In the United States John F Kennedy, the avowed friend of Algerian Independence had become and was soon leaning heavily on de Gaulle."

As great as Hornes's historical works appears to be he, seemingly inexplicably, is former President George W. Bush's favorite historian.

out Yapeen way in the old pub

long converted to a cottage

I've been looking again for the moon

in the window at night

like last year

every night

no moon

instead the voices of

gold rushers filling the dark

slaking dusty throats

sharing exaggerations

a well-turned ankle disappearing

into a back room

the Jaara people

unseen keeping watch

all-seeing

quizzing the drink

the music

the people

there's old Joe in the corner

with squeeze box

fit to beat the band

dancing the well-worn songs

Mary crying for old Ireland

on this hushed and moonless night

NOTES

Wednesday January 25 2012: voices

An Australian Farm Institute study provides a comprehensive review of what is currently known about the amount and location of Australian agricultural land, the rate of land use change occurring, and how governments make decisions both in Australia and internationally. Whether or not there will be sufficient good quality land available for agriculture in the future has not been a high priority issue for most of the past two hundred years.

Does Australia need a national policy to preserve agricultural land?

Obviously we do! This is a question being asked by the Australian Farm Institute

The rate of land use is changing, and it's important how governments make decisions both in Australia and internationally. Australia has the sixth largest land area and the lowest population density of almost any nation on earth, so the question of whether or not there will be sufficient good quality land available for agriculture in the future has not been a high priority issue for most of the past two hundred years. It's assumed that land is an infinite resource.

Our large land mass gives false sense of security, but Australia has only a little more than 6% arable land, irregular water supplies, and Australia features 96 percent desert. It lacks regular water, fertile soils and resources to carry its current population load. Yet, politicians remain bent on adding millions more people to Australia.

Obviously property development is more lucrative than horticulture, and their lobbyists are far more cash-up and powerful. Food security is not high on politicians' priority list.

According to the research report, Australia is being too reckless with its best agricultural land, and future generations might regret decisions that are currently being made about the future use of that land. With urban sprawl, mining, CSG and environmental demands taking more and more land, and foreign investors also purchasing significant areas, it is legitimate to ask whether Australia can realistically plan to become the future "food bowl of Asia". It's also legitimate to ask if our government's drive for perpetual economic growth be justified if it means we pay higher prices for imported food, something that may diminish in future years with global population reaches 9 billion.

While Australia appears to have plenty of land, in reality only about 3% is actually suitable for cropping, and even less of this is considered to be prime agricultural land. Low or high Population density and population size can't be compared to the nations in Europe of Asia with fertile soils, high rainfall and high human "carrying capacity".

The report concludes that Australia currently lacks a consistent and comprehensive understanding of where this land is located, or how much of it is being diverted from agriculture each year.

Australia is now a net importer of horticultural products, whereas it was a net exporter only a few years ago. Wheat, dairy, fishing and sugar production are all down from their previous peaks.

Earlier detailed research by researcher Dr McGovern, lecturer in the Queensland University of Technology’s school of economics and finance, found that Australia exports only around 25 per cent of its agricultural product at second-stage production, not 80 per cent as has often been supposed.

There's a great international market opportunity for a four-fold increase in food production in Australia, but there's no explanation on just this magnificent feat is going to be achieved, especially if climate change scientists are correct. A free-market economy has no parameters for the limitations of Nature, and that the security of domestic food supplies must be a priority over exports.

Once high immigration - the driver of our population growth - created jobs and an economy of scale, now our population growth is threatening our local fresh food supplies, and it must be slashed. We can't rely on imported food as global overpopulation will mean countries will need the food for their own populations. Food is more important than a "healthy" GDP!

Property development and real estate is obviously more lucrative than growing vegetables. It's about short-term profits and cash flows than real planning. What's the use of economic growth - a pseudonym now for population growth - without food security?

We must stabilize our numbers or we will be no better off than bacteria in a petri dish, bemoaning the lack of room for growth, knowing our final demise but being trapped by a leadership vacuum on population and its implications for food security.

The remarks made by prominent Australian businessman and environmentalist, Dick Smith that in 100 years time people in Australia will be starving to death is not implausible.

Minister for Sustainable Population Tony Burke remains silent, while our growth-based economy continues unfettered. . It's a number-free ministerial policy.

See also: The Groundwater Footprint: The Privatisation of the World's Water Resources of 16 August 2012.

The Stable Population Party Australia is reaching out to members and sympathisers in a series of networking events across Australia. Should be interesting and fun to meet like-minded people and help to organise a coordinated electoral response to the growth lobby that has taken over our country. (Candobetter Ed.)

Invitation to all sympathisers

A message from William Bourke, National Convenor of Stable Population Party of Australia:

We'd like to welcome members and non-member supporters to Stable Population Party networking events across Australia.
These social events present a great opportunity to engage with like-minded people on sustainability and population matters.

Each event will run for around 3 hours & include:

- Party update
- Opportunity to meet current candidates
- Opportunity to meet state coordinators to discuss policies, campaign support and expressions of interest in candidature
- Opportunity to purchase lunch/dinner & beverages

Details:

NSW

12pm on Saturday 2 June @ Edinburgh Castle Hotel, Sydney (L1, Lounge Bar):

http://www.edinburghcastlehotel.com.au

Queensland

6pm on Friday 8 June @ E'cco Bar, Brisbane:

http://www.eccobistro.com/ecco-bar.html

Victoria

12pm on Saturday 16 June @ Richmond Club Hotel, Richmond (L1, Balcony Bar):

http://www.richmondclubhotel.com.au

WA

12pm on Saturday 23 June @ The Court Hotel:

http://www.thecourt.com.au

ACT

12pm on Sunday 24 June @ The Kingston Hotel (Red Room):

73 Canberra Avenue, Kingston

For planning purposes, please RSVP ASAP by replying to this eNews or contact us through our website: CLICK HERE

Networking events: NT, SA & Tas

Would you like to attend a networking event in Darwin, Adelaide or Tasmania in July?

If so please contact us ASAP to express your interest. You can reply to this eNews or contact us through our website: CLICK HERE

Your support is vital...

Our grassroots community party relies on its members and supporters to make these events a success. We look forward to seeing you there!

Kind regards

William Bourke
National Convenor
On behalf of the national committee
STABLE POPULATION PARTY
www.populationparty.org.au

Like us on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/populationparty

Follow us on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/populationparty

"More than 50% of the people who come here under the permanent migration program end up in either Sydney or Melbourne competing with unemployed Australians for work." "If we go down the path of enterprise migration agreements, we will end up with a situation where we have foreign companies, using foreign workforces to send our resources in foreign ships to foreign countries for the use and enjoyment of foreign customers." "I'm supportive of the idea of the jobs board." "These projects will be built. If this takes another year or two, then, frankly, so what? "I am...confident that these resource projects will proceed and that labour resources are there provided Gina Rinehart and others are prepared to pay people appropriate rates ... and... training..." (Kelvin Thomson)

Transcript of Kelvin Thomson video on Enterprise Migration Agreements

KELVIN THOMSON: I wanted to talk this morning about Enterprise Migration Agreements. I do not support Enterprise Migration Agreements.

In the first instance, they are a confession of failure in regard to our permanent migrant worker program. Since the mid 1990s the permanent migrant worker program has been multiplied by more than five times."

This program is supposed to be meeting the needs of the mining boom. It is not doing that. In fact more than 50% of the people who come here under the permanent migration program end up in either Sydney or Melbourne competing with unemployed Australians for work.

If the permanent migrant worker program was successful, why is it that we turn to temporary migrant worker programs such as this one? The permanent migrant worker program should be properly targeted to meet the kind of needs that are being expressed here.

Secondly, if we go down the path of enterprise migration agreements, we will end up with a situation where we have foreign companies, using foreign workforces to send our resources in foreign ships to foreign countries for the use and enjoyment of foreign customers.

Now, this may be the idea of some people about how we spread the benefits of the mining boom but it's not my idea. If this is in the national interest I'll go hee for tiggy.[1]

The third issue is that Enterprise Migration Agreements come at the expense of indigenous Australians. We've seen recently a debate between Andrew Forrest and Gina Rinehart, where Andrew Forrest has said he wants to employ indigenous Austrlaians on mining projects. Gina Reinhart wants to bring in foreign workers. Andrew Forrest is right. Gina Reinhart is wrong. But, if we go down the path of enterprise migration agreements, we'll get the Gina Reinhart outcome at the expense of indigenous Australians. Under her proposal we're getting 1700 migrant workers and 100 aboriginal jobs. It should be the other way round.

High immigration undermines local training programs

JOURNALIST: Government is responsible for training. Isn't the situation where people are saying, I've got this massive project to build, construct or operate, but I don't have anyone to build it. Where is the government with in terms of the training of people like indigenous people you talk about?

KELVIN THOMSON: Well the government is engaged in training programs but it seems to me that the objective of these training programs is undermined if you bring in workers from outside. If we don't bring in workers from outside, we will have the training that people like Andrew Forrest say we need, and we will get outcomes in which indigenous Australians and other Australians get the jobs.

JOURNALIST: Isn't the issue that it needs to be built now and there isn't anyone to build it?

Mining Projects: Where's the fire?

KELVIN THOMSON: When you say it needs to be built now, I think that this suggests a lack of faith in market forces. If we pay people enough they will come, and these projects will be built. If this takes another year or two, then, frankly, so what? These resources have been here for hundreds of thousands of years. All the historical evidence suggests that they will increase in value over time and that they will be worth more to Australians over time than they are now. I am highly confident that these resource projects will proceed and that labour resources are there provided Gina Rinehart and others are prepared to pay people appropriate rates to experience the hardships of the Pilbara and prepared to engage in the training of indigenous Australians and other Australians so that they can do the jobs that are needed.
...
I think that the government should not proceed with the Enterprise Migration Agreement. I think that we should be putting the effort into training and skilling Australian workers, particularly in this instance, indigenous Australian workers.

Australia's immigration program far too large overall

...It's been my view for quite some time that both our permanent migrant worker program and our temporary migrant worker programs are too large and I think that what we're seeing here is effectively a confession of failure that the permanent migrant worker program is not delivering the outcomes that it's supposed to.

JOURNALIST: It's been said that the Prime Minister insisted on this "jobs board"[2]as a condition of the EBA. Why aren't you convinced that the Prime Minister's idea of the jobs board will protect Australian workers will ensure Australian workers are involved?

KELVIN THOMSON: I'm supportive of the idea of the jobs board. Indeed, I mentioned it in a speech in parliament over a year ago when I talked about issues to do with skilled migration and the fact that the manufacturing worker's union had set up their own skills register and were proposing the idea of a jobs board which I think it a good idea. I'm certainly of the view that it is a good idea, but unions are saying that there are abuses in relation to the temporary migrant worker programs, the 457 visa programs, and that they are not able to achieve an outcome where those workers are being payed in the same way that Australian workers are being payed. I had one union leader mention to me a case in the Pilbara where his advice is that Chinese workers are being payed 50 to 60 per cent of the Australian rate that he has raised it with the relevant officials but has not been able to get a satisfactory outcome. So people are concerned that if we have the migrant workers being brought in that they will be exploited. There have been many examples of 457 visas being exploited.

JOURNALIST: Do you have people in your electorate or people you know just generally who would love to be able to go and work on Gina Rinehart's project at a fly-in fly-out rate?

Australian workers displaced by foreign workers imported by companies

KELVIN THOMSON: I think that if people are payed appropriate wages and given appropriate training they will come. I've certainly had people in my electorate contacting me to say that they are interested in getting work in particular industries like IT, but in fact are not able to get that work because companies are bringing in people, either under the permanent worker program or the temporary worker program, at their expense.

NOTES

Headings supplied by Candobetter Editor.

[1] * hee for tiggy = an old expression, now sadly fading from the Australian lexicon, rooted in the childhood game of "chasey" also known as "tiggy-touchwood", abbreviated to "tiggy". If you were tigged - or touched - you were deemed to be "hee" and became the chaser. Obviously, to say that you would go hee voluntarily means that you're so sure of your argument that the dire possibility would never arise. Source of explanation was http://iamdoghearmesnore.blogspot.com.au/2009/03/yes-we-can-plagiarise.html

[2] Julia Gillard has promised no Australian worker will miss out on a job as a result of the Federal Government's decision to allow mining magnate Gina Rinehart to import more than 1700 workers for an iron ore project in Western Australia."Companies won't be able to bring in foreign workers if there is an Australian ready, able and willing to do the work on the jobs board," the Prime Minister said in Melbourne this afternoon.‘‘We will have a jobs board which will be a way for Aussies to know what’s happening in the resources sector and what the jobs are,’’ Ms Gillard said. Source: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/no-aussie-job-will-go-overseas-insists-gillard-20120526-1zbeg.html

Published on Thursday, May 24, 2012 by Common Dreams
by Ellen Brown

According to both the Mayan and Hindu calendars, 2012 (or something very close) marks the transition from an age of darkness, violence and greed to one of enlightenment, justice, and peace. It’s hard to see that change just yet in the events relayed in the major media, but a shift does seem to be happening behind the scenes; and this is particularly true in the once-boring world of banking.

In the dark age of Kali Yuga, money rules; and it is through banks that the moneyed interests have gotten their power. Banking in an age of greed is fraught with usury, fraud, and gaming the system for private ends. But there is another way to do banking, the neighborly approach of George Bailey in the classic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Rather than feeding off the community, banking can feed the community and local economy.

Big banks trading against local interest

Today the massive too-big-to-fail banks are hardly doing George Bailey-style loans at all. They are not interested in community lending. They are doing their own proprietary trading—trading for their own accounts—which generally means speculating against local interests. They engage in high-frequency program trading that creams profits off the top of stock market trades; speculation in commodities that drives up commodity prices; leveraged buyouts with borrowed money that can result in mass layoffs and factory closures; and investment in foreign companies that compete against our local companies.

We can’t do much to stop them. They’ve got the power, especially at the federal level. But we can quietly set up an alternative model, and that’s what is happening on various local fronts.

Alternative models

Most visible are the “Move Your Money” and “Occupy Wall Street” movements. According to the website of the Move Your Money campaign, an estimated ten million accounts have left the largest banks since 2010. Credit unions have enjoyed a surge in business as a result. The Credit Union National Association reported that in 2012, for the first time ever, credit union assets rose above $1 trillion. Credit unions are non-profit, community-minded organizations with fewer fees and less fine print than the big risk-taking banks; and their patrons are not just customers but owners, sharing partnership in a cooperative business.

Move “Our” Money: The Public Bank Movement

The Move Your Money campaign has been wildly successful in mobilizing people and raising awareness of the issues, but it has not made much of a dent in the reserves of Wall Street banks, which already had $1.6 trillion sitting in reserve accounts as a result of the Fed’s second round of quantitative easing in 2010. What might make a louder statement would be for local governments to divest their funds from Wall Street, and some local governments are now doing this. Local governments collectively have well over a trillion dollars deposited in Wall Street banks.

A major problem with the divestment process is finding local banks large enough to take the deposits. One proposed solution is for states, counties and cities to establish their own banks, capitalized with their own rainy day funds and funded with their own revenues as a deposit base.

State Bank of North Dakota amazing exception to the rule

Today only one state actually does this, North Dakota. North Dakota is also the only state to have escaped the credit crisis of 2008, sporting a sizeable budget surplus every year since. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, the lowest default rate on credit card debt, and no state government debt at all. The Bank of North Dakota (BND) has an excellent credit rating and returns a hefty dividend to the state every year.

The BND model hasn’t yet been duplicated in other states, but a movement is afoot. Since 2010, 18 states have introduced legislation of one sort or another for a state-owned bank.

Values-based Banking: Too Sustainable to Fail

Meanwhile, there is a strong movement at the local level for sustainable, “values-based” banking—conventional banks committed to responsible lending and service to the local community. These are George Bailey-style banks, which base their decisions first and foremost on the needs of people and the environment.

One of the leaders internationally is Triodos Bank, which has local offices in the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Germany. Its website says that it makes Socially Responsible Investments that are selected according to strict sustainability criteria and overseen by an international panel of “stakeholder” representatives representing various community, environmental, and worker interest groups. Investments include the financing of more than 1,000 organic and sustainable food production projects, more than 300 renewable energy projects, 33 fair trade agricultural exporters in 22 different countries, 85 microfinance institutions in 43 countries, and 398 cultural and arts projects.

Two U.S. banks exemplifying the model are One PacificCoast Bank and New Resource Bank. Operating in California, Oregon and Washington, One PacificCoast is comprised of a sustainable community development bank with around $300 million in assets and a non-profit foundation (One PacificCoast Foundation). Its commercial lending business focuses on such sectors as specialty agriculture, renewable energy, green building, and low-income housing. Foundation activities include programs to “help eliminate discrimination, encourage affordable housing, alleviate economic distress, stimulate community development and increase financial literacy.”

New Resource Bank is a California based B-corporation (“Benefit”) with $171 million in assets, which focuses its lending and banking services on local green and sustainable businesses. New Resource was recognized in 2012 as one of the “Best for the World” businesses, being in the top 10 percent of all certified B-Corporations and scoring more than 50 percent higher than 2,000 other sustainable businesses in overall positive social and environmental impact.

Risks in choosing banks

All this might be good for the world, but isn’t investing locally in a values-based bank riskier and less profitable than putting your money on Wall Street? Not according to a study commissioned by the Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV). The 2012 study compared the financial profiles between 2007 and 2010 of 17 values-based banks with 27 Globally Systemically Important Financial Institutions (GSIFIs)—basically the too-big-to-fail banks, including Bank of America, JPMorgan, Barclays, Citicorp and Deutsche Bank. According to the GABV report, values-based banks delivered higher financial returns than some of the world’s largest financial institutions, with a return on assets averaging above 0.50 percent, compared to just 0.33 percent for the GSIFIs; and returns on equity averaging 7.1 percent, compared to 6.6 percent for the GSIFIs. They appeared to be stronger financially, with both higher levels of and better quality capital; and they were twice as likely to invest their assets in loans.

Community Development Financial Institutions CDFIs

Along with the values-based banks, community investment is undertaken in the United States by Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), including Community Development Banks, Community Development Credit Unions, Community Development Loan Funds, Community Development Venture Capital Funds, and Microenterprise Loan Funds. According to the CDFI Coalition, there are over 800 CDFIs certified by the CDFI Fund, operating in every state in the nation and the District of Columbia. In 2008 (the last year for which a report is available), CDFIs invested $5.53 billion “to create economic opportunity in the form of new jobs, affordable housing units, community facilities, and financial services for low-income citizens.”

Two of many interesting examples are the Alternatives Federal Credit Union and Boston Community Capital. Alternatives FCU, located in Ithaca, New York, is committed to community development and social change and is part of the Alternatives Group, which includes a non-profit corporation (Alternatives Community Ventures); a 40-year old trade association of community groups, cooperatives, worker owned businesses, and individuals (Alternatives Fund); and a not-for-profit organization that facilitates secondary capital investment in the credit union (Tomkins County Friends of Alternatives, Inc.). The credit union has over $70 million in assets and offers many innovative financial products, including Individual Development Accounts—special savings accounts for low income residents that offer matching deposits of 2 to 1 up to a certain amount—in addition to more traditional services such as loans for minority and women-owned businesses, and affordable mortgages. The credit union also offers small business development (classes, seminars, consultation, and networking programs), free tax preparation, and a student credit union.

Although its lending programs focus on lower-income borrowers, Alternatives FCU has had lower delinquency and charge-off rates than many major banks that avoid these types of customers. Boston Community Capital (BCC) is a CDFI that is not actually a bank but invests in projects that provide affordable housing and jobs in lower-income neighborhoods. BCC includes a loan fund, a venture fund, a mortgage lender, a real estate consultation organization, a solar energy fund, and a federal New Markets Tax Credit investment vehicle. Since 1985, it has invested over $700 million in local organizations and businesses. These funds have helped build or preserve more than 12,800 affordable housing units, as well as child care facilities for almost 9,000 children and health care facilities that reach 56,000 people. Their investments have helped renovate 850,000 square feet of commercial real estate, generate 5.9 million KW hours of solar energy capacity, and create more than 1,500 jobs.

Less Money for Banks and More for Workers: The Models of Germany and Japan

Values-based banks and CDFIs are a move in the right direction, but their market share in the U.S. remains small. To see the possibilities of a banking system with a mandate to serve the public, we need to look abroad.

Germany and Japan are export powerhouses, in second and third place globally for net exports. (The U.S. trails at 192nd.) One competitive advantage for both of these countries is that their companies have ready access to low-cost funding from cooperatively-owned banks.

In Germany, about half the total assets of the banking system are in the public sector, while another substantial chunk is in cooperative savings banks. Germany’s strong public banking system includes eleven regional public banks (Landesbanken) and thousands of municipally-owned savings banks (Sparkassen). After the Second World War, it was the publicly-owned Landesbanks that helped family-run provincial companies get a foothold in world markets. The Landesbanks are key tools of German industrial policy, specializing in loans to the Mittelstand, the small-to-medium size businesses that drive the country’s export engine.

Because of the Landesbanks, small firms in Germany have as much access to capital as large firms. Workers in the small business sector earn the same wages as those in big corporations, have the same skills and training, and are just as productive. In January 2011, the net value of Germany’s exports over its imports was 7 percent of GDP, the highest of any nation. But it hasn’t had to outsource its labor force to get that result. The average hourly compensation (wages plus benefits) of German manufacturing workers is $48—a full 50 percent more than the $32 hourly average for their American counterparts.

Banks in Japan

In Japan, the banks are principally owned not by shareholders but by other companies in the same keiretsu or industrial group, in a circular arrangement in which the companies basically own each other. Even when there are nominal outside owners, corporations are managed so that the bulk of the wealth generated by the corporation flows either to the workers as income or to investment in the company, making the workers and the company the beneficial owners.

U.S. banks

Since the 1980s, U.S. companies have focused on maximizing short-term profits at the expense of workers and longer-term goals. This trend stems in part from the fact that they are now funded largely by capital from shareholders who own the company and want simply to grow their returns. According to a 2005 report from the Center for European Policy Studies (PDF 566K)(in Brussels, equity financing is more than twice as important in the U.S. as in Europe, accounting for 116 percent of GDP compared with 62 percent in Japan and 54 percent in the eurozone countries. In both Europe and Japan, the majority of corporate funding comes not from investors but from borrowing, either from banks or from the bond market.

Funding with low-interest loans from cooperatively-owned banks leaves greater control of the company in the hands of employees who either own it or have much more say in its operation. Access to low-interest loans can also slash production costs. According to German researcher Margrit Kennedy, when interest charges are added up at every level of production, 40 percent of the cost of goods, on average, comes from interest.

Globally, the burgeoning movement for local, cooperatively-owned and community-oriented banks is blazing the trail toward a new, sustainable form of banking. The results may not yet qualify as the Golden Age prophesied by Hindu cosmology, but they are a major step in that direction.

This piece originally appeared on Alternet as part of a their five-part series titled “New Economic Visions”

About the author - Ellen Brown

Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. She is president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org, and has websites atWebofDebt.com and EllenBrown.com.

Previously published on Global Research TV, YouTube

Retired Captain Ray Lewis served within the ranks of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Police Department for nearly a quarter of a century. Now he is at odds against the force’s higher ups, however, over his role with Occupy Wall Street.

Captain Lewis became a regular at protest and rallies since the infancy of the Occupy movement last year. Regularly donning his Philadelphia PD uniform, Lewis was caught at demonstrations across the country demanding for changes within the system. Speaking with Russia Today (RT), though, the 24-year veteran of the force says it hasn’t been easy.

After first involving himself with OWS, Lewis says he received a letter from the department condemning his uniformed protests. “They want to make sure that no other officers join me in promoting this Occupy movement,” he tells RT. According to the captain, the aesthetic of a uniformed officer rallying against the backbone of the law enforcement industry is the reason behind the department’s demands.

“It is my belief that they were pressured by corporate America, because the one sign I carry on a daily basis is to ask people to watch the documentary Inside Job,” says Lewis. “Inside Job is a scathing, indicting film of banks, specifically in the 2008 financial collapse, and anybody who watches that documentary will fully understand the corruption of our banks in this country.”
The ties between the police and the nation’s financial institutions might not be clear cut, but Lewis attests that it is certainly there.

“In Philadelphia, the Fraternal Order of Police — a lot of cops want to be the president of that union — and they have elections. And these elections are run just like any other political election: they are based on money. A lot of advertising goes into these elections and those cops don’t pay for that advertising out of their back pockets. This advertising is paid for by corporations, banks, financial institutions.

“Subsequently, when you are elected, you are beholden to those financial institutions. And when I come out condemning those financial institutions, if the president of the [union] wants to get continuing contributions, he better pay heed to the banks,” explains Lewis. Now, he says, his benefits with the Philly PD could be revoked if the department decides to pursue an investigation into his role with the protest movement.

Lewis says that the union’s response to his participation in the Occupy movement wasn’t exactly what he had expected. He tells RT he “was taken aback” when he received a letter in the mail from high higher-ups at the Fraternal Order of Police.

“They threatened me with having a hearing, perhaps to expel me,” he says. “I was surprised that they took that extent, without even giving me the courtesy of a phone call and finding out exactly what I was doing; what I was about.”

After going public with his grievances over his demands, Lewis was let off the hook — for now. He says that the way the department acted over his involvement with the Occupy movement should be a chilling wake up call to the rest of the country, though.

“When they come out and say what I’m doing is illegal or improper and give me an order to immediately cease and desist wearing my uniform…or they will take any and all unnecessary action to stop me, what’s so egregious about this is it sends the message to officers that they can violate people’s First Amendment rights,” he says.

Today Lewis says he has yet to be expelled but is still sure that the department will continue to investigate his role with OWS. As for the movement itself, he says he has no expectations but is still behind it 100 percent.

“It’s not going to do any good wondering where it’s going to go,” he says. “I’d rather spend my time and my positive energy on determining what path I can take, what can I do to further the goals of the movement.”

The signs continue to gather of a Bulldozer apocalypse for Melbourne and her citizens' democracy and our formerly quiet peaceful lives. Our leaders are not on our side. Not in Melbourne and not in any other Australian city.

This gives you an idea of the push by the Developers Union (The Property Council of Australia) to walk all over the rest of us. Developers have taken over government.

Watch out or you will find yourself 'renewed'!

Australian Financial Review, Tuesday 22/5/12, page 57 "Melbourne Rushes to Meet Urban Renewal Targets", describes an urban renewal briefing hosted by the Property Council of Victoria at the State Library on Monday, where a study into Melbourne's urban renewal was launched backed by Charter Keck Cramer 'research'.

Melbourne falls over itself to Meet Urban Renewal Targets: Key Points

1. A record 14 960 new dwellings will be constructed next year in existing suburbs

2. Major residential urban renewal is expected to account for 38% of Melbourne's total new housing supply over the next two years (short of the 53% govt. target).

3. Almost half the the urban renewal required between 2005-14 will happen over the next three years.

4. Number of apartment, detached and medium-density dwellings is tipped to increase.

5. "Ms Cunich said the study helped to explain why development in urban areas was more effective in some suburbs than others. ....

The Victorian government has a great opportunity to really nail smart urban renewal".

6. Biggest increase over next two years in Stonnington and Yarra Council areas.

AFR Tuesday 22/5/12, page 56 "Frustrations mount over Vic planning", describes the recent review, quotes developers and opponents. "The DLA Piper recommendations outlined the need for statutory separation between the planning department and the Minister".

AFR Tuesday 22/5/12, page 49, "Developers slam NSW system", complains about the NSW Independent Planning Assessment Commission rejecting large housing projects (Coalition govt. handed planning power back to Councils for State significant projects).

Human exposure to 1080 is very severely restricted by law, for obvious reasons. The same does not apply to other species in baited areas. The major animal welfare concern over the use of 1080 relates to its extreme cruelty and its lack of an antidote. The major environmental concern relates to its effects on non target animals, either through ingestion of baits or by secondary poisoning.

Article by Sheila Newman with Maryland Wilson, President, Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC)

1080, sodium fluoracetate, is all bad news

1080, sodium fluoracetate- for which there is no antidote, is cheap and easy to use, but a cruel solution.

(Photo of Eastern Grey joey, "Acacia," by Brett Clifton.The late Dr Peter Rawlinson La Trobe University zoologist stated in 1987 (as an Australian Conservation Foundation Councillor):

“The wallaby does not know the carrots will poison and kill her...they are laced with 1080; she will die and her joey will starve! There is no antidote to the progressively slow and agonising death...as her functions fail...” Photo: Brett Clifton “When ingested, wallabies, possums, wedge-tailed eagles that feed on smaller prey are progressively debilitated and die a slow, agonizing death as its systems fail. Death may ultimately result from a variety of causes ranging from heart failure to suffocation. There is no antidote to 1080 poisoning”.

For these reasons, human exposure to 1080 is very severely restricted by law. The same does not apply to other species in baited areas. The major animal welfare concern over the use of 1080 relates to its extreme cruelty and its lack of an antidote. The major environmental concern relates to its effects on non target animals, either through ingestion of baits or by secondary poisoning... the toxic chemical that slowly kills.

Secondary poisoning

Secondary poisoning occurs when animals, such as birds of prey, eat poisoned mammals. Falcons and eagles are a case in point. Many of these animals are increasingly rare:

"Australia and its territories host 35 species of birds of prey: 24 diurnal raptors and 11 owls, many of which are endemic. Nine species and as many subspecies are listed as threatened nationally and/or regionally....

As predators at the top of food chains they are vulnerable to secondary poisoning and the accumulation of persistent pesticides, and subject to persecution." Source: http://www.birdlife.org.au/documents/OTHPUB-Raptors.pdf

Pets and domestic animals victims of 1080

Dogs and even horses are at serious risk. Here is a case in New Zealand:

"The land treated could easily have been treated for possum control by safer alternative methods, ie. trapping and ferratox in bait stations, as it is NOT REMOTE, NOT INNACCESSIBLE, and NOT RUGGED TERRAIN.

It is obvious from the position of the animal, the damage to its leg, the vomited lungs and the distended veins, that this animal died a horrible and cruel death. Deer have been observed to have tried to rip open their own bellies in their agony, and have inflicted similar and worse damage to their bodies while under the effects of 1080. Dogs are driven insane by the excruciating pain inflicted upon them before succombing to a cruel death. Poisoned possums can travel several kms and may take up to 18 hours to die." Source: http://emigratetonewzealand.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/1080-3/

Dingos are a better idea than 1080

The alternative idea of supporting the return of terrestrial predators adapted to Australian conditions has recently been the subject of serious discussion, most recently and fascinatingly in this article by scientists, Corey Bradshaw and Euan Ritchie: "Can Australia afford the dingo fence?" The authors write:

"...Why do we invest billions of dollars in feral animal control and the subsequent recovery plans for endangered wildlife using the same techniques for decades, when a more proactive and natural alternative exists? It’s a solution mired in controversy because it involves yet another “introduced” predator – the dingo.

...And poisoning is not the answer either. In addition to killing non-target native species, baiting dingoes might in fact result in increased dingo densities due to social breakdown of the pack, resulting in increasing attacks on stock, not to mention a higher likelihood of hybridisation with feral dogs. Baiting also leads to more juvenile dingoes."

Article by Sheila Newman with Maryland Wilson, President, Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC)

Campbell Newman is permitting bauxite mining within the original buffer zone of the wild river reserve John Howard gave taxpayer support to after Steve Irwin's death in 2006. Bauxite mining is especially hazardous to tropical wetlands. Australia's Steve Irwin was loved by the world and arguably the most successful wildlife defender of the late 20th and early 21st century, eras not known for their sympathy with nature or democracy. This seems like an environmental and unpatriotic obscenity.

Concrete connection Campbell

We all know how difficult it is to chisel any protection for nature out of governments, so the Wild Rivers Act 2005 almost certainly underestimated the buffers necessary to protect Australia's wild rivers. Now Queensland's new Premier, Campbell Newman, a man many will already associate with grandiose failed concrete projects that depend on public money and bauxite, is going along with mining's song of how they can open-cut mine pollutant, water and energy intensive projects ever closer to these fragile river systems.

In "Wenlock Wild River declaration to be lifted," Courier Mail (Queensland) 23 April 2012, Brian Williams, writes that Cape Alumina Mining is set to mine bauxite in the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve in Cape York. This rape of the wilderness is now possible due to the new Queensland Premier, Campbell Newman, weakening recent conservation laws that protected the reserve under the Wild Rivers Act.

The Wild Rivers Act 2005

The Wild Rivers Act 2005 says, "Mining leases—tenement conditions for granted or renewed leases: Only low-impact exploration activities and specified works, such as roads and pipelines are permitted on the surface of a high preservation area or a special floodplain."..."Prospecting permits—tenement conditions for granted or renewed permits
A permit cannot be granted over land in an HPA, SFMA or a nominated waterway." (Source: http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/factsheets/pdf/water/wr18.pdf Bauxite mining is high impact and particularly problematic for tropical wetlands because it affects hydrology, changes water acidity and soil structure. This damages river health and aquatic creatures and carries through to land-animals and birds. The operation requires substantial clearing for open cut mining and the roads leading in and out of the mining area, as well as infrastructure for accommodation, offices, storage and processing. Fluoride is used in the processing of bauxite to get aluminium. The industry is energy and water intensive.[1]

Newman was formerly Mayor of Brisbane and known for his gung-ho participation in inflicting massive money-losing private-public partnered tunnels on Brisbane despite sustained public protest. Not then a liberal party member, he was imported to lead the Queensland Liberal Party just prior to the recent state elections. This bizarre decision replaced long-term liberal member, Dr John-Paul Langebroek as leader. Dr Langebroek had questioned privatisation and corruption in the former Labor government. Campbell Newman is pro-privatisation.

In a rare environmental gestures, former Liberal Prime Minister, John Howard, had allocated public money to help fund the purchase of the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve after Irwin was stung to death by a stingray in 2006. The Wild Rivers legislation was an exceptional creation of a former Labor Government, not known overall for its respect for nature. Bauxite provides feedstock for aluminium production and is used in the cement industry and in the manufacture of building materials and many other mass-produced items, including soda cans, cosmetics, artificial gemstones and aluminium products like saucepans and cars. Expansion of bauxite mining is a symptom of overdevelopment associated with overpopulation and a throw-away commodity based economy that depends on huge energy expenditure and costs us all quality of life and environmental amenity. Currently in Australia these ills are exacerbated by a boom and bust mentality that is encouraging rapid strip-mining of anything that can be dug up and exported. This culture is impoverishing our country.

Democracy treated as just "Politics"

Queensland Natural Resources and Mines Minister Andrew Cripps reportedly said that mining companies would still face strict regulations after Wild Rivers Act was changed, but that "...politics won't be getting in the road." Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-24/qld-government-moves-to-review-wild-rivers-laws/3969460

One wonders at the 'politics' that see the reversal of environmental protection in tropical forested North Australia, at the behest of the mining industry and Campbell Newman's election promises.

All in all this is terrible news for biodiversity, nature and democracy in Queensland. It is also incredibly sad in its disrespect for Steve Irwin's memory and contribution to our land.

What is a wild river declaration?

(Source of this information is http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/wildrivers/declared_areas.html)

A wild river declaration is a statutory document under the Wild Rivers Act, which aims to preserve  a river that has all, or almost all, of its natural values intact. This is done by regulating, through the declaration, certain new development activities that have the potential to impact on the river’s natural values. A declaration sets out:

• the extent of the declared wild river area and its various management areas
• any caps on resources that can be taken in the declared wild river area (e.g. water)
• any rules or limits that must be complied with when undertaking new development activities (such as quarrying, agriculture and mining) in the declared wild river area
• any development assessment codes that must be applied.

A river system is declared a wild river area where it has all, or almost all, of its natural values intact. This means the riverine processes of the river (and other natural values associated with the river such as wildlife corridor function) have not been significantly altered from their natural state. Special features (which are on- or off-stream elements of the river network), may also play a significant role in maintaining the natural values of the river system.

A wild river declaration outlines where new development can occur in the wild rivers area and under what conditions. Wild river requirements do not apply to everyday activities such as feeding stock, refuelling machinery or fishing and camping along the rivers, or to developments existing at the time of declaration.

NOTES

"The production of aluminium takes in three main processes, bauxite mining, refining of bauxite into alumina and finally the electrolytic reduction of alumina into aluminium. Each process has its own set of environmental issues.

Bauxite Mining can have significant particulate/dust emissions due to the extraction process that involves explosives and the transporting of raw materials to the smelter.

Bauxite refining (Bayer Process) requires significant amounts of water and energy to separate the alumina from bauxite. producing gaseous emissions that include particulates, SO2 and NOx.

Aluminium refining (Hall Heroult Process) uses sodium aluminium fluoride(cryolite) and an electric current to electrolyse alumina to aluminium. The process is energy intensive. Emissions include fluorides and particulates. SO2, NOx and CO are also generated by the power stations used to supply the refinery with electricity.

Global warming is of special interest to the aluminium industry as approximately 14 MWhr/tonne is required for the aluminium refining process resulting in associated high levels of CO2 greenhouse emissions." Source: http://www.ecotech.com/applications/aluminium-industry

"There is one announcement in the budget which I cannot in all good conscience overlook and with which I strongly disagree. The government has increased the permanent migrant worker program from 125,000 to over 129,000. This is heading in absolutely the wrong direction. We should be cutting the number of migrant workers, returning it to the level it was in the mid-1990s —around 25,000. This is because, firstly, Australia has big cost-of-living and congestion problems arising from our rapid population growth, and increases the number of foreign workers only makes these problems worse." Kelvin Thomson - see last four paras this article.

Speech by Kelvin Thomson, Monday, 21 May 2012, House of Representatives, recorded in Hansard, p.96.

Mr KELVIN THOMSON (Wills) (19:34): I rise to speak in support of the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2012-2013 and cognate bills, which help create a budget that continues the Australian government's tradition of sound economic management, assisting those who are most in need and supporting those sections of the economy struggling under the pressures of a high exchange rate and a two-speed economy.

This budget has taken the tough decisions needed to balance the books. Its core theme of economic responsibility stands in stark contrast to the shamelessly shallow budget reply delivered by the Leader of the Opposition—an unflattering commentary both on his economic illiteracy and on the quality of modern-day political debate where spin doctors come up with one single proposal designed to occupy the airwaves for 30 seconds and draw attention away from the absence of any serious, detailed, costed budget alternative. On this occasion it was the proposal regarding languages other than English, but frankly it could have been anything. Anything will suffice so long as it distracts attention from the total absence of numbers in the opposition leader's response—a budget reply without numbers or figures. It reminded me of the pub with no beer!

The opposition leader treats the Australian people as fools prepared to trust him as Prime Minister without the faintest idea of which government programs and benefits he would keep and which ones he would axe. The opposition leader's budget reply shows the Liberal Party is still besotted by the free market and globalisation. But, as John Quiggin has identified in his book Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us, the assumptions behind neoclassical economics have been laid bare by the global financial crisis. The extra investment generated by more favourable tax treatment is supposed to be allocated efficiently so as to produce higher rates of long-term economic growth, but the economic crisis has shown that success was built on sand. Much of the extra investment went into real estate or into speculative ventures that collapsed when the bubble burst. Having cut taxes drastically, governments were left with inadequate financial resources to convince now-cautious investors that their bonds were a safe investment. More generally, the global financial crisis has exposed the view that incomes accruing to different groups in the community are an accurate reflection of their marginal contribution.

The opposition leader talked about deficit and debt.
He did not tell us that Howard government policies resulted in the spending of 94 per cent of a $330 billion increase in tax revenue from 2004-05 from the mining boom mark 1. This in turn forced the hand of the Reserve Bank, which pushed interest rates higher to contain inflation.

The opposition leader raised the deficits of the past four years. Again, he conveniently overlooked the global financial crisis, and the effective measures undertaken by the government to protect Australia from that crisis. The OECD has found that Australia's fiscal stimulus measures were amongst the most effective in the OECD in terms of stimulating economic activity and supporting employment. The Nobel Prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz lauded the Labor government's stimulus spending, saying:

Not only was it the right amount, it was extraordinarily well structured, with careful attention to what would stimulate the economy in the shorter run, the medium term and the long term.

When I look around the world, it was, I think, probably the best-designed stimulus program in the world and you should be happy that in fact it worked in exactly the way it was designed to work.

In fact we are in a better budgetary position today than we would have been had unemployment risen, as it would have done had Joe Hockey been Treasurer.

The budget is in better shape than it would have been because the largest item on the revenue side—the pay-as-you-go taxes—has defied the trend of falling revenue. Personal tax collections are, in fact, stronger today than Treasury thought they would be at the depths of the GFC panic in early 2009.

The opposition talks about net public debt. The budget papers outline that net public debt will peak in 2011-12 at 9.6 per cent of gross domestic product. Most countries, and every large Western economy, would love this result. By comparison the average net debt position of the major advanced economies is expected to be around 93 per cent of GDP in 2016 and 2017. Our public debt is trivial compared to the OECD average.

Other countries would love to be in our shoes.

The strength of our public finances is a key reason behind Australia receiving a AAA credit rating with a stable outlook from all three major rating agencies for the first time in our history. We are one of only eight countries that currently meet this standard. Returning to surplus sends a strong message of confidence to the est of the world during a period of heightened global uncertainty.

I want to particularly welcome those initiatives that support manufacturing, invest in the nation's universities and enhance skills training. The pattern of growth in the Australian economy is uneven, with the resources and resource related parts of the economy growing strongly. Business investment as a percentage of GDP is expected to reach a record, with companies planning to invest $120 billion in the resources sector in 2012-13, or around 150 per cent more than two years ago. The resources and resources-related sectors of the economy are likely to average growth of nearly nine per cent per year over the next two years, accounting for 15 to 20 per cent of total GDP. Let me note in passing that this makes a nonsense of those predictions of doom and gloom in the mining and resources sector over the mining tax and the carbon price made by some big mining businesses and their Liberal and National Party puppets.

In stark contrast, the non-mining part of the Australian economy is forecast to expand at an average annual rate of just two per cent over the same period.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is facing challenging conditions, which I know of first hand from the recent pressures on components manufacturers in my own seat of Wills. Manufacturing employed 997,000 Australians in November 2010, but this fell to 945,000 by November 2011, a fall of over 50,000 workers or over five per cent of the industry's workforce.

Although the relative decline of Australian manufacturing has been a multidecade trend, its contraction has accelerated in recent years. Eighty-six thousand manufacturing jobs were lost between mid-2001 and mid-2011. It would appear the loss of manufacturing jobs is gathering pace. Total employment in the industry fell below one million in May 2010 for the first time in decades. Of the 86,000 net jobs lost in the industry in the past decade, 69,000 were lost between February and August last year. This is a troubling picture. The decline in manufacturing's share of employment has been more rapid in Australia than in most other developed countries.

The ACTU has concluded that it is conceivable that Australia will soon have fewer workers employed inmanufacturing, as a proportion of total employment, than any other developed country. I regard it as incredibly important that we stop this from happening.

There has been plenty of research to show that manufacturing is essential for economies.
Manufacturing provides better-paid jobs, on average, than service industries, is a big source of innovation, helps to reduce trade deficits and creates opportunities in the growing 'clean' economy, such as recycling and green energy. These are all good reasons for a country to engage in it.

Technological innovation is important to growth in manufacturing. Advances in computer integrated manufacturing can increase productivity by saving businesses time. Increased efficiency is not the only benefit of computer integrated manufacturing.
In addition, Australian innovators can license their technology for local or overseas use. Improvements in CIM can also reduce geographic constraints, allowing Australian companies to operate more effectively through global supply chains. The NBN is an important development for further improvements to compute integrated manufacturing.

In the budget the Australian government has recognised the importance of innovation in manufacturing by investing $30 million over four years to establish a Manufacturing Technology Innovation Centre to bring our brightest researchers and manufacturers together to drive innovation through new and improved industrial products and processes.

It will establish sectoral collaboration to support major manufacturers, small and medium enterprises, industry bodies and research agencies to create solutions in their production lines. It will help them realise new market opportunities through harnessing new technologies, business processes and technical knowledge.

The Manufacturing Technology Innovation Centre is consistent with the Prime Minister's Taskforce on Manufacturing, and demonstrates this government's commitment to facilitating the transition of manufacturing to 21st century technologies and processes. This stands in stark contrast to the opposition, who would pull the rug from underneath the manufacturing sector and allow it to wither and die.

Manufacturing is important to our economy. Without the initiatives of the Labor government, the high Australian dollar will see manufacturing continue to retreat, and we will end up with a two-state economy.

Queensland and Western Australia will benefit from the mining boom, but other states, like my state of Victoria, will not.

The ACTU has concluded that it is conceivable that The budget's $714 million loss carry-back scheme will Australia will soon have fewer workers employed in help support businesses that are not in the mining fast lane of the economy. In 2012-13, companies will be able to carry back losses incurred in that year of up to $1 million so they get a refund against tax previously paid. From 2013-14, companies will be able to carry back losses for two years. This means a manufacturing, tourism, education, retail and construction business which is currently profitable and paying tax will know that, if it undertakes investments in 2012-13 that initially result in a loss, they will get a tax refund of up to $300,000 when they lodge their 2012-13 tax return.
This measure will provide assistance to nearly 110,000 companies.

Higher education teaching and learning will also see an increased funding commitment, of $38.8 billion over four years from 2012-13. Government funding to the university sector in 2011 was around 30 per cent higher than in 2007. Training more students will help Australia meet emerging skills shortages and deliver a highly skilled, productive and innovative workforce.

Immigration

There is one announcement in the budget which I cannot in all good conscience overlook and with which I strongly disagree. The government has increased the permanent migrant worker program from 125,000 to over 129,000. This is heading in absolutely the wrong direction. We should be cutting the number of migrant workers, returning it to the level it was in the mid-1990s —around 25,000. This is because, firstly, Australia has big cost-of-living and congestion problems arising from our rapid population growth, and increases the number of foreign workers only makes these problems worse.

Secondly, it is not true that we are short of workers.
We have 600,000 people out of work, and the budget papers indicate that unemployment will go to 5.5 per cent this year—that is, it will rise. Furthermore, it is government policy—and I totally support it—to lift our workforce participation rate, bringing people who are presently on pensions into the workforce. We are short of jobs rather than short of people. The idea that we are short of workers is wrong.

To give the House an example of what I am on about, there has been a debate between Andrew Forrest and Gina Rinehart about where workers for their mining companies should come from. Gina Rinehart wants to bring them in from overseas. Andrew Forrest wants to find local workers, particularly Aboriginal workers. I think Andrew Forrest is right and Gina Rinehart is wrong. But, for as long as we continue to run a massive program of migrant workers—permanent migrant worker numbers are up from 24,000 in 1996 to over 129,000 now, and temporary migrant worker numbers are up from less than 40,000 a decade ago to more than 90,000 last year—Gina Rinehart's view will prevail, and the mines will employ foreign workers, not local ones.

In conclusion, the 2012-13 budget spreads the benefits of the mining boom to help families on low and middle incomes with the cost of living and provide much needed help to small business while still balancing the books as we need to do. This budget also supports businesses in meeting the challenges and opportunities of the mining boom through a loss carry-back reform, while support for skills training and our universities will help us adapt to the structural changes in our economy and facilitate innovation. It continues the foundation for lower inflation and lower interest ates than we had under the opposition, and lower unemployment than we would have if they were to be returned to government. I commend the bills to the House.

Kelvin Thomson's home page.

"Canberra's Nature parks will be closed tomorrow for a "cull" of Eastern Grey Kangaroos. About 2000 are to be slaughtered for a "sustainable" number, to protect the flora and fauna. Polls of about 600 residents reveal that 79% of the city want the killings to go ahead. It's ironical that 9 "Nature" parks will be closed, under that assumption that kangaroos are not part of Nature and a threat to conservation efforts and sustainability.

Endangered flora and fauna are being threatened by "over-abundant eastern grey kangaroos". Just how does Daniel Iglesias, the public servant responsible for the decision, actually evaluate what is "abundant" or "sustainable"?

There are never any government polls or public debate on what is a sustainable human population, for Canberra or any city. Kangaroos are native animals, living in harmony with the environment, and softy-treading animals on the Earth. Humans, on the other hand, drive cars, use energy-consuming technology, change irrevocably the landscape, emit greenhouse gases and pollution, but there's no discussion on human "carrying capacity" or sustainable numbers, only for kangaroos!!

Animal activists have located what is believed to be fresh graves at Mugga Lane where 2000 of Canberra's iconic kangaroos will be buried during this year's slaughter, including the stars of the recent ABC documentary "Kangaroo Mob". Despite claims by the ACT government that their killing program is about protecting threatened species, they have failed to provide any credible evidence to support this claim.

The ACT government has also refused recent Freedom of Information requests from the Australian Society for Kangaroos relating to questions about recent culls in ACT nature parks. The Canberra government has breached multiple FOI laws by failing to respond to our request about their kangaroo culls within the legal time frame.

Thanks to the Australian Society for Kangaroos for the photo:

One of the intended burial sites for the kangaroos was switched to another location yesterday after the activists stumbled upon the proposed burial ground in south Canberra.

Activists ready to disrupt cull of 2000 roos - Canberra Times

Parks and Gardens Conservation services director, Mr Iglesias, said the culling was necessary to keep the number of kangaroos at sustainable levels that did not have a detrimental impact on other animals and plants. Just how is "sustainable", a vague and ambiguous word at the least, measured? Grasslands were used by pastoralists for many years causing species extinctions and land degradation. Nature should be allowed to find a natural balance to restore ecological systems, and this includes kangaroos.

[email protected]

New French Minister for Industry in France says globalisation is extremist policy and that France, Europe and other westernised countries need to protect themselves from total free-market doctrine. He also proposes external taxes, including on carbon emissions for imported products. This is a fascinating interview for citizens of Anglophone countries who feel that free-market ideology has replaced democracy.

This is a transcript and translation of an interview with Arnaud Montebourg, the new French Minister for reestablishing manufacturing industry. The interview took place on France2's Journal Télévisé[1] on Thursday 17 May 2012 at 2000h. The interviewers were Julien Bugier (the news presenter) and Fabien Amias.

Interview with Arnaud Montebourg, the Minister for Reestablishing Productive Industry.

750,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in the past
10 years and 900 factories have closed in the last three years in France. Ten years ago 28 per cent of France's economy was manufacturing. Now it is 13 or 14 per cent. According to Minister Montebourg, France is "deindustrialising even faster than the UK which has the reputation at the moment of having almost no manufacturing left at all."

Minister Arnaud Montebourg is the author of a book, Vote for Deglobalisation, published nearly a year ago.

He is quoted as saying in it, "Globalisation is nothing other than an extremist system."

He is asked by a France 2 news interviewer if he feels he can maintain the same position now that he is in government.

ARNAUD MONTEBOURG: "We need above all to protect ourselves. [Globalisation] is an extremism because without loyalty or law, without any limit, it has placed our territories, our industrial system, enterprises, wage earners - in direct competition with countries which have ... wages 30 times lower than ours.

Social protection there is virtually absent, whilst wage earners [in France] after two centuries of social struggle have fair working conditions. And this competition has destroyed our industrial system. Furthermore, it has not greatly progressed emerging countries either. Some countries have escaped [poverty] and others have not. They have become poor."

FABIEN AMIAS: "There are countries elsewhere where industry, as it has in Europe and France, has been reduced more than in France, despite being subjected to the same competition as their neighbours, [from] China, India, Brazil .."

ARNAUD MONTEBOURG: "It's true, because we failed to protect ourselves. The protection methods used by our competitors in that economic war are redoubtable. They use everything that we forbid ourselves to use! They control their money. Our money is left to a central bank that decides without consulting us. They use sovereign funds. We are at pains to control our businesses and we leave them, finally, to be treated as self-service by those who come and do their shopping in Europe and capture our technologies, send our patents away, and leave with them, after having closed our businesses and go elsewhere. Our work is to protect ourselves and to re-arm ourselves. That is the meaning of this 'reestablishment'of productive industry. We will reestablish industry if we ourselves find the resources in ourselves to reestablish it."

Question from JEAN-FRANCOIS ROUBAUD, President of The Federation of Small and Medium Businesses [Confederation General des Petits et Moyens Entreprises.(CGPME)]. "How do you expect to effect the reestablishment of industry in our country without the international exchanges that are necessary even if we would prefer not to have them?" [This question is answered much later in this interview.]

Unilateral protection for renewed industries

Montebourg is quoted by the interviewers as saying he would "Engage unilateral protection measures for renaissant industries." He is then asked for examples.

ARNAUD MONTEBOURG: "To start with, this is a European strategy. And Francois Hollande, besides, in his campaign expressed himself very strongly on the necessity that Europe, if she is to be 'Open' should not be 'offered'[like a sacrifice]. Today we are unprotected against globalisation. [He uses the metaphor of a 'globalisation sieve'].

EVen the European Commission is now recommending greater protection than any that existed before. Let us be clear. It is about reorienting the European Union which is currently as ineffective as a sieve against globalisation. And we will need to ask for reciprocity: that which the Chinese, the Americans, the Brazilians --.

The Brazilians have just decided come up with an incredible strategy: they have decided to tax every iPhone made by Apple in China that comes across Brazilian borders. The consequence is that Apple has decided to build a factory in Brazil. It is obvious that the European Union alone in our European continent has the power to do that. Therefore ..."

FABIEN AMIAS: "That means that we ... that Francois HOlland, the head of state, and the government and at the European level ... that kind of protectionism ...that kind of tax for every product that is produced..."

ARNAUD MONTEBOURG: "We spoke before of 'extremism'. Globalisation without limit is extreme. It has to be moderated. And I want to reply to Mr Roubaud [Refer above], by saying to him that we will not manage to survive in exports on the world market whilst wearing crutches while others are using rollerskates. We would remain handicapped. So we have, in a way, demanded what Francois Hollande has called 'reciprocity': That which you do to us, we demand the right to do it back."

JULIEN BUGIER, News Presenter: "And that's reasonable."

Externalising Carbon Taxes

ARNAUD MONTEBOURG:"It's already on the agenda. For example, the Carbon Tax - rather than inflicting it on ourselves ... we are talking about an external tax!"

FABIEN AMIAS: "Which was revoked the other day by the Constitutional Counsel ..."

ARNAUD MONTBOURG: "No, this is another... It's an external tax..."

FABIEN AMIAS: Gestures an apology, and for Montebourg to continue on...

ARNAUD MONTEBOURG: "What I want to say is that these are measures which are being put in place, including in all the European countries. It is part of the European discussion about the reorientation of the European Union."

JULIEN BUGIER,News Presenter) to interviewer, Fabien: "Last point, Fabien."

Anti-dumping and French state should buy French products

FABIEN AMIAS: "Procedure. You have spoken about procedure: 'Anti-dumping French-style'. That is, we no longer sell to those who practice disloyally low prices."

ARNAUD MONTEBOURG: Nods. "I can tell you that even President Sarkozi thought that it was necessary to use French companies for all French public purchases, that is to say, a kind of protectionism. So, today, there is a movement in all westernised countries that have lost their manufacturing industries, to organise a bit of protection!"

FABIEN AMIAS: "I have a very specific question. The Post Office very recently chose to use Taiwanese motor scooters, to the detriment of Peugeot scooters. If you had been Minister for Industry at that time, would you have allowed them to do that?"

ARNAUD MONTEBOURG: "I think that our responsibility is to reorientate public purchases towards our small and medium enterprises, which need the state to purchase [from them] in order to grow, expand, hire staff, get market share, augment their margins, in order to develop in their territory in their turn. So, this project is a project which will require that the European Union evolve its totally economic liberal doctrine. That is, the doctrine that says,'Listen, it's forbidden to give preference to to local industry.' We wish to advance this debate and I believe that opinions are evolving in Europe."

[Translation by Sheila Newman]

NOTES

Source of material: Journal Télévisé

US Congress's decision to maintain its bloated defence budget whilst other US government programs suffer savage austerity is opposed by two thirds of Republican voters and nine tenths of Democrat voters. As retired US Army Colonel Douglas McGregor explains in an interview with Russia Today excessive defence spending threatens the future economic viability of the US whilst doing little to stop threats to its citizens from South of the border that are far greater than that which they face from regions in which the US has waged war in recent decades.

Also published at Brasscheck TV, YouTube.

Sheila Newman will interview Jenny live 19 April between 12 midday and 1pm at 3RPP. You can listen live here. What next? Will they sell the people off as slaves? Will the remove access to our bank accounts overnight? Will they raise the cost of electricity so high that the companies take our houses to pay for them? Our Parliamentary system is beyond democratic control. Our economic system is a bad joke. Our taxes are used to pay for educational institutions which are then set up to profit private enterprise and investors and users overseas. And now, under Ted Baillieu, there is this proposal to sell Port Melbourne... (No, this is not an April fools joke.)

"It’s insulting that Spring Street might value the Port of Melbourne at only $2.4 billion (Baillieu flags state asset sales 23/3). Taxpayer shareholders recently spent around $1 billion on channel deepening and subsequent maintenance dredging to “prepare the Port for the future”. And, it’s a small fraction of the current estimate of $10 billion to develop the Port of Hastings – a project recently identified by government as urgently needed infrastructure. Taxpayers have invested in the Port of Melbourne for over a century and now we are expected to support its hand over to the private sector and then pay again to build Hastings port. It’s time to join the dots. Dumping the Port of Melbourne and developing Hastings is about catering for Baillieu’s pet projects for Gippsland: export of brown coal, woodchips and coal seam gas it he can find it. Topped up with Ports Minister Napthine’s proposed driverless trucks trundling up the Westernport Freeway from the Port of Hastings with assorted imports and we are approaching dystopia indeed."(Jenny Warfe, Blue Wedges) Sheila Newman will interview Jenny live on 19 April between 12 midday and 1pm at 3RPP. You can listen live here.

Sale Plan to pay for port

(Originally published March 27 2012 on 3RPP as "Sale plan to pay for port."and in Western Port News, 27 March 2012.)

March 27 2012

THE state government could sell the Port of Melbourne for $2.4 billion and four water authorities to fund five priority infrastructure projects including development of the Port of Hastings.

The other four projects are the east-west tunnel (linking the Western Ring Rd and the Eastern Freeway), rail links to Avalon airport, duplication of major freight highways, and a rail tunnel from Caulfield to Footscray.

Last financial year the port paid a dividend of $13.4 million to the government and earned an after-tax profit of $39 million.
Melbourne’s four water authorities are Melbourne Water, City West Water, South East Water (which services the peninsula) and Yarra Valley Water.

The revelation of the go­vernment’s plans for possible asset sales has already drawn criticism from disparate sources including award-winning economics and public policy commentator Ken Davidson and environmentalists.

Mr Davidson wrote on Monday that it was “silly to prioritise the port at Hastings while Australia’s number one port at Melbourne has serious problems that inhibit Victoria’s development”.

Industry groups, including the Australian Peak Shippers Association, have warned the Port of Melbourne would face major bottlenecks from 2015 onwards as it reached capacity.

This has seen the government, led by Ports Minister Denis Napthine, to promise fast-tracking of Port of Hastings development (‘New port start five years away’, The News, 31/1/12).

In January Mr Napthine and Port of Hastings Development Authority board chairman Yehudi Blacher told The News Hastings was well suited to become Victoria’s second container port within 10 to 13 years.

“Container movements are estimated to quadruple over the next 30 years and it is critical that we begin planning for this growth now,” Mr Napthine said.

But Mr Davidson says development of Hastings could wait until 2035 when Melbourne’s population was expected to be five million.
Until then, the Port of Melbourne could be improved by redeveloping the Swanson/Dynon precinct, he said.

Other suggestions have included developing Webb Dock.

The pressure on Port of Melbourne has further increased following claims by government sources, port figures and shipping and automotive industry groups that the government is set to abandon its plan to move all automotive shipping from Melbourne to the Port of Geelong.

Port of Hastings has been touted as an alternative port for exporting and importing vehicles, especially with the closure of BlueScope’s hot strip mill, which saw the Iron Monarch bringing slab steel from Port Kembla weekly.

The Iron Monarch’s last voyage of slab cargo arrived at Western Port on Tuesday 4 October and the BlueScope jetty is underutilised.
Selling the Port of Melbourne and developing Hastings was about cater­ing for Premier Ted Baillieu’s pet projects for Gippsland – exporting from Western Port brown coal, woodchips and coal seam gas, Blue Wedges Coalition president Jenny Warfe told The News on Monday.

Ms Warfe said it was insulting the government valued the Port of Melbourne at only $2.4 billion.

“Taxpayers recently spent about $1 billion on channel deepening and subsequent maintenance dredging to ‘prepare the port for the future’, as port authorities claimed,” she said.

“The current estimate to develop the Port of Hastings – a project recently identified by the government as urgently needed infrastructure – is $10 billion.

“Taxpayers have invested in the Port of Melbourne for more than a century and now we are expected to support its hand over to the private sector and then pay again to build Hastings port?

“It’s time to join the dots. Dumping the Port of Melbourne and developing Hastings is about the premier wanting to export from Gippsland brown coal, woodchips and coal seam gas, if he can find it.

“With massive trains hauling this cargo through our green wedges to Hastings – and Ports Minister Denis Napthine’s proposed driverless trucks trundling up the Western Port Freeway from the Port of Hastings with assorted imports – we are approaching dystopia indeed.”

The government last month introduced laws forcing the Port of Melbourne Corporation to pay an annual $75 million ‘’licence fee’’ that would increase each year with inflation and generated about $1 billion over the next decade.

The Port Licence Fee will add $8000 to $10,000 to the cost of bringing a ship into the Port of Melbourne.

The fee cuts both ways as the Victorian Farmers Federation says it will add $10 million to the cost of exporting Victorian farm produce. It has dubbed the fee a “tax on trade”.

Melbourne has the last publicly owned major port on the eastern seaboard following the Queensland government’s sale of the Port of Brisbane for $2.1 billion and a NSW government plan to privatise Port Botany.

There are many suspicious features about Craig Thomson’s Health Services Union imbroglio, but notable among them are the apparently close links between HSU “whistleblower” Kathy Jackson and Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. Peter Wicks uncovers a very tangled web.

Article written by Peter Wicks, originally published by Independent Australia on 16 May, 2012 1:36 am.

Fair Work Australia vice president Michael Lawler; his partner, HSU “whistleblower” Kathy Jackson; and friend.

The major saga embroiling the Federal Government at the moment, besides the curious Peter Slipper and James Ashby affair, is the Health Services Union (HSU) debacle.

Firstly, let me start by saying that I do not endorse anyone spending over $6,000 on prostitutes on a union credit card — that is reprehensible behaviour. Nor do I endorse not declaring vast amounts of money to the Electoral Commission on election campaigns. However, these allegations are yet to be proved — and are vigorously denied.

In any case, I think I smell a rat.

Union whistleblower Kathy Jackson has been ripping into both the Labor Party and the former (until February 2012) President of Fair Work Australia, Geoffrey Giudice, for months now over the goings on within the embattled Union and the investigation resulting from her claims.

Kathy Jackson has caused the union movement untold damage and brought the Federal Government to the brink of collapse. One would assume that the public may be interested in knowing a little more about her and any conflicts of interest she may have.

One vital piece of information that is not widely known about her is that her partner is a man named Michael Lawler.

Who is Michael Lawler?

For starters, according to reliable sources, Michael Lawler is friends with a man named Tony Abbott. Apparently, the two of them socialise regularly. Conveniently, Tony Abbott is also the leader of the political party making so much ground out of the claims Michael’s partner is making.

Michael Lawler works for an organisation called Fair Work Australia, where he is a Vice-President on a salary of $400,000 a year. The only person higher than him at that organisation is Iain Ross, who just replaced Geoffrey Giudice – the one who Tony Abbott and Lawler’s partner Kathy Jackson were attacking daily – as President of Fair Work Australia.

On the 11th of October 2002, according to the FWA annual report, Michael Lawler was appointed Vice President of Fair Work Australia — although back then it was called the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. Previously, Lawler was a barrister who made his mark representing employers in employment disputes. The man who appointed him to the AIRC was none other than Tony Abbott — who at the time was Employment and Workplace Relations Minister under John Howard’s Coalition Government.

On his appointment, Tony Abbott gave a speech praising Lawler in a remarkably personal and intimate fashion. Here is some of what he said that day:

“Intellect combined with common sense, compassion tempered by realism, ideals shaped but not dimmed by experience, some grasp of the nobility and waywardness that contend in every man: these, in my view, are some of the qualities which Vice President Lawler will bring to the demanding and often lonely life that lies before him.”

At a function to farewell Tony Abbott from his position as Employment and Workplace Relations minister the following year, Lawler was one of just four members of the AIRC to attend.

Independent Australia requested confirmation from Tony Abbott’s office about the relationship between the Opposition Leader and Michael Lawler, but had not received a response by the time of publication.

The Opposition always refer to Fair Work Australia as Julia Gillard’s “baby”, but Lawler was certainly Tony Abbott’s appointment.

Of course, all these things may be purely coincidental…

However, it does appear strange that Mr Lawler seems to have become involved in factional battles within the union on his partner Kathy’s behalf.

Carol Glen was the Victorian Divisional Secretary of HSU East for three years before resigning recently. At the time, Kathy Jackson was National Secretary of HSU East, and Michael Williamson was the General Secretary of HSU East.

Carol resigned due to the factional fighting within the union, particularly between Jackson and Williamson.

However, Jackson clearly did not want Carol to resign, as she feared that Williamson would replace her with a Divisional Secretary loyal to him.

This is the point where Lawler became involved in the factional battle within the Union, even though he was not a part of the HSU himself.

Carol Glen, in a written complaint to former Fair Work Australia President Geoffrey Giudice, alleges she received an “aggressive” phone call from Lawler, who told her:

“You can fuck off and take sick leave if you don’t want to do the work and still be paid, but you can’t resign.”

Michael Lawler did not work at HSU East, and this complaint went directly to his only superior in Fair Work Australia, Geoffrey Guidice.

Then, just a few days later, Lawler made corruption allegations against Carol to NSW Police and Strikeforce Carnarvon was born.

It is odd that this type of complaint would come from Lawler — as he was not part of HSU East or even a member of the Union.

As part of his complaint of corruption, Lawler made reference to a cheque that was being picked up by Carol — something he said she had mentioned in an email. The inference was that this cheque was some sort of pay off.

The Australian details the claims made by Lawler and the subsequent reaction by Glen:

Mr Lawler claims Ms Glen may have been given an inducement to give false evidence, noting that in a private email exchange with her partner in December, she had referred to a cheque she was going to pick up.

“I had ordered a bank cheque to pay my rent,” Ms Glen said, questioning how Mr Lawler had obtained her emails. She says she finds it extraordinary that Mr Lawler, the second highest industrial judge in the land, would engage in such a campaign.

Mr Lawler’s associate said it would be inappropriate for him to comment.

So, in fact, the cheque was a bank cheque ordered by Carol to pay her rent — totally innocent and unrelated to any Union business at all.

However, the question remains: how would Lawler know about the cheque? Given he mentioned a “private email exchange”, it would seem certain that he somehow had access to Ms Glen’s emails. So, how did Lawler have access to Glen’s private emails?

We don’t know, because as soon as he was asked about this detail, Lawler’s associate clammed up.

All decidedly suspicious.

On the 2nd May, police officers from the NSW Fraud and Cybercrime Squad raided the HSU East headquarters in Pitt Street, Sydney, in a much publicised operation.

However, my inside sources have pointed out a few anomalies about the official story of the raid that was reported in the press. Police were offered the option of using the service elevator and the rear entrance to the building to make things simpler, safer, and faster for officers — but this offer was rejected as the police were reportedly keen to use the main entrance, where the press had been assembled. Sources also state that the large number of boxes shown on TV being carried out by officers were all virtually empty — it was allegedly all done for show, to make it look like there were mountains of documents seized. Also, sources say, the story about HSU boss Michael Williamson trying to sneak out a back door with evidence was total rubbish — done presumably to implicate guilt. In fact, Mr Williamson left the office via the entrance the police were offered access to, as his car was parked in the car park opposite; the things he was carrying were taken by police as a routine part of the operation, as were his personal items — and probably a sandwich as well.

Of course, Kathy Jackson has acted very strangely for a so-called union boss.

In Melbourne, Jackson has hired Stuart Wood, a former Vice President of the HR Nicholls Society, as her lawyer. The HR Nicholls Society is a right-wing lobby group with close ties to the Liberal Party, set up as a think tank dedicated to Industrial Relations “reform”— much of which fed into the architecture of the Howard Government’s infamous “WorkChoices” policy.

It would seem valid to question why the Secretary of a union would hire a solicitor that is anti-union — and, indeed, one whose ideas you have apparently spent your whole working life fighting against. A quick look at HR Nicholls Society’s website shows just how close its ties are with the Liberal Party. Former Howard Government industrial relations minister Peter Reith is a board member, for example, and other notable names on the list of who contributes to this Society are Tony Abbott (there’s that name again), Eric Abetz, Peter Costello, Michael Kroger… the list goes on and on — even Andrew Bolt gets a mention.

Even more strangely, for a union rep, Jackson is due to be guest of honour and give a speech at the HR Nicholls Society annual dinner on June 12th. Strangely, Mal Brough – who has been accused of being implicated in the allegations against Peter Slipper – fronted the HR Nicholls Society only a week or two ago [note below video].

And, in yet another strange coincidence, Peter Slipper accuser James Ashby is using Kathy Jackson’s Sydney lawyers.

On the 14th May, on the Chris Smith programme on radio station 2GB, Kathy Jackson said that rumours of the Liberal party paying for her vast team of lawyers were rubbish. These lawyers, expensive lawyers, were all working for her for free – pro bono – she stated. Chris Smith, however, chose not to pursue the matter…

People can say whatever they like about Craig Thomson’s credibility and his explanation of events, however most people would find it totally unbelievable, and absolutely inconceivable, that these right wing lawyers, one of them from a Liberal Party aligned union busting “think tank”, would provide their services free to a union boss — especially one who pays herself a $270,000 salary.

So, it would seem there are many questions to be asked — and not just of Craig Thomson.

The mind boggles as to how someone who is a former employers’ barrister in their disputes with unions and was appointed to the AIRC by Tony Abbott as well as allegedly being a personal friend, is able to allegedly hack the emails of a Union official and then make a criminal complaint regarding this Union even while being the Vice President of the organisation actually in charge of investigating the same Union — as well as being the partner of the Union whistleblower most deeply enmeshed in the whole affair, who is soon to speak at a function for a union busting Liberal Party-aligned think tank, and who is being represented in all her actions against the union for free by the Liberal Party’s favourite lawyers — and yet none of this is widely reported in the media, or seemingly of any major interest to police?

Talk about conflicts of interest.

What is really going on here?

In my mind, all this puts question marks over the entire investigation — and makes me wonder about the Coalition’s direct involvement. After all, George Brandis repeatedly kept pushing for more investigations. If nothing else, Jackson, Lawler, Abbott – and the NSW police – have some serious questions to answer.

I don’t know how deep this runs but, like I said, I smell a rat.

(This is an abridged version of a longer story WIXXYLEAKS.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License

Whereas most recycling (apart from composting and metals) is pretty energy-costly and pollution-generating and not worth doing, recycling of drink containers that can actually be reused - notably glass containers - would substantially reduce litter and plastic pollution. Complementary to such a scheme should be discouragement of throw-away plastic containers. There is so much we can still do to reduce our energy-footprints, as well as reducing population growth.

Bins for North East Victoria – a feeble step for a giant problem

The launch today in Rutherglen of Coca Cola’s ‘National Bin Network’ pilot litter initiative is feeble and will hardly scratch the surface of the region’s and state’s annual 2.5 billion landfilled or littered beverage containers, the Boomerang Alliance of 17 environment groups said today.

“The launch is intended to distract from the real game changer which is a national 10cent container deposit scheme (CDS) currently being considered by environment ministers. It’s just another part of the beverage industry’s tactic to avoid taking real responsibility and leave all future management costs to councils,” said Jeff Angel, National Convenor of the Alliance.

“The proposal for more bins in the street and sporting grounds simply won’t have a meaningful impact - we would have to have millions of bins lining roads or creeks and parks to have a broad and significant impact on litter. Unlike a CDS where a 10cent deposit is built into the scheme encouraging people to return the container or pick up the litter, this bin proposal offers little incentive for consumers or collectors to act. Industry will put bins in and then walk away leaving local councils and the community to meet the ongoing costs of collecting and processing for landfilling this contaminated material.”

“It’s a non-solution and we’ll keep campaigning in Victoria and other states for the real answer – container deposits.”

“A national container deposits system (CDS) will deliver $1.78billion for recycling in the first five years of operation – 17 times more than the national bin offer from the beverage industry. Not only is this amount and the recycling of another 6 billion containers per year assured, the CDS funds could support a wide range of measures to improve recycling across Australia,” he said.

“A container deposit system does far more for the packaging problem than any other option at a maximum cost of one tenth of a cent per container”.

Key benefits from a variety of studies shows CDS will produce:

• A fund worth $1.78billion – derived from unredeemed deposits in the early years to support
increased recycling and reprocessing in Australia; improve commercial and industrial collections; public education on litter; local council efforts; and CDS costs.

• Miniscule impact on beverage prices – RIS (Regulatory Impact Statement) data shows an impact of one tenth of a cent per container by 2020; or under adjustments to errors in the RIS – a surplus of half a cent or more – when part of the fund supports CDS costs.

• Clean, not contaminated recyclate – a CDS produces clean materials that attract a price premium rather than contaminated bins material for lower value uses, or dumped into landfill.

• Financial boost for local councils/ratepayers – Victorian councils will save over $20m a year

• A new tier of hundreds of convenient drop-off centres – as in South Australia these will also

take e-waste, used white goods, batteries etc – generating several thousand jobs

• A boon for charities – Scouts SA generate $22m from their recycling centres and other charities in other states have expressed an interest in being involved in a national CDS.

Source of article: Boomerang Alliance

HUGE chunk of Victorian farmland - about 11 times the size of Melbourne's CBD - has also controversially fallen into foreign hands. Qatar-based Hassad Foods, which is the agricultural arm of the Qatar government, recently agreed to pay about $35 million for more than 8000 hectares of sheep-grazing and cropping land in Victoria's Western District.
Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa and bread riots in other regions - caused by record high food prices - have reminded governments of the cost of failing to guarantee domestic food security.

Qatar-based Hassad Foods, which is the agricultural arm of the Qatar government, recently agreed to pay about $35 million for more than 8000 hectares of sheep-grazing and cropping land in Victoria's Western District. As well as prized Kaladbro Estate in western Victoria and Queensland’s Clover Downs, Hassad’s burgeoning portfolio also includes 6800 hectares of sheep grazing land in Canowindra in New South Wales.

Hassad Australia - a subsidiary of parent company Hassad Food Group - owns 250,000ha, stretching from Queensland to Western Australia, which has been bought in the past three years.
It's been confirmed that big parcels of Western Australian farming land have sold to Middle East interests.
An “Australian”company, Hassad Australia Pty Ltd., backed by the Qatari Government, has bought 27,000 hectares.

There are three major land aggregations , five at Jerramungup in the south-east, three at Bindi-Bindi, east of Moora, and one at Esperance.

An additional HUGE chunk of Victorian farmland - about 11 times the size of Melbourne's CBD - has also controversially fallen into foreign hands. Qatar-owned Hassad Australia finalised its recent purchase lof 10 properties at Telopea Downs , on the border of Victoria and South Australia.

Food security fears

Fears about the planet’s ability to feed a projected 9 billion people by 2050 have driven much of the recent demand for land. Since 2007-2008 food price crisis triggered a flurry of export bans and restrictions by major food producers like Brazil, China, India and Argentina, Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa and bread riots in other regions - caused by record high food prices - have reminded governments of the cost of failing to guarantee domestic food security.

Australia for sale

A report released by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences in January found 11 per cent of farmland, 9 per cent of water entitlements and 1 per cent of agricultural businesses were owned by foreign interests.

Australia is the driest continent with irregular weather and is subject to natural disasters such as droughts and fires. We also have little more than 6% arable land, threatened by urban sprawl. At same time, our mining wealth is largely be consumed by the "nation building" infrastructure for our swelling population instead of being invested into the future.

With shallow policies and grotesque short-termism from Canberra, the public should be very concerned about any more land being sold to foreign countries.

Qatar's unsustainable growth

Qatar, an arid country of some 1.8 million inhabitants jutting off Saudi Arabia into the Gulf, can only produce about 10% of its food needs and is desperately reliant on imports. Currently, only 1.6 % of Qatar is arable land and agriculture only contributes 0.1% to gross national product, according to the FAO.
The government expects Qatar’s population to rise by 2.1% a year over the next five years, reaching 1.9 million in 2016.

Qatar’s population has more than doubled from around 614,000 in 2000 to 1.699 million at the end of 2010. Qatar's oil and natural gas industries account for 50 percent of GDP, 85 percent of export earnings and 70 percent of the government's revenue.

As well as food security, air, water, and land pollution are also significant environmental issues in Qatar. In addition to smog and acid rain, the nation has been affected by the air pollution generated during the Persian Gulf War. Pollution from the oil industry poses a threat to the nation's water.

There's nothing sustainable about Qatar's environmental/population growth record, so why should they bother with any such issues in their Australian property buy-ups?

Water security

Qatar's water consumption has tripled in the last seven years, the energy and industry ministry and chairman of the Permanent Committee on Water Resources has said. Per capita consumption of water in Qatar is 460 liters per day, one of the highest in the world, and the production of desalinated water in Qatar doubled four times over the past two decades.

Most native species are small, but the larger, diurnal species, like the Arabian oryx, gazelle and ibex, have been hunted down to extinction. The Arabian oryx, al-maha in Arabic, is Qatar's national emblem. It was once believed to have been hunted down to extinction, but some herds have survived outside Qatar.

December 03, 2011 - At least 25 special permits have been issued to dignitaries belonging to the Arabian peninsula allowing them to hunt the internationally protected Houbara Bustard (Chlamydotis undulata) during the hunting season 2011-2012. The permit holders include at least three rulers, many crown princes, and other members of royal families. The houbara bustard is a very shy bird species and inhabits arid areas away from human population, but at least one of the permit holders, belonging to Qatar, has been allocated the city of Dadu in Sindh for hunting. The Qatari Government is currently in the process of reintroducing the Arabian gazelle, which is near extinction, to its desert domain. Before 2001, when Qatar signed a key international treaty, known as Cites, restricting trade in endangered animals, it was not illegal to import rare animals.

Marine desert?

Experts have sounded the alarm over a massive decline in the number of sharks populating the waters around Bahrain - saying the Gulf was in danger of becoming a "marine desert". Many larger species of the sea's most famous predator were in danger of disappearing from the region altogether. Unchecked construction, sedimentation, a lack of fresh water, overfishing and pollution have been cited as the key threats to the Gulf's shark population.

Experts are now warning the Gulf could actually become a "dead" area of water unless urgent legislation is passed in all countries bordering it, with decades of rapid development taking a huge toll on the marine ecosystem.

Qatar Summit

Qatar, the first member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to host the discussions later this year aimed at limiting global warming, illustrates the scale of the challenge the world faces to cut greenhouse gases.

European Commissioner Connie Hedegaard, a representative responsible for climate change action, feels that Qatar being the host of this year’s summit has the potential to play a positive role in shaping the international climate change debate. If Qatar will show that [although] the rest of the world has seen it as a sort of traditional oil economy, that there they [are starting] to diversify, there you find smarter solutions, there you start to apply solar or other kinds of renewable energies and it will not harm your economy - as a long-term strategy it will benefit your economy.

The irony is great: Climate Change negotiation in Qatar will take place atop vast natural gas deposits and in a country with the highest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world, almost three times those of the United States.

Australia's food security first

With Australia's food security not as secure as supposed, then this sale is a betrayal by our government. Our sovereignty should be promoted, not sold off to the highest bidder. Australia is now a net importer of horticultural products, whereas it was a net exporter only a few years ago.  Wheat, dairy, fishing and sugar production are all down from their previous peaks. 

Earlier detailed research by researcher Dr McGovern, lecturer in the Queensland University of Technology’s school of economics and finance, found that Australia exports only around 25 per cent of its agricultural produce at second-stage production, not 80 per cent as has often been supposed.

There's a great international market opportunity for an increase in food production in Australia, but there's no explanation on just this feat going to be achieved, especially if climate change scientists are correct and our food chain is increasing out of our hands.

The Government claims it applied a rigorous national interest to all foreign investment applications.
The spokesman Assistant Treasurer, David Bradbury, said foreign investment could help Australian companies and farmers gain access to new export markets, grow their businesses and create jobs. The exports will be to the Middle East and jobs will be lost as Australian farmers will struggle to compete with big monolithic agricultural foreign government-endorsed businesses. The food will not be for Australians but for their own people.

Population growth has exploded in the Middle East and there are cultural limits to facing the problem, so they are seeking out resources in countries like Australia with poor leadership and permeable borders.

Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce said "under the current tutelage of Wayne Swan we can totally rely on the fact that this purchase, (purchase of 10 properties at Telopea Downs) like every other purchase that has ever been made, will never be stopped".

Information from the West of Elgar Group (WERA) shows what could happen in your street. So keep alert just in case. The developer is an overseas company and the development is being advertised overseas. The size of some of the units indicates they may only be of interest to the overseas student market. In Surrey Hills, close to Wattle Park tram terminus, and far from shops, developers are buying cheaper land in our local streets. VCAT has just approved an application by an overseas consortium for 32 apartments in such a street. Three development applications for this site have been knocked back. This one breaks rules set for the others. Where is the sense or the justice in this?

28-34 Boisdale Street Surrey Hills

Local residents have spent an immense amount of time and effort since 2009 in an attempt to preserve the character and amenity of their neighbourhood.

The planning void left after the Brumby Government’s Melbourne 2030 disappeared has yet to be replaced with a clear planning policy by this State Government. As a result , out here in Surrey Hills, not far from the Wattle Park tram terminus, and not near any shops, developers are buying cheaper land in our local streets.

VCAT has just approved an application by an overseas consortium - the Ever Bright Group - for 32 apartments in such a street. (The neighbourhood consists mostly of houses, plus occasional units and town houses.)

Previous applications knocked back; how is this one better?

The first application [2009-10] was refused by both Whitehorse Council and VCAT.

The second application had much the same footprint, and in fact, the number of units was INCREASED from 27 to 32.

Whitehorse Council again refused this application outright as it failed over 14 sections of the Whitehorse Planning Scheme and it was contrary to the neighbourhood character objectives and standards of the scheme

Despite this, and the fact that the site is nowhere near an activity centre, and over the objections of 150 local residents, VCAT approved this application .

In order to set aside the Whitehorse Council's decision, the tribunal became a de facto Planning Authority - inserting a number of conditions including structural deletions, alterations to the ramp and garage, and alteration of the footprint of some 2800mm.-this will require yet another re-drawing of the plans#. In addition it allowed some of the factors which the previous tribunal had rejected!

# In effect, the resulting plan will be different from that originally put to the Council, and they will have no say in it!

Dark towers

Further, the proposed building is no architect’s delight. Most of the units will be very small (some only the size of a double garage- 55 sq m) and a fair percentage will never receive any direct sunlight (as they are entirely south facing) nor will the building’s limited communal open space receive any sunlight after the equinox.

This result has been bad enough, but now there is an application for over 40 units in another short street nearby. Already there are cars parked overnight in both streets.

All this can still occur because the planning community is in "No-man's-land", where M2030 is no longer valid, but a definite new planning policy has yet to be pronounced.

No activity centers here yet big appartment blocks planned

This means that despite the fact that Matthew Guy has stated repeatedly that higher density developments should be "limited to activity centres", developers are still able to use local streets to take advantage of the planning void.

We desperately need a co-ordinated planning system, not just these ad hoc decisions.

Community and developers need to have certainty.

Surely by this time we could expect better outcomes for the community from our current State Government.

Source: Elizabeth Meredith
West of Elgar Residents’ Association Inc.
W E R A
A.N.:A0031410U

The World League for the Protection of Animals has expressed alarm at a proposed new New South Wales law that would permit children as young as 12, unaccompanied, to pursue and kill with weapons animals declared feral in National Parks.

"New laws proposed in New South Wales are set to allow children as young as 12, armed with bows and arrows, dogs, and knives, to hunt feral animals without adult supervision. The new guidelines have been drawn up by the NSW Game Council, the State Government body which regulates hunting. Children are already allowed to hunt feral animals, but they cannot do it alone." Adam Harvey, "12-year-olds to be allowed to hunt alone."

Dear Minister Hodgkinson,

We urge you to put your support behind our defenceless animals who have no voice, no guns and no way of defending themselves, whilst simultaneously protecting the citizens of NSW and disallowing any legislation that would permit 12 year olds to attack animals. The Game Feral Animal Control Regulations (2004) are to expire on 1st September , which is why we are relying on your government to protect the broader community and not the Shooters Party. Already we have the Game Council that is subsidised by the tax payer and represents only the interests of The Shooters Party and The Firearms Control Committee that is represented almost entirely by the pro gun lobby. There is no government committee that is established to represents the interests of the environment or the animals that depend on these environments for their future survival.

We strongly oppose any measures to permit minors to hunt with knives, bows and arrows and pig dogs for these reasons:

* Such practises are inhumane and unacceptable to any 'civilised' society.
* These children will not be supervised by rangers, adults or any authority as far as we are aware. Why would your government want to endorse such unpoliced activities ?
* Children will not be required to carry written permission with them and further be given 48 hrs to produce written 'permission'. This is unbelievable and something which the citizens of this state would not accept, if they knew about it.
* The use of bows and arrows, bowie knives and pig dogs in the practice of hunting any animals whether they be introduced or not, is simply brutal and inhumane. The cruelty inflicted upon these helpless animals can not be condoned by any society arguing it is in fact humane and progressive.
* What will happen to all those animals wounded and injured? Unnecessary pain and suffering witnessed in the practice of blood 'sports' should be eliminated and prohibited.
* To encourage and allow children to act in such a cruel and irresponsible way is both dangerous to the voiceless animals and to the children involved.
* Such a proposal is a concession to the Shooters and Fishers Party that have only their own interests at heart.
* An extra 142 State Forests were 'opened' to the Shooters Party for some 10 years which was done at the expense of the rest of the NSW community. These state forests were once prohibited to shooters, but now native fauna in these once relatively quite and safe places have no place to hide. Our native fauna can not afford to lose more valuable yet shrinking habitat.

We implore you to prohibit such reckless and dangerous behaviours and not to allow these practices to become law. Your government has this opportunity to establish it's commitment and concern to the broader community by protecting us all from the Shooters Party.

Yours sincerely

Lindy Stacker
World League for the Protection of Animals
PO Box 211 Gladesville 2111

The rate of road-kill of koalas in Queensland, NSW, and Victoria is testimony to the unsustainability of human population growth and the cowardice of our leaders in the face of profit-driven developer groups. We drive too fast, we are too numerous, and we have far too greater impact. Are most of us ignorant, selfish and callous or is it mainly our leaders and the developers they protect?

(Above) Yet another koala road accident victim. (Below) Ray and Murray Chambers return a koala to the wild. (Photograph from Sunshine Coast Koala Wildlife Rescue

Its all a little too late for the koalas, finally being listed as threatened and the rest of the world is waking up to the shame of what we have done.

Following a photographer from the BBC tagging along with the Sunshine Coast Koala Wildlife Rescue Service twin brothers, Ray & Murray Chambers, National Geographic Magazine included them in their feature in this month's issue, with photographs by one of the world's leading wildlife photographers, Joel Sartore.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/05/koala-rescue/sartore-photography#/04-koala-crusader-ray-chambers-670.jpg

http://www.joelsartore.com/galleries/koala-rescue/

The twin brothers today are laying three more of their beautiful koalas to rest and regardless of the heartbreak they endure each day, will not stop being on call 24/7 for their mates. Without this vital service, not just many koalas would be waiting to die on the sides of roads, but many other injured wildlife wouldnt be given a second chance.

We are currently negotiating with international documentary makers who have expressed interest in filming series on the incredible work these angels in footy shorts do without any financial assistance. A Sunshine Coast University Journalism student Sean Fabre-Simmons has also been chosen from a number of applicants to ride shotgun on some of their rescues, armed with a state of the art camera to post online the sickening scenes we are called to for the world to see.

For the Animals

Jaylene Musgrave
Vegan Warriors

Media Manager, Sunshine Coast Koala Wildlife Rescue Service
http://www.veganwarriors.com.au.
http://www.sckoalarescue.com.au
Join Me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter
Nominee "Pride of Australia Medal" 2011 & "Australian of the Year Medal 2012"

Humane Society investigation reveals workers kicking piglets like soccer balls, swinging sick piglets in circles, and ruthlessly beating mother pigs, who were trapped in 'gestation crates'.

Source of photo: URL:Piglets Are As Cute As You Thought They Were, But Far More Interesting

May 12, 2012

On Tuesday, The Humane Society of the United States released undercover video footage revealing cruel treatment of animals and inhumane conditions at a Wyoming pig breeding facility owned by a supplier to Tyson Foods. The investigation revealed workers kicking piglets like soccer balls, swinging sick piglets in circles, and ruthlessly beating mother pigs. Along with individual acts of animal abuse, this investigation also highlights the suffering pigs endure when locked in metal "gestation crates" where they cannot even turn around for nearly their whole lives -- a standard pork industry practice.

The Platte County Sheriff's department and Wyoming Livestock Board are now investigating the abuses for potential violations of the state's anti-cruelty statute. And, since the release of the investigation, Tyson has suspended its purchases from this supplier. However, Tyson needs to do more: It must stop allowing its suppliers to confine pigs in gestation crates.

Burger King, McDonald's, Wendy's, Safeway, and other major food companies have announced, at the urging of The HSUS, that they'll remove gestation crates from their supply chains. Tyson is lagging far behind and still defends this extreme confinement. We need your help to move the company to do the right thing. Please help pigs by urging Tyson to stop allowing them to be confined in tiny gestation crates.

Wayne Pacelle,
President & CEO
Humane Society of the United States

Good news! The Federal Budget did not provide funds to Premier Baillieu for the East West Link. Julianne Bell thanks those 16 community groups for supporting PPL VIC and the Royal Park Protection Group for Ian Hundley's and her mission to Canberra on 27 March 2012 to present their submission to Infrastructure Minister Albanese in which they requested the Federal Government NOT fund the EW Link but support public transport projects. Ian Hundley and Julianne briefed staff. Thanks also go to the Greens "for their principled stand against the East West Link and for their advocacy for Doncaster Rail Link."

Article by Julianne Bell of Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.

I. Good News from Federal Parliament Budget - No Funding for EW Link!

See below the message from Adam Bandt, Federal Member for Melbourne, with the good news that the Federal Budget did not provide funds for the East West Link, as requested by Premier Baillieu. We thank Adam and the Greens for their principled stand against the East West Link and for their advocacy for Doncaster Rail Link. We again thank those 16 community groups for supporting PPL VIC and the Royal Park Protection Group for our mission to Canberra on 27 March 2012 to present our submission to Infrastructure Minister Albanese in which we requested the Federal Government NOT fund the EW Link but support public transport projects. Ian Hundley and I briefed staff - the Minister's Chief Advisers on Transport - on the history of the extension of the Eastern Freeway/EW Link and on the public transport needs of greater Melbourne.

II Policy of City of Melbourne Re EW Link

On Tuesday 8 May 2012 at the City of Melbourne (CoM) Future Melbourne Committee meeting the City of Melbourne Transport Strategy was tabled. Under City of Melbourne Transport Strategy 2012 were the headings - Flexible and Adaptable - Private Transport - City Driving Page 52 of the attachment Objectives and Actions - East West Link 28. The text read: "Priority Action: Consider the Government’s proposed East West Link when details are known to make sure that it achieves the City of Melbourne’s transport plan for access to and through the central city hub." In 2008 in response to huge community opposition Council totally opposed the EW Link. It looked as though the Council was fence sitting last night. The Transport Strategy was, however, amended, to include reference to Council's resolution of 2008, which includes: That Council: 1.1. oppose the Eddington East West Road Tunnel and the use or reduction of any parkland and disruption to the community 1.2. oppose the use of parks for any works associated with an East West Road Tunnel...etc (This is only second hand information, please check it.) The City of Melbourne is certainly not going all the way to oppose the EW Link.

Unjustified complaints from Ted Baylieu

Ted Baillieu, the Liberal Premier of Victoria, is already complaining about underfunding for transport. Huge funds have already been given to Victoria by the Federal Government for the Regional Railway Project, however, so it is difficult to see what his problem is here.

III Media

See Age article Wednesday 9 May 2012 "Doncaster Rail Link may lead to more buses."
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/doncaster-rail-study-may-lead-to-more-buses-20120508-1yb0e.html

Julianne Bell
Secretary
Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.
PO Box 197
Parkville 3052

Subject: Congratulations - a blow to Ballieu's East-West toll road.

Dear friends,

I am writing with some good news fresh from the federal budget lock-up.

The Federal Government has heeded our call and refused to fund Ballieu’s dirty and expensive toll road. It’s a great win for our campaign – congratulations!

We know the State Government is ready to start drilling but it’s going to be a lot harder and take a lot longer without federal backing, as Baillieu said himself tonight.

It’s a boost to our campaign to bring smarter and cleaner transport infrastructure to Melbourne.

We know there is a problem with transport in our city but the last thing we need is a private toll road from Hoddle Street right through Fitzroy, Carlton and North Melbourne to the Kensington, Docklands and Footscray area. Whether it’s above or below ground, it will disrupt our communities without relieving the congestion.

Building the Doncaster rail link would go some way to alleviating the congestion coming in from the East and help transform Melbourne into a world-class public transport city. That’s where I want our federal infrastructure dollars being spent and that’s what I’ll continue to campaign for.

We’ve still got a lot of work to do to win this campaign but I wanted to share this great with news as soon as I could.

Looking forward to continuing to work with you to keep Melbourne liveable,

Adam Bandt MP
Tuesday, May 08, 2012 8:10 PM

Adam Bandt MP

Federal Member for Melbourne

Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens

On the You Tube channel www.youtube.com/SyrianGirlPartisan, Mimi al-Laham, an articulate young English-speaking Syrian has taken on the lying corporate and phony left newsmedia which is providing cover for NATO's proxy war against her homeland as they did last year when NATO bombed and invaded Libya. James Corbett[1] has interviewed the Syrian Girl on his Channel. We have also embedded this interview on candobetter.

See also: Syrian Girl interviewed on Infowars of 21 May, Carr tries to justify Australian support for NATO war against Syria of 12 Apr 12, Syria: NATO's Next "Humanitarian" War? of 5 May 12, Foreign troops inside Syria: The Failed UN Brokered "Peace Plan" Sets the Stage for War? of 29 Mar 12, Syria: CIA-MI6 Intel Ops and Sabotage of 7 Feb 12, The Al Qaeda Insurgency in Syria: Recruiting Jihadists to Wage NATO's "Humanitarian Wars" of 2 Sep 11 and other Global Research articles on Syria.

On the You Tube channel www.youtube.com/SyriangirlPartisan, Mimi al-Laham, an articulate young English-speaking Syrian has taken on the lying corporate and phony left newsmedia which is providing cover for NATO's proxy war against her homeland as they did last year when NATO bombed and invaded Libya. James Corbett[1] has interviewed the Syrian Girl on his Channel. We have also embedded this interview below on this page.

Above broadcast is also to be found on the Corbett Report and at youtube.com/watch?v=y8-4nz6KvXA

See also: Syrian Girl interviewed on Infowars of 21 May, Carr tries to justify Australian support for NATO war against Syria of 12 Apr 12, Syria: NATO's Next "Humanitarian" War? of 5 May 12, Foreign troops inside Syria: The Failed UN Brokered "Peace Plan" Sets the Stage for War? of 29 Mar 12, Syria: CIA-MI6 Intel Ops and Sabotage of 7 Feb 12, The Al Qaeda Insurgency in Syria: Recruiting Jihadists to Wage NATO's "Humanitarian Wars" of 2 Sep 11 and other Global Research articles on Syria.

FootNotes

[1] Whilst James Corbett has contributed enormously to fighting mainstream media lies in order to make known the truth about the cause of recent and ongoing wars, he has, unfortunately, in other broadcasts, and articles condemned those opposed to human population growth, presumably including the late Martin Luther King and 9/11 Truth advocate Barrie Zwicker, as anti-human 'eugenecists'. Examples of Corbett's unfortunate nonsense on population can be found on a previous broadcast (which, thankfully, I can no longer find) and here on Global Research.

Victorian Planning Minister Matthew Guy is setting up a website http://www.planmelbourne.vic.gov.au asking for residents' feedback on the sort of Melbourne we want in the future. These kinds of websites, however, make it hard to say what you really think. It is probably better to send the Minister a submission re Plan Melbourne saying what you really think, in your own words, rather than responding to the website questionnaire. Email it to Matthew.Guy[AT]parliament.vic.gov.au . As a guide, we suggest that any plan must first have a policy to limit the population growth. To ignore this issue and try to plan for greater growth, would be self defeating.

Alert from BRAG

The Department of Planning has been working on a new metropolitan planning strategy and regional growth. A press release today from the Minister of Planning says, “We need to build on the best of past planning strategies and bring fresh thinking to our consideration of projected growth and change and how we address the challenges in front of us”.

But Brag's Vice President, Mary Drost, has responded saying,

“Population has grown too fast and infrastructure hasn’t been able to keep up.”

She is quite right. Melbourne is the fastest growing city in Australia, we grew by about 605,000 from 2001 to 2010 compared with only 450,000 in Sydney and that trend continues. And we are under pressure with overcrowded transport, gridlock on our freeways, overloaded sewerage and drainage, water shortages, power blackouts, problems with schools, hospitals etc.

The current planning strategy is to retrofit development into existing areas using existing capacity in schools, hospitals roads, rail,
trams etc. but any capacity is now well and truly filled. For instance our trains and trams are already seriously overcrowded.

BRAG's view is that any proposed development should identify local infrastructure capacities, show the effect of the project and how the developer will tackle the problems that will arise. If the developer does not come up with a satisfactory solution then the application should automatically fail. It should not fall back on Councils or the residents to rectify such problems.

Outer suburban developers have long been required to fund local infrastructure requirements. Why not in the inner suburbs?

BRAG contends that a bigger Melbourne is not a better Melbourne. We are trying to cope with densification in inner Melbourne as well as the urban sprawl and neither option is the answer. The Federal budget is unlikely to provide finance for the necessary infrastructure upgrades. Of course we have the elephant in the room – massive population growth, which both federal and state governments ignore.

So what is the answer?

We are constantly told that we need to go up to cope with population growth . Commentators like Bernard Salt from KPMG and the
Committee for Melbourne believe Melbourne needs New York style development and have promoted “Manhattanising” Melbourne,
which appeals to the development and construction industry but would be a disaster for residents.

Boroondara is a great place to live and, as a consequence, is under pressure from the developers because it offers them the best
economic returns. Our Council is doing its best to manage the tensions between accommodating growth and offering housing diversity while maintaining liveability. However the pressure from developers will continually increase making council’s task ever more difficult.

More and more residents from all over Boroondara are asking BRAG for help in combating opportunistic development in their area.
Under the previous state government there was a real decline in local democracy and local say in planning issues which accompany urban consolidation. When we object, we are branded NIMBY’s But its OK to say “not in my backyard”. We do have rights concerning the neighbourhood we live in despite what the growth lobby says.

Now we have an opportunity to exercise those rights. Planning Minister Guy has announced he is setting up a website http://www.planmelbourne.vic.gov.au which offers residents the opportunity to have input to the sort of Melbourne we want in the future.

We urge you to carefully consider the issues then go on to the website and tell the government what you think. Encourage your neighbours to do the same. If we don’t then the government will think we don’t care.

However, be careful about following the lead set by the questions. Like many such government surveys, they seem to be set up to gain predetermined answers.

BRAG believes it is better to send the Minister a submission re Plan Melbourne in your own words that say what you really think. Email it to Matthew.Guy[AT]parliament.vic.gov.au

As a guide, we suggest that any plan must first have a policy to limit the population growth. To ignore this issue and try to plan for
greater growth, would be self defeating but you make up your own mind and tell the government accordingly.

Jack Roach
BRAG(Boroondara Residents Action Group)

CO2 Group's Chief CEO, Andrew Grant says that anthropogenic climate change science is quite simple really: "It's a function of increased population on the earth." Candobetter.net received the following as a press release today. We obviously like the idea of wildlife corridors connecting national parks. By the same token, nothing in the corporate or the government area can be taken at face value. Until the corridors are established; until we can see that more is not taken away by related interests somewhere else, we have to remain cautious. Nonetheless, on face value, this is cheering news. So is the Chief CEO of CO2 Group's attitude to human population growth and carbon emissions.

Asked by the Australian Financial Review interviewer, "What is your scientific understanding of human co2 emissions which are causing dangerous levels of global warming?", Andrew Grant, Chief CEO of the C02 Group, said:

"Well, it's really rather simple. It's a function of increased population on the earth and if you go back into look at population history for example it took from the beginning of time to 1880 for the earth to get its first billion people. Now we're at seven billion. Fundamentally what we have done is cut down 20 per cent of the world's forests and liberated that carbon into the atmosphere and then we've burnt fossil fuels at a rate where we've taken a large amount of carbon from fossil fuel reserves and put them into the atmosphere. So it's no more complex than that. As humans we have liberated more carbon at a rate quicker than the carbon cycle can handle. And it's not a good or a bad thing. There's no value based in this, but the simple reality of doing that is it changes global weather patterns. The debate really is not do we need to act? Even in Australia where it's very politicised, both parties say they support reducing emissions by 5 per cent by 2020. The debate is how."

CO2 Group Press Release on Commonwealth funding for reforestation of wildlife corridors

Melbourne 8 May 2012: CO2 Group is pleased to announce it has been successful in gaining funding for two projects of the Federal Government’s Biodiversity Fund. The grants, worth $3.8 million, will support two projects in Western Australia and New South Wales.

CO2 Group’s Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Grant said: “We are delighted to receive these grants, which we see as recognition of the quality of our work in the Australian market and our deep environmental expertise.

“Our projects will research, map, design and implement targeted biodiversity enhancements across Australia’s largest commercial forest carbon sink estate. We manage a 26,400 ha estate across 30 properties in Australia’s highly fragmented wheat-sheep belt, including sites within the south-west Western Australia biodiversity hotspot.

“The two projects will integrate biodiversity outcomes with large-scale commercial carbon plantings, creating a unique partnership between a for-profit commercial entity and the government. A partnership of this nature and scale has not been attempted outside the not-for-profit sector,” said Mr Grant.

In Western Australia, the CO2 Group project will take tangible steps toward the establishment of vital corridors between both Lake Magenta Nature Reserve and Fitzgerald National Park and Corackerup National Park and Fitzgerald National Park. These corridor links will contribute to the capacity of the reserves to continue to function and facilitate biodiversity conservation in face of uncertain climatic challenges ahead.

CO2 Group’s project in WA will contribute to the Fitz-Stirling Functional Landscape Plan, the Carnaby's black cockatoo Recovery Plan and also assist with the conservation of a range of other nationally and regionally significant conservation targets such as western whipbird, mallee fowl, tammar wallaby, western mouse, and black gloved wallaby.

In New South Wales, CO2 Group’s project adjoins conservation reserves in central NSW. The selected sites will contribute to consolidation of the regional conservation estate as well as enhancing connectivity between some reserves. The reserves that will benefit include Goonoo National Park, Goonoo State Conservation Area, Pillaga State Conservation Area and Pillaga West State Conservation Area. Conservation target species include the black glossy cockatoo, mallee fowl and sugar glider. Specific flora of conservation significance may contribute to the revegetation and restoration actions.

Another CO2 Group project site in NSW offers an opportunity to commence consolidation of a chain of remnant vegetation stands along a 100km section in the Upper Central West and Plains of NSW.

All of the projects supported by the Biodiversity Fund will help to revegetate, rehabilitate and restore more than 18 million hectares of the Australian landscape over the next six years.

CO2 Group has a history of being a leader in its field and was the first organisation to achieve accreditation for reforestation projects under the NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme and the Federal Government’s Carbon Farming Initiative. With 26,400 hectares under management across the country, plus 3500 hectares of native remnant vegetation, CO2 Group is the largest provider of dedicated carbon sink plantings in Australia. The company currently manages landmark commercial contracts for Qantas Airways, Eraring Energy, Macquarie Bank, Woodside Energy, INPEX Browse, Origin Energy, Newmont Mining and Wannon Water."

End of Press Release.

Candobetter.net Ed's comment:

Please comment on this article and tell us what you may have experienced about this group and its work. Obviously this kind of investment seems infinitely superior to land speculation in its usual form, which is to clear land, build infrastructure and housing, then invite loads of people into the country in order to drive up the price of the housing. We don't see the downside of this kind of investment, except where it impinges on property rights and common land of indigenous and other Australians. But we could be naive. Obviously we have a positive view of a CEO who seems to understand the importance of human population growth in the creation of pollution/atmospheric change. Marketing companies, such as the one that sent the press release on, also understand that ecological blogs like that kind of statement. The Primeminister got support against Kevin Rudd for that kind of statement. How sincere is it? We don't know.

Too often we fail to see the connection between the ecological destruction and cultural genocide of so-called "developing" nations and the lax immigration policies of those nations like Canada which play host to both the victims and the perpetrators of the tragedy. A look at the relationship between Sarawak's plight and the inflation of real estate values in Ontario, Canada and elsewhere should give us a better understanding of how plunder abroad promotes in-migration here. Canada, by offering an outlet to dirty money and the people who profit from it, must be seen as a willing accomplice and silent partner to a vast money-laundering operation.

Introducing The Godfather of Sarawak

I had a friend, "David", over for 3 hours this past Wednesday night. David, a serious Christian, and an individual of outstanding character, was a CUSO worker in Sarawak four decades ago and returned for a three month visit this winter to re-connect with old friends. Upon his return he treated me to a travelogue more enlightening and thorough than anything you would find on National Geographic program. Among his major concerns was the alarming growth of the Islamic population which is being favored by the patronage of the province's corrupt Minister, and the ominous potential that demographic shift might have for the liberty and security of non-Muslims. Coincidentally, two weeks after listening to David's account and seeing hundreds of his beautifully graphic pictures, I came upon a television documentary about the politics of this region, and invited David to view the recording. It was the 20 minute documentary that Global TV did on the Chief Minister of Sarawak, Abdul Taib Mahmood, and his kleptocracy. David confirmed the truth of most of what was said in the documentary, and was very pleased that two environmental activists in London, England were following the labyrinthine money trail from "Daddy" to his daughter Jamilah Taib Murray, the wife of Canadian Sean Patrick Murray.

The Criminal Rape Of Sarawak’s Rainforest

I was able, in the second viewing, to record several fascinating facts about Jamilah and Sean Murray's real estate investments in Canada, which ironically began in Ottawa. What I found ironic is that Ontario's 'green' Premier Dalton McGuinty, darling of David Suzuki, leads a government with 11 Ministries who pay $4.9 million a year in rent to the Murrays for office space in their building(s). The Murrays---through their "Sakto Corporation"---- own six major commercial properties in Ontario worth over $100 million , money which has its origin in the criminal rape of Sarawak's rain forest and its conversion to palm oil plantations. This is a catastrophe of global significance. One square mile of Sarawak's rainforest contains more biodiversity than all of North America. More than that, in clearing cutting an area the size of England, the logging companies---owned by Taib's family and their political allies (largely ethnic Chinese)----they have obliterated the culture of the Penan people, one of the last nomadic tribes in the world. Many Penan protesters have been overtly killed or have simply disappeared. One of them, now a Canadian resident, spent a month in solitary confinement just for participating in a blockade to stop logging trucks. He walks the streets of a Canadian suburb like a disembodied and broken spirit, stalked by memories of a life spent in a tropical heaven, a heaven that is now rapidly being transformed into hell. As he spoke to the camera, his face was concealed in darkness---a testimony to the ability of Sarawak's "mob boss" to intimidate even the people who, one would think, should be beyond his grasp.

Corruption in Sarawak Finances Real Estate Development Abroad

As the logging has proceeded, the Taib family has grow richer and richer. At least 84% of the shares of Cahya Mata Sarawak (CMS) , a Sarawak-based construction conglomerate with net assets of $760 million (US) are held by Taib’s late wife and his four children Mahmuc Abu Bekir Taib, Sulaiman Rahman Taib, Hanifah Taib and Jamilah. According to Malaysia’s Anti-Corruption Commission, CMS ,“has a track record of receiving untendered public contracts worth millions of dollars and holds a cement monopoly in Malaysia’s largest state...and has also massively benefited from the Bakun dam construction which has been labelled by Transparency International as a ‘monument of corruption’”. A CMS subsidiary “Similajau Industries” has also formed a connection with Rio Tinto Alcan to oversee the an aluminum smelter with the scope to produce up to 1.5 million tons per year.

When Jamilah was a foreign student in Canada in 1983, Daddy the Godfather and Piggy Bank, gave her $23 million to play with, and so began her real estate acquisitions in Ottawa, now extended to America, Britain and elsewhere. In fact the British government is currently looking into alleged Taib family money-laundering in the UK and British offshore financial centres. Through “Ridgeford Properties”, Sean and Jamilah Taib Murray hold luxury properties in Central London estimated to be worth several hundred million pounds. Jamilah is also currently a Director on the boards of some 63 Malaysian companies.

Canada The Land Of Opportunity And The Champion Of Diversity

It warms the heart—doesn’t it---to know that it was Canada, the land of opportunity, which allowed this enterprising immigrant to launch a business empire stretching almost across the globe, fuelled by monies obtained by crony capitalism and the wanton destruction in a faraway tropical land, home to so much biological and human diversity. How ironic that diversity can be destroyed in Sarawak to feed real estate development in a country that brags about its “diversity”.

Dalton McGuinty too can take pride in helping her to grow her business and reward Minister Taib for his program of relentless rainforest destruction. Whatever initiatives McGuinty has taken to reduce carbon emissions in Ontario have been more than offset by the deforestation that has enabled Jamilah to build her empire. With the destruction of this magnificent jungle, the world is not only losing a unique culture, and untold species---including the orangutan---but a carbon sink of similar scope to the Amazonian forest. And Canada, it seems, must make itself a haven for refugees fleeing from these kinds of tragedies, but for the perpetrators and their ill-gotten gains as well. Is this an effective remedy for a problem that is all too common in the "developing" world? In many ways, Sarawak is a microcosm of the world. Greed, corruption, economic disparity, religious friction, environmental degradation and the displacement of indigenous peoples---it is all in play. Perhaps we can attack the problem in another way. A way that would assist both Canada and those who we would want to protect from persecution. Rather than open the door to untold millions of refugees, maybe we should slam the door to the forces of greed, corruption, and destruction that drive them out. Could we not embargo their exports, most especially their exports of corrupt politicians, their family and their fortunes?

Always Follow The Money Trail

Clare Brown --the London-based environmentalist determined to expose Taib's corruption---has been able to shine a light on Taib's activities by pouring through the paper trail of investments. This, I think, is the key to discrediting any group. Thanks to Vivian Krause and Sun Media TV's persistence in showing the fraudulent nature of the David Suzuki Foundation's "charitable" status, Suzuki has been forced to distance himself from his own foundation. And the public is finally waking up to the corporate corruption of environmental groups. The Conservatives--to their credit--- seem determined to prevent green NGOs from taking donations from foreign-owned corporations. Our project, however, is to make the point that environmental NGOs should not be able to take money from ANY corporation, foreign or domestic. Shining a light on the big three (the DSF, the Sierra Club and Nature Conservancy ) and their practice of taking corporate money should be key to our effort to question their failure to address the profoundly negative impact of mass immigration---and their integrity. How does this smell: the Sierra Club of Western Canada has accepted money from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RFB) to protest the oil sands development and Enbridge pipelines. How interesting. Jay Rockefeller, a major donor to the RFB, is the long-time Governor and now senior Senator of West Virginia, one of the biggest coal-producing states in America, supplying coal for electricity generation to two dozen other states. According to Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria, the burning of coal is 40 times more impactful than the burning of oil in terms of green house gas emissions, not to mention its medical effects. It seems that environmental groups are willing pawns of a corporate game that is less motivated by genuine concerns about the environment than deflecting attention from the damage they are doing in their own backyard. Shades of the East India Company, which supported Wilberforce's campaign to end slavery in order to undercut their chief rival in tea production---the West Indian slave plantations.

Scratch a noble cause and you find a mercenary motive.....

Green Inc. And “Green” Corporations---A Partnership Made In Hell

It is high time that the public come to understand that Green Inc. and the corporations that fund them are first and foremost a business. In return for the funding that maintains their paid bureaucracy and sustains their relentless quest for more and more donations, environmental NGOs give corporations what they crave---ecological dispensation, the seal of approval that they can wave on their websites and brochures as proof of their corporate "responsibility". Meanwhile, they can lobby for higher immigration quotas and aggressive outreach initiatives to recruit the foreign labour they want to fuel their drive to drill, mine and develop at an ever quickening pace----secure in the knowledge that they have bought the silence of their 'kept women' in the DSF and the Sierra Club and Nature Conservancy.

The Moral Stench Of Canada’s Growth Lobby

Canada is the Chicago of the 1920s writ large. It's bipartisan immigration policy is like a numbers racket where everyone from the cop on the beat to the politicians at City Hall get a "piece of the action". Environmental NGOs must be regarded as key constituents of the Growth Lobby, every bit as important to the team as are the slimy immigration lawyers, the cheap labour employers, the big banks, the Puppet Intelligentsia in academia and the CBC, which like the ethno-cultural organizations, feed off the taxpayer tit while they tirelessly work to undermine our country. Together they form a stew of putrid slime that has no equivalent except what one would see while peering through the hole of a outhouse. Next time you're in a Provincial Park and nature calls, take a whiff. That, my friend, is the foul stench of Canada's Immigration Industry---an industry that is fully complicit in the rape of Sarawak and regions like it across the world.

Tim Murray
May 4, 2012

See also: 9/11 activist hands himself in to British police for "peddling lies" that 9/11 and 7/7 were staged (1/10/14).

I knew there had to an answer to the 9/11 conspiracy theorists that would make the facts clear to non-experts. This 5 minute video (Also at YouTube) demolishes the fantasies peddled by extreme right and looney left paranoids.

It is unfortunate that ABC Local Radio Melbourne 774 presenter Jon Faine neglected to make use of the evidence contained in the above video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE3pMPObcGU) in his altercation with Kevin Bracken in October 2011.

See also: Citizens for truth on the Kennedy Assassination (http://ctka.net), the YouTube channel of Charles Ochelli, the Blind JFK researcher, James Corbett's interview with Charles Ochelli, Humanity's debt to JFK of 19 Nov 11, Why won't the "left" thank JFK for preventing nuclear war? of 23 Nov 11, Noam Chomsky, phony American dissident of 26 May 2009.

Examples of recent disinformation against JFK include: Morbid JFK: Assassination Will Protect My Legacy in The Hibernia Times - "Ireland's Internet Newspaper" of 7 May 2012, JFK - The Mother of all Conspiracies, a 10 minute discussion with David Birchall on ABC Radio National's Counterpoint of 28 Nov 12, Disinformation amidst an otherwise mostly commendable speechof 4 May 12.

This speech from YouTube is also recently an embedded broadcast on Brasscheck TV for the month of April 2012. I have found myself unable to become weary of listening to any speech by JFK. In this speech Kennedy explains why he welcomes scrutiny of his decisions and engaging in debate about them. He famously praised the ancient Athenian legislator Solon who stated that avoiding controversy should be considered a crime.

See also: Citizens for truth on the Kennedy Assassination (http://ctka.net), the YouTube channel of Charles Ochelli, the Blind JFK researcher, James Corbett's interview with Charles Ochelli, Humanity's debt to JFK of 19 Nov 11, Why won't the "left" thank JFK for preventing nuclear war? of 23 Nov 11, Noam Chomsky, phony American dissident of 26 May 2009.

Recent attempts to tarnish the memory of JFK

Recent examples of disinformation against JFK include: Morbid JFK: Assassination Will Protect My Legacy in The Hibernia Times - "Ireland's Internet Newspaper" of 7 May 2012, JFK - The Mother of all Conspiracies, a 10 minute discussion with David Birchall on ABC Radio National's Counterpoint of 28 Nov 12, Disinformation amidst an otherwise mostly commendable speech of 4 May 12.

Despite their claim to oppose the Wall Street agenda, pseudo-environmentalists remain supportive of one of its key elements----the unfettered migration of cheap labour across borders.

Where did Avaaz go in 2012?
Hopefully to hell.

They tried very hard to prevent Sun Media from gaining a licence to enter the Canadian cable/satellite TV market---for good reason. Sun Media has been to present politically incorrect truths that the Smear Network (Avaaz, Common Dreams, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, SPLC and CNC) have tried to prevent Canadians from hearing. At long last, people are learning about the corporate funding behind the David Suzuki Foundation, the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy and other green orgs on the corporate take. All of these organizations share one common thread. They are all "population-deniers" . None seem prepared to concede that if human activity causes climate change, then the number of "humans" must have something to do with human activity.

Read this month's issue of the Social Contract and you will learn part of what has been going on. The Green-Left are not our "friends". Their aim to is to exclude, isolate and marginalize population activists from the environmental conservation. Despite their claim to oppose the Wall Street agenda, they remain supportive of one of its key elements----the unfettered migration of cheap labour across borders. Despite their fixation on climate change, they fail to mention that immigrants, on average, quadruple their GHG emissions upon arrival to this continent, and that since 1991, immigration has been responsible for four times as much GHG emissions as the entire Alberta tar sands project, which Avaaz et al reviles. And when a couple in British Columbia gave birth to their 18th child, not one constituent of this fake green coalition thought to use it as a "teachable moment" to educate Canadians about the carbon legacy of having children.

The failure of Avaaz and their ridiculous petition to thwart Sun media was the highlight of my year. The CBC monopoly has been broken. The truth will out.

The idea that in gratitude for our support, greens will one day embrace Malthusian concerns is forlorn. Suzuki is a classic case in point. When it came to the crunch, on October 31st, on the eve of arguably the most significant day in human history----the birth of the 7th billion human---he wrote to say that population growth was not so important. So don't hold your breath for Avaaz.