Blockade Australia gave a press conference at 2.30pm today at Pyrmont Bay Park  Media liaison Zelda Grimshaw said: Exactly one year ago, NSW police tried to smash our network with a highly repressive strategic incapacitation operation at Colo and subsequently in Sydney.  Today we have come back, like the hydra, threefold. You cannot decapitate the

The post Blockade Australia Media Release appeared first on The AIM Network.

The government today announced its review of the Emissions Trading Scheme. As is clear from the media coverage, this is focused on one issue: forestry. The cor problem is summed up in this graph:

(Note that this chart does not include agriculture, because its currently not part of the ETS)

Basicly, we've planted enough trees already that we're going to have too many carbon credits by the end of the decade, resulting in a falling ETS price, a much lower incentive to reduce emissions, and (eventually) fewer trees. Which is a problem, because we need a lot more trees to meet future climate targets, and (eventually) to draw down carbon from the atmosphere and undo some of the damage we have done.

The review proposes four broad policy options to fix this. The first one - reducing ETS auction volumes - is a non-starter, for reasons which are obvious from the graph above: by the time we have a problem, auction volumes are minuscule compared to forestry removals. The second one - effectively, getting the government to start buying forest credits - is likely to be a part of any solution. In strict ETS terms, this can be seen as offsetting public sector non-ETS emissions (through cancellations) and backing auctions and free allocation units - especially those allocated to agriculture if it enters the ETS. But the real reason is to incentivise the forests we need to keep planting to meet 2050 and post-2050 drawdown targets. The third option is to reduce demand for forest credit by limiting their use and expiring them out of the pool if unused, or just by halving the amount given away. Again, the graph shows why this isn't really going to solve the core problem. The final option - and the one MfE is clearly pushing for - is to split the market in two, and say that polluters can no longer use forest credit to offset their emissions. This has some definite advantages - the ETS cap actually becomes a cap, meaning it drives reductions. But it raises the obvious question of who is actually going to buy forest credits if polluters won't? On this there's the intriguing suggestion of requiring polluters to surrender some proportion (10% say) of additional removal credits in addition to their normal units - effectively legislating for over-performance. But again, lo...

The media campaign against Brittany Higgins was a revenge tactic by the Murdoch press after she exposed the Liberal Party's ignorance of women's issues, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.

*CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses rape

WHEN BRITTANY HIGGINS took her allegations of rape to the media in 2021, she used her story as a weapon in an uphill battle to seek justice. The problem women have in picking up a weapon is that it can be grabbed from their hands and used against them. That is exactly what the Murdoch media is doing to Higgins and anyone who supported her.

Women face enormous hurdles in taking allegations about sexual assault to the police and then to court. Almost 90% of sexual assault victims do not go to the police. The reason for this is that they are concerned their allegations wont be taken seriously or believed and that they might suffer personal or professional repercussions for reporting the perpetrator.

Brittany Higgins was one of these 90% of women for two years after she alleged she was raped by her senior colleague, Bruce Lehrmann, in a Parliament House office on 23 March 2019. She did initially go to the police on the same day Lehrmann was sacked, allegedly for a security breach, on 1 April 2019. However, she says she feared if she pursued the allegations further, her job was at risk.

For almost two years after the alleged incident, Higgins continued to work for the Liberal Government, campaigning for...

Newsroom has a followup piece about its complaint about Stuart Nash refusing to release compromising emails to donors in which he revealed cabinet discussions. Nash had used the "hat game", claiming that those communications were made in his capacity as an MP, not a Minister, and so not covered by the Official Information Act (and so, for OIA purposes, they did not exist). Newsroom had complained, then dropped the complaint when the Ombudsman took too long, then revived it when the emails were leaked and Nash was sacked. And the Ombudsman has now made the obvious ruling: that the emails were held in a Ministerial capacity, and so Nash violated the OIA. That's good, but it gets better, because the Ombudsman has also directly attacked the hat game:

In announcing his decision, Boshier also set out his expectations about how future ministers should respond to OIA requests. He emphasised the importance of transparency and underlined the OIAs broad application.

This case highlights the potential for the roles of an MP and a minister to overlap and for information to be held in both capacities. The Official Information Act is an important constitutional safeguard. It is based on the principle of making information available, said Boshier. In my view the OIA should apply where there is a ministerial overlap of any kind.

This is an obvious ruling, given the 2016 ruling that information received by Ministers is official by default, and Ministers have to prove that it was received in another capacity. But its good to have it formally stated. And hopefully there'll be an official case note, so that Ministers will have no excuse, and for requesters to refer to when Ministers illegally try and hide information.

A celebration was held for the defining moment in modern environmental activism that led to the protection of rainforests across NSW, writes Charles Hunter.

ON SUNDAY 18 June 2023, locals from Northern NSW joined National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) staff and the traditional owners Widjabul Wia-bal to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Nightcap National Park. Its somewhat unusual to attend a party to celebrate the creation of a national park but there is an incredible story behind Nightcap.

The 8,080-hectare Nightcap estate, which is part of the Wollumbin Caldera, is located in Northern NSW near Byron Bay and protects ancient Gondwanan rainforests containing trees with lineages dating back many millions of years and a forest that has the highest biodiversity in NSW. This is certainly worth celebrating, however, the true celebration was for the inspiring story of why the park was created 40 years ago.

The story begins almost ten years before Nightcap was gazetted in late 1974, the year Nan and Hugh Nicholson moved up from Melbourne to live a quiet life next to the ancient Gondwanan rainforest at Terania Creek in Northern NSW (Bundjalung Country), not long after the infamous Aquarius Festival was held in nearby Nimbin. But just a few months after the Nicholsons had moved, Hugh discovered some harrowing news.

Anatomy of a Cover-Up:

whistleblower warned PwC and Lendlease of $1b tax scam

PwC advised Lendlease on the billion-dollar tax scam which is now subject to Australian Tax Office audit. As Lendlease whistleblower Tony Watson fights the giant in court over his dismissal as a tax lawyer, documents obtained by MWM show Watson warned a PwC tax partner and group finance chief Tarun Gupta the tax scheme was a rort. Michael West reports.

In the week before Christmas in 2017, whistleblower Tony Watson met Tarun Gupta, then CFO of Lendlease, and Paul Abbey, a global tax partner of PwC. Watson explained to them in detail how Lendlease was breaching the tax laws on an aggressive retirement village deal. The ATO will not fall for it, he advised them subsequently by email.

The Tax Office did not fall for it. Although, in the face of exhaustive lobbying and butt-covering by PwC and Lendlease, the ATO has dithered on enforcing the law, it has told Lendlease their tax approach was wrong and is now albeit 6 years later auditing the company.

PwC was adviser to Lendlease on the scam, so its tax partner Paul Abbey should not have been surprised by anything said at that meeting. After the meeting, Watson wrote to Tarun Gupta and the Lendlease Board on 31 December 2017:

5. Next steps

You will assess the immediate next steps after Paul Abbey reports back to you. I fear we have placed him in a difficult position..Paul Abbey will either have to call his own partner as having produced an incorrect opinion under duress, or himself embrace the hopeless tax claim that the law does not apply to reduce the cost bases by the deductions claimed. If he...

Ive been using this quiet period between elections to get ready for the elections of 2024, and as part of that I have now published my guide to the 2024 Queensland state election.

This will likely be the biggest election event of 2024, and the latest, scheduled for 26 October 2024.

While I am still waiting for electoral boundaries to be finalised before I can do the ACT, NT and NSW council elections, theres no redistribution needed for the Queensland state boundaries.

The guide features profiles of all 93 state seats. Each profile features the history and geography of the seat, and tables and maps showing the results. They will eventually feature candidate lists, but at the moment 16 months out from the election this section is pretty much entirely empty.

Most of this election guide is only available to people who chip in $5 or more per month via Patreon, but Ive unlocked four marginal seat guides as a free sample:

• Barron River
• Bundaberg
• Burleigh
• South Brisbane

You can click through to each seat via this map below.

Money, power, influence:

How media monsters used journalism to cement their empires

Carl Sagan said that in order to understand the present, its necessary to know the past. Nowhere does this apply with greater force than to the Australian media and its place in the nations power structure.

Media Monsters, Sally Youngs second volume on the history of the Australian media, is indispensable for anyone interested in the dynamics that drive Australian politics.

It builds on the foundations laid in her magisterial first volume, Paper Emperors, and matches it for breadth, depth and insight, synthesising ownership patterns, political manipulation and vested interests that have helped shape Australian democracy.

Not only are these forces largely hidden from public view, but they have survived epochal social, political and technological change more or less intact.

The patterns that emerged in the 19th and early 20th centuries the dynasties, the allegiances, the political partisanship, the harnessing of journalism to promote proprietorial preferences were still present into the 1970s. Some survive to this day: Notably, the journalistic practices of the Murdoch dynasty.

Media Monsters picks up the story in 1941, where Paper Emperors left off. It covers the long period of conservative political hegemony through the 1950s and 1960s, and...

Australias jobs market has improved greatly over the first year of the Albanese Government, as Alan Austin reports.

IN HIS FIRST YEAR as Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese has increased the number of Australians in the paid workforce by 3.44% to an all-time high of 14 million plus a few. That gives Albo the best record of any prime minister from Malcolm Fraser onwards, when the current data series began.

Thats according to the monthly jobs figures released last Thursday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). This data batch contains several hidden items worth celebrating, with credit shared, of course, by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and workforce ministers Tony Burke and Brendan OConnor.

The jobless rate improved from 3.68% to 3.55% in May. Thats down from 3.91% when Labor took charge. Jobs added so far this year come to 220,000. The total over the full year to 31 May 2023 is an impressive 465,500.

The percentage of all workers with full-time jobs is now steadily rising, as the economy improves. For the last four months, more than 70% of all workers were in full-time jobs. The last time this happened was in 2012 when Julia Gillard was PM. Jobs relative to population are also steadily rising.

All-time high hours worked per person

This measure is arguably the strongest evidence that current economic policies are getting people into productive work.

As several IA contributors have argued, notably...

 

So the pond was watching a Finnish production of Turandot the other day (it's amazing what you can find on YouTube), and began thinking it was a rum sort of do.

Here's the sweet young slave, full of undying love and amazing sacrifice, but she has to off herself in the third act to help save her beloved master. It's true that Puccini gives her a nice song to send her on her way, but to what avail? She's done herself in for a female sociopath with a body count too big to put a number on, and for an arrogant, self-serving, patriarch who just wants to make the sociopath submit, because she's showing alarming signs of feminist thinking (as you'd expect of feminist sociopaths). He doesn't even seem to mind that his blind, long suffering daddy is now without his faithful companion Li. Sure, Calaf sings a song of sorrow, but guilt assuaged, he stays on the make for the ice maiden.

Moral of the story? As usual, it's the hapless lumpenproletariat that cops the lumps, while the other pair get to sing at end of show of undying love and glory. No wonder Puccini had trouble finishing it. Two most unattractive leads and the heroic worker done down. It's enough to make the pond turn Marxist. Even cultural Marxist and fully woke. 

What's the pond talking about? Not a clue. Even Rex Huppke couldn't offer a clue: 

What's that? Too off topic? The pond should return to its herpetological studies? But that's more than enough to make the pond turn cultural Marxist, and the pond has never been one for Marxism.

Speaking of horticultural Taoism, the self-regarding swill of pompous 'leet Surry Hills swine is populated by Calafs and the odd Turandot (the pond fancies Dame Slap in the role if she had a singing voice as opposed to a feral, sociopathic keyboard), and you'd have to look long and hard to find a selfless Li.

They were at it again, with yet another excuse to feature the Lehrmann matter (and naturally find an excuse to run a snap of Higgins in the revolving fickle of visual fate, though there was also Lidia to demonise):

 

Grafton Base Hospital is a Level 3/4 rural community hospital with an est. 68 bed inpatient capacity which provides acute medical, surgical, orthopaedic, paediatric, anaesthetic, geriatric, obstetric and maternity, intensive and critical care, renal, oncology, palliative care, emergency, some specialist outpatient services and day surgery facilities. Maclean District Hospital is a Level 3 rural community hospital with an est. <43 inpatient bed capacity, an inpatient Rehabilitation Unit and a Day Surgery Unit.

Clarence Valley Independent, 14 June 2023:

Between Grafton and Maclean Hospitals another 40 nurses are needed to provide adequate staffing levels say the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association as the Local Health District tries to fill 180 nursing vacancies across the region.

NSW Nurses and Midwives Association Clarence Valley branch secretary Thea Koval said without agency nursing staff being called in, who are paid significantly more than NSW Health nurses, Maclean and Grafton hospitals would struggle to operate.

Without agency nursing staff our hospitals would not be able to be run with the nurses employed only by NSW Health, she said.

...

So it begins; he driving, me happy to be the passenger.

I know the Min Min is somewhere out there, somewhere beyond. No chance of even a glimpse until we shrug off the pull of the coast and plunge into the Outback. Leave far behind the coastal huddlers with their desk jobs, soft hands and short horizons. The Min Min isnt here, never would be. Have to turn away from the sea. Inland. Thats where well find it. Or not at all.

Hes taking this Toyota to a relative at Normanton in the far north and I grab the chance to go with him. I know hes not interested in the Min Min. For him this is just an Outback road trip for two grey blokes. Or maybe, for the well-read man he is, like the wanderings of Don Quixote with Sancho Panza.     

Past Beenleigh and Ipswich, were on the Warrego Highway before long. Roadside has a veneer of grey gums and ironbarks. Move on up the range to Toowoomba, gateway to the famous Darling Downs.

"Were starting to pull away from the coast now," I say.

"How do you mean?" he says.

"Weve crossed the Great Dividing Range. All waters here drain inland, not to the east."

Beyond Toowoomba, busy grey clouds sloping away across the paddocks towards a low green strip along the south-western horizon. Here and there, low-set farmhouses shelter in clumps of trees well back from the road at the ends of driveways marked with fresh puddles.

Continue on past Dalby. More grey-cloud ceiling. Fallow fields and no trees nearby.

"This whole area used to be dense brigalow scrub before the First World War," I say.

"Whats brigalow?" he asks.

"A kind of wattle tree," I say. "Dark trunk and silver leaves. Only about 60 years since it finally gave up in the face of overwhelming machine and chemical onslaught."

Not visible from the car are the extensive coal seam gas fields in this area; gas trapped below ground in coal seams by the pressure of underground water. But its also a cropping area growing wheat, barley, chickpeas and more. Many farmers are unhappy; dont want drilling anywhere near their land. They say drilling has made their fields subside permanently. Whatever the truth of it, governments of both persuasions are backing expansion of the gas fields.

Gun-barrel straight road as I settle into a bit of a reverie. Road follows...

In Tajikistan, women are still subject to discrimination and sexual repression, writes Johanna Higgs. 

"The situation for women in Tajikistan is really bad," said Dilraboi Davlatnazar, a Tajik lawyer. "Its still a very traditional society and there are very young girls who get married at 16 or 17. I think that this is very bad. If a woman gets married then she should be a virgin. If shes not, then it would be a shame for the family."

We were sat in Davlatnazars office in the small mountainous village of Khorog, Tajikistan in the northeast of the country, bordering Afghanistan. I had come to Afghanistan to learn more about the situation of womens rights as part of my global work to raise awareness about violence against women and girls.

I have come across many forms of violence and discrimination against women throughout the world, however, arguably one of the least acknowledged forms of discrimination is against womens sexual rights. Sexual rights being the right to have control over ones own sexual behaviour and choices.

Throughout the world, patriarchal norms and values continue to subordinate women and girls right to making their own sexual choices. In many cases, this subjugation of womens sexual rights is justified by religious, cultural or political ideologies that oppose or deny the existence of womens right to be sexual, or at least seek to restrict or control them.

Part of this discrimination is the expectation that women be virgins before marriage. Expectations that are not placed on men.

So much is the case in Tajikistan.

This emphasis on a womans virginity stems from so-called traditional values, that see a womans central role in society as being that of motherhood. Gender stereotypes and traditional attitudes dictate that a womans value and honour are directly linked to her sexuality, more specifically, ensuring her virginity before marriage.

Women who are not virgins before marriage may face social stigma, rejection, violence, or divorce which in some cases can lead to harmful practices such as early and forced marriages, polygamy, or bride kidnapping.

Such beliefs are essentially informal customary laws which are supposedly intend...

The agent of chaos is at it again. Boris Johnson, frontman of the Brexit disaster show, prime minister responsible for breaking regulations, rules and laws, and overall self-serving gross figure of indulgence, has decided to throw in the towel. He is leaving the House of Commons. The time had come for him to walk to

The post The Revenge of Partygate: Boris Johnson Resigns appeared first on The AIM Network.

Recently in The New Yorker, author Andre Dubus III wrote about a weekend enjoying the high life in New York. The premise was I had been writing daily for nearly twenty years, and now my third published book had become a major best-seller, and I who at forty-one had never had more than three hundred

The post Dont give me a home amongst the park trees appeared first on The AIM Network.

This morning I made myself a cup of tea. While this is a normal occurrence, I usually use a teabag but this morning I used loose leaf tea and a few moments later my wife opened the pantry cupboard and told me that there was tea all over the floor. Just to make sure that

The post Damned Van And The Whole Problem With Judging When Youre Not In The Room! appeared first on The AIM Network.

To ensure its longevity, the Albanese Government must pull recalcitrant public servants into line and take on the Murdoch media, writes Paul Begley. 

SINCE WINNING a comprehensive victory in the May 2022 Election, there is plenty of evidence supporting the idea that Anthony Albanese is proving the critics wrong in the way he has established his authority domestically. 

That said, and mindful that Albanese has been in government for just over one year of a three-year term, there are ominous signs that suggest his authority may be short-lived.

Although the opposition Coalition is pitifully weak on numbers and wafer-thin on talent, it enjoys two advantages over the government that could see Albaneses authority head south just as Julia Gillards government did a decade ago.

The first is an advantage Albanese gifted to his political opponents by generously declaring he would not fire partisan public service chiefs. The second is his reluctance to take action against the Murdoch media empire.

On the first, both the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme and the ACT Board of Inquiry into the ACT Criminal Justice System following the aborted Lehrmann rape trial, have shown senior public servants operating in ways that are consistent with a determination to remain loyal to the government that appointed and promoted them rather than to provide impartial advice as expected by a professional public service.

Competent public servants are capable of saying no minister when giving advice that takes into account the long-term public interest rather than short-term party political advantage. That became almost impossible during the Morrison years within a public service dominated at the top level by secretaries such as Phil Gaetjens, Mike Pezzullo,...

 

Long ago in a time far away, angry Sydney Anglicans once stalked the pond's pages in the cause of a Sunday meditation ... and given the religious tone of a few of today's lizard Oz offerings, it seemed only fair to note that the bigots are still in business, and ducking and weaving at what their Uganda forays have produced ...

For once the pond must stray from the lizard Oz for Sydney at centre of global Anglican stand-off over sex and colonialism ...

Well if you can't find a complimentary woman to do your bidding, why not hang a gay?

There's more at the link, and there's more religion to follow, but first the pond must get past prattling Polonius, doing a fierce impression of a knee-capping hard man ...

...