The poetic stylings of Gina Rinehart
This is almost too good to be true, but it appears to be very much real.
Gina Rinehart has composed a poem extolling the virtues of Special Economic Zones and guest workers, and had it engraved on a boulder placed outside a new market in Perth’s suburbs.
Quick link: Cattle out of Alpine National Park for good
The Victorian government’s “scientific trial” of cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park has been stopped permanently by Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke under the National Heritage Act. Here’s the Ministerial press release, and here’s the formal notice of the [...]
Queensland election roundup 1
Before the formal election campaign starts when Parliament is dissolved on February 19, I’m going to keep people updated with a series of Queensland election roundups. The big question, of course, is how politicised things get before the campaign kicks [...]
Invasion Day/Australia Day: Unity/Disunity
I think everyone of a certain age can remember a certain mantra from John Howard. Symbols, he intoned, are not important. “Symbolic Reconciliation” is not important, he couldn’t say Sorry. The Republic was just a symbol, of interest to “elites”. [...]
Queensland election called for March 24
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has just announced that the state election, originally intended to be held on March 3, will now be held on March 24. Local Council elections, scheduled for March 31, will be delayed until April or May. [...]
The Big Dumb Number approach to fire hazard reduction redux.
I have previously posted about the potential pitfalls of framing the fire hazard reduction task in Australian landscapes in terms of simple numerical targets, which I characterised as a Big Dumb Number approach. Nonetheless, the Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission decided [...]
Culture Wars: Self fulfilling prophecy time
The peak body representing Australian Universities has adopted The National Best Practice Framework for Indigenous Cultural Competency in Australian Universities. Not something, if you read the key points, I’d have thought should be overly controversial.
Old-school police culture strikes back
After the controversy surrounding the two past Victorian police commissioners, it seems that traditionalists are going to like Ken Lay just fine. One of his first acts as commissioner was a new dress code that bans officers from having ponytails, [...]
Remembering the floods
As I write we have brutal heat in Brisbane, with a dry west wind. On 11 January last year Robert Merkel put up a post, Queensland floods get worse. Later that day Mark put up a post, Brisbane flood maps and up [...]
This post brought to you by the letters N, B, and N
When I found out that Schloss Merkel was located in the NBN trial site in Brunswick, Victoria, it wasn’t a hard decision to sign up.
#LocktheGate, Bob Brown and Bob Katter
Some of the seemingly surprising alliances crystallised by the Lock The Gate campaign against the impacts of Coal Seam Gas exploration on land use and communities were on display in today’s media, as Lock The Gate President (and long time [...]
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