I am glad New South Wales farmer Peter Spencer has ended his hunger strike, is well, and will be able to speak directly to legislators.
Jo Nova and Michael Duffy have both written about the impact of tree-clearing legislation on Peter’s property, and on farmers and graziers in general.
The NSW Native Vegetation Act 2003 is draconian. It not only stops clearance of previously unused land, but also the removal of regrowth, so that land which may have lain idle for a couple of years cannot be re-used.
The loss of income and loss of property value this causes is entirely met by the property owner. This is unjust.
The community, through State or Federal government, is perfectly entitled to decide that a particular piece of land, or building, or watercourse, is of special value and should be preserved.
When it does so, the costs of retaining that land or watercourse in its original condition should be met by the entire community, not by whoever owns it. This should take the form of realistic, market value compensation for loss of income or loss of capital value.
This does not apply, of course, if the land or other asset was purchased after the legislation was in place. In that case the purchaser could reasonably be expected to know that it applied to the property he intended to purchase. Purchasers have a responsibility to check whether a property is suitable for their purposes.
If the legislation was in place, and the purchaser did not check whether it applied to the property, or what its impact might be, then it is hardly reasonable to blame the government when the earning capacity of the property is not what he hoped.
The situation in that case would be similar to that of the tourists in Dubai who went to the police to complain after the woman was raped. The alleged rapist was arrested, but so were they.
The couple were on holiday from England. They celebrating were their engagement. They were sharing a hotel room, and had been drinking.
Well, so what?
The ‘so what’ is that the woman is a Muslim. In Dubai, a Muslim woman drinking and sleeping with a man to whom she is not married is a criminal.
To arrest a woman who has been raped because she has been having sex with her fiancé is monstrous. It would not occur in any civilised country. But Dubai is not a civilised country, and in Dubai, that is the law.
Those who travel abroad have a responsibility to ensure that they comply with the laws of the countries they visit – even if those laws are manifestly unjust and inappropriate. If you cannot comply with a country’s laws, don’t go there.
If we expect tourists to consider whether they are willing to comply with the laws of the countries they visit, then even more can we expect business people to check Australian legislation that might affect their use of any asset they purchase. The greater the value of the asset, the greater the diligence required.
But Peter Spencer bought his property beginning in 1980.
He had no way of knowing that the NSW government would enact legislation which would make what he purchased to be a business, a working farm, into an extensive nature reserve.
In his case, and the many others like it, the government has a clear moral obligation to compensate for losses suffered.
Justice Stephen Rothman said in the Supreme Court in 2008:
when .. restrictions prevent or prohibit a business activity that was hitherto legitimate, … and (the government) does not fully compensate for the restrictions imposed, society is asking Mr Spencer, and people in his position, to pay for its benefit … it is a most unfortunate aspect of the operation of the scheme that a person in Mr Spencer’s position is effectively denied proper compensation for the restrictions imposed upon him by a scheme implemented for the public good.
If we don’t stand up against this sort of injustice, and demand that something be to remedy it, what right do we have to expect justice for ourselves?
A new report commissioned by the Australian Education Union, has found, surprise, surprise, that State schools are not receiving a fair share of Federal Government funding.
This, they claim, is terrible, unfair, wrong, bad, and disadvantages families whose children attend State schools.
These claims by the AEU are so misleading that it hard to see how thay can be anything other than deliberately dishonest.
Education is a state responsibility. Schools are meant to be funded by the states.
But states routinely give only minsicule funding to private schools – less than 10% of the funds given to State schools.
The Federal Government makes up some of the shortfall by giving additional funds to private schools. But total government funding to private schools is still only about two thirds per student of funding to State schools.
Children who attend private schools are just as much citizens, and their parents just as much tax-payers, as those who attend State schools.
A system which so grossly discriminates against families who choose private schools is unfair. The AEU claims it should be even more unfair.
The AEU is not concerned about justice. Nor is it concerned about better outcomes in education.
The AEU has consistently opposed every state or federal policy proposal which evidence suggests would give better results.
The evidence is indisputable that clear curricula and standards based teaching works, that clear reporting of student results and rankings works, that more parent involvement in schools works, that giving parents free choice of schools works.
But all of those things undermine union power, and the AEU can be relied on to object to all of them.
Perhaps it should be renamed the AUPMT - the Australian Union for Protecting Mediocre Teachers.
According to worried family members, a boat carrying 105 illegal immigrants left Indonesia on October 2nd, and has not been heard of since.
Up till then 19 deaths could be attributed to the Federal Government’s new, humane immigration policies (five after a boat carrying 50 people was sabotaged and exploded, twelve drowned after a boat carrying 39 sank near Cocos Island, and two shot in an altercation with the Indonesian coastguard).
Adrienne Millbank of Monash University says the government’s policies are contradictory and reek of hypocrisy.
But still Mr Rudd and his mates seem to think the appearance of compassion is more important than the lives of a few people in leaky boats.
Bastards.
According to Monday’s Australian:
The peak UN body in climate change has been dealt another humiliating blow to its credibility after it was revealed a central claim of one of its benchmark reports – that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 because of global warming – was based on a ‘speculative’ claim by an obscure Indian scientist.
The 2007 IPCC report included a claim made several years earlier in New Scientist by Syed Hasnain.
Hasnain’s claim was not subjected to any checks. The IPCC did not refer to any other glaciologists before publishing it, nor did they talk to Hasnain.
At the beginning of this year Hasnain admitted the claim was an off the cuff remark made in a telephone interview, and that it was not based on any research.
Nonetheless, Hasnian’s off the cuff remark became a central plank of the IUPCC’s 2007 report. The chief writer of the relevant section, Professor Lal, followed the WWF, which had picked up the original New Scientist story, in claiming the predicted glacier melt was ‘very likely.’ In IPCC parlance, that means a likelihood of greater than 90%.
All this on the basis of no research whatever.
Glaciologists including Julian Dowdeswell of Cambridge University say the claim is inherently ludicrous – no possible level of warming could result in that level of melting – and asked how such an egregious error could have appeared in the report. Professor Lal has admitted he knows nothing about glaciers.
US evangelist Pat Robertson says the reason Haiti is so poor, and suffered the recent devastating earthquake, is that 200 years ago its people made a deal with the devil.
This is the kind of nonsense that makes me embarrassed to be a Christian. But Robertson’s comments lead Francis Clooney SJ, to ask some interesting questions about God and justice and good and evil:
Does the world make sense from a Christian perspective, or not? God allows: the question — that of theodicy — is the age-old one: if God is all-good and all-powerful, why the hurricane? the earthquake? …
Mr. Robertson is clearly trying to come up with reasons for why such things take place — to preserve his conviction that the world is in God’s hands, that nothing happens except by divine decree …
Better to ask, I suggest, “Where is God when such events take place?
If there was any kind of deal with the devil, it was made by the Duvaliers.
The people of Haiti have suffered enough without being told it is all their fault.
Pat Robertson makes one good point – the difference in wealth between the half of the island that is the Dominican Republic, and the half that is Haiti.
This is not because Haiti made a deal with the devil. Nor is there any significant difference in the natural resources available to each.
The difference has been in government accountability and free elections. There is a huge correlation between free elections and GDP.
The US is taking the lead in relief and rescue efforts in Haiti. Well of course. The UN is about as useful as a tinker at a Tupperware party.
Incidentally, Australia’s promised support of $10 million is second only to that of the US.
It is Saturday evening in South Australia.
I got back from Western Australia this afternoon. I went over to Geraldton last week for the funeral of my brother-in-law Bruce.
A great bloke – honest, caring, intelligent. I will miss him.
I wrote a few posts while I was away, but did not have internet access.
I will upload them tomorrow, along with anything else that seems worth commenting on in the last few days’ news.
Too tired tonight. Need beer, chocolate, sleep …
Or threatens to.
Google has long removed sensitive search results from its Chinese search engine at Google.cn, but said Tuesday it plans to end the censorship and may ultimately shut down the company’s China offices.
However, China is highly unlikely to allow Google to run an uncensored version of the search engine, according to observers.
Google has in fact said plainly it will not operate in China under present censorship rules. This follows attempts by hackers to access gmail accounts belonging to known human rights activists.
If Google refuses to filter results and supply information as requested by the Chinese government, China is likely to block access to Google within its borders.
This will cost Google money, enough to hurt, even if not a major percentage of its $22 billion in annual revenues.
Let’s hope Google sticks to its motto ‘Don’t be evil’.
And don’t co-operate with evil either, no matter how much money is involved.
Lots of news about the 6th ROBO ONE GATE Biped Robot Competition.
A few videos there, but this one is my favourite:
Definitely more impressive than Roxxy the sex robot, and probably cheaper:
Roxxy the Sex Robot, and Partner
Like Rupert Wyndham at Climaterealists, I have had some clashes with senior clergy over social issues including climate change.
However, I don’t think I have ever written to an archbishop in tones quite like this:
And, dare it be said, for those such as yourself, in the vanguard of so called “faith communities”, who arrogate to themselves the role of moral leadership, this gives rise to serious questions, does it not? Indeed, in many ways, “Climategate” is less about the “science” – which anyway is garbage – than it is about the integrity of the scientific process, an issue of immensely greater ethical significance for all who value truth as well as democratic accountability. AGW science has been exposed as a fraud, by far the gravest in the entire history of science. The AGW hypothesis itself is no better than a glib and distorted misrepresentation of a 100 year old speculation relating to the so-called Greenhouse Effect allied to invented evidence concocted within the guts of a computer by individuals with a predetermined agenda coupled with huge personal vested interests – financial and otherwise …
That, of course, leaves you in a quandary, does it not? Either you repudiate this ethical obscenity and, in a spirit of Christian repentance, exercise moral authority or you continue to promote it and abrogate moral auhority. Although religious leaders often seem to find the concept seductive, what you cannot do is both to wolf your bun and hang on to your penny. Your predecessor thought he could. He was wrong.
Ouch! But quite right.
It is one thing to have gangs of scientists saying ‘We’re scientists. The world is ending. Give us billions of dollars and we’ll fix it.’
It is another thing entirely to have religious leaders telling people they are stupid or immoral if they disagree.
Posting will be light over the next week or so.
My brother-in-law Bruce died yesterday. Kathy has already flown over to Perth, and I will follow in a couple of days time.
Bruce was 56. He had been a licensed clinical psychologist, and a licensed plumber. Plumbing paid better, and you meet a nicer class of people.
Bruce and I disagreed about almost everything. He was gay, and an atheist.
He thought Obama was an inspiring leader. I wouldn’t trust Obama to run a cake stall.
He thought Michael Moore was an honest reporter, a man of the people. I think Michael Moore is a disgusting dishonest elitist swine.
He liked Baz Lurhmann’s Australia. Enough said.
But Bruce was an honest, generous, intelligent man, who cared deeply about what happened in the world, and about the people around him.
I loved him, and I will miss him deeply.
I don’t know where I heard that phrase. I think was in a blokey discussion of the arts – Australia versus the US.
Wherever it was, the consensus amongst the blokes was that our poofters were indeed better than their poofters. There was even a touch of pride in some of the accomplishments, say, of Sir Robert Helpmann and Peter Allen.
So in that same spirit, I would like to wish Mr Byron Adu, Australia’s regional winner, all the very best of luck as he represents us in the Worldwide Mr Gay competition in Oslo in a few weeks’ time.
Nearly seven in 10 Afghans support the presence of U.S. forces in their country, and 61 percent favor the military buildup of 37,000 U.S. and NATO reinforcements now deploying, according to a poll released Monday.
Perhaps even better news is that support for the allied action against the Taliban is growing:
After steep declines in recent years, nearly seven in 10 Afghans also think their nation is headed in the right direction. That’s up 30 percent since January 2009 …
Overall, 42 percent of Afghans blame the Taliban for the violence — up 27 percent from a year ago. Seventeen percent blame the U.S. and NATO, or the Afghan government or Afghan security forces — down 36 percent from a year ago.