Off to the opening of The World Indigenous Peoples' Conference: Education today. It starts in Melbourne with a Traditional Welcome to Country Ceremony, Sunday December 7 2008 at the Aborigines Advancement League 2 Watt Street, Thornbury. 10am – 7.30pm.
Come along. It's an open event today. Visit the ICV (Indigenous Community Volunteers) stall if you can.
3000 delegates from around the world will be attending the 5 days event. For details click the link above.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
World Indigenous Peoples' Conference: Education
Friday, December 5, 2008
Suburbamania: Choking Australia
The Victorian Sustainability Commisioner was stating the bleeding obvious:
A DAMNING report on Victoria's environmental health has called for a halt to urban sprawl and dramatic changes to the "unsustainable" materialism and consumption of the state's citizens.We have travelled extensively throughout Australia during the last 20 years, mostly by car. Two clear messages stand out about how we are choking our continent. Our obsession with living in suburbia is strangling our cities and regional towns and destroying the surrounding environment. Flowing out of these is an endless traffic grid-lock.
Just two days after the Brumby Government announced an extension of Melbourne's urban boundaries, the state-appointed Sustainability Commissioner has warned of serious environmental damage on the city fringes and called for the boundaries to be fixed.
Brumby told to halt the sprawl (The Age 5 December 2008)
The suburbs:
Western Australia is state of the artless. Perth, plus most regional cities and larger towns, is now surrounded by the new suburbs. They are expensive spec developments. The pillared entrances display the obligatory double-barrel names on either side: Dolphin Waters, Floodplain Flats, Pacific Palms, Platypus Park, Pirates Cove, Redgum Ramble. They cluster around mega shopping centres. Strolling through the Karratha, Port Hedland, Mandurah, Esperance or Albany plazas, I often wondered which town I was in as the same franchises canyoned before us. You needed an advanced driving course just to negotiate the car park.
At South Australia's lower lakes, Hindmarsh Island sports the inevitable suburban style marina. Ironically the boat launches behind the houses have quite a drop to water because of the sad state of the Murray mouth. Exmouth has the latest marina residential development, the envy of the old Gold Coast white-shoe brigade. Both noble attempts to tackle the nationwide marina shortage.
The traffic:
Regional cities like Geraldton can now boast peak hour traffic, bumper to bumper. Civilisation has arrived. The mania forbids straight lines in the new suburbs as the Crescent and the Courts mimic Canberra's curves and roundabouts. A rule of thumb: move on when they put in the second set of traffic lights. I challenge you to drive into Pelican Waters near Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast without getting lost. Broome now has a multi-lane road to the Port that splits Cable Beach from the other new suburbs and the old town.
Between Geraldton and the iconic Shark Bay is Kalbarri, which has its own Kalbarri National Park. It also has suburbia. Eco Flora estate is an example:
We have lost our way since the intense debate about alternatives that took place in the 1970s. The sprawl is supreme.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
America Limited: Conservatives Consorting
Americans for Limited Government is a U.S. organisation that believes "that the bigger you get, the better it is for all of us who value individual liberty, constitutional rights, and the free enterprise system."
They're not talking about the size of government, but rather the blogging community they're putting together.
I received this email earlier in the week and their Net Right Daily email yesterday. At first I thought it was a practical joke but it's probably conservative spam. Perhaps they are more than a bit confused about the nature of my blog. 
For Immediate Release Contact: Adam Bitely
November 24th, 2008 Phone: (202) 689-9266
Dear Fellow Blogger,
It is my distinct pleasure, as the president of Americans for Limited Government, to invite you today to become a key member of the exciting new conservative “bloggers central,” NetRightNation.com.
At ALG, we recognize the critical role you as a blogger play in gathering, assimilating, and disseminating news and commentary. And I, personally, am deeply grateful to you for taking the lead in fighting some of the most important battles our country has faced over the past decade, and more.
That's why I am so pleased to announce that NetRightNation.com is providing bloggers like you, the mainstream media, politicians, and other opinion leaders free, instant access to nearly 60,000 conservative blogs nationwide. And counting.
As a complete service bureau, NRN provides you a wide new array of blogger opportunities. As a featured blogger on NRN, you will be able to post your own blogs and interface with other like-minded bloggers nationwide. You will soon be able to “claim” your blog and customize your blog profile.
Information on NRN – blogs, as well as Twitter feeds -- will be divided by state, as well as by issue, to make it easy for you and others to access. NRN will also include a sophisticated search engine function and will soon have the capability for you to subscribe to customized email blog feeds on your topics of choice. Stay tuned, for these features will soon be online!
And all of that is just the beginning. In fact, I have asked ALG's Director of New Media, Adam Bitely, to follow up on this note with a letter of his own providing you the exciting details on how NRN can help you grow your own blog.
Above all, we want to make sure NRN is all that you, an important member of the conservative blogosphere, want it to be. So, as you visit NetRightNation.com, I urge you to please give us your input on how to make it the valuable asset we are committed to providing, at absolutely no charge.
Thank you for all that you are doing. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Bill Wilson
President, Americans for Limited Government
###
Americans for Limited Government is a non- partisan, nationwide network committed to advancing free market reforms,private property rights and core American liberties. For more information on ALG please call us at 703-383-0880 or visit our website at www.GetLiberty.org.
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The claim to 60,000 bloggers may be a bit exaggerated. Adam Bitely's twitter is currently following 2000 people and has 777 followers. Not quite bigger than Texas.
This "Conservative Bloggers Consortium" should be a source of endless nonsense for Andrew Bolt, Thoughts on Freedom, A Western Heart and similar Australian conduits of conservative and libertarian ideas. Anyway they've just had 8 years of very limited government in America. A real success story. Oops, shouldn't use irony - they'd never understand.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Vale Frank Crean
Frank Crean died today aged 92. He was a common-sense Treasurer in a ministry of big-spending, charismatic adventurers. He was a loyal, honest Deputy Prime Minister in the dying days of Gough Whitlam’s government. He was a humble man who put party before personal ambition at a time when immense egos dominated the political arena.
Frank was the Federal member for Melbourne Ports when I joined the Prahran branch of the Australian Labor Party in 1972. The electorate stretched from Port Melbourne south to St.Kilda, east to parts of South Yarra, and south to Windsor. It was still predominantly a working class area. The local ALP campaign committee were mostly trade unionists, especially waterside workers, with a sprinkling of university educated Whitlamites.
Mary and Frank Crean and their family lived in middle class Middle Park, befitting the accountant Frank had been before entering parliament. Their home was open house on election nights just as Frank’s office door was always open. His quiet manner and sense of humour are still reflected in the unassuming smile of his son Simon, the Trade Minister.
Born in the midst of the Great War, he grew up in the depression and Second World War. Frank Crean was an old-fashioned Labor man who will be remembered affectionately by those who were lucky enough to know him.
Vale Frank Crean.
Howard on top: Luck, Lies and Latham
Watched Part 3 The Howard Years: Commander-in-Chief last night. Decided that my post yesterday should have been called: Luck, Lies and Latham.
Tony Blair and George W. Bush were his political referees for the Iraq war. Funny how the three of them are still sure that they were right about WMDs and Saddam Hussein's support for Al Qaeda. Howard is still not prepared to accept any responsibility for the debacle.
The children overboard spin tested the government ministers' memories again. Peter Reith, the Defence Minster in 2001, must have old timer's disease. The blatant political misuse of the military was obvious. The removal of captions on the photos of refugees in the water was disgraceful. This attempt to make them appear to be throwing children into the sea speaks for itself.
Looking forward to Howard's self-destruction next week. As Peter Costello might have suggested, the Prime Minister should have walked before he ran himself out.
Monday, December 1, 2008
John Howard's Commanding Performance
Tonight is Episode 3 of The Howard Years: Commander-in-Chief
So here's another installment in 'The Poll that Counts' video series: Tallyroom Tension. It has a small contribution from Fran Kelly the narrator of the ABC program.
The lead up to the 2001 election was a hard time for John Howard. We saw the ultimate pragmatist who avoided a post GST recession by spending his way out, after a quarter of negative growth. Yes, Johnny could be a Keynesian when survival counted.
In John Winston Howard : the definitive biography by Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen, Peter Costello criticised Howard's budgetary adventures in 2001 and 2004 as unsustainable. But they were effective.
That was Howard cunning working overtime. In 2001 we saw Lucky John emerge. In August the Tampa arrived with its ship load of Muslim refugees. He was in the States for September 11 and didn't go into hiding like George W. Bush. What a double! All it needed was a large dash of jingoism mixed with a twist of lies for Labor's chances to go overboard.
His good fortune with ALP leaders also helped to build his reputation as the consummate politician. First, Kim Beazley adopted a small target strategy during 2001. His me-too approach to terrorism and asylum seekers made him appear irrelevant during the election.
2004 saw the Mark Latham experiment which Howard exploited cleverly. He seemed unbeatable after the comfortable Coalition win that year.
But many Australians had other ideas. And Howard's luck was about to change. But that's next week's story.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Without the hot air: the energy numbers
Thanks to openDemocracy, I found and downloaded Numbers, not adjectives, the first part of David MacKay's book Sustainable Energy - without the hot air.
If the rest is as interesting and readable as Chapter 1 Motivations, it could prove to be a real gem. His take on the debate about renewables versus nuclear as energy alternatives:
This heated debate is fundamentally about numbers. How much energy could each source deliver, at what economic and social cost, and with what risks? But actual numbers are rarely mentioned. In public debates, people just say “Nuclear is a money pit” or “We have a huge amount of wave and wind.” The trouble with this sort of language is that it’s not sufficient to know that something is huge: we need to know how the one “huge” compares with another “huge,” namely our huge energy consumption. To make this comparison, we need numbers, not adjectives.Later on he claims:
I don’t want to feed you my own conclusions. Convictions are stronger if they are self-generated, rather than taught. Understanding is a creative process. When you’ve read this book I hope you’ll have reinforced the confidence that you can figure anything out.The rest of the book can be downloaded from his website above.
... Debates about energy policy are often confusing and emotional because people mix together factual assertions and ethical assertions.
Good reading!
Monday, November 24, 2008
Howard Made History - Happy Anniversary!
From 'The Poll that Counts' video series from the National Tallyroom in Canberra, to celebrate the first anniversary of the election of the Rudd government.
The Howard Parrots
Another video from 2007 to celebrate The Howard Years: John Howard's Dead Parrots Society.
They're not dead, they're resting!
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Fugitive Pieces: Laying the Ground Work
A warning to those given to feelings of depression. The slow, bleak, heart rending journey of Fugitive Pieces to its uplifting finish may not seem worth the effort at times. Jakob Beer (Robby Kay), a seven year old Polish Jew, loses his family at the hands of Nazi troops. He is spirited away by a Greek archaeologist Athos Roussos (Rade Šerbedžija), first to Greece where he is house-bound hiding from the Germans and then to post war Canada. The adult Jakob (Stephen Dillane) continues to be haunted by this experience, with nightmares filled by memories of his sister Bella (Nina Dobrev).
He combats the dark side by writing. The path takes him from private journal to successful author of his autobiographical Ground Work. Jakob's Toronto Jewish neighbours mirror his struggle with the legacy of the holocaust, in particular their son Ben (Ed Stoppard).
Jeremy Podeswa was both screenwriter and director. The script is based on Canadian poet Anne Michaels’ novel of the same name. His use of flashbacks is well controlled, as Jakob relives the war years and different periods of his later life in Canada and Greece.
This is another multi-lingual film. English is the main language but Polish, Yiddish and Greek are used extensively with sub-titles. The sombre music by Nikos Kypourgos underlines the gloomy tones of Fugitive Pieces.
Stephen Dillane, known for his roles in Welcome to Sarajevo and The Hours, gives a very severe performance. Rosamund Pike as Alex and Ayelet Zurer as Michaela are the two serious attempts by Jakob to sustain a stable relationship. Their bright portrayals help to moderate this severity.
Fugitive Pieces is worth the effort but go prepared for an intense exploration of the depths of human experience. 
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