Category: News

My first attempt at citizen journalism was my June profile of the Griffith electorate.

Reprinted with permission from No Fibs.

Since then I have spoken with staff in both Kevin Rudd’s and Bill Glasson’s local electorate offices and sent emails with my details seeking interviews or response to questions.  Electorate staff have been polite and helpful and have promised to pass my details on to their candidates. I have learned that follow-up calls are important and I will keep trying.

As the PM, Mr Rudd has constant national and local coverage, and is supported by his own media team.  Dr Glasson likewise is getting considerable coverage in the Courier Mail and other local media and has staff and volunteers supporting his campaign. Both have Facebook sites and Kevin Rudd is also active on Twitter.

Minor party candidates are much less visible to the local electorate and have nothing like the resources of the major parties to get their messages out.  Whether on the left or the right of the political spectrum, however, the minor party candidates all claim to be attracting voters who have lost confidence and trust in the major parties.

Geoff Ebbs (Australian Greens) and Luke Murray (Katter Australia Party) have been happy to talk with me, and I provide my reports below.

I have been in touch with Palmer United Party (PUP) candidate for Griffith, Karin Hunter and I’m keen to talk with her in more detail soon.  Karin was brought up in PNG and says in her PUP profile that she was attracted to the party because of its “… sensible and practical approach to border protection and their refugee policy”.  She, like Luke Murray, has no support staff but has promised to give me some time when she can. Her profile appears on the PUP website, and while not a user of Twitter, she does have a Facebook site.

This process of seeking interviews is teaching me persistence and well as patience, and I hope to have more profiles over coming weeks.

I will definitely be attending the planned “meet the candidates” event in South Brisbane on 6 August at 7.00am – candidates will be interviewed live on ABC 612 by Steve Austin.

– See more at: http://nofibs.com.au/2013/07/28/the-greens-and-katter-party-candidates-in-rudds-griffith-kingdom-janbowqld/#sthash.6yoUfSF4.dpuf

Marco Renai snaps a shot while running a 60 second triathlon at Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre

Business needs to embrace mobile media, a panel of experts at the COSBOA conference in Southbank told local businesses today.

 Owner of Gold Coast fitness clinic, Marco Renai, stole the show with a 60 second triathlon involving the entire audience that he photographed and posted to facebook during the session. He clinched the sympathy of the audience with his short video outlining the work a group of Gold Coast business men in helping homeless teenage boys get their lives back on track.

Marco’s presentation illustrated nicely the assertion of Facebook representative Nick Bowditch that the best marketing tool in social media is complete integrity. “If you are simply yourself, then you will have no trouble remembering your positioning, your message or your unique selling point,” he said.

 The panel was united in the power of mobile devices. Over the last two years the ratio of computers to phones has flipped, with two thirds of the population now accessing facebook on their phones.

Google’s Matt Dawes said that an incredible one third of mobile searches are for local information. The figure is slightly lower for searches from computers.

This underlines the value of publishing platform and newsfeeds like the Westender that focus on a specific area and provide the link between the community and the back-end technology.

John Swain has been a West End resident for only 12-months and says he loves the location, restaurants and shops.
“Saturday and Sunday is very busy around here. I lived near by a while ago. It’s changed quite a bit, there used to be trams, double-decker buses and steam trains. But we shouldn’t be lo

sing our hospitals and although we have some good police, we need more.”
John’s a trusted local around west end with close relationships with restaurant owners and the South Bank cinema.
“I’m waiting to go to an Italian restaurant across the road. They’ll give me a meal today and let me pay them tomorrow.”
“You must be a pretty trustworthy person, for them to believe that you’ll pay them back.”
“I’m pretty good that way. I’ve known them for a while.”
When I ask what John’s plans are for the rest of the day, I discover his great joy- going to the movies.
“I’m going to see the Titanic, they reckon it’s pretty damn good.”
“Have you never seen the Titanic?”
“Not yet, I also want to see the new car racing movie, The Fast and The Furious. I get a good deal at the South Bank cinemas; I’ve been going there since the place was opened. I sure do love my movies. The South bank cinema is great, the Imax screens are terrific and it’s real cheap too. I’m also really excited to see the new cartoons they have coming out. The new Superman movie looks good too.
John claims he sees at least two movies a week at the local cinema.
“Who’s your favourite actor?”
“Mel Gibson.”
John’s advice for life: “Wear sunscreen.”

Astute Westender readers will remember our June article about Food Connect travelling to Jakarta for the 6th international La Vía Campesina conference which is all about giving control of agriculture back to the farmer.

While the La Via Campesina movement was formed in support of peasants in poor countries whose governments have sided with global agribusiness giants, many Australian farmers have found themselves facing similar problems.

We provide here for you the presentation to the conference by Food Connect’s Luke Speghen. It is reproduced here by permission of Food Connect.

For the last 10 years or so George Orwell’s dictum “those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future” [1] has been expressed through a small number of people, arguing against long-established basic laws of physics, the principles of climate science and current measurements.

According to the leader of the Australian opposition “It’s a market, a so-called market, in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one” [2].

But perhaps no so invisible? (see Figure 1).

Given major media platforms, the anti-science lobby has (continues to) provide polluting interests and their political mouthpieces with pseudo-scientific excuses allowing an increase carbon emission and lulling populations to a false sense of security (see: Merchants of doubt [3]).

The consequences are upon humanity and nature:

1. 

   CO2 levels have reached record levels of 400 ppm exceeding those of the Pliocene (2.6-5.2 million years ago) within less than a couple of centuries, at an unprecedented rate of 2-3 ppm/year [4] (Figure 2).

2. Since the 19th century global warming has reached 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures on the continents [5]. Mean temperature higher than 2 degrees Celsius are masked by sulphur aerosols, which already constitute an unintended global geo-engineering measure [6]. Ocean temperatures to 100 meters depth have risen by ~0.4 degrees C [7], which has already resulted in melting of the Arctic summer ice (12.6 to 11 million square kilometer between June 1979 to 2013 [8]) and is driving melting of the Antarctic ice sheet [9].
3. Consequent on the rising CO2 levels ocean acidity has increased by approximately -0.1 pH points [10][10a], placing plankton and corals at risk. 
4. Consistent with rising temperatures in the oceans, increased evaporation and consequent precipitation lead to floods and increased heat/energy results in the intensification of hurricanes [11]
5. Rising temperatures over continents have already resulted in increase in heat waves and fires [12][12a], Australia being no exception [13]. 

Not that the above features too much in the Australian elections, where the reality of climate change has been replaced with the hit-pocket-nerve term “carbon tax”, “emission trading scheme” or “direct action”. In the context of the fast deteriorating global climate, plans by both
major parties of 5 percent reduction in emissions relative to 2000 represent no more than climate window dressing.

Nor are coal exports mentioned too often, despite current exports and planned future exports of representing carbon emissions tracking toward an order of magnitude higher than local emissions [14].

According to Dr Adam Lucas of the Science & Technology Studies Program, University of Wollongong, currently Australia (with ~0.3% of the global population) contributes domestic missions of about 1.8% of global emissions [15]. The total domestic and overseas consumption
of Australian coal is responsible for more than 2% of global emissions. Plans to triple or even quadruple coal export volumes over next 10 years would raise Australia’s total contribution to global GHG emissions to around 9% to 11% by 2020 [15].

Which places the “Great moral challenge of our generation” [16] in perspective.

Fig. 2. Growth in CO2 and CO2 equivalent (CO2+CH4) during the Pleistocene and the
Holocene.
[1] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/georgeorwe109402.html
[2] http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/a-socalled-market-in-invisiblestuff-the-meaning-of-tony-abbotts-carbon-rhetoric-20130715-2q00e.html#ixzz2Z9iyWIKE
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942
[4] http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
[5] http://berkeleyearth.org/results-summary/
[6] http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/13421/2011/acp-11-13421-2011.pdf
[7] http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/index3.html ;

[8] http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2013/07/Figure3.png
[9] http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20130613.html
[10] http://www.ocean-acidification.net/FAQacidity.html; http://theconversation.com/jumps-inocean-acidity-put-coral-in-more-peril-12606
[11] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/279/5353/1018.short
[12] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130118104121.htm ;
http://www.acfonline.org.au/be-informed/climate-change-energy/heatwaves-and-globalwarming?gclid=CPOkrM7wsrgCFfBIpgodx0cARg
[13] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-19/saturday-bushfire-live-coverage/4472026
[14] http://theconversation.com/on-arctic-sea-ice-melt-and-coal-mine-canaries-5967
[15]
http://www.ies.unsw.edu.au/sites/all/files/UNSW%20Australia,%20Climate%20Change%20%2
6%20the%20Coal%20Industry.pdf
[16] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqZvpRjGtGM

Head of Alcohol Policy Research, Prof Robin Room, has called for the legalisation of marijuana to reduce binge drinking and violence.

He says that it would significantly reduce government costs to “have a highly controlled legal (cannabis) market and tighten up the legal market of alcohol in the same way we tightened up the market of tobacco”.

“Cannabis is not without harm but it’s substantially less than alcohol and tobacco in terms of social harm,” he says.

More information about Professor Room is available at his website