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  • Labor’s secret hit-list reveals NSW hot seats

    SAMANTHA MAIDEN NATIONAL POLITICAL EDITOR
    The Sunday Telegraph
    February 17, 201312:00AM

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    A LEAKED election battle plan has revealed Labor’s list of target seats across NSW for the 2013 poll and sparked accusations Julia Gillard is sugar-coating an electoral bloodbath.

    Obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, the ALP’s list reveals the seats Labor will try to win from the Opposition or hold for Labor by throwing cash and manpower their way. Nationally, there are 25 ALP and Liberal seats regarded as the most marginal, must-hold or vulnerable to attack.

    It confirms the Labor Party’s battle is holding the line in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, with not a single Liberal-held seat on Labor’s target-seats list deemed as vulnerable to attack.

    But Labor is hopeful of picking up Liberal-held seats in Queensland and Western Australia to balance the expected bloodbath in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania.

    The target-seats list confirms Craig Thomson’s seat of Dobell is regarded as high risk after the ongoing Health Services Union dramas despite a 5 per cent margin, with Greenway held by Michelle Rowland, Lindsay held by Labor frontbencher David Bradbury and the electorate of Banks held by Daryl Melham in the danger zone. In western Sydney, Labor MP John Murphy’s seat of Reid is regarded as high risk, as is Deb O’Neill’s seat of Robertson, Janelle Saffin’s electorate of Page and Mike Kelly’s Eden Monaro.

    The Greens’ seat of Melbourne, held by Adam Bandt, is also in the ALP’s sights, despite the fact that his support was crucial to Ms Gillard forming government. But independents Andrew Wilkie, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor’s electorates are not on the target-seats list.

    Some Labor strategists are despondent the target-seats list is more concerned with protecting the PM’s leadership, amid fears up to 20 Labor MPs could be thrown out of office.

    “It’s all wrapped up in the leadership. They can’t have a frank discussion about what seats are at risk further up the pendulum,” a Labor strategist said. “They’re trapped. I understand why they’ve got the list they’ve got.”

    Another senior strategist predicted a “reconciliation” would happen closer to the September 14 poll that reflected seats on much bigger margins that were clearly in play.

    “The electorate is volatile and what’s in play is not the standard electoral pendulum,” the strategist said.

  • Labor pains? Up pops Rudd

    Labor pains? Up pops Rudd

    Date February 17, 2013 Category Opinion 176 reading now

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    Paul Daley

    is a Canberra-based writer and an award-winning political journalist

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    Illustration: David Rowe

    Labor supporters are rightly dismayed by the fortunes of the federal government.

    The support base is rippling with white-hot anger at journalists for focusing on inane elements of what increasingly appears to be a leadership struggle of mutually assured destruction between the Prime Minister and her predecessor.

    But hard-headed government supporters are also willing to apportion some responsibility to the Labor MPs who, fearing a lemming-like conga line over the electoral abyss on September 14, are venting more openly than ever about the bastardry of Labor dissidence, about Rudd’s alleged treachery, about Gillard’s manifold tactical mistakes and about what they now see as Wayne Swan’s incompetence and lacklustre salesmanship. Helpful. Not.

    Witness the emailed thoughts of a Labor supporter – ”Mr Rudd, your disloyalty to your leader and party is shameful” – that were leaked in an attempt to damage Rudd last week.

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    There’s nothing remarkable about it. Indeed, it is similar to dozens of emails Labor MPs receive weekly from loyal ALP voters who are appalled at Labor’s penchant for self-harm, while Tony Abbott’s opposition avoids policy scrutiny and much in the way of electoral promise beyond not being Labor.

    Gillard and Rudd continue to say the Labor leadership was dealt with decisively a year ago. There’s no denying the caucus vote for Gillard (71) over Rudd (31) was precedent-setting and telling about Labor sentiment towards the member for Griffith.

    Today the charge of disloyalty against Rudd is as easy to level as it is for him to deny – which he seems to be called upon to do on a most distracting, almost weekly, sometimes daily, basis.

    Some say he is driven by a desire for vindication far more than retribution. Perhaps they are the same, which is why the consistent line from his ”supporters” is that he will not re-challenge but would accept the party’s overture to be redrafted.

    That might seem fanciful, even in light of the malaise and fear gripping the Gillard government as the clock ticks down to the election.

    Simon Crean, who knows a thing or two about being politically undermined – and who went out with such force a year ago to consign Rudd to the political knackery – said it best the other week: ”I think he [Rudd] is an asset, and we should use him, but it has to be a disciplined asset. And, again, that’s a judgment not just for us to make, it has to be for Kevin to make.”

    Rudd has certainly been notably more visible since Crean made this concession. But perhaps not always in the way Crean might have envisaged.

    Sometimes Kevin is just there, to tell the media to chill when he makes himself all too available to be peskily asked (again, you rascals!) if he’s up for a challenge. Indeed, his mere presence has the impact of a mind-altering existential substance on some who seem to take the view that he is, therefore he’s running.

    But all he says is: ”Give me a break, fellas, get off the grass, have a cold shower.”

    Then he’ll re-emerge a day or two later just as the government is trying to spin its way out of the fact that the mining tax it redesigned as a sop to the billionaires has been a disastrous waste of time and energy that will raise sweet nothing to help fund its laudable policies such as disability insurance and education reforms and …

    Then Kevin weighs in: ”Of course, after the government’s leadership changed, the Treasurer and the new Prime Minister elected to make some significant changes to the structure of the tax … given the fact that it has not collected any real revenue of any significance so far, that really is a matter for the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to consider and I’ll leave it with them …”

    Fancy that getting interpreted as Rudd criticising Gillard and Swan, and as evidence that he is a) being disloyal, b) ramping up pressure on Gillard and, c) preparing for another ”tilt” at the leadership!

    And to think it ”coincided” with Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon describing parts of the tax under Gillard as ”untidy, inefficient and, I think, unsustainable”.

    No big deal. Joel is, after all, only Julia Gillard’s Whip. It’s only his job to ensure parliamentary discipline – to knock on doors and kneecap the odd boofhead like Rudd (and himself) who criticises their government.

    No. There’s nothing in this Labor leadership stuff.

    Get off the grass. Take a cold shower. Go back to the beach.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/labor-pains-up-pops-rudd-20130216-2ejmt.html#ixzz2L6ZxlrOq

  • Fear, optimism and activism: What drives change?

    Fear, optimism and activism: What drives change?

    Posted: 16 Feb 2013 01:38 AM PST
    It’s a fair bet that my Brightsiding series in 2012 was responsible for the topic at this year’s Melbourne Sustainability Festival Great Debate held last Friday: “Fear is stronger than optimism in creating rapid social change”.
    So six of us lined up, not in teams, but with clear instructions to take one side or the other and not fence-sit (more of this later). The participants were Bob Brown, Jon Dee, Fiona Sharkie, David Spratt, Guy Pearse and Tanya Ha, and the debate host was ABC TV’s Bernie Hobbs.
    Given the brightsiding that still dominates the poor performance of the government and many of the big environment groups on climate action, I felt obliged to bend the stick in the opposite direction, even though the question was poorly framed. Ten minutes is hardly time to canvas the meaning of life, so this was my contribution:

    Yesterday, 14 February, was the tenth anniversary of the biggest ever protest rally in Melbourne. Bob Brown will remember it well: he was was one of the speakers.
    A quarter of million Victorians stopped the city to say: “Don’t launch war on Iraq, it will be hell.”
    As an organiser for that event, I understood that people came because they were defiantly angry, upset, fearful for the tens and hundreds of thousand of people who would die in a war for oil.
    And they were right.
    We all hope for peace. But anti-war rallies happen when killing is at hand.
    At another time of war, one of the world’s great optimists was Neville Chamberlin, the British prime minister in the late 1930s. Faced with a militarised Germany, Chamberlin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler in 1938 and announced optimistically that he had secured “peace for our time”.
    “Madness”, said opposition leader Winston Churchill, who urged the country to prepare for war at all speed, and became the nation’s leader. Churchill was no blind optimist: he assessed the situation bluntly and without false optimism — to call it like it was, and then lead the country to fight and win.
    The Churchill lesson is that fear and courage together can make us safer.
    As human beings we want to avoid harm. Refusing to drive with a drunk driver is prompted by rational fear.
    This is built into our DNA: the fight or flight response. Danger triggers fear, which helps us respond. Without that fear-response, we would not survive.
    Fear is the starting point, but it is not enough. All the studies on health and safety promotion — smoking, obesity, drink driving, HIV, workplace safety — show the same thing:

    Be honest about the problem, don’t hold back, tell it like it is. (The government’s new graphic cigarette packaging, is a result of decades of careful research on what works.)
    Then show there is a better alternative, the benefits of changing behaviour,
    Finally show there is an efficacious path: “you can do it” actions that the person or society is empowered to take to move from fear to success.

    This process also applies to the threat of climate change, which demands large-scale, fast action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
    So how did the Labor government and the big climate groups try to convince people of the worth of the planned carbon tax two years ago?
    The health promotion lesson was completely forgotten. The impacts of climate change on people lives now and in the future didn’t get a mention.
    Instead they ran campaigns about “clean energy futures” and “saying yes”. It was all happy-clappy, win-win. It was all about selling “good news” and not mentioning “bad news”.
    This approach, based on “positive psychology” is the stuff of motivational speakers, of many personal development courses, of personality and religious cults, and of most politics today. It is an unrelenting false positiveness disconnected from reality.
    And what happened with the happy-clappy “Clean energy futures” campaign? Public support fell, because the government tried sell the answer without elaborating the problem.
    This is modern marketing — reality avoidance, glib hope, spin.
    On the other hand when people learn what climate change entails — record extreme fires, heat waves, floods and storms — public support for climate action goes up, because people then understand how living on a hotter planet will feel.
    And that is a starting point for community organising and engagement.
    Over four decades of community activism, I have no doubt that engagement starts with anger, moral outrage, fear, a sense of injustice… combined with a belief that we achieve change.
    The biggest community movement in Australia today — against coal seam gas — is motivated by anger and fear of water tables being poisoned, agricultural lands being lost, family lives destroyed. These people are hopping mad.
    We do not fight because we are happy. We fight because we have taken off the blinkers of false optimism and we see what is really going on. We fight not knowing whether we will win, but knowing the power of solidarity and collective action.
    The scientists tell us that global failure to control greenhouse gas emissions means the world is heading to be 4 to 6 degrees Celsius hotter by century’s end. Much of the planet will be unliveable, and the carrying capacity of the planet will likely be under a billion people, one-seventh of today’s population.
    A 4-to-6-degrees-hotter future is incompatible with an organised global community. This is scary stuff.
    Fear can immobilise us when the problems seem too big. That’s why it is important to understand what modern psychology teaches us.
    We each have a limited capacity for tolerating difficult emotions: fear, grief, pessimism and anxiety. Pushed too far, we are unable to cope and feelings run out of control. That’s why climate change is a difficult subject for many people.
    But security, support and understanding can help us better deal with a wider range of such emotions.
    Working in groups, community solidarity and identifying with strong courageous leadership can all expand this capacity. In doing so we can feel emotionally safer when the going gets tough.
    The bravest thing we can do right now is to be brutally honest in our assessment of the situation, and then find the collective power to change it. That’s the Churchill lesson.
    The other choice is bright-siding, the belief that you can control your outlook with relentless positive thinking and a sunny disposition, and by refusing to consider negative outcomes. In requires deliberate self-deception.
    As Barbara Ehrenreich observes of the United States, believing the country impervious to a 9/11-style attack, or New Orleans to inundation, and incapable of failure in Iraq or a Wall Street crash, can exist because there was no inclination to imagine the worst, as well as the best.
    In the end, bright-siding strips away critical analysis. As Ehrenreich concludes, enforced optimism obstructs the progressive agenda, producing an enforced stupidity.
    In other words, optimism is conservative, while realism is progressive.

    So how did this go down? Fiona Sharkie (CEO of Quit Victoria) said that fear-based campaigns had been very effective in her organisation’s work. Likewise academic and author Guy Pearse was sober and forthright in describing the failure of political parties and many environment and climate groups to get to grips with the real size and urgency of the climate challenge.
    John Dee said neither was a particular driver and Tanya Ha, in the end, was close to sitting on the fence. Bob Brown acknowledged the role of legitimate fear as a driver of social activism and said it was more than justified given what is happening to the planet, and concuded that fear then needed to drive “intelligent optimism”.
    Of course activism requires both, but it would have hardly have been a debate if we had all said that! After the six speakers, the audience was invited to vote, and were given three choices (plus “other” which produced many personal takes on proceedings!). Of the three tick-a-box options, “optimism” scored 10 votes, “fear” scored 45 and “both fear and optimism” won with 145. That “both” won was to be expected.
    What was good was that, in contradistinction to the brightsiding that pervades so much of climate advocacy and public policy discussion, the healthy role of legimate fear as a reasonable response to global warming got a healthy airing, and most of the audience was able to acknowledge than emotion.
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  • Magnitude-6.0 earthquake strikes off NZ

    Magnitude-6.0 earthquake strikes off NZ

    Updated 7 minutes ago

    Map data ©2013 Google – Terms of Use

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    Map: New Zealand
    A magnitude-6.0 earthquake struck off New Zealand’s North Island this afternoon.

    The US Geological Survey reported it was centred 205 kilometres deep and about 300 kilometres north-east of Auckland.

    The tremor, which stuck about 5:15pm (local tme) was not widely felt and there are no reports of damage or injury.

    A shallow magnitude-6.3 quake devastated Christchurch in February last year, leaving 185 people dead.

    New Zealand is on the boundary of the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, and experiences up to 15,000 tremors a year.

    AFP

  • Landholders told no insurance for gradual sea level rises

    Landholders told no insurance for gradual sea level rises

    Updated Tue Oct 30, 2012 2:43pm AEDT
    Map: Sale 3850

    A committee of coastal property owners dropped by the South Gippsland Shire Council will be unable to insure their homes against sea level rises caused by climate change.

    The South Gippsland Shire Council plans to cut its ties with the committee it set up to maintain seawalls along the Corner Inlet coast.

    The council says by cutting its ties with the group, it can no longer be sued if homes are inundated by sea level rises.

    Karl Sullivan, from the Insurance Council of Australia, says the residents will be unable to insure their homes against gradual sea level rises.

    “If it’s a single large event, generally you will find a lot of people will have cover for these things but a gradual increase in sea level, over many decades that gradually … [submerges] the house, is not really contemplated under most policies,” he said.

    “From a residential perspective, there’s really no cover available globally to protect yourself [from] a gradual sea level rise and loss of amenity of a property.”

    Topics: climate-change, local-government, insurance, sale-3850

    First posted Tue Oct 30, 2012 12:43pm AEDT

  • Sydney water supply in danger from mine

    Sydney water supply in danger from mine

    AAP
    February 16, 201310:35AM

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    NSW government approval of a coal mine in Sydney’s drinking water catchment area is reckless and will damage natural reservoir systems, conservationists say.

    The Nature Conservation Council of NSW says the government has broken a pre-election promise to protect water catchments by approving an expansion to the Dendrobium mine, near Wollongong.

    The mine expansion would come within a few hundred metres of the Avon dam and is located entirely within Sydney’s drinking water catchment area, conservation council chief Pepe Clarke.

    “This is an irresponsible activity,” he told AAP on Saturday.

    “These are the same catchments where you’re not allowed to walk a dog, or go into for that matter.”

    Water is caught by swamps in the area and is then slowly filtered through to drinking water reservoirs, Mr Clarke says.

    Drinking water could be lost as the mining process will fracture bedrock under the swamps, allowing it to fall further into the earth, Mr Clarke said.

    “Those swamps are a really important part of Sydney’s water supply.”

    Mr Clarke added that BHP, the company that runs the mine, had said water would reappear further downstream.

    But the NSW office of environment and heritage believes there “is inadequate evidence to support that claim,” Mr Clarke said.

    “The concern is that type of mining in our drinking water catchment has a cumulative impact on the quantity and quality of the water.”

    Comment is being sought from the government.