UPDATED: Former CSIRO researcher talks about the lack of freedom to speak against the government.
See Angry Anderson’s speech and Art Raiches speech about the decline of CSIRO: Art Raiche on CSIRO Canberra Protest. Dr Raiche talked of the days when the CSIRO was a world class organisation and worked for Australia, Agriculture and Industry.
“Management learned how to bring the most senior climate scientist under their control. It was OK to think independently…as long as Management approved of it.
We were given very strict, VERY strict guidelines on not publishing anything or publicly discussing any research that could be seen as critical to Government policy.If we did not do it, we would be subject to dismissal.
We had now become a Government Enterprise. We were told by the Chairperson that we Scientists no longer worked for Australia, we had to learn that we worked for the CSIRO.”
Destination Canberra – nearly 4000 km away
This is a protest to set records. For these vehicles in Perth, it’s 4 days of driving nearly every waking hour (and another 4 days minimum to return). The cost of petrol, accommodation, wear and tear and camper-hire, not to mention time-off-work, mean you need to be very very motivated to take part in the Convoy of No Confidence from so far away. We were pleased with the turnout in the darkness this morning!
Perth Now covered the convoy too.
Trucks gather in the predawn light
…
Trucks begin to roll at the crack of dawn
These people are always on time.
That's a HUGE Banner!
This message is travelling across the continent:
No Confidence in (Brown) Gillard Govt
Wouldn’t trust you to run a chook raffle!
Aust can’t afford to labour under Labor
It’s enough to make you cry in your Weetbix!
Election NOW
There are a lot more photos…
Perth Now covered the convoy too.
Toot for the Thompsons! Photo: Richard Polden Source PerthNow.
…
No Confidence in this puppet government
…
The cars begin to snake out
…
Perth Convoy of No Confidence
Canberra on Tuesday August 16 — More Photos
Click for a bigger version Photo: Peter Jeffries
Click for a bigger version Photo: Peter Jeffries
Click for a bigger version Photo: Peter Jeffries
Click for a bigger version Photo: Peter Jeffries
Click for a bigger version
Click for a bigger version
Click for a bigger version
Click for a bigger version
Thanks to Lawrie Ayres, and Peter Jeffries for the Canberra Photos
Way to go Thompsons
After all your luck recently it makes me feel shallow that I am not there in the convoy.
Heart and spirit is with you guys, even if the body isn’t.
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TOOT TOOT TOOT
I love the Aussie flag on the Thompsons camper van.
Great people.
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Outstanding. I’ll link the pics later.
Great Job.
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This is going to be hard to ignore.
Unfortunately, there have been herds of elephants trampling through the people’s kitchens and work rooms for decades that the political elite successfully ignored. This even after they set them loose in the first place. They will work overtime to muddle through this crises and successfully ignore it as well. Considering they will have the willing help of the government captured media, they will think they can get away with it.
When they do ignore it, what is Plan B?
I suggest the solution is not in finding the right people to run things. It’s in finding and implementing the right ideas that are necessary to limit a very dangerous servant: government. Given the right ideas, even mediocre people can do better than the current crop of government social planners and petty tyrants. The next election will give more of the same unless and until the right ideas are explicitly implicit in the body politic.
Saying NO! is a good start but it is not near enough. You have to show why you have a right to your lives, your liberty, and your pursuit of happiness and that you will accept nothing less. History tells us that you have to be prepared to take the issue to the brink and possibly over. Otherwise, you won’t even be able to keep what little of it you do have.
He who is free never submits. He who submits was never free.
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Thank you for posting the pictures, Jo!!
Go the Convoy!!
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Can I encourage all convoy participants and well wishers to take your digital camera or phone and take PHOTOS and VIDEO of the event, and upload to youtube or vimeo, then share on twitter on hashtag #convoync. Win news had great coverage of the Charters Towers event, but I would like more people to see it. I can’t find the Win TV Charters Towers coverage anywhere online.
Thanks Jo for excellent coverage of the Convoy of No Confidence.
And here is just one more reason:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-nsw/new-questions-as-fund-for-mp-craig-thomson-tops-150000/story-e6freuzi-1226117747188
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Good luck to them all.
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Abbot has been very quiet over all this.
I’m not too sure I would trust him with your wallet either.
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Lionell Griffith: #4
I agree Lionell.
There is a temptation to be taken up by the emotions of the moment; to fight the current skirmish in the present battle.
But in so doing, you loose sight of the strategic objective. And that must be, I suggest, a change in attitude in the political claque in Canberra, on both sides of politics, and in the faceless people that “serve” them.
If political attitudes are not changed, then this effort will only have a temporary effect, and “things will return to normal” with the same, or perhaps different, faces but with minds that will not allow this sort of protest in the future. This has already happened in Europe, where the routine deployment of water cannons is now the standard response to any protest.
I hope somebody in the convoy has thought to bring the metaphorical wooden stake.
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My best to the Thompsons.
GIVE ‘EM HELL. Go, convoy, go.
(10,000 miles away, but with you in spirit)
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@Rereke
Don’t forget the cross, the garlic and the mirrors.
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You are starting a long process of reclaiming your government! I wish you the best and keep at it! It will not be easy or fast.
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Big trucks trump water cannons.
I hope it doesn’t come to that. But beginning well is not enough!
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great pics. keep them coming. btw folks, looks like fossil fuels aren’t running out:
17 Aug: Bloomberg: Norway Sees Longer Oil Era as North Sea Find Offers Hidden Giant
Statoil ASA (STL) has made two offshore finds of more than 250 million barrels of oil equivalent in Norway this year. The country’s biggest oil and gas producer yesterday said Aldous Major South and Avaldsnes in the North Sea are part of one “giant” oil field, and among Norway’s top 10 discoveries…
An estimated 60 percent of Norway’s petroleum resources are still underground. The country had an estimated 10 to 16 billion standard cubic meters of oil equivalent in recoverable resources by the end of 2010, according to a report published in September by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy.
“These are enormous areas, with enormous potential, where we can witness incredible things and we already are,” Borten Moe said in an Aug. 9 interview. “The activity level in general is high and the discoveries that are being made are raising the level of interest, creating a virtuous circle.” …
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-16/norway-sees-longer-oil-era-as-north-sea-find-offers-hidden-giant.html
18 Aug: WSJ: Exxon, U.S. Government Duel Over Huge Oil Find
Exxon Mobil Corp. is fighting with the U.S. government to keep control of one of its biggest oil discoveries ever, in a showdown where billions of dollars hang in the balance for both sides.
The massive Gulf of Mexico discovery contains an estimated one billion barrels of recoverable oil, the company says…
The company hadn’t previously disclosed the size of the discovery in what is called the Julia field until it was mentioned in the suit Exxon filed against the Interior Department last week in federal court in Lake Charles, La…
It has also roped in Norway’s Statoil ASA, which owns 50% of the Julia find. Statoil said it filed its own suit Monday in the same Louisiana federal court against the Interior Department to preserve the leases. Exxon is the field’s operator and lease holder…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576514762275032794.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
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I know I’m not a threat to our global climate so if the CAGW, CACC and general crazy enviro-nut proponents–the unwashed mass’ of extremist socialist hippies, the cowardly green skinny bearded men, green skinnier women bearded in all the wrong places–claim to destroy our beloved global climate, why are they so evil as to asked the rest of us to pay for their malevolent destruction of our wonderful global climate?
Why should us who obviously don’t destroy our kick ass climate have to pay for NGO’s, like Greenpeace and WWF, political parties politicians self proclaimed climate destructive behavior?
Why can’t the greenies, who claim they’re destroying our fragile global climate, take responsibility and pay for their own, god damn global climate horrendously destructive, actions?
Are you a greenie? Stop destroying our precious global climate, you evil bastard!
😉
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Truely inspiring stuff.
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Above all maintain civility. By keeping civil in all this you will maintain the high ground. When the opposition turns ugly they will be shown for what they are.
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Hopefully this will turnout to be Australia’s “climategate moment”. I have always thought that biggest effect of climategate was that it unleased millions to say what they thought. Prior to it,these silent people privately did not believe what they were being told but didn’t say so because all those “brilliant” scientists , politicians , journalist said differently. But once they saw what was going on behind the scenes it “released” them to speak out and research for themselves.
So similarly this convoy movement hopefully will make the silent majority in Australia realise that there is a huge level of discontent out there ( and the MSM has largely ignored it , up until now )
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and now for the latest from team catastrafaria:
Aliens may kill us all because of glibal warming -NASA
Makes as much sense as polar bears drowning to me….
Maybe aliens come from the planet called rent seekers…
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OT but worth a read..
Labor chains itself to Thomson’s carcase
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/labor_chains_itself_to_thomsons_carcase/
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To all the convoy participants…..
GO FOR IT !
WE’RE AS MAD A HELL AND NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE !
ELECTION NOW !!!!
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re Dandy @ 15.
Now there’s a clearly and coherently argued point (which point I’m not quite sure). You are the taxonomic classification of the befuddled, frightened, raving nutters who can’t quite cut the mustard in this new and fast world. But I take your point, facial hair is clearly and huge threat to humanity.
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Makes me wish I had a vehicle to join the convoy… damn me and my ironically small carbon footprint :p
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Sorry to be so far off topic, but would like Tony from Oz’s take on the following.
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Bob,
If someone gives you money to offset the cost of doing something, obviously it will look like its cheaper. Take away that grant/rebate/handout and it becomes again none viable. The article even says this:
“Nevertheless, the flow-on effects of the subsidies have helped achieve grid parity across wide areas of rural NSW.”
Anything can be made cost effective if you throw money at it and discount it out of the total cost figures. Most people would call that dodgy accounting.. Do you support the Enron accounting model?
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Keith.
No I don’t support the Enron accounting model, nor do I believe Solar is really on parity with either coal or gas. I was hoping Tony who has posted several times on the cost of power might give me an insite to a true cost comparison.
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I’m old enough to actually remember the many fiascos of the Whitlam Government.
In those days the voting age was 21, so I had to wait to get the vote. The first time I did get to vote at the Federal level was in fact that 1972 election, and, as a (relatively) young man, I was sad at the time that I voted for the losing side, although my First Preference in the Senate got up, Neville Bonnor, in the days when the Senate voting ticket was more than one metre long and you had to number every square for a valid vote.
I watched as that Whitlam Govt navigated from crisis to crisis with some fairly inept Ministers.
‘Eddie’ is now 95 and I can see him right now, with a broad smile on his face every day, full in the knowledge that at last, he’s not the worst PM in our history. The pressure is finally off Eddie old mate. You lived long enough to have that pressure relieved.
Oddly, the demonstrations in those days went mostly in his favour, although the anger against him was palpable.
However, I’ve never seen anything like this.
It’s true that average Australians are indeed a larrikin lot, and are known to stand up for a perceived underdog, as was the case with EG, but this time the outrage is so visible, it’s hard to ignore, even for media outlets intent on supporting Labor.
The fiascos now are on a much larger scale, as each one outdoes the one that went before.
I’ll bet even Kevin has a smile a little wider with each passing day.
Maybe he and Gough can compare notes. Those notes will be on a foolscap page.
Julia’s notes to take forward with her will be around the size of ‘War and Peace’.
Her light at the end of the tunnel in this case is an approaching Convoy.
Tony.
P.S. Bob Malloy.
I will have something to say about that grid parity thing, but gee, if 28 cents is on par with three cents, I want to see if that guy sells land. (Around 2PM)
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There appears to be a mood in Australia against giving too much power to politicians.
Recently in the NSW state elections, Barry O’Farrell won a resounding majority in the lower house, but was unable to gain a majority in the upper house.
We believe that people want to break down the power of politicians and are thus reluctant to give unqualified support to any party.
We are researching the idea of having an informal group of people run as independent candidates for the Senate, in the upcoming federal election. These independent Senators could act as a counterbalance to the extreme elements and extremists greenies in our parliament. Many voters can see the destruction that will be wrought by these extremists if they continue unchecked. The coalition seems to lack courage to take them on.
As we do not have powerful financial interest backing us we have embarked on a plan to circulate our ideas for comment. Whether we proceed to the next step will depend on the response we get to our ideas. If you are concerned about our country’s future, we strongly urge you to let us know your thoughts and opinions. Not having powerful forces behind us can in one instance be an advantage as we want to be beholden to voters and not to powerful special interest forces, many of which are more interested in furthering their own ambitions, at the expense of the working people and taxpayers of Australia.
Central to our policies would be a strong business sector. Only by having a strong private business sector can people gain higher real wages and better living standards. A strong business sector means more demand for people. Governments don’t build prosperity; they take it away. The business owners, farmers, the people who work within those organisations; and the investors are the most valuable people this country has. They must be encouraged, not discouraged.
A brief overview of policies and principles:
• No carbon tax or ETS scheme of any kind. Ultimately, the working people of this country will bear the cost of this, for the benefit of a few.
• It is critical to maintain a balanced budget. A budget deficit to be only available in exceptional circumstances, such as war.
• Responsible money supply policy to maintain the value of the currency
• Smaller less intrusive government. Today, we see myriad laws from the unproductive sector telling the productive sector how to act. These laws make it costly for businesses to operate. We need to reward businesses, not punish them, for creating jobs.
• No outside treaties unless there is a clear benefit to Australia. Such treaties to carry always a sunset clause to protect us, in the long term, from bad government decisions.
• No trading off of sovereignty such as is happening with the EU. People in the EU are now subject to laws from an unelected bureaucracy.
• A critical examination of overseas aid to see that it not used to line the pockets of corrupt officials.
• No jumping the queue by arriving by boat, for potential immigrants. Any potential immigrants who break our laws while in detention to be immediately repatriated. Similarly for those who destroy their passports.
• A government for Australia and not for some foreign entity such as China or the UN.
• Restructuring of how scientific research is financed. Government funding has led to corruption of climate science.
Good luck to the convoy
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Tony @ 26.
Thanks in advance.
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John Westman:
August 19th, 2011 at 10:11 am
Just a suggestion, check out the climate sceptics website or ask Jo to get you in contact with Anthony Cox.
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John Westman @ 27.
I sincerely wish you good luck with that.
Having said that I regret to advise you that you are pushing the proverbial uphill without even a fork. I have been involved in the formation of five political parties over the years, starting with the Advance Australia Party (AAP) in 1986, which at one stage had more paid-up members than the Nationals and Liberals combined. I can assure you of two things:
1) – Australians won’t vote for what they perceive to be “single issue” parties, such as The Climate Sceptics (TCS) no matter how good their intentions.
Conversely however, and in apparent contradiction:
2) – Australians won’t vote for fledgling parties with a whole bag of “policies” no matter how well thought out they may be.
Don Chipp showed how to do it in 1977 when he formed the Australian Democrats with the single policy aim of “keeping the bastards honest”. The Democrats went from strength to strength on that simple statement and then destroyed themselves by developing “policies”.
If I were young enough and well enough to start over again, I would form a party with a name along the lines of “The Australian Realists” – vague enough to mean anything and nothing.
The Realists would run a Senate team in each state. They would approach people like Jo Nova, David Evans, Ian Plimer, John Nicol, Bob Carter, David Archibald, John McLean, Tom Quirk and other like-minded, intelligent people to stand as candidates.
They would have no “policies”. Just a straight-forward commitment to the Australian People that any legislation introduced into the Senate would be subject to a “Reality Check” – an eight or ten point series of questions to judge the viability of the legislation. Bills that passed the Reality Check get supported, bills that don’t are not supported, regardless of which party introduces the legislation.
The Reality Check would be comprised of simple questions, such as –
“do we actually need this” – (IE what pressing national “need” is addressed by the proposed legislation);
“can the nation afford it at this time”; and
“does the government have a mandate to introduce this legislation” (IE – was it an issue at the last election, and if not, why does it need to be considered now, and not after a mandate is established),
and so on.
I think there is sufficient anger and disillusion in the electorate for a group acting along those lines to secure a Senate seat in all mainland states and the NT.
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Have a look at the convoy passing through Ingham: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuNC_Qnnh6E&feature=player_embedded
Jo I wonder if this post could be kept as a top sticky post for the next few days so people can pass on youtubes and messages of support
Go the convoy!
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19 Aug: Herald Sun: AAP: Protest convoy to hit Canberra traffic
A PROTEST convoy could leave much of Canberra in gridlock on Monday, ACT police warn…
ACT Police operational commander for the event, Superintendent Michael Chew, said there had been much cooperation and good discussions between the organisers, ACT Government and ACT Policing.
“We anticipate that the extra traffic on the roads will cause delays to motorists, and we encourage people to think of alternate routes, especially if they work in the CBD, or travel through the CBD to go to work,” Supt Chew said…
Commuters could experience delays to traffic between 5.30am and 9am on Monday, police said.
ACT Policing said its traffic twitter account – ACTPol_Traffic – would give up-to-date information about road closures, traffic delays and hazards.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/protest-convoy-to-hit-canberra-traffic/story-e6frf7jx-1226117874278
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[…] More » pindanpost.com/2011/08/19/convoy-of-no-confidence…[…]
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Trucks roaring to Canberra
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/trucks_roaring_to_canberra/
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To memoryvault @30.
Your comments are most valuable. I have thrown the ideas out there for comment. I do agree with much of what you say.
My view is not to form a party as such, but to get into the Senate a number of like minded people. Funding, for promotion, of course is an issue.
One point I inferred from your comments is that such Senators should act as the Senate is supposed to act, and that is as a place of review of legislation. There is plenty of pernicious legislation in this country that needs a critical review.
However, I think that a broad outline of principles is needed for any grouping. The principles could embody the points you made in your “reality checks”. Minute detail to be avoided at all costs as it would be fundamentally irrelevant anyway.
So often, I hear comments such as “I voted for the best of a bad bunch”, which further reinforces my view that people would like to have the opportunity for an alternative. I accept that it will be impossible to break the current nexus in the lower house with the two party system but the Senate is very different.
I do believe that there is sufficient anger in the electorate for a new political thought. There is little doubt that Abbott will romp in at the next election, but as seen in the NSW state election, many of those who will vote for Abbott in the lower house will look to place their vote elsewhere for the Senate.
Please keep the comments coming. JW.
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@Ross:
August 19th, 2011 at 7:50 am
“Hopefully this will turnout to be Australia’s “climategate moment”. ”
Why stop there? Don’t suffer the blindness of the pink eye. It might be the defining moment relative to the greens destruction of our climate of the whole of the western world.
It might be the Aussies that saves us all from economical doom. Who would, in the northern hemisphere, ever have thunked that? The Aussies queer gay fake queen never has, neither the EU, let alone the UN. Apparently it’s only been the supposedly two biggest polluters of the world that supports OZ without disregard, USA and China, which would mean that even if OZ get all windmill on the world it still will have to sell coal to those, two, who’s buying the coal, to survive. One has to be totally and completely deranged bonkers to want to destroy one’s own only future income!
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Mr Westman
I have a policy idea, a single idea that would help every thing in every way.
What is needed is to strip the Federal government of the power to determine legal tender. It would require a constitutional amendment. Leave in the constitution the obligation of the states to tender only gold & silver as payment of debt. The fact that the constitution states that the Federal government can determine legal tender yet the states can only repay their debts in gold & silver is contradictory but I’m sure the Federal government would point to it as their lawful right to determine & enforce legal tender.
This is the only way the government, state & federal, can be kept in check. The present situation is running out of control as the debt of the federal & state governments is monetised ad infintum. Of course debt is not money, hence the out of controlness.
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apart from a shorter report in The Guardian, no MSM are reporting this. how complicity is the MSM?
15 Aug: Reuters: UPDATE 2-Six stand trial in carbon fraud case in Germany
Six people accused of evading more than 200 million euros ($282 million) in tax in the European carbon market face possible prison terms of up to nine years, the judge told the opening of their trial at a Frankfurt district court on Monday…
Claude Bauduin, Robert Peitzmeyer and his son Bjoern Peitzmeyer, Wayne Stewart Brown, Irfan Musa Patel and Fraz Mir — who are from Germany, France and Britain — were not asked to make a plea initially…
In an EU-wide investigation, Germany has carried out the biggest swoop on suspects, with prosecutors identifying around 170 suspects in carbon fraud.
A spokesman for the court said the cases of the six standing trial on Monday were seen as most pressing as they had been remanded in custody.
Seven employees of Deutsche Bank are among the 170, though the bank has said the firm itself is not subject to investigation.
“Deutsche Bank continues to assume that accusations by the prosecutors against its employees will turn out to be groundless,” a spokesman for the bank said on Monday.
CARBON SCAM
The EU carbon market has suffered a series of damaging scandals since its launch in 2005, which apart from VAT fraud include a long-running glut of permits, theft and recycling of carbon credits…
In the UK, seven defendants have been charged over suspected VAT fraud in the carbon market. A plea and case management hearing is scheduled for Oct. 31, a spokeswoman for HM Revenue and Customs told Reuters on Monday…
http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFLDE77E0F120110815
15 Aug: Deutsche Presse-Agentur: Defendant admits mega tax scam at start of executive trial
Police, who arrested the executives early last year, believe a shadowy network of Mr Bigs in the United Arab Emirates, Britain and Switzerland funded the team to milk the German tax system…
The accused, aged up to 66, used their close knowledge of two abstruse subjects, carbon emissions trading and the European Union’s value-added tax system, to establish Germany’s biggest ever tax ‘carousel,’ a form of white-collar crime…
The accused men’s companies allegedly obtained refunds, although no tax had been paid in the first place as the rights were successively sold through a web of German-registered firms.
‘It was an open secret in Dubai and in London that this was a method of tax evasion,’ said the 27-year-old defendant…
After that he had sought business associates in Germany willing to lend the huge sums of money needed.
‘To my great surprise, Deutsche Bank was willing,’ he said. Neither the bank nor German tax authorities had queried his activities. ‘I thought, maybe this is legal after all, even if it is ethically and morally wrong.’
Deutsche is Germany’s biggest bank. Its head office in Frankfurt was searched last year when police arrested the six…
Deutsche Bank declined comment on the testimony, but a spokesman said in response to a media call, ‘Deutsche Bank continues to believe that allegations by prosecutors against employees of the bank will turn out to be unfounded.’…
Tax experts say VAT carousels appear to operate in multiple European Union nations and earn their backers billions of euros.
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/business/news/article_1657059.php/Defendant-admits-mega-tax-scam-at-start-of-executive-trial
no MSM update, except for a Guardian piece in Jan 2011 naming seven who have been charged:
REMINDER: April 2010: UK Telegraph: Tax officers arrest 22 in UK carbon fraud probe
Criminals mainly from Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland are estimated to have pocketed Euros5bn (£4.5bn)…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/7659747/Tax-officers-arrest-22-in-UK-carbon-fraud-probe.html
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more fuel for the Convoy:
5 Aug: Reuters: Carbon offsets near record low, worst performing commodity
Carbon offsets neared all-time lows Friday, confirming their status as the world’s worst performing commodity, as slumping demand meets rising supply of the U.N. instrument traded under the Kyoto Protocol…
Carbon offsets have fared uniquely badly because a U.N. climate panel continues to print new offsets, regardless of a widening glut in emissions permits in the main demand market, the European Union’s carbon…
“If the European economy goes through a double dip (recession) it could be a lethal threat for the carbon market,” said Marius-Cristian Frunza, analyst at Schwarzthal Kapital…
The financial crisis has blown off course talks to agree a global climate deal, which now seems years off. The CER market had a traded value of $18.3 billion last year, down from $26.3 billion in its peak year 2008…
Benchmark CERs fell as low as 7.4 euros Friday, down more than 7 percent on the day, fractionally above an all-time low of 7.15 euros.
Prices are now at around cost price in developing countries, squeezing margins for project developers such as London-listed Camco, whose shares were down more than 10 percent at midday, and by nearly 40 percent over the past month.
Rival developer Trading Emissions PLC last week pulled a proposed sale of its assets because of falling carbon prices. Its average CER costs are 7.5 euros per tonne.
European carbon prices also continued falls on Friday, to as low as 10.65 euros or by 5 percent…
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/08/05/us-carbon-low-idINTRE77442920110805
1 Aug: Parramatta Sun: Paddy Manning: Grazing and farming land taken over to offset carbon
FARMERS fear a new rush of environmental plantings for biodiversity and carbon offsets will accelerate the loss of land for food production.
In an emerging trend, carbon traders are starting to buy farms to generate carbon credits for sale under voluntary schemes or – assuming legislation clears the Senate – the federal government’s Carbon Farming Initiative…
Mr Grant (chief executive of CO2 Group) said his company, which managed 16,000 hectares across three states – almost half the 40,000 hectares under carbon forestry nationally – did not set out to own land and only bought when it had offset contracts to honour.
”We don’t prospect, we don’t land bank,” he said.
Robert Gill, who sold Lorraine, said he was nearing retirement age and his son was entrenched in another career. He had his merino sheep and cereal farming operation on the market for a few years before getting an offer near market price from CO2 Group. ”There were not too many buyers about. I felt if I let these people go I might not find another buyer for a while.”
However, Mr Gill said the farm was still productive and he was sad to see it go under trees after spending his ”whole lifetime cleaning it up”. ”I’m very sceptical about the whole thing, to be honest,” he said…
In February, the Rio Tinto subsidiary Coal & Allied paid $23.4 million for a 9956-hectare stretch of land between Merriwa and Cassilis in the Upper Hunter, including the St Antoine grazing property owned by the cattleman Tony Maurici’s Castlebar Holdings. Coal & Allied has confirmed these acquisitions would not be mined but were bought as biodiversity offsets as a condition for expanding mining in the Hunter.
In a presentation to investors last week the company said it had spent $40 million this year on offset acquisitions linked to its proposed Mount Pleasant coalmine near Muswellbrook. The Swiss miner Xstrata has also joined in, paying more than $8.4 million through the property agent Brunskill Pty Ltd for a series of farms in the Muswellbrook area, totalling 4419 hectares…
http://www.parramattasun.com.au/news/national/national/environment/grazing-and-farming-land-taken-over-to-offset-carbon/2243619.aspx
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more fuel:
19 Aug: Australian: $1.5bn cloud over renewables plan
EXCLUSIVE Annabel Hepworth
CONSUMERS could be slugged with up to $1.5 billion in extra electricity costs next year as the high Australian dollar and a flood of cheap solar panels from China sabotage the Gillard government’s push to take the heat out of its renewable energy scheme…
This has forced the government’s Office of the Renewable Energy Regulator to dramatically revise up its estimates of how many “small-scale technology certificates” the energy retailers will be required to buy next year to soak up the glut of about 20 million.
The certificates, which are created when households feed solar power from their rooftops back into the main grid, cost the retailers far more than electricity from the existing coal-fired power stations.
AGL Energy, Origin Energy and TRUenergy — the nation’s three biggest energy retailers — have all suggested the costs of this scheme must be passed on to consumers, adding an estimated $1.5bn to power bills.
And the nation’s biggest energy retailer, Origin, has warned that a key plank of Julia Gillard’s carbon tax plan — the creation of a $10bn clean energy fund — could force power costs even higher by providing new subsidies to the solar industry…
It comes as Alinta Energy chief Jeff Dimery said yesterday Australia had no economically viable baseload renewable energy and warned that the Greens’ attack on coal-seam gas added to sovereign risks for investors.
“If you don’t have CSG on the east coast and you have the 20 per cent target on renewables and you have a carbon trading regime, then naturally enough you’re going to have an exponential increase in costs for energy consumers,” Mr Dimery said. “We’re being encouraged to close down coal-fired power stations under a carbon regime, and the most economic way of replacing them is with gas. But if you don’t know where your fuel supply is coming from, and at what cost, then you’re not likely to want to invest in gas baseload.”…
On Wednesday, the operator of the nation’s only solar panel manufacturing plant, Silex Solar, announced it would shut down, with the loss of 30 jobs.
Silex Solar has said Chinese imports flooded the market, driving down costs, and it was hard to compete with the lower wages and government assistance there…
Energy Retailers Association of Australia director Cameron O’Reilly said “misdirected” green industry support schemes such as feed-in tariffs and the household renewable energy scheme had pushed up prices and reduced public support for the carbon tax.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/bn-cloud-over-renewables-plan/story-fn59niix-1226117775512
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Madjak posted the Guardian link, but WUWT has the comedic comments:
WUWT: Bizarre, craptastic theory from the Guardian, Penn State, and NASA: “ET will kill us because global warming will tip them off that we are a bad species”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/18/bizarre-craptastic-theory-from-the-guardian-penn-state-and-nasa-et-will-kill-us-because-global-warming-will-tip-them-off-that-we-are-a-bad-species/
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(from Andrew Bolt’s blog) Daryl leads the pink convoy through Charters Towers
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/trucks_roaring_to_canberra/
Watch it – it will make you proud – the day the mustering choppers and the truckies came to town
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THis is off topic, I know, and Joanne, I apologise for that, but readers may in fact be wondering about what was said.
Bob Malloy mentioned an article from yesterday morning’s SMH about how rooftop solar power has achieved price parity with coal fired power in some parts of NSW.
The article is, er, erroneous on so many fronts, it’s difficult to understand why the claim was made.
In precis, that parity price of 28 cents per KWH is based on the retail price of electricity in those areas.
A coal fired power plant sells the power it generates to the grid at wholesale price, the cost of the actual generation of the power at the plant, that cost taking into account, the fuel, the maintenance, the wages for the plant, the profit, and the extrapolated cost of the original construction for the plant.
Even with all that and more, that coal fired plant sells its electricity to the grid at around 3 cents a KWH to the grid.
If 3 cents is parity with 28 cents, then I wish I had some of that action.
This price of 28 cents is with the feed in tariff removed, and in some cases those feed in tariffs range from 40 to 60 cents per KWH, making that parity claim even more ridiculous, now making rooftop power 15 to 20 times more expensive.
If you were a grid provider purchasing electricity to on sell, tell me, where would you be purchasing your electricity from to sell to the punters at around the average 20cents per KWH.
From coal fired power at 3 cents per KWH, or at 28 cents per KWH from rooftop solar.
On top of that the actual power provided back to the grid is so minute as to not even be considered when grid requirements are taken into account.
As you may understand, it’s more than a case of them saying ‘we have grid price parity with coal fired power, and then me replying, ‘well no, you don’t have parity at all.
The Post at the following link explains in some depth how this claim is spurious.
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/rooftop-solar-power-reaches-grid-parity-with-coal-fired-power-well-not-really/
This is just another of those instances where ‘clean energy future’ lobbying is making claims to pursue their own agenda, and where some explanation shows a completely different perspective on what are patently misleading claims.
Tony.
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Val, Yes we are proud of our fellow Austalians (with some notabe exceptions in goverment). Unfortunately Gillard’s gang live in a sonnd proof bubble & hear only the things they want to hear.
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No, Tony, the extra cost of solar is offset with a union credit card of an official who does not pay but approves the transaction and the sum is later refunded in an invisible transaction with the union by an unnamed party who may or may not be the person who used the signature and ID of the official who didn’t pay, who is later compensated not by the union but by the ALP for costs incurred in seeking redress against Fairfax, because they said what I just said.
So, you see, the cost of solar can be anything we want. Anything!
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WOW! Even the ABC has allowed a Convoy blog to get up:
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2847388.html
Jump in, be supportive, polite, factual 🙂
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John Westman @ 36
Hi John, thanks for accepting my comments in the spirit they were offered. I am not trying to just be critical of your plans, and having failed so often my self I can hardly be considered an expert – except in what DOESN’T work. I’ll answer your post in chunks:
This a noble undertaking. Unfortunately the Senate is now a numbers game well and truly rigged towards the party system. A person attempting to run for the Senate outside of a Party registered with the Electoral Commission has a better chance of winning Powerball next Thursday night.
What is needed is a registered party, and a team of six candidates in each State and Territory. Only the first candidate is of any note, since realistically they are the only ones with a chance of getting elected. The rest are there simply to obtain maximum leverage from the quota Senate system. So the rest can be whoever you like who is like-minded and willing.
Amongst the candidates are two spokespeople (NOT “leaders”) – a woman and a man. These are the only people who speak to the mainstream media to any great extent. That keeps it simple and eliminates much foot-in-mouth.
In this day and age I don’t think that is as big a problem as may think. There is little doubt Obama won the presidential election largely on the strength of his electronic social media campaign. You don’t need to reach everybody. Three or four people prepared to print out and letter-box drop QUALITY material in a suburb is as powerful as a major news-paper ad.
Ditto for things like how-to-vote cards. In my day a candidate for a state seat would need to have printed around 50,000 how-to-vote cards, at significant expense, and then get them distributed from a central point to the polling booths.
Today ten supporters each with a home computer, a pack of A4 paper (five reams) and a bubble-jet printer, could turn out 50,000 A5 how-to-vote cards in a day, for local distribution within the electorate.
Once you start down that road there is no end to it. If you have “policies” of any kind (even vague enough to be called “principles”) then you must have mechanisms for people to add to or subtract or alter them. Welcome to the demise of the Democrats.
In the 80’s I threw every cent I had, and then some, into the establishment of the Citizen’s Electoral Councils (CEC) throughout much of Queensland. I set them up with only two principles. First, candidates supported the concept of Citizen’s Initiated Referenda and Recall (CIR), and second, on all matters coming before Parliament they would represent the WILL of their electorate.
Couldn’t be simpler, right?
Wrong. The Kingaroy CEC was hijacked by the Nationals to get their stooge Trevor Perrott elected. Then, in an effort to be more than what they were ever meant to be the CEC’s jumped en mass onto the Pauline Hanson band-wagon, and we all know how well that worked out. (The AAP destroyed itself in like manner attaching itself to the coat-tails of John Siddons).
That in turn, led to the CECs becoming “One-Nation”, and now, as I understand it, they are the Australian arm of the Lyndon LaRouche Movement, an American group so far to the right they would ban all music other than symphony classics performed by bona-fide orchestras. I happen to like the Beatles and the Stones.
Another problem with “policies”, no matter how vague, is that for every vote you gain, you will lose one. Let’s go back to your original post and your principle of making laws “less intrusive” to business. Okay, so you just got the business vote.
However the media will immediately label your motives as “anti-labour” – that is, anti wage earners, so you just lost them. Remember, while the media like to play their favourites amongst the major parties, the one thing they are all united on is keeping everybody else out of the game entirely. Outsiders are NOT welcome and anything that can be twisted and corrupted to used against you, will be.
The third thing wrong with stated policies – no matter how broad – and the best reason why a new party should steer clear of them, is that the day after you utter them the government of the day will have used the full resources of the Treasury to “cost” your policy and demonstrate, beyond question, that implementing them will bankrupt the nation in three days.
That will be followed up within a day with an “official” report from the Department of Foreign Affairs declaring that adaptation of your policy on something will see us thrown out of the UN and declared a “Rogue State” by the Security Council.
That fact that all this is utter bull is irrelevant. You can’t fight that kind of perversion of taxpayer’s resources from outside. You have to be on the inside first.
Australians by and large don’t vote FOR policies, they vote FOR perceived concepts (the Labor Party represents the working man, Liberals are conservatives etc). Conversely and again, perversely however, Australian do vote AGAINST specific policies – Workchoices springs readily to mind from the past, and the carbon tax will do a similar job on JuLIAR as things stand now.
So the trick to success in the Senate is to create a strong perception, and stay as far away as possible from “policies”.
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Madjack @ 19. Theres some
scientistsidiots in NASA that actually have useless PhD putting out this mindless drivel about Aliens and actually getting paid for it. Revoke their degrees! Sack them. NASA is full of idiots who think the sun shines out there rear ends. Allot of them are fools.10
John Westman @ various
All this about a push for the Senate came up a couple of weeks ago in another thread. At the time I put together something along the lines of my “Reality Checklist” which I offer below as a starting point:
THE AUSTRALIAN REALISTS REALITY CHECKLIST
.
1) – Is there a need for it?
Does Australia as a nation need this?
.
2) – Is it legitimate?
Does the government of the day have a mandate to introduce this? (Was it part of their platform at the last election?)
If there is no mandate what has happened since the election to create the need for this to be introduced now, and not after the next election, when a mandate can be claimed?
.
3) – Is it cost effective?
What are the costs?
What are the benefits?
Do the benefits justify the costs?
.
4) – Will it do the claimed job without adverse side-effects?
What are the intended consequences?
What are the possible unintended consequences?
Does the expected gain from the intended consequences outweigh the risk of the unintended consequences?
.
5) – Does it have democratic support?
Do a majority of Australians want this?
.
6) – Price?
Regardless of how desirable and popular it may be, can we afford it at this time?
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John Westman: #Various
Hi John.
If you are the John Westman I think you are, you owe me a beer. If you are not, then I probably owe you two beers, but you will have to prove it! (Sorry guys – private joke)
I agree with memoryvault. Too many politicians go into politics believing in things (poor sods). It never works. You can’t use the word “auditor”, but that is what we need to have (on both sides of the ditch). People who will sit in the upper house and ask if the legislation is: a) needed now, and if so for what imperative reason; b) affordable now, within the Governments agreed and legislated budget (“Excuse me, which budget line does this refer to?”) ; and c) what alternatives have been considered, and why were they rejected.
All you are asking for is the reasonable power of veto. The only questions that really matter are: “How would the average citizen respond to this legislation if they were sitting where I currently am?”; and, “Will the country, as a whole, gain or loose from implementing this legislation?”.
Simple enough concepts for people to understand and vote for. Nothing else is required.
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Rereke @ 51.
Looks like I forget my creditors but remember my debtors. I have posted here before on a number of matters, including the matter of the Thompsons. Good to see that the Thompsons are still showing some fight. Can you refresh me Rereke?
I do remember you from before.
I have thrown my ideas into the ring as an assessment of what could be done. I have not been disappointed. The discussion has been robust with many quality comments. Looking at the number of ticks, I believe that there are many people who agree with me.
To memoryvault. For such a concept to get off the ground it would require the marketing to go viral through the Internet, via emails. I believe that the overall concept would fail in the marketing department unless there was a willingness of people to pass the concept on. If this happened, people may gain an “ownership” of the concept. Further it would get rid of the problems associated with conventional marketing.
I do agree that the CEC with Larouche has some whacky ideas, not least is an animosity towards the British. I can’t help thinking that he hasn’t got over Wellington’s victory at Waterloo.
I find many people accept that Gillard has to go, but many have reservations about Abbott. He is viewed as weak.
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A short vid of how the Canberra 16th protest looked about 1/2 an hour before the start time. As the place began to fill up. From my dodgy cheapo camera so poor sound and picture(the rest is ok).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F12Zl_PwTW4
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With my red ribbons and balloons in my little Suzuki hatch back I will try to frighten the bejesus out of the government.
It is not important what you drive it is the statement, all those that can , just get on the web and loose a few days of your life for the good of the country. Just do it and get to Canberra, sleep rough eat tough it is the least you can do, our country is in a pickle.
I lived through the days of what I thought would never be repeated, of the worst government Australia ever had, and now we have one that is worse x two.
It ain’t hard, look up a convey and join in.
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Off topic but is there any feed back on the returning by post of the propaganda sent out by Combet last week?
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[…] #4Jo Anne Nova has some good photos not only of the protest in Canberra but some of the convoy as well – looks to be shaping up nicely! […]
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John Westman: #52
Hmm. It was this passage that had me thinking that I knew you:
It is almost word for word with the central theme of a paper that was presented at an economics conference two or three years ago, in Brisbane (I think). After the conference we met in a hotel bar, and had a discussion about fashion trends in political thought?
Now, tell me … was that you? Or do I owe you two beers?
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[…] Print This Post | Email This Post | Comments (56) […]
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Sorry Rereke, you owe me two beers.
I have not read the paper that you alluded to; thus I can’t be accused of plagiarism. While I have only studied a little of economics, I feel that I have always had a “head for it”. My background is in small business which to me is one of the great teachers.
Makes me feel good that my mind in in sync with some of our economic experts. Although I heard a comment recently, where it was said, that if you have 5 economists you will end up with 10 opinions. Of course, politics enters into the opinion process and corrupts everything.
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The NASA Aliens story just shows some NASA scientists are seeking employment in Hollywood after the Space Shuttle’s last flight.
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[…] More photos from both sides of a Nation protesting! Like this:LikeBe the first to like this post. […]
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May the protest spread worldwide!
I am encouraged that Australian citizens are uniting in convoys headed to Canberra for a show of no confidence in government leaders that have supported the AGW story and the environmentalist movement.
Almost two years ago, in November 2009, released e-mail messages confirmed our worse suspicions about the AGW story and the environmentalist movement.
Since then, world leaders and leaders of scientific organizations and the news media not only failed to condemn data manipulation and deceit in publicly-financed government reports on Earth’s climate worldwide.
They closed ranks to support giving citizens outright misinformation on Earth’s climate.
I had observed similar behavior in the space sciences community over the past four decades and tentatively concluded that world leaders agreed in 1971 [1] to use global climate as the “common enemy” to:
a.) Unite nations,
b.) End the space race, and
c.) Avoid mutual nuclear annihilation.
Noble goals – that cannot be achieved in democratic societies by deception.
Since world leaders and leaders of scientific organizations and the news media apparently secretly united several years ago to support environmentalism and the AGW story . . .
Must citizens of the world also unite in demanding an end to tyranny and restoration of the basic right of citizens to control their governments?
Comments would be appreciated.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Reference:
1. “Deep Roots of Climategate”
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/20110722_Climategate_Roots.pdf
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We’re convoying through the Clare Valley. Wow, amazing country, and the crops are brilliant. It’s a site to behold, these decorated trucks and campervans snaking around the hills.
Thanks for all the support! If you are inspired, please support the National Road Freighters Assocaition, who will help drivers with cost of fuel.
Quadrant online has daily updates from us, btw, with some pics. http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2011/08/the-thompsons-go-to-canberra-2
Hey, Julia: Big wheels rollin’…. movin’ on! (hehe)
Cheers,
Janet
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Len @ 55, I’ve heard that they are actually being delivered. We’ve got about 80 now that we’ll hand-deliver back to sender. 🙂
Cheers,
janet
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From Bolta,
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For, Janet H. Thompson:
Keep on truckin’, Safe motoring to all the convoys.
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Bob Malloy @ 65, and I haven’t sent mine back yet, must do soon. I didn’t even open it and wrote LIARS on the front.
Thanks for reminding me.
Cheers
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John Westman: #59
Yes, well the way the current ALP is going, there will not be anything other than small business in Australia.
And coincidences do occur no matter how surreal.
So having accepted that I owe you two beers, are you prepared to authorise the mods to give me your email address? At least then, I will be able to let you know when I am next in your part of the West Island 🙂
[Please forgive me if this turns out to be a duplicate comment – I got a message that the Joannenova hostng server was not responding]
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Prof (Emeritus) Oliver @ 62, you are well known on other sites, not so well known here. I believe, I may be wrong. Prof Manuel was James Hansen’s supervisor at one stage.
This world is being swayed the way it is by the influence of unscrupulous people and those who are prepared to sell science to suit political agendas and obviously for financial profit.
The financiers and carbon traders jumped in and billions invested in
carbon trading shares, that are losing value by the minute. Yet, they are as Shakespeare once noted in Macbeth – so far steeped in blood to go back is impossible.. or words of that effect.
If we didn’t have the Internet, non of the AGW lies would have been revealed. Wind turbines and solar are inefficient to supply all our electricity needs. Obviously we have to care for the environment, but one way is not to suddenly pull the plug out of our computers to save on energy although that is what the government wishes us to do. Lots of us have been very recycling conscious, compost keeping, using those
low voltage bulbs, turn off appliances and like me, I don a coat and don’t turn on heating during winter. I had a rain water tank supplied
for washing clothes and the second toilet. All subsudised by both State and Federal governments. I have saved $40 dollars a year on my water rates. Some of my rooms don’t have light bulbs in as I don’t use them often at night.
I drive below 100 km to conserve petrol on longer runs. Very few mind you, but it does save petrol.
Quote Gillard – If we tax carbon people will use less energy.(electricity). Quote Wong during the last Fed election tally room
coverage when asked whether dumping the ETS was the cause of labours
losses, she replied ‘No – the planet is cooling’.
I can’t believe how this government is so obsessed with the carbon tax to no where is still progressing without comment. And the Critical Decade provided by the climate change scientists had a disclaimer on page 2? At no time during my 46 years residence in Australia have I seen so much protest against this present government and the convoy is the ice on the cake to me and I pray for them that their message might get through. If the politicians ignore it and probably they will, I doubt if at the next election those that voted for it will still get in.
Thank you for you interest Prof Oliver. And hope to hear more from you
in the future.
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One comment on Andrew Bolt’s blog re Convoy was why didn’t they use an Australian voice rather than an American red neck one. Actually the videos on Andrews Blog didn’t have any song as background music.
I enjoyed it anyway. I keep playing the various ‘Convoy of No Confidence’ videos all the time, right now about to go back to them with a glass of champers in my hand. Go the Convoy! Can’t wait until they start to arrive in Canberra, I think there will be a massive traffic disruption, and the ANU (the one that was responsible for providing the Critical Decade report to the government with a disclaimer on page 2) say they are open and expect their staff might be held up … I have a feeling the convoys are aware of this and stagger their arrival possibly at night and be there in the morning.
Go Convoy!
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To Rereke @ 68.
I would be happy for Jo to give you my email address. Ditto to memoryvault.
LOL about your west island. I was thinking the other day about the mainland seceding from Tasmania. You are probably aware that Tasmania is a drain on the national purse. Tasmania has been described as a big national park. Nice place for a holiday but not much good if you want to work there. There are signs of an incipient migration from Tasmania for higher paying jobs on the mainland.
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John Westman #71:
I reckon that Tasmania should be used as a dumping ground for all the Greenies of Oz. No subsidies from the rest of Oz. Let them build their socialist utopia there if they can. The place would look like Burma, Cuba or North Korea within a couple of years. Everything would be falling apart as they waited for “the government” to fix and maintain things.
Any able bodied man or woman would be out of the joint like a scalded cat, leaving a bunch of perpetual malcontents to their own very limited and ever diminishing resources.
Did anyone ever wonder why communist countries never have a Ministry of Immigration?
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Safe travels Convoyers. The people are with you. Julia is supporting an ex-union official who ripped of his union, his members and then lied about it. And on his continued presence in the parliament (an outrage) her government depends. Just a vote is all we want.
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Rally of No Confidence
It seems that the peaceful convoy which was designed NOT to cause traffic chaos is being downplayed by Bob Brown and others who are saying that there has not even been any traffic congestion. I believe that the only way to MAXIMISE the impact is to cause as much traffic chaos as possible. Perhaps ALL the participants could leave SIMULTANEOUSLY whilst blowing their horns, leaving their lights on and asking others to ‘honk for support’? That might demonstrate just how strong support actually is.
I would like someone to come up with a way that all of us who have not attended the protests or rallys could demonstrate our rejection of this crook government. Perhaps flying Aussie flags and leaving our lights on will become synonomous with our opposition to Gillard/Brown/Independents destroying our wonderful country.
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I should have said driving cars with lights left on and flying Aussie flags… ooops!
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So on this thread:
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/08/gillard-has-a-problem-convoy-on-the-way-powers-through-north-queensland/comment-page-1/#comment-451091
In post 114:, it says:
And now in this thread, post 72 says:
Australia is a vibrant democracy, it is big enough for people to hold a wide range of views on different issues.
People shouldn’t be killed or forcibly deported from their homes simply because of the opinions they hold.
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