Monday 2 December 2013

Moggy Musings [Archived material from Boy The Wonder Cat]


A two for one musing:
The Daily Examiner's 23.10.13 issue carried this blooper. "Clarence Valley library users contnue to slate their thirst for material that's turning the page from traditional books to those available on the internet." A case of simple typo teams up with an inability to look up slake in the dictionary.

A little birdie musing: 
Now I normally consider little birdies as nothing more than party appetisers, but today one flew by and told me that Metgasco Limited shareholders are worried that the proxy authorization wording put to them by the current board may see many shareholders unknowingly allowing their vote to be hijacked in favour of the status quo.

A glass ball musing:
Butch the Boxer who lives in Grafton is one savvy dog. He dropped by mid-week on his way to a bit of beach time. He told me that mutts in his street are laying odds on Prime Minister Tony Abbott organizing a legal move against Clive Palmer's newly created senate bloc à la Hanson and Etteridge by July 2014.

A looking over her shoulder musing:
Quietly glided my way onto the desk and stuck my nose right on the laptop screen. Seems one Yamba local (who swears that NCV is not worth a read) came onto the blog five times in one day recently just to see what was going on. Hiya Dave!

A well who didn't see that coming musing:
Former NSW Premier and former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr is to quit politics now he is a lowly senator on the Opposition benches. If Federal Labor has any sense it will replace him with Janelle Saffin the hard-working former MP for Page on the NSW North Coast.

A Walks On Water musing:
Which Clarence Valley shire councillor has made a habit of successfully requesting to stay in the room when fellow councillors are considering that councillor’s particular business interests or matters impacting on those business interests.

A who on earth told Eli that musing:
Eli Greenblat is a journalist writing for The Sydney Morning Herald and he electrified Yamba folk in late August by referring to Billabong founder Gordon Merchant as an environmentalist.
Bitter laughter could be heard as locals turned the pages of their newspapers that day.

Boy

The Australian newspaper outs Federal Education Minister in "Christopher was so tied to the new school funding model we thought his name was Pyneski"


Is the Murdoch media now genuinely in two minds over the Abbott Government or has it decided that mirroring growing public anti-Abbott sentiment will sell newspapers?
THE Coalition was on a unity ticket with Labor on the Gonski reforms -- and then suddenly it wasn't.
Christopher Pyne tells the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute forum, February 2012:
PARENTS and schools need certainty in funding arrangements. They need to know that their school's funding arrangements won't be prone to sudden change . . . I have seen first-hand just how angry parents and communities get without certainty.
Tony Abbott to reporters, August 2:
WE will honour the agreements that Labor has entered into. We will match the offers that Labor has made . . . but you won't get the strings attached so what I want to say today is that as far as school funding is concerned, Kevin Rudd and I are on a unity ticket.
Pyne's policy launch, August 29:
SO you can vote Liberal or Labor and you'll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school except you'll get $120 million more from (us).
Pyne at News Ltd forum, August 29:
WE have agreed to the government's new school funding model over the forward estimates, because we believe that the debate about funding was becoming something of an asinine distraction from the issues.
Pyne on Radio National, August 30:
WE are committed to the student resource standard; of course we are. We are committed to this new school funding model. It will be up to the states to decide whether they spend their money or not because they are sovereign governments and should be treated like adults.
Pyne, ABC1's 7.30, October 15:
OUR policy, very clearly before the election, was that we would honour the next four years of the school funding agreements.
Asked about a new funding model, Pyne to reporters on Tuesday:
I BELIEVE that the school funding model that was implemented by the Howard government, which was based on the socioeconomic status and qualifications of parents and went to the schools that were most in need, is a good starting point for a school funding model.
Pyne has a change of heart on ABC Radio in Adelaide, Wednesday:
I'VE never said that we'd be reverting to the Howard model, so I don't know where you've got that idea from.
Fran Kelly interviews Pyne on Radio National Breakfast, Tuesday:
KELLY: Kathryn Greiner was a member of the Gonski review panel. She's urging you not to walk away from their recommendations. She's asking if you'd sit down with the panel for a day so they can convince you of the system's benefits. Would you do that?
PYNE: No. I've studied the Gonski model closely.
But Pyne tells the ABC's Matthew Abraham in Adelaide, Wednesday:
ABRAHAM: Chris Pyne, you won't meet with the Gonski panel, I think that's correct, is it?
PYNE: No that's also not correct . . . I mean in this fevered reporting of these matters . . .
ABRAHAM: Or are you just all over the place? Is the media reporting your thought bubbles and you're then having to go around and correct them?
PYNE: No, no that's quite unfair . . . I never said to anybody that I wouldn't meet with the Gonski committee.
The Prime Minister on Ten Network's The Bolt Report yesterday:
ABBOTT: I'm happy to say that under the Coalition schools will get the same quantum of funding over the four years that they would have under Labor had it been re-elected. In fact, they will get a little bit more.
ANDREW BOLT: You just heard me play that promise . . . it was about each school getting the same money for the next four years. Will you repeat that promise? I don't know why you made it then and can't repeat it now?
ABBOTT: Well, I think Christopher said schools would get the same amount of money and schools -- plural -- will get the same amount of money. The quantum will be the same.
Laurie Oakes tells it straight on Pyne, Daily Telegraph, Saturday:
PYNE is still engaging in the moving-target trickery of opposition . . . lies were told before the election and lies are being told now.
UPDATE

The Sydney Morning Herald 2 December 2013:

The Abbott government has reversed its position again on the Gonski education funding, saying it will honour all existing deals for the next four years, and add an extra $1.2 billion into the system.
In a joint press conference held at Parliament House in Canberra, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Education Minister Christopher Pyne sought to put an end to the damaging headlines about the government's ‘‘broken promise’’ on education. 

The Lies Abbott Tells - Part Five


In announcing the Abbott Government’s changes to education funding for Australian schools, neither Prime Minister Tony Abbott nor Education Minister Christopher Pyne would guarantee that individual schools, in those states which had entered into agreements with the Commonwealth under the former Labor Government’s legislated education reforms, would receive the funding levels expected over the next four years.

With Mr. Pyne apparently going one step further and implying that any cuts in funding to individual states would have to be met by reducing funding to schools in those states’ free public education systems, as non-government/private school funding levels were set in separate legislation.

However, Tony Abbott continues to insist that he is keeping his election campaign promise with regard to school funding.

He is not telling the truth.

THE LIE

ABC News 1 December 2013:

Mr Abbott maintains the Coalition is upholding its election commitment, saying it promised to match the funding total, not the model used to distribute it.
"Under the Coalition, schools will get the same quantum of funding over the four years that they would have under Labor had it been re-elected. In fact, they will get a little bit more," he told Channel Ten.
"I think Christopher [Pyne] said schools would get the same amount of money and schools - plural - will get the same amount of money.
"We are going to keep the promise that we actually made, not the promise that some people thought that we made, or the promise that some people might have liked us to make."

THE TRUTH

TONY ABBOTT: ...as far as I am concerned, as far as Christopher Pyne is concerned, as far as the Coalition is concerned, we want to end the uncertainty by guaranteeing that no school will be worse off over the forward estimates period. So we will honour the agreements that Labor has entered into, we will match the offers that Labor has made, we will make sure that no school is worse off...as far as school funding is concerned Kevin Rudd and I are on a unity ticket.

ABC NEWS 2 August 2013:

The Coalition has announced a turnaround in its support for the Federal Government's so-called "Gonski" school funding plan.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says if the Coalition wins government, it will honour Labor's funding commitments across the four years of the budget forward estimates.
Previously, he had promised only to guarantee any deals Labor struck for the first year.
Mr Abbott says the decision will help schools plan for the future.

Excerpts from then Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s official website, www.tonyabbott.com.au:

The Coalition's policy for schools: Putting students first
  Posted on Thursday, 29 August 2013
A Coalition government will improve Australia’s schools through improved teacher quality, greater parental involvement in decision-making, a sound national curriculum and deliver certainty over funding.
Our policy starts with a clear commitment to all Australian schools: your funding is certain.  The Coalition will match Labor dollar-for-dollar over the next four years......

Interview with Barrie Cassidy, Insiders, ABC TV

  Posted on Sunday, 1 September 2013
TONY ABBOTT:
I don't believe the additional savings to be announced later in this week, will impact on ordinary Australians. I want to give people this absolute assurance, no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions and no changes to the GST.

Address to the National Press Club, Election 2013

  Posted on Monday, 2 September 2013
.......No cuts to education......

Christopher Pyne confirms Abbott's election campaign commitment:


On 26 August 2013: So you can vote Liberal or Labor and you'll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school…

UPDATE

THE PARTIAL BACKDOWN

The Sydney Morning Herald 2 December 2013:

The Abbott government has reversed its position again on the Gonski education funding, saying it will honour all existing deals for the next four years, and add an extra $1.2 billion into the system.
In a joint press conference held at Parliament House in Canberra, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Education Minister Christopher Pyne sought to put an end to the damaging headlines about the government's ‘‘broken promise’’ on education. 

Once upon a time strong criticism of Tony Abbott was generally confined to social media - not anymore




For the almost six years Tony Abbott and the Coalition occupied the Opposition benches in the Australian Parliament he encouraged, flattered and cajoled the mainstream media into accepting a negative view of federal government.

Now heading the federal government himself, he is reaping that which he sowed.

The Australian 30 November 2013:

The real danger for the new government, a danger enhanced by a far more hostile media than confronted the incoming Rudd government, is that an impression, true or false, created now, in just a few weeks, will determine how the Abbott prime ministership is viewed for years to come. This atmosphere is made worse by internal sniping and blame-shifting, bad polling, an attempt to overreach on management and a lack of recognition of the damage that can be done in the short term that will not be overcome in the long term.

Financial Review  29 November 2013:

The alarm bells about the Abbott government are becoming deafening. And they are ringing around the world. What started as a rumble in Jakarta is now echoing through the capitals of every nation which has any dealings with Australia.
And it’s not hard to imagine that the first question being asked about Abbott’s Australia is: “What on earth is going on?”
What is happening is that a dramatic re-positioning of the way Australia relates to the rest of the world is under way.
A new ideology is being applied by
Tony Abbott and those with most influence on his thinking. And it is now clear that Joe Hockey is not one of those people.

The Sydney Morning Herald 29 November 2013:

It's rare, maybe unheard of, for an elected political leader to set out to put his country into even worse shape than he found it.
If such a reversal occurs, it's usually the result of war, or recession or incompetence or exceptionally bad luck, or a combination of external circumstances.
Tony Abbott might not think this is what he is doing. It might not be what he intends to do, but he needs to be aware of the likely consequences of the course he has embarked upon. Because there is no doubt he is going to leave Australia in worse shape than he found it and this is going to be especially tough on the next generation. Babies born this week will, on average, live to around 2101 we learnt from reports a few days ago. But what will their lives be like?
Just looking at two of the Abbott government's policies – education and climate change – we can confidently predict the next generation of Australians will be denied the continuous betterment to their lives that their parents and grandparents have taken for granted.
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Abbott's brazen backflip on the Gonski schools funding agreements and Christopher Pyne's extraordinary flirtation, later abandoned, with a return to John Howard's class-based socio-economic status (SES) system means today's generation will serve life sentences in whatever socio-economic group they happened to be born into.
And Abbott's bizarre notion that planting (even lots of) trees and paying polluters to be a little bit less dirty will arrest, let alone begin to reverse, the trajectory towards catastrophic climate change on which this planet is hurtling, borders on criminal negligence.

The Sydney Morning Herald 28 November 2013:

But inside the Abbott brains trust, there must surely be those who are wondering if the U-turn they've just made will come back to haunt them.
The flipside of Abbott's directness in opposition is that it makes any reversal in government stand out all the more clearly. Voters heard the promises of a new government that it would say what it means and then do what it says.
They warmed to the promise of adults being back in charge and of Canberra being straight and open with voters.
They embraced the prediction that there would be an instant fillip of business and consumer confidence. And they bought it.
Yet since the election, the reality has been decidedly less attractive.
Joe Hockey had told voters that the answer to debt is never more debt. Now he wants an unprecedented $200 billion hike in the borrowing limit.
Pyne and Abbott promised an independent speaker but installed one who has remained in the party room.
Scott Morrison promised to turn back asylum seeker boats and even buy fishing boats but has turned back none and bought back none.
And the whole thing has been cloaked in an absurd and contemptuous secrecy.

The Sydney Morning Herald 27 November 2013:

They promised before the election to be a “no-surprises” government.
But since winning power the Abbott government has lengthened its list of broken promises and policy surprises by more than one a week.

Herald Sun 21 November 2013:
If it wasn't so serious, you'd think it was a rejected storyline for the spy-spoof TV series Get Smart.
Would you believe four years ago one of Australia's most secret spy agencies monitored the mobile phone of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his wife Ani and eight of his inner circle? And would you believe they then bragged about how clever they were in a PowerPoint presentation with the now laughable slogan "reveal their secrets - protect our own".
We share our intelligence with the US but our secrets have been revealed by security contractor and one-time CIA employee Edward Snowden, who gave 200,000 classified documents to the British press and then fled to Russia.
And it's all led to Tony Abbott's first real crisis as Prime Minister, as he comes under fire for his response to the spy bungles.
Indonesia has recalled its ambassador, halted military ties, stopped co-operation in the fight against people smugglers and frozen information-sharing on counterterrorism. Australia's most famous prisoner in Bali, Schapelle Corby, could even have her hopes for release tied up in this storm.
In Jakarta there are protests and the burning of Australian flags outside the our embassy. In Darwin, Indonesian troops taking part in war games with Australia simply walked out.
It is a disaster for Abbott, who is trying to regain control from chaos.......

News.com.au 20 November 2013:

IF the Government's determination to block information on asylum seeker policy hasn't reached a peak of absurdity it is must surely be just short stroll from that summit.
We now see Immigration Minister Scott Morrison refusing to confirm information released by Immigration Minister Scott Morrison.

* Photograph found at The Sydney Morning Herald

Sunday 1 December 2013

Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison just sent this small baby to Christmas Island detention camp

Scott Morrison loves secrecy so here's a photo of baby Erfan....sent to Xmas Island Detention Centre yesterday
10:38 AM - 30 Nov 13 

Abbott Government sets the clock back to the IT dark ages


Former Telstra CEO and Tony Abbott-appointee as NBN Co Chairman, Ziggy Switkowski, will earn a total of $700,000 on an annualised basis if he keeps the acting [NBN] CEO role for 12 months.

Apparently this amount of money may have purchased Prime Minister Abbott and Federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull a change of heart on the part of Mr. Switkowski.



This volte-face was revealed when.......

The Australian Select Committee on the National Broadband Network’s Inquiry into the National Broadband Network issued summons.

IT News 27 November 2013:

The newly-formed senate committee examining the NBN said it has been forced to summons NBN Co executives to appear as witnesses at planned hearings this week.
Kate Lundy, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on the national broadband network, said in a statement NBN Co executives including interim CEO Ziggy Switkowski, strategy head JB Rousselot, COO Greg Adcock, CTO Gary McLaren and CFO Robin Payne had been "reluctant to attend the committee in person".
"The committee is disappointed that NBN Co have taken this position," Lundy said.
"It is with regret that we have had to issue this summons, given the public commitment the Government has made to openness and transparency in all matters relating to the NBN."
The summons requires NBN Co to appear before the committee on Friday of this week.
Comment is being sought from an NBN Co spokesperson at the time of publication.

ZDNet 28 November 2013:

The membership of the committee is made up of three Labor senators and one Greens senator. The Coalition is allowed to appoint three of its own to the committee, but it is understood that the government didn't nominate any senators prior to today's hearing.

And those giving evidence at the Inquiry stated for the record what most bloggers already knew.

The Sydney Morning Herald 28 November 2013:

There are at least three reasons why the NBN Co expects to make less money from customers on the Coalition's network – which is expected to be about $17 billion cheaper to build than the previous Labor government's NBN.
First, businesses and families will not be able to buy the highest speed plans offered under Labor's NBN, which involved running fibre cabling to 93 per cent of homes around Australia.
The Coalition's alternative NBN, which piggybacks on copper telephone wires for about 70 per cent of households, could not offer “packages” of 250, 500 or 1000 megabits per second, government officials said on Thursday.
Second, it is likely Australians will download and upload less data across the Coalition's slower NBN, which would lower revenue forecasts.
And third, while Labor's NBN was essentially a government-owned monopoly, the Coalition's network will face infrastructure competition from telecoms companies offering other technologies such as HFC (hybrid fibre-coaxial).

The Australian 28 November 2013:

Under that new proposal the Coalition will connect nodes on street corners with fibre cabling and use Telstra's existing copper network to connect homes over the last few hundred metres.
Today the Department of Communications conceded that those changes would preclude the Coalition's fibre-to-the-node NBN from offering broadband plans above 40Mbps, which would hit revenue forecasts for both access costs and the increased data consumption which comes with the availability of faster download speeds.
Some 72 per cent of customers on the NBN are currently using plans that deliver download speeds of 25 megabits per second (or less), the same download rates promised by the Coalition's fibre-to-the node plan.

Including facts rural and regional bloggers knew only too well

Then a media leak gave Internet users more bad news
SBS News 29 November 2013:

The government's 2016 delivery deadline for the national broadband network looks likely to be blown out, according to a leaked internal NBN Co document.
The coalition has promised to deliver 25 megabits per second (Mbps) broadband services to all homes by 2016, but a brief to the incoming government, obtained by Fairfax Media, says construction and technical issues mean that may not happen.
"There are a number of conditions that will impact on NBN Co's ability to undertake a volume (fibre-to-the-node) network rollout," the report says.
"Given the complexity of these conditions, it is unlikely that NBN Co will meet the 2016 deadline to upgrade the fixed network to enable Australians to have minimum download speeds of 25Mbps."
In addition to raising issues about timing, the document also cuts revenue projections by up to 30 per cent by 2021.

To add to the old and very old bad news
Financial Review 29 October 2013:
Some potential bottlenecks remain for Telstra’s network, however. Both global and local technology experts acknowledge the carrier’s decision to use thinner copper wiring in newer suburbs could reduce the maximum potential speeds by up to 10 per cent.
Others have criticised poor maintenance on the network, too, after years of patching the ageing telephone network with tape or plastic bags.

The Sydney Morning Herald 11 December 2003:

A month ago, before a Senate committee inquiry into broadband competition, Telstra's Bill Scales and Tony Warren rather let the cat out of the bag.
Warren, group manager, regulatory strategy, told the committee: "I think it is right to suggest that ADSL is an interim technology. It is probably the last sweating, if you like, of the old copper network assets. In copper years, if you like, we are at a sort of transition - we are at five minutes to midnight."
A few minutes later his boss, Bill Scales, attempted to bury this bit of candour: "The only point of clarification, just so that there is no misunderstanding, is that when we think about the copper network, we are still thinking about 10 years out. So five minutes to midnight in this context . . ."
Dr Warren (chiming in): "Doesn't mean five years."
Mr Scales: "It does not. It could be 10 or even 15 years, just to get some context into that."