How many times and in how many ways does the NSW Government have to be told before they admit they are wrong?

The majority of local residents and farmers don’t want this coal mine, a number of experts have been warning against it for years - yet still the NSW Government doesn’t appear willing to genuinely protect the water resources, agricultural assets and biodiversity values of the Liverpool Plains food bowl.

Here is the latest plea to go public.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 August 2017:

Claims that Shenhua's restricted coal mining will avoid affecting the aquifers of the rich farmlands of the Liverpool Plains are "false and ignorant", former state and private agronomists have said in a letter to Premier Gladys Berejiklian. 

The government last month paid the Chinese coal miner $262 million for just over half the exploration licence area of the proposed mine at Watermark in northern NSW. Energy Minister Don Harwin said the buyback would ensure there was no mining on the fertile black soils of the plains.

But the agronomists, five of whom worked for the Department of Primary Industries or precursor departments, said limiting the proposed open cut mine to ridges would still likely affect surface and groundwater flows in the plains and downstream regions.

"The claim that mining the ridges above Breeza will not have an impact on farming operations is false and ignorant," the letter's authors said.

"Hydrogeological investigations have shown that there is a high degree of connectivity between the alluvial aquifers throughout the Namoi Valley."

Brian Tomalin, a retired cattle farmer and a former Namoi Catchment Management board member, told Fairfax Media endangered ecological communities such as whitebox woodlands were also at risk from impacts of an open pit reaching as deep as 300 metres.

Political Tweet in the Week

Older Australians are often targeted by scams. Learn how to protect yourself here https://t.co/902RSVrBYO and here https://t.co/WRM17qhrcw pic.twitter.com/cwjGQZW5Hn

— Centrelink (@Centrelink) August 22, 2017

Centrelink not seeing the irony of tweeting a warning about people seeking payment under false pretences. #NotMyDebt

Political Cartoon of the Week

@jonkudelka

Quote of the Week

"Trump's nothing like Hitler. There's no way he could write a book."

[UK comedian Frankie Boyle, 2017 Edinburgh Comedy Festival]

“President Trump's former campaign adviser Roger Stone told TMZ that any politician who votes to impeach Trump “would be endangering their own life.”  “Try to impeach him. Just try it,” Stone said. “You will have a spasm of violence, an insurrection in this country like you have never seen before. Both sides are heavily armed, my friend.” [The Hill, 24 August 2017]

A possible explanation as to why in 2017 Liberal and Nationals politicians in Australia still hold the poor in such contempt?

In the 45^th Australian Parliament 86.9 per cent of Liberal MPs and senators and 59.1 per cent of Nationals/CNP MPS and senators have formal higher education/professional qualifications.  

A total of 175 of these 196 qualified Coalition parliamentarians graduated from university, with the majority of qualifications being in law, commerce, economics and finance. [See 45th Parliamentary Handbook of The Commonwealth of Australia]

As a group Coalition parliamentarians have a higher percentage of members with higher education qualifications compared with other parliamentary political parties.

By comparison, in the general Australian population 48.9 per cent of 35-44 year-olds, 38.2 per cent of 45-54 year-olds, 33.9 per cent of 55-64 year-olds had tertiary qualifications in 2015 according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data.

Both Liberal and Nationals MPs and senators also feature prominently in a list of parliamentarians with significant investment property portfolios.

However, belonging to the current affluent political class doesn’t completely explain the level of arrogant entitlement our Coalition politicians display on the floor of federal parliament and elsewhere.

Unless for many in this affluent group a sense of privilege began generations before…….

In Australia a wide collection of rarer surnames, predominately of British/Irish origin, were used by Gregory Clark (University of California), Andrew Leigh (Parliament of Australia) and Mike Pottenger (Melbourne University) to study social mobility between 1870 and 2017.

Immobile Australia: Surnames show Strong Status Persistence, 1870-2017

In this paper we derive equivalent surname status correlations for Australia 1870-2017. These show that despite the fact that Australia was an immigrant society incorporating migrants from a wide variety of backgrounds, and without some of the entrenched social institutions and rigidities of England, underlying social mobility rates all the way from 1870 to 2017 were just as slow as in England. Also there is no sign of any increase in mobility rates in the most recent years……

In 1900-9 someone with the rare elite surname was 16.5 times as likely to get a degree from Melbourne or Sydney as someone with a common surname. Over the decades this overrepresentation declines, but more than 100 years later in 2010-17 the rare surnames are still 76% more represented among degree recipients than would be expected......

With this structure the social system behaves as though it has a longer memory of family status. The predicted status of children depends not just on the parents, but also on the grandparents, uncles, aunts and other relatives. In high status lineages, large short-term declines in status by a child tend to be corrected in the next generation, the grandchildren. For lower class families large upward movements in social status tend also to get corrected in the next generation.

Another feature that should be emphasized is that our data does suggest there will be complete social mobility in Australia, if we wait enough generations. The descendants of the Colonial elite are becoming more average with each passing generation, and will eventually be completely average in status. However, this process takes a very long time. The holders of rare elite surnames in table 2 had an average occupational status 1.54 standard deviations above the social mean in 1904. With an intergenerational correlation of 0.75 in occupational status their average status will lie within .1 standard deviations of the social mean by the generation of 2204. It takes about 10 generations, 300 years, for such an elite set of families to become effectively average.

It is not obvious how we should weight the two different elements of short run and long run mobility in terms of evaluating the degree of social mobility in Australian society. Indeed, policies that increase parent-child social mobility may be desirable even if we expect that there will be some reversion in the next generation. But it is clear that in terms of long-run social mobility, Australia has been just as immobile a society as its sclerotic parent England.

It appears that Australian society is as stratified as ever with dominant groups retaining high status through the generations and working class families remaining relatively fixed in lower status groups and, a genuinely egalitarian society in this country is not to be expected for another 300 years - if at all.

Adding to our NBN blues now come the scams

ACC, ScamWatch, 22 August 2017:

Watch out for NBN scams

The ACCC is warning the community that scammers are pretending to be from NBN to con victims out of their money and personal information.

Scamwatch has received 316 complaints this year about scammers impersonating NBN with nearly $28,000 reported lost.

“Scammers are increasingly using trusted government brands like NBN to trick people into falling for scams. Their goal is always to either get hold of your money or personal information,” ACCC Deputy Chair Delia Rickard said.

The three common scams reported to Scamwatch that involve scammers impersonating NBN are:

signing victims up to fake accounts – scammers will ring victims to ‘connect’ them to the NBN network for a low price. They will often demand payment be made through iTunes gift cards

gaining remote access to computers – scammers pretending to be from NBN will call a victim with claims there are problems with their computer. The scammer uses this ruse to gain remote access to the victim’s computer to steal valuable personal information, install malicious software or demand payment to fix ‘problems’ they have discovered

phishing – scammers impersonating NBN will call victims to steal valuable personal information like their name, address, Medicare number, licence number. The scammer may tell the victim they’re entitled to a new router, for example, and say they need these personal details to confirm the victim’s identity.

“Australians over 65 are particularly vulnerable to this scam with fraudsters using phone calls to target their victims,” Ms Rickard said.

“NBN will never phone you out of the blue to try to sign you up to a service over its network. NBN is a wholesaler meaning they don’t sell direct to the public. If you get an unsolicited call like this, it’s a big red flag that you’re dealing with a scammer,” Ms Rickard said.

“NBN will also never call you to remotely ‘fix’ a problem with your computer, or to request personal information like your Medicare number or your bank account numbers. Don’t listen to the reasons they give you for needing this information.”

“Finally, if someone ever asks you to pay for a service using iTunes gift cards, it is 100 per cent a scam. Legitimate businesses, especially those like NBN, will never ask you to pay for anything in this way,” Ms Rickard said.

People can protect themselves by following some tips:

If you’re ever in doubt about contact you’ve had from someone saying they’re from NBN trying to sell you an internet or phone service, hang up the phone and call your retail service provider to check if the person calling is a fraud.

You can only connect to the NBN network by purchasing a plan through a phone and internet service provider. Go to NBN’s website(link is external) to check if your home or business address is able to connect to the NBN network and see which phone and internet providers are available in your area.

Never give your personal, credit card or online account details over the phone unless you made the call and the phone number came from a trusted source.

Never give an unsolicited caller remote access to your computer.

If you think you have provided bank account or credit card details to a scammer, contact your bank or financial institution immediately.

People can also follow @Scamwatch_gov(link is external) on Twitter and subscribe to Scamwatch radar alerts to get up-to-date warnings.