New South Wales

1 July 2009 -  In the NSW Supreme Court of Appeal today, Wiradjuri Traditional Owner, Neville Chappy Williams, has further delayed the expansion of Barrick Australia’s Lake Cowal gold mine.

Today a three year old boy has died of H1N1 (known as Swine Flu). This brings the total number of deaths in Australia to nine. I wonder whether, had the Australian government taken better precautions, these nine people may not have died. It could be that the ordinary influenza would have killed them as all of them had health problems.

A source within the Human Resources Directorate of the New South Wales Department of Education and Training has today informed me that there is an "unwritten policy" of dismissing any person suspected of being a whistleblower in an effort to thwarte attempts at using the Protected Disclosures Act for protection.

The Department of Education has finally come to its senses and has found a way of dealing with teachers experiencing difficulties other than forcing them to see a government psychiatrist (known as ‘HealthQuesting’), having them ‘certified’ and then sacking them by means of ‘medical retirement’, or harassing them and causing everyone terrible stress by placing them on the ‘improvement programme’ which is nothing but a 6-step programme to an inevitable exit from the teaching service.

I posted a tongue in cheek comment to a Daily Telerag story this morning. I expressed my disgust at the politician, issue of tasers to police, in order to obtain the NSW police vote. Rees obviously doesn't realise that police traditionally vote Liberal. My comment: "Nathan Rees. We who are about to die, salute you."  The Telerag only printed comments supporting the issue of tasers to police. So much for unbiased reporting.

New Shooters Party Bill allows hunting in national parks and private
game reserves

Greens MP Lee Rhiannon has called on the Environment Minister Carmel
Tebbutt to reject outright a new bill from the Shooters Party that paves
the way for hunting in national parks, private game reserves, the
hunting of native species and the growth of recreational shooting on
public and private lands.

The Game and Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill was introduced into
the NSW Upper House by Shooters Party MP Robert Brown last week.

Climate change protestors have halted production in Australia’s largest aluminium smelter by attaching themselves to a weigh bridge that is a pinch-point of the operation.

The protestors are angry that heavily polluting industries, like aluminium smelting, will receive 90% of their pollution permits free from the Federal Government under the controversial Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, allowing them to carry on largely unaffected by pollution constraints, and leaving the public to pick up the cost of reducing greenhouse emissions.

More info from www.risingtide.org.au

Over 300 concerned Tweed Valley residents expressed their opposition on May 28th, 2009 to the proposal to hold a leg of the World Rally Championships in the Tweed and Kyogle areas. Check it out on YouTube at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md0jeE9rE1s

The rally is proposed to run in September 2009 and every second year for up to 20 years.

Learn More and What You Can Do: Visit http://sites.google.com/site/norallygroup/

I wrote this some time ago.