Stop Wasting our Dam Water

by Viv Forbes,

The Saltbush Club today accused state and federal governments of wasting water often desperately needed everywhere west of Australia’s Great Dividing Range. The “Saltbush Water Watch” has been established to monitor government action and inaction and report on priorities.

The Executive Director of the new and growing Saltbush Club, Mr Viv Forbes, said “From Adelaide to Longreach we have allowed green subversives to prevent new dam construction and to dictate the waste of water caught in existing dams.”

“Without water conservation the Murray River would turn back into a string of disconnected waterholes every big drought. More reliable fresh water has benefitted humans and nature all along the river.

“Luckily (and predictably), Tim Flannery’s climate alarm forecasts of endless drought has proved wrong, or this area of Australia would now be depopulated.

“The green activists behind the water waste are not pro-environment – they are anti-human. Humans are part of the environment.

“The Saltbush Club is in the process of setting up several “Watch Groups” to investigate, monitor and report on this political war on human activity. It has appointed Mr Ron Pike, “A Bushie from the Back of Barellan” to lead the Saltbush Water Watch.

“Ron has a lifetime of experience of farming, irrigation and politics in the Murray Darling Basin. He was the first farmer to use water from the Snowy Scheme to irrigate his farm in 1961.

Ron says:

“The food we eat, the water we drink and the power we use for most of our endeavours, are available only because previous generations invested their know-how and money for the future. “It is time this generation did the same.”

Via email






Shorten haunted by ghost of socialist past

Bill Shorten will lead Labor into the next election with the party’s central mission statement being to implement the socialist objective, after the ALP national conference ignored a directive from almost four years ago to review its creed.

The party’s previous national confer­ence, in July 2015, resolved to set up a cross-factional committee to review the 1921 socialist object­ive and recommend to the next conference how it could be modernised. The resolution require­d the party “to commence a review of our socialist objective, with a view to replacing the existing language with the most appropriate and modern set of principles and objective”.

In October 2016, Labor’s ­national executive to set up an eight-member review committee with former Labor MP Tim Hammon­d, then the party’s vice-president, as chairman.

However, the review committee held no meetings with party members, MPs or unions, nor did it call for submissions on a new statement of belief, as it was directed to do by the national conference and executive. The motion agreed at the 2015 national conference also asked the review committee to “circulate draft proposals” for rewriting the party’s objective ahead of this ­week’s national conference.

Labor sources struggled to explain why the committee never began a review. Some suggested poor organisational leadership, a reluctance by the Left faction to engage in the process, and not wanting to start a difficult debate.

The socialist objective defines Labor as a “democratic socialist” party that supports “the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields”.

It was not part of Labor’s founding principles in 1891. After the party formally committed to social­ism in 1905, the objective was repeatedly modified and qualified. The last review occurred when Bill Hayden was party leader, in 1981. It was agreed to keep the objective but heavily qualify it with other principles. In 2014, the NSW Labor conference voted to abolish it.

Mr Shorten supported Labor reopening debate with a view to developing a modern mission statement. He has described the objective as being “as useful as a 100-year-old street directory”.

The move to abolish it had support from across the factions. The review committee comprised Mr Hammond and senator Kim Carr, former senator Ursula Stephens, former Queensland minister Linda Lavarch, former National Union of Workers national secret­ary Greg Sword, United Voice nation­al secretary Jo-anne Schofield, academic Anna Yeatman and party activist Adam Clarke.

SOURCE 






Global urban mobility index shows Sydney and Melbourne more traffic snarled than many major cities

Given our insane immigration rate

We spend hours every week stuck in never-ending traffic. Now a graph has shown how bad it really is in Australia.

Melbourne and Sydney have worse traffic congestion than New York, less comprehensive public transport networks than Lisbon and more traffic pollution than Mexico City.

That’s according to a new report looking at mobility in 38 of the world’s largest metropolises.

Overall, Copenhagen came out on top while Sao Paulo languished at the bottom of the Urban Mobility Index released by navigation data firm Here Technology.

The index looked at a series of factors including traffic flow, public transport systems and emissions.

And for the two Australian cities in the index, it wasn’t great news. Overall, Melbourne ranked 20th worst out of 38 cities. Sydney fared even worse at 30, placing it only slightly better than Los Angeles for transport mobility.

“Australian cities suffer from traffic congestion (and) more needs to be done,” said Here Technology’s Ross Caldow.

The company used data from mobile handsets and connected vehicles, among other sources, to see how slow cities really were.

The most traffic jam free city was the Finnish capital of Helsinki. There, only 16 minutes is lost to delays for every 100 kilometres driven. In the peaks just 2 per cent of roads are congested. Zurich, Berlin, Copenhagen and Madrid rounded out the top five least congested urban areas.

Melbourne found itself in the bottom third of cities for congestion. For every 100km driven, 35 minutes was lost to congestion while 9 per cent of roads were regularly full.

But if you think sitting stationery on Punt Road is a pain, spare a thought for those motorists on Parramatta Road in Sydney. In the Harbour City, 11 per cent roads are clogged and 40 minutes are lost for every 100km driven.

New York City is hardly a paradise of free flowing roads but the traffic flows considerably faster than either of Australia’s two largest cities.

“As much as Melburnians complain about traffic flow, people in Sydney seem to be doing it slightly tougher,” said Mr Caldow who is Here’s infrastructure specialist.

But at least Sydneysiders fare better than motorists in India’s largest city Mumbai where almost a minute was lost in congestion for every kilometre driven.

SOURCE 





Australia's jobless rate lifts unexpectedly -- as employment increases

Both labour force participation and the employment to population ratio increased , indicating that solid labour market conditions are encourage people to work or look for work.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), employment jumped by 37,000 in seasonally adjusted terms, easily beating expectations for an increase of 20,000. That followed a 28,650 increase in October, below the 32,800 level originally reported.

Total employment now stands at 12.694 million, the highest level on record.

All of the hiring spree last month came from part-time employment which increased by 43,400, more than offsetting a decline of 6,400 in full-time workers.

Over the past year, full-time employment still rose faster than part-time employment, lifting by 180,200 and 105,500 respectively. In percentage terms, employment growth over the year slowed to 2.3% from 2.5% in October, well below the 3.5% levels seen in early 2018.

While plenty of jobs were created last month, total hours worked fell, dropping by 3.3 million hours to 1.7595 billion hours.

Despite the sharp lift in employment, the unemployment rate rose to 5.1%, above the 5.0% level expected.

That was due to another lift in labour force participation which rose to 65.7% from 65.5% in October.

The increase in the number of people participating in the workforce is a good thing, albeit on this occasion it led to a small increase in the total number of unemployed workers which rose by 12,500 to 683,100.

While employment increased by 37,000, the number of people either in employment or actively seeking work rose by a larger 49,500, explaining the increase in unemployment.

Male unemployment accounted for a bulk of the increase, lifting by 11,500 from a month earlier. Female unemployment rose by a smaller 1,000.

SOURCE 

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here