"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. No price is too high for the privilege of owning yourself." - Friedrich Nietzsche
When the mayor’s away, a relaxed council plays
Bob Hawkins. Pic: of HVC Mayor - and MLC - Robert Armstrong. First pub: July 22
22.07.14 6:45 am
Huon Valley Guessing Games Robert Armstrong — Huon Valley Council’s sometimes mayor and the Huon Division’s sometimes member of the Tasmanian Legislative Council (parliament’s upper house) — was, I believe, still playing council clown and toying with the municipality voters when Wednesday’s council meeting (July 16) began. And he wasn’t even there.
• Alderman calls for candidates to commit to donations disclosure
Will voters find out who is funding Tasmanian local government election campaigns?
Bob Burton. Photo: Hobart Town Hall. Photo Bob Burton. First pub: July 21
22.07.14 6:30 am
When Tasmanians vote in the October local government elections they will have no way of knowing who is funding the election campaigns of the candidates due to the state’s outdated local government regulations. Nor will voters ever find out, as Tasmania is the only state in Australia that has no requirement for local government candidates to disclose who funded their campaign.
• Alderman calls for candidates to commit to donations disclosure
Damon painting his last canvas
Andy Woodworker. First pub: July 22
22.07.14 6:15 am
The residents of Hobart directly elect the Lord Mayor in October this year. The role is important being the Mayor of the capital city. This election is an important one as, for the first time the Mayor will be elected for a four-year term rather than a two-year term.
Alderman calls for candidates to commit to donations disclosure
•Alderman Jeff Briscoe, in Comments:In this era, more that ever, the times are a changing, transparency and honesty are required and conflicts of interests should be declared and/or managed openly and that includes the overdue reform of declaring donations to Lord Mayoral campaigns. Those paid guests to Damon Thomas’s last canvas launch at the C3 on Wednesday should be reminded of that before they open up their cheque books.
© Martyn Turner, Irish Times. Used with permission. First pub: July 21
22.07.14 5:45 am
• Earlier: And Nothing Changes ...
Catastrophic failure of justice system in Sue Neill-Fraser case
Eve Ash. Graphic: Miguel Robertson
21.07.14 5:30 am
‘Sue Neill-Fraser’s murder conviction is a wrongful conviction’, says Dr Bob Moles one of Australia’s foremost experts on miscarriages of justice. Chester Porter QC, Robert Richter QC, Stuart Tipple and other top Australian legal minds are alarmed by this case. It is a catastrophic failure of our justice system in Tasmania and Australia.
• Court of Criminal Appeals decision. Read for yourself, here
Max Atkinson. Pic: of Edmund Burke
21.07.14 4:30 am
Richard Cooke, writing in the June edition of The Monthly ( The People v the Political Class, here ), condemns politicians for ignoring public opinion. His thoughtful and informative essay on the causes of the present discontent looks to the demise of two-party politics to restore substance to democratic ideals; but is there any basis for this optimism other than that it might restore integrity to political debate by challenging doctrines of party unity? His account of the problem, persuasive as it is, arguably ends just where serious debate begins.
Nothing more than a one-sided comparison of various chunky gifts to the porcelain gods
Barbara Mitchell, in TT comments. Pic: ABC
21.07.14 4:00 am
Comment first made on this article here: All our staff acted in a lawful and professional manner, July 16, 2014 The Monthly magazine article that has Paul Harriss and Guy Barnett livid with rage at the ‘sickening’ activities of radical greenies and the unconscionable apparent complicity of the previous Labor/Greens government was published this month (July 2014). The activities at the Triabunna Mill to which it refers took place in late September 2013, almost nine months ago.
• Tim Thorne, in Comments: Meanwhile, I, too, await with fascination the answer to Barbara Mitchell’s question about which category of the committee’s scope justifies the inquiry.
Georgi Marshall*, Witness to Australiaʼs Offshore Processing Regime
21.07.14 3:45 am
ʻThey told us to go to the front gates; they told us that we will be safe thereʼ. It is a year since Australiaʼs Regional Processing Centre burnt to the ground, yet the haunting nightmare of that evening has far from faded from the minds of asylum seekers left there, stranded in Nauru. Breezing past us in the morning tabloids a year ago were the Nauru riots, where on the small Pacific Island nation over a hundred men were rounded up and imprisoned, later to be released on bail to the torture of indefinite detention and unjust legal proceedings.
Shake-Up on Opium Island (Tasmania)
Keith Bradsher, New York Times. ABC pic
21.07.14 3:30 am
Tasmania, Big Supplier to Drug Companies, Faces Changes Now is the sowing season for opium poppies in the Australian state of Tasmania. Tractors chug up and down paddocks, pulling elaborate machinery that drills pairs of adjacent, miniature holes in the dirt, and then drops a dozen tiny kernels of fertilizer in one of the holes and a tiny poppy seed in the other.
Growing up Queer: Caleb Nichols-Mansell
Caleb Nichols-Mansell, The Anthymn Blog
21.07.14 3:15 am
My name is Caleb Nichols-Mansell and I am eighteen years old and a proud young Aboriginal man from Tommengene land on the North West of Tasmania. I live with my boyfriend Brodie on the North-West Coast of Tasmania and attend TasTafe. I am currently studying for my Certificate III in Business Management under a scholarship through The Pinnacle Foundation.
Asset recycling no dream for Hockey, but efficiency boost likely
Graeme Wells University Associate School of Business and Economics University of Tasmania, The Conversation. Pic: of Joe Hockey
21.07.14 3:10 am
The federal government’s A$5 billion asset recycling initiative, part of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s claim to be the “infrastructure prime minister”, has passed the Senate
Livestock school highlights positive attitude of next generation
Catriona Nicholls, Whitemore. Pic*
21.07.14 3:00 am
“Attitude is everything” was the focus of a unique livestock handling school held in the Tasmanian Midlands recently for 27 young participants aged from 11 to 18 years of age.
Philip Lynch
21.07.14 2:30 am
With the demise of the so called Celtic Tiger in 2008 the Irish are deserting the Emerald Isle in droves. But I wonder if we Irish are sometimes too quick to go. Is an unemployed, well-educated Catriona from Cavan or Timmy from Tipperary any more deserving of hoped for greener pastures than the thousands fleeing from decimated war-torn countries?
Examiner: The rage over the comics ...
John Hawkins, Chudleigh. Pic: of Martin Gilmour
21.07.14 2:30 am
The Editorial columns in today’s Sunday Examiner speaks volumes about the paper and its Tasmanian readership.
Mercury: ‘Still the top newspaper brand in the state’ ...
Mercury editor Matt Deighton. Lindsay Tuffin
21.07.14 2:15 am
NEW figures have confirmed the Mercury is Tasmania’s No.1 newspaper brand, reaching a total print and digital audience of 368,000 people each month.
Mother Mountain: The Symphony of Birdsong (21)
Don Knowler, http://donaldknowler.com/ Pic*
21.07.14 2:00 am
The “Respect the Mountain” forum ( here, here, and here ) at the Hobart Town Hall earlier this year prompted Don Knowler to return to a diary he compiled after daily rambles on Mt Wellington during the previous year. In what promises to be a momentous year in the modern history of Kunanyi, the weekly diary gives the mountain and its wildlife its own voice. All Don’s Mother Mountain columns - and much more by this superb writer - can be found under the Category, Don Knowler, here
1.9 Capes - Another Bungle in the Jungle
Ted Mead
21.07.14 1:29 am
Since the outset, the Tasmanian government’s effort to construct a high-grade walking track on the Tasman Peninsula has been fraught with ill-conceived blunders.
Big spenders ...dumped pollies final fling ...
Rosemary Bolger, Examiner. Pic: of Helen Polley
21.07.14 1:15 am
DUMPED Labor federal politicians flooded their electorates with printed material paid for by taxpayers, spending more than $100,000 each in the weeks leading up to the September federal election.
Five years on since the US recession ‘officially’ ended in June 2009….
Catherine Cashmore, https://catherinecashmore.wordpress.com/ Pic: of Catherine Cashmore
21.07.14 1:00 am
Five years on since the US recession ‘officially’ ended in June 2009, urban land prices are rising, the pattern of history is repeating, and this time, the players on the chessboard have changed.
‘Science the biggest loser from Tasmanian World Heritage decision’
Mark Poynter, Online Opinion. Bob Brown pic
21.07.14 12:45 am
Last month, the United Nation’s World Heritage Committee took less than 10 minutes to reject the Abbott Government’s bid to delist part of a 170,000 hectare, so-called ‘minor’ extension to Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area (the TWWHA) that had been engineered by the former Gillard Government.
• Josh Gordon, The Age: Axe VicForests or chop off the public money The age of entitlement is alive and well in Victoria. At least when it comes to the logging of native forests, a proposition that has become so financially fraught the government is considering getting into the business of firewood collection and chipboard production just to prop it up.
• Will voters find out who is funding Tasmanian local government election campaigns?
• West Coast commitments brought forward, wilderness railway to run the full track
• Archibald portrait a worthy winner, but Wynne landscape prize a scene stealer
• The Hobart Bookshop: Bob Brown, James Boyce, August 7
Tasting Tasmania: Pointing to food, wine reviews, with latest news, MRs below ...
• The Hobart Bookshop: Bob Brown, James Boyce, August 7
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