All of Australia has to hope that who ever becomes NSW Premier is prepared to tackle the mess the state is in. The first step a new Premier will need to take is to stop blaming Canberra or the economy for the problems because they have been self inflicted by a series of very bad decisions from governments at both the state and local level.
The economic downturn and a few decisions from Canberra simply multiplied the effects of the NSW mistakes. It did not cause them.
The first person to blow the whistle on Sydney's role in the NSW mess was Australia’s largest apartment investor and Sydney resident Harry Triguboff, who declared in The Australian newspaper more than five years ago that Sydney “was dying”.
It's dying because local governments were so bound up in their own political turmoil that they could not make sound real estate decisions.
It's dying because NSW has zoned out good land forcing house prices up to levels that people could not afford.
It's dying because NSW taxed developed land at around $140,000 block – about six times the equivalent taxes charged by other states.
It's dying because the health and safety rules use the French system of justice (guilty until proved innocent).
It's dying because there are a maze of bodies that strangle industrial development and the proper working functions of a state.
There are many other forces at work strangling this state. The business people and politicians in Queensland have developed a strategy of expansion based on the NSW joke. Melbourne will soon become Australia's largest city because of the Sydney/NSW morass.
But there's a problem. NSW is our richest state and Sydney is still our largest city so everybody suffers when the Premier State is badly managed.
NSW desperately needs a premier like Anna Bligh, John Brumby or Nick Greiner. Or a partnership in the mould of Jeff Kennett and Alan Stockdale. Unfortunately none of those people are available. Let’s hope somewhere there is a strong person prepared to tackle the favour ridden factions of NSW and the bodies within that stifle the development of the state.
If NSW's credit rating was slashed – which it ought to be – it might be a blessing in disguise. Voters would then surely demand proper leadership.
Robert Gottliebsen
What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.
David Evans
Clever? He thought that, as whole worlds grew and died inside his skull. But equally, the powerfully defective nature of his soul haunted him, fragmenting his heart, distorting the physical realm. The sad dog next door barks constantly, an alsation locked in the concrete back yard of the Lebanese next door. They came in the 1970s, and they brought their ways. What seems cruel to us they accept as normal, that you would leave a dog in the pouring rain and the cold and the wind and let it bark constantly day and night in its own terrible madness, and think that was acceptable. Our own pampered little Major lives a very different life.
His fresh face, as they stood beside the pool, as they were taken into spare rooms, as they partied and sang and drank and he withdrew behind the enveloping screens of alcohol, drinking till he didn't know what was happening, which queen was mauling him, what the future held. There was no way back to these times, hard bodies, universal adoration. There was no way back to even middle aged love, comfortable bodies, comfortable routines, comfortable orgasms. He looked up startled, and knew he had been discovered. The only place for secrecy was inside; the only place where he didn't embarrass himself, where the world wasn't out to get him.
That ragged band so long ago, he wanted to be true to them. They were probably all dead now, the life they led. But even so he wanted to say, your young lives were significant, your good looks didn't pass unnoticed, your desperate laughter and crazy inventions and constant fallings in and out with the police, it wasn't for nothing. He was there. He could create pen portraits that would record their lives forever. Now, of course, these fragmentary, often doomed lives are recorded: on you-tube, cheap video phone cameras, in odd laughing flashes, loaded to the net, loaded to eternity.
But then, way back then, there was no easy technology to record anything that happened. Clark came out from Canada after the fishing season, all cashed up, and immediately sought out his favourite boy. Much had happened in the intervening year. They were moving to renovate the park, that place full of shadows in the centre of the Cross, the El Alemain fountain was being repaired, paving was being put in all around it. How many men had trawled their fingers across his body since they had last met? How much grottier had his soul become, soiled by the corruption of strangers, eroded by the alcohol, addled by the speed tablets he loved so much.
Welcome back, welcome back, he said and laughed, come back into our circus, our struggle to survive, our little chaotic group. Come back into this dark bar on the other side of the planet, this place where daily we drown our sorrows and our hopes, where we all become as one, dodging the evil lichen stretching down from the ceilings, avoiding the slime soaked walls, pleading for drinks. It wasn't his first year, he wasn't a fresh face any more, my God he was getting old, he was almost 18, almost legal. Soon he wouldn't be the rent boy they all wanted, vying to buy drinks, out bidding each other. Soon he'd be just another queen on a bar stool.
But they were glad to see each other, and they ignited their past in sunny drunken afternoons at the Sebel Hotel, in between drinking sessions at the Rex. Clark paid as always, but there was more companionship in their drinking, less lust in their assignations. He even took him to dinner in the hotel restaurant, and they drank fancy wines he would never normally even think of, and go back to the room overlooking Ruschutter's Bay, admiring the distant ships. He was usually too drunk to provide much service; he just passed out and they did what they wanted. But with this one, the fit handsome cashed up fisherman from North America, he was almost fond.
You weren't allowed to be fond of your clients, and he would never have admitted it to the other boys. They still gathered each morning around the Alemain fountain, even in the wintery sun when the cold seeped through their skinny frames, swapping notes, seeing who had enough money to start the drinking for the day. One of them, usually him, hadn't drunk absolutely everything they had made from the night before, and they would negotiate their way back into the bar, despite their under-age status, and he would shout them all the first drinks of the day, Alan, Rob, Paul, their clear wild faces and criminal intent, their tragic backgrounds and parentless state, and they would laugh as the first beer began to make them feel sane, and they lined up for the next, trying to appear respectable under the relentlessly fierce gaze of the bar manager. She would toss them out if the police were around, and they knew they had to keep their place.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24148862-11949,00.html
HAS global warming stopped? The question alone is enough to provoke scorn from the mainstream scientific community and from the Government, which says the earth has never been hotter. But tell that to a new army of sceptics who have mushroomed on internet blog sites and elsewhere in recent months to challenge some of the most basic assumptions and claims of climate change science.
Their claims are provocative and contentious but they are also attracting attention, so much sothat mainstream scientists are being forced torespond.
The bloggers and others make several key claims. They say the way of measuring the world's temperature is frighteningly imprecise and open to manipulation. They argue that far from becoming hotter, the world's temperatures have cooled in the past decade, contrary to the overwhelming impression conveyed by scientists and politicians.
As such, they say there should be far greater scepticism towards the apocalyptic predictions about climate change. Even widely accepted claims, such as that made by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong that "the 12 hottest years in history have all been in the last 13 years", are being openly challenged.
"She is just plain wrong," says Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs. "It's not a question of debate. What about the medieval warming period? The historical record shows they were growing wine in England, for goodness sake; come on. It is not disputed by anyone that the Vikings arrived in Greenland in AD900 and it was warmer than Greenland is now. What Penny Wong is doing is being selective and saying that is a long time ago."
But selective use of facts and data is fast becoming an art form on both sides of the climate change debate now that real money is at stake as the West ponders concrete schemes to reduce carbon emissions. So what is the validity of some of the key claims being made by these new blogger sceptics?
http://www.theage.com.au/national/garnauts-softly-softly-line-on-cutting-emissions-20080905-4aq1.html
AUSTRALIA should accept that an ambitious global treaty on climate change is virtually impossible in the short term and make a gentle start on cutting greenhouse gases, the Government's climate change adviser says.
Launching his economic modelling of the impact of climate change yesterday, Professor Garnaut called for a 10% greenhouse emissions cut below 2000 levels by 2020 as part of an achievable international deal.
If a new global deal — including China accepting binding emissions targets — was not reached, the Government would set a target of no more than 5%.
Green groups savaged the proposed targets, claiming the veteran economist was accepting catastrophic climate change and effectively abandoning landmarks such as the Great Barrier Reef and the Murray River.
Professor Garnaut said there was "just a chance" dangerous climate change could be avoided, but it was a global problem and Australia must work within an international framework.
"The review has reluctantly concluded that a more ambitious international agreement is not possible at this stage," he said.
Professor Garnaut argued that his recommended cuts were much deeper than they first appeared when analysed on a per capita basis, which he considers the only way to reach a significant global deal.
Given Australia's high level of immigration, a 10% emissions cut would mean a 30% cut in pollution per head. Australia has the second highest per capita greenhouse emissions in the developed world.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/06/2357143.htm
The Federal Government is facing strong resistance from key business groups to a deep carbon emissions reduction target.
The Government's climate change adviser Professor Ross Garnaut yesterday recommended cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 10 per cent by 2020.
Professor Garnaut says a 25 per cent cut would be more effective, but unlikely to attract a global agreement.
But Minerals Council executive director Mitchell Hookes says even a 10 per cent cut could "crush" Australia's economy.
He says even 10 per cent is equal to the emissions from the entire electricity sector.
"If we don't have a technological breakthrough it's akin to saying that Australia's going to become a candles economy," he said.
But environment groups say if softer interim emissions reduction targets are adopted it will erode Australia's credibility in negotiating a global agreement.
World Wildlife Foundation spokesperson Greg Bourne says Australia cannot take anything less than 20 per cent to global climate change talks next year.
"We will not be in the negotiations at all, we will be laughed out of court," he said.
But Mr Hookes says deep cuts would run the economy into the ground.
"They will look at us and say 'look what Australia did to their economy'," he said.
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