The US-based black activist organisation, Color of Change, has launched a campaign to fight Murdoch TV FoxNews, which it says, "is dividing the country with smears and lies." It is asking people all round the world to join the campaign by signing up for the campaign.

See also: stopmurdoch.blogspot.com

"When Julia Gillard hurtled towards the Governor General on July 17, she knew an early election would keep the Stable Population Party of Australia name off the Senate ballot paper. But it did not stop all of our party candidates from standing." SPPA - Commit to a stable, sustainable, open and tolerant Australia.

Today, on Geraldine Doogue's "Saturday Extra" (ABC radio national), the wrong impression was given by a British-accented commentator that the GST had been brought in in Australian in a fair and reasonable manner. This is infamously untrue and misleading on election day. Wide-eyed talk of how people oddly resent 'change' ignores the fact that change initiated by the people is resisted adamantly by the press and the politicians.

Without obtaining the prior mandate of the electorate, successive Australian governments have been seeking to establish a water-market in this country. For as long as the people of Australia are required to “buy-back” the nation’s water, especially during times of crisis, they will have no water security. Bidding-wars, as currently being waged by Senators Wong and Joyce, are now an unattractive and dangerous feature of Australian water policy: profits arising will be privatised but the impacts will be borne by the Australian public. The electorate of this country must be given the opportunity to indicate whether it wishes its water to be privatised and exposed to global speculation - or protected for future generations of Australians.

Along with Dr. Joe Toscano, environmental activist, Jenny Warfe, (campaigner against Port Phillip Channel Deepening) has decided to stand as a radical independent for the Federal senate in the forthcoming election. The group of friendly independents, has decided to give their preferences to The Greens. On the senate ballot paper Dr. Joe Toscano will be the lead candidate and Jenny will appear below him as the second of three radical independent candidates. Joining with Dr. Toscano and third candidate Andrew Sadauskas means that they will be allocated a box ‘above the line’ on the senate ballot paper. Thus voters can Vote 1 above the line for them without having to number every one of the sixty or so boxes below the line. Jenny Warfe is pro small population for Australia - see https://candobetter.org/node/2145

According to some of Australia's most widely published journalists and many opinion polls, the Liberal and National Parties were thrown out of office largely because of voter objections to their policies, notably their anti-union "Work Choices"laws.
Despite this, less than three years since Australians repudiated the ruling Federal Liberal and National Parties' policies and laws, the same polls and commentators say that they may soon become the government again. There are issues behind the issues which the mainstream doesn't cover.

Google may permit giant corporations to control internet accessibility. Several news outlets reported yesterday that Google and Verizon are about to cut a deal that would allow giant corporations to control which websites load slowly, quickly, or not at all. The upshot would be that the multimedia and governments would once again hog the internet to the exclusion of democratic alternatives.

Many Victorians who lost friends and family, and know people who lost houses in the 2009 furnace in Victoria are appalled at some of the recommendations issuing from the Royal Commision Final Report. They are trying to find solutions that match the enormity of the increase in bushfire threats of the future. Inform yourself with this analysis of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission Report and Recommendations!

If you have anything you would like to raise, which is likely to be of interest to our site's visitors, which is not addressed by other articles, please add your comments here. Note that you need to go to the bottom of the page and click to go to the 'last' entry since the system won't take you there automatically.

Previous Miscellaneous Comments page of 4 May 2010 at 1.

"The Windsor Hotel redevelopment scandal will go down in history as a bid to corrupt Victoria's Planning and Heritage laws.

What is not so clear yet, however, is whether the Windsor scandal is an isolated incident linked to a 'Rogue Trader' in the State Government's Media Unit, or whether it is part of a wider conspiracy designed to help undermine the rule of law, and the regulation of property developers in Victoria," says Brian Walsh, leader of the Kew Cottages Coalition in Victoria. (Kew Cottages Coalition was formed in 2003 to defend public ownership of public land containing building and plant for the care of people with developmental problems. This public estate, overlooking sweeping views of parkland and the Yarra River all the way to the city of Melbourne, has since been sold-off by the government to private development, without democratic consultation.)

‘In the year 2008-2009, RSPCA national statistics indicate that of 912 complaints in the ACT, there were just 6 prosecutions and just one conviction. According to those statistics, the ACT inspectorate carried out no ‘routine inspections’ of intensive farms or indeed anything else we would have expected’.

This morning Planning Minister Madden’s revised Planning Amendment, now re-badged VC 68, was fast tracked through Parliament with the support of the coalition - Liberals and Nationals – who had, over the past year, held out against inducements to approve this toxic planning amendment. (Only the Greens and DLP MP’s stood firm.) This represents a catastrophe for Melbourne as it will see rezoning of land from rural to residential on the City’s fringe and so extend our notorious urban sprawl.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard's stated intention to remove from our roads vehicles made prior to 1995," which guzzle a lot of petrol and they spew out a lot of pollution," is naive. Instead of reducing our carbon guzzling, it will increase humankind's consumption of non-renewable materials, contrary to its stated purpose. Touted fuel consumption savings of more modern vehicles will be cancelled out by the carbon and other natural non-renewable resources which the new vehicles will require for their manufacture. Consigned to the scrap-heap as 'old cars' the valuable and non-renewable materials and fuel embodied in the older supposedly less fuel-efficient vehicles will represent a regrettably permanent deficit in our energy and materials accounting for what is known as natural capital.

Photos by Jill Quirk added on 21 July. Latest Update: Leader Newspaper 2 August coverage of Protest March to Alistair Harkness's office, Frankston This will make you angry. In the first project to come under the notorious "Major Transport Facilitation Act," bulldozers move in to nationally significant heritage Westerfield before the Heritage Council Decision comes out. Picket line ongoing, since 5 July. Contacts for the picket site: S Walsh Mobile: 0405 380 312 Also Gillian Collins Pines Protectors 0414 309 960 and Jim Kerin Defenders of the South East Green Wedge Mobile 0409 501 764. Original notice was from Julianne Bell, Secretary, Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.
PO Box 197, Parkville 3052, Mobile: 0408022408

Population growth costs you and me: "In the last 10 years rates have risen by over 100% which is more than almost every other consumer commodity. This includes hospital and medical services, health services, education, food, alcohol, tobacco, petrol, gas and electricity, restaurants meals, take away fast food, domestic and international holidays, clothing and footwear, household appliances, and motor vehicles." (Alan Nelsen, Coordinator McCrae Action Group and Secretary Mornington Peninsula Ratepayers' & Residents' Assoc Inc.)

Australians need help from the world's ecologists! Royal National Park, known to many tourists as the closes to Sydney, is the world's second-oldest National Park and Australia's first. It is under threat through adjacent overdevelopment by the growth-mad New South Wales government. Even Australia's primeminister doesn't want growth now and Sydney's expansion must be stopped. Royal National Park is of world class historic and ecological significance and it is incomprehensible and alarming that the NSW Government is allowing development to encroach.

Every state government in Australia is trying to impose unreasonable and undemocratic population growth and development on Australians. On the heels of the Victorian protests, here is another urgent notice from Geoff Brown in New South Wales about the Sydney Growth Centres.
One of Candobetter.org 's main reasons for existence is to help Australians stop fighting local environmental brush-fires and start targeting the nationally organised arsonists - the Growth Lobby - where it dwells in political parties, government, business and organisations.

Click image for filmThis film reports on a steep decline in land and housing prices in the US and predicts that they will fall further - by 70 or 80%. It says that if you are investing in a house or simply buying one now, you are going to lose the house because it will lose speculative value. It says that Americans with common sense are simply staying away from buying houses, knowing that they can bring the market to its senses this way. It says that the winners in this will be those who need houses and will soon be able to afford them. The losers - the land speculators; the people who have made money idly out of homelessness; the bankers, the middleclass housing investment wannabes - will lose their money. About time.

On Tuesday 25 May Mark O'Connor and Bernard Salt debated Australia’s population options at the “Future Summit”, run by the Australian DAVOS Connection (ADC) at the Hyatt in Melbourne. It was a one-hour debate, moderated by Jane-Frances Kelly of the Grattan Institute, before an audience mainly of business people. Organizers were surprised by the numbers this session attracted.

The Minister for Planning has approved and is now seeking parliamentary ratification of Amendment VC55. Subject to Parliament’s approval of the Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution legislation it will then come into operation.
25 May is the date on which the government will probably try to bring this bad law (Amendment VC55) in. Mary Drost of Planning Backlash has called these proposed laws, "diabolical".

Click on picture to view video This is a good film about how government and capitalism deprives people of freedom and gets them to coerce each other. It attributes increases in wealth since the second world war to increases in financial freedom, apparently not understanding the importance of the vast store of fossil fuels we have exploited since the 18th century. Nonetheless it makes good and valid points on a classic them.

Save the Orange Bellied Parrot of 21 Apr 10 on www.lakesneedwater.org.

Bolivia's Evo Morales: Capitalism and Plastic No, Mother Earth and Indigenous Products, Yes of 21 Apr 10 on www.culturechange.org.

As long ago as 1999 a civil trial jury found that Loyd Jowers participated in a conspiracy with the US state to kill Martin Luther King. Even though Martin Luther King is world renowned, the results of this trial are still not widely known and probably few Australians have any idea of the truth. The man officially convicted of the assassination, James Earl Ray, died in jail. The civil trial exonerated him. Successive governments had refused to reopen his case. Part of this remarkable story is about the efforts of the King family and friends to bring about a thorough investigation and the absolute recalcitrance of the US government.

We've been publicising political alternatives in Australia, notably parties which promise to fight population growth. Another party that wants a sustainable population is The Australia First Party (not to be confused with the New Australia Party). It also wants to abolish multiculturalism. Australia First cops a lot of flack, but it also attracts the low-income people in our society who carry the biggest loads in terms of the costs of population growth. Here is an article from a member of Australia First about fronting up to the dole office. Anyone who has had to do this in the past few years will understand the sentiments. See also other political alternatives for a small population.

21.5% of Melbourne's sewage is currently recycled to Class A or C recycled water standard. This is mainly used on market gardens, open spaces, golf courses, vineyards and to reduce dust at construction sites. Most of the remaining treated effluent is discharged into Port Phillip Bay and Bass Straits under accredited EPA licences. Now there is a plan to trash the network of pipes that supplies recycled water to Melbourne's market gardens, just to build more suburbs to satisfy the construction lobby's demand for more immigrants to buy houses. In the mean-time we are subjected to constant harassment from the Victorian government to make us use less water.

Kevin Rudd and his Federal Government ministers have lately taken to uttering the catch-cry that they "want Australia to be a place that makes things". However, this will not happen in a world of slave-labour economies, until the abandonment of protectionism, supported by both the major Australian political parties, is reversed.

See also: "Whatever happened to Australian manufacturing?" by Martin Feil in the Age of 20 May 10.

Tonight ZeroDavid wrote in about his inspired attempts to get special Victoria (Australia) number plates with "Victoria Overpopulated", rather than the current unfortunate slogan of "Victoria, the Place to be". Anonymous wrote in then and suggested that, if number plates were not possible, how about sticker-numberplates. Yes, how about it? Let's have input from our readers for overpopulation protest stickers.

SPA, Dick Smith, Kelvin Thomson have combined to produce simultaneous population reform speak-out breakfasts in all mainland states of Australia tomorrow morning. We believe that the event was inspired by the Global Population Speak outs.