Time for conversation and truth-telling

Looking over the Upper Hunter from Mount Royal, NSW

For the third time, I have left Facebook, and this third time will definitely be the FINAL time.

There is no going back for me, not after everything we actually really did know, coupled with extra dark and menacing stuff that maybe we didn't know but perhaps we did or had forgotten, as well as all the Cambridge Analytica sinister antics - curtains for me 100%.

As I have previously mentioned in this blog (I think?), since September 2016 I have been a councillor for the Upper Hunter Shire Council, and so now that I am no longer on Facebook and therefore no longer have a 'Councillor Page' I am going to use blogger to post regularly (that is if Europe's new General Data Protection Regulation doesn't impede me). Naturally anything I post will be all my own opinions, thoughts and views, and at no time will I ever be speaking on behalf of council.

There ... we've got that sorted (sigh).

On Monday 28th May 2018 we had our Ordinary Council Meeting and in the spirit of National Reconciliation Week I moved:

"That the Upper Hunter Shire Council work with the Wanaruah people and other relevant bodies to create a communications plan that focuses on 'broader community education to help the community better understand Aboriginal people's experiences of January 26.'"

Last September (2017) I put a similar motion to the Upper Hunter Shire Council but it was not even seconded so I never got a chance to talk to it.

This time it was, so in speaking for the motion and inspired by Mark McKenna after reading his recent Quarterly Essay, I said that:

"We need to recognise that the destruction of Aboriginal society was the price of European development. We need to recognise that the material success of Australian society was built upon the dispossession of Indigenous Australia. We need to recognise that it is the time for conversation, truth telling, treaty and settlement. 

We have to do more than begin public meetings with an acknowledgment of country that in itself is so silent when we stop short after "traditional owners of the land."  

Mark McKenna, the historian, in his Quarterly Essay entitled "Moment of Truth," suggests we should continue with a completing clause after we refer to Aboriginal people as traditional owners of the land with the words:

"... which was taken away from them without their consent, treaty or compensation."

The Uluru Statement from the Heart is an invitation to all Australians to start our future together, but to do that we need to recognise unequivocally the brutality of Australia's foundation and listen to Indigenous Australians tell their histories in the spirit of "Makarrata" (healing and coming together after a struggle).

Please, councillors, let us start this conversation in the Upper Hunter Shire."

Out of the seven councillors who were at the meeting three of us voted for the motion, and whilst I was disappointed that yet again it wasn't carried, I felt a little  heartened that two of my fellow councillors thought starting a conversation was a good idea, and that after the meeting the General Manager suggested he might be able to arrange a link up with the Wanaruah people for a meet and greet.

So, perhaps it's actually started ...

My Council Shire Notes (3rd April 2018): Consumption Minimisation

News from South Africa should have us very alarmed … and I am not talking about the dull-thud-on-willow variety.

Cape Town is approaching “Day Zero;” the day when the city’s taps will be turned off and water will only be able to be accessed from designated armed-guarded collection points.

That water is a finite resource should concern us all.

Cape Town was warned that climate change would herald drier, hotter weather with less winter rainfall leading to reduced stream and river flows and diminished city water levels but the warnings were unheeded. That was until last year (2017) when three straight years of drought saw the city’s six reservoirs go from 100% of capacity to 26% of capacity.

Then the city moved into action, and now after strict water restrictions were imposed (50 litres per person per day) along with a decline in agricultural usage, Day Zero, which was to have been this month, has potentially been pushed back to July.

The Cape Town situation affects us all on planet earth and that means those of us living in the Upper Hunter Shire too. Basically it warns us that we need to be implementing water-wise strategies now. 

The Upper Hunter Shire Council recognises that diminishing water levels pose a risk to our lives, and so along with NSW government funding for the major capital pipeline and treatment plant projects, has been water-proofing our shire.

And as the water consumers that we all are, we have an important role to play too.

Yes water-consumption charges have increased but that is because water conservation must be encouraged, though through our actual water consumption we still do have a choice over our water charges - for example when we choose to use less water, our water bills will be reduced.

South Africa has warned us that our water habits have to change, and we need to heed their warning.

As climate change embeds itself more and more into our daily lives, our current water habits must be addressed, and this requires leadership from all levels of governments and the community. Council is attempting to do this, and as always welcomes any feedback and suggestions.

And to conclude with that other news from South Africa, in my opinion Steve Smith has shown leadership and bravery, and I abhor that he has been thrown to the wolves - shame on you, Cricket Australia.

Things That Keep Me Awake At Night (Director's Cut)

Bayswater Power Station, Upper Hunter, New South Wales)

Every week in our local (and slowly dying) paper an Upper Hunter Shire councillor writes a column entitled 'Shire Notes.' Given that there are nine councillors, I (yes I was elected last September 2016) get a turn once every 9 weeks. Here are my latest ones.
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Last week (Wednesday 29th March 2017) I attended the ‘Power Stations and Our Health Community Workshop’ held at the Upper Hunter Conservatorium of Music in Muswellbrook. 

It was chilling. 

According to Dr Ben Ewald from Doctors of the Environment the Upper Hunter community pays a high cost for the polluted air billowing out from our coal-fired power stations. We pay through heart disease, lung disease and asthma. There are no safe levels of pollution and both Bayswater and Liddell are health hazards to our community.

Despite the Australian government allowing coal-fired power stations to belch out a much higher level of polluting emissions than the World Health Organisation advises, Muswellbrook’s air quality shows air pollution levels beyond even our own paltry standard. 

There are five monitoring sites in the Upper Hunter, and the data collected tells us we have a problem.

The main pollutants from Bayswater and Liddell are sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and small invisible particulate matter referred to as PM2.5 (product of combustibles), and they are absorbed through our lungs into our bloodstream where they can cause angina, heart attacks and strokes. Unsurprisingly, children are at an extreme risk from this toxic mix of air pollution.

Two AGL representatives at the workshop noted that Liddell is due for retirement in 2022 and Bayswater in 2035. But what concerns Doctors for the Environment is that closure schedules all too often pit commercial interests against health damage, and consequently power stations are retired first on economic grounds rather than health.

Bearing in mind that our power stations could actually close earlier than forecast, Doctors for the Environment raised the spectre that Australian governments are ill-prepared in creating new jobs and new industries for the inevitable transition away from coal-fired power stations. It is all a great worry.

The proposed Scone Bypass is also causing me concern.

The loss of part of the Bill Rose Sporting Complex, the impact on the Golf Club and White Park, the unsightliness of a significantly raised road through the floodplain area of Parson’s Gully and Kingdon Ponds … how is any of this going to improve our town?

The apparent minimal community discussion RMS have had (or not had) on the environmental and social impacts of the bypass alarm me. Whilst the removal of trucks from our high street has been flagged as a significant driver for the bypass, will we not also be removing essential traffic required for business along Kelly Street?

Yes Council is working hard with local stakeholders to have our town ready when the bypass is complete but this project is essentially about motorway building and the moving of freight on a national integrated system of super roads.

Today’s roads have morphed into mobile warehouses, and Scone bypass will be an imposed environmental grievance with lasting impacts on our town.
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Beware Mission Creep

WeaselWordCreep

In this time of fake news, breaking news, and twentyfourseven news, libraries provide a lighthouse for us. 

Every community needs one and to be without one is like being without a public hospital ... even if we don't use it we need to know we have one because we might need to use it one day and anyway tons of other people are using it right now ... tight knit communities still invested in the collective are cool with that. 

When we go to a library we do not go as shoppers but as community members with our right to free access to knowledge firmly ensconced in our psyche.

But our libraries like everybody's libraries are vulnerable, and need defending. Governments have their eye firmly on the 'profit' line and don't even pretend about the 'people' and 'planet' lines. Consequently libraries are being labelled dull and boring and out of date and obsolete, and then told it is time to be rebadged, gutted and or culled.

Yet according to Alan Gibbons, a well known children's author, 

 "libraries ... are not in decline because of some natural, historic progression, but because of the monstrous cultural vandalism of savage cost-cutting. We will pay a terrible price for the behaviour of our masters.”

Libraries are our village squares. They are our free public spaces where we can browse, dream and float through all sorts of information possibilities, memories, stories, connections. They teach us how to appreciate essential intangibles for life, and from that we learn how to be brave in standing up for what we believe in.

Libraries need our protection. 

Open letter to NSW children: Anzac Parade our French multi-national Penn Station moment peppered with WestCONnex

Dear children of Sydney and all over NSW,

We have failed you. Your grown ups have been playing at mud pies in a pernicious adult sort of a way and the game has got very murky.

A sludge of global companies pretending to be 'fair dinkum' aussie ones has invaded our public institutions by stealth all the while facilitated by our public officials and politicians. I am afraid we have not been able to prevent the desecration of your homes and your futures - this terrible state of affairs has happened on our watch and has been perpetrated by our democratically elected representatives whom we have voted for. Right now the premier Mike Baird and his road minister Duncan Gay and others are overseeing the triumph of violence and stupidity in New South Wales. They literally are dripping with guilt

Yes, we voted for these destroyers some of whom are parents and grandparents to some of you.

I am so sorry.

There were a few of us who tried to broadcast warnings as to what was looming but we were pilloried as "Cassandras" and as with the mythological Cassandra  we were not to be believed or heeded.

Unfortunately that very Australian 'she'll be right, mate' approach to life acted as a barrier to us actually seeing what was happening in our parliaments and their back rooms, committee rooms, or whatever you like to call them. Most people did not imagine for a minute the extent of the destruction that was to come - and come it has.

The felling of the beautiful trees on Anzac Parade and Alison Road is basically Sydney's Penn Station moment.

(Image: Penn Station, mashable.com)

Bear with me for a quick little recap of another immense urban atrocity that happened in New York over 50 years ago because there are similarities. You will see over your lives that history has a nasty tendency to repeat itself particularly when good men and women take their eye off the ball for a moment ... sigh.

Anyway, Pennsylvannia Station was one of New York's most magnificent stations of the twentieth century until the 1960s. It was a grand entrance into New York for anybody and everybody.

Penn Station had been built in 1910 and then inexplicably in 1963 it was demolished according to the wishes and desires of Big Developa and Big Pollie to make way for ... wait for it ... a  monstrous sports stadium and entertainment centre which some of you may well have heard of ... Madison Square Gardens ... sounds familiar to what is on the cards for Sydney.

Sigh.

Just as with our Anzac Parade and Alison Road, there were plenty of protests held, and plenty of passionate people making the case for the station to remain, and of course there were plenty of police and sadly plenty of vested interests political and otherwise licking their lips and getting ready to line their pockets with $$$.

(Image: Penn Station, mashable.com)

Unfortunately the protesting New Yorkers, admirably led by Jane Jacobs, (and if you ever have a minute do read her fabulous book "The Death & Life of Great American Cities"), were not successful saving Penn Station.

(Image: Penn Station, mashable.com)

One of the most beautiful railway stations in the world was destroyed for pure greed.

However the battle for Penn Station and its preposterous destruction did prepare New Yorkers for other planned onslaughts in their city one of which was the outrageous proposed destruction of Grand Central Terminal in 1975.

(Image: Grand Central Terminal, www.wikipedia.org)

This time it was Jackie Kennedy Onassis who took the baton with her band of protestors and fought for the station's survival. Having seen what had happened the decade before, New York was ready to be galvanised into action and this time the protestors were successful and today, as some of you probably know, Grand Central Terminal is an iconic New York landmark visited by millions of people every year. Some of you have probably even been there - just think, it nearly went the same way as Penn Station.

(Image: Grand Central Terminal, www.downtownmagazinenyc.com)

But back to our tragedy with our beautiful trees, many of them so lovingly planted in memory of the Anzacs in 1917.

On a side note, I have just started transcribing Anzac First World War diaries in a voluntary capacity for the NSW State Library and I have to tell you that I have not got very far. Reading the diaries makes for the saddest reading I have ever done.

I feel each sentence is reaching out to me across the last 100 years from the damp fetid terrifying trenches of the Somme in France to make sure that I bear witness to the fact that war is not for the ordinary man or the ordinary woman or the ordinary child but for the ever present greedy Big Corpa and politician-puppets that we have always had with us.

The sentences envelop me in a pall of sadness, and this is all the more acute right now when I look at what our hypocritical politicians are doing to these young men's memorial on Anzac Parade. And then that pall of sadness turns to anger when I think that those dead Anzacs did not give their lives so some rich 'fucker' like Mike Baird could destroy Sydney. (Whoops, but not sorry, children, grrr).

These trees play such an important part in our city; environmentally, socially, 'memorially' ... and we need them. Countless generations of Australians and visitors have marvelled at our magnificent tree-lined boulevards. No longer - they have gone ... sigh.

I am so sad, I am so sorry.

Ok, children, why don't we now have a look together at this Team Sydney Destruction ... oh I probably should use their preferred nomenclature, ok, Altrac Light Rail consortium.

This group has agreed:

 "... to build a 12 km light rail route in Sydney, Australia, worth AUS$ 2.1 billion (US$ 1.5 billion) in order to help reduce congestion. It will comprise of a 12 km track, 19 stops, a bridge over the Eastern Distributor toll road, a tunnel under Moore Park, Control Centre facilities, housing for the light rail vehicles, a maintenance depot, and substations with other service buildings along the route."

... jeez that's a lot of infrastructure to plonk in Sydney.

Anyway, I hear you ask, 'who are Altrac Light Rail Consortiom?' ...

... and that is a good question indeed.

Answer: a melting pot of greedy corporates which have seen an immense opportunity for making a billion or two, and following best Big Corpa practice like the good corporates that they are, have employed the use of friendly independent sounding business names to confuse what are essentially corporate subsidiaries so as to project a nice familiar trustworthy local feel not normally associated with the faceless parent mult-national companies that actually run stuff in our homeland.

So here we go, let's have a peep at them, and see what we know so far:

Altrac Light Rail Consortium (previously Connecting Sydney), consists of:

1. Acciona

  ... a dodgy Spanish company which has seen two of the firm’s senior executives being investigated by a Spanish magistrate and anti-corruption prosecutors over allegations of misappropriation of public funds, falsifying documents and money laundering.

                                       

(Screen capture: Daily Mail UK)

2. Alstom

... a dodgy French company which has been "at the centre of corruption charges in the UK ...

 ... and the US and was fined $800 million last December after an FBI investigation into bribery."

... and then because they were in such a pickle with their piggy bank, Alstom had to sell the energy and grid part of their company and allow themselves to be acquired by General Electric, a US company, which meant Alstom's role in their brand spanking new partnership with DCNS, yet another dodgy french company (which has just landed the $50 billion Australian contract to build us 12 submarines by 2030) was taken over by GE.

3. Capella Capital

... in a relationship with Lendlease (isn't everybody?) and was the sponsor, infrastructure developer and financial advisor to Altrac.

4. Transdev Sydney, oh boy, here we go ...

(Image: Transdev, the parent)

... formerly Veolia Transport, which was formerly Connex, (dumped and fined $11.2 million by the Victorian Government for poor rail services) which was formerly CGEA Transport when the public transport divisions of Compagnie Générale des Eaux (CGE) and its subsidiary Compagnie Générale d'Entreprises Automobiles (CGEA) were merged (hmmm ... did the French inspire Duncan Gay to merge Roads & Traffic Authority and NSW Maritime to create the Roads & Maritime Services?), but I digress back to the the merged French company which was the international transport services division of the French-based multinational company Veolia Environnement until the 2011 merger between Veolia Transport and Transdev, formerly a subsidiary of Caisse des Dépôts, which gave rise to Veolia Transdev (which lost the Yarra Trams government contract and was fined $1.84 million) and which then in July 2011, amid disappointing financial results caused Veolia Environnment to divest its participation in Veolia Transdev exiting transport all together leaving Transdev on its own, a French-base international private public transport operator with operations in 19 countries and in which Caisse des Dépôts has shares) ... got that, kids?!

Oh là là , what a tangled web we weave.

This is the world of globalisation and Trans-PacificPartnerships and secrecy and cloak and dagger government and powerful people's machinations and pretence too because Big Corpa knows that we are becoming less and less trusting of them each day, hence their pathetic trick of pretending they are home-grown enterprises.

C'est nul! (french for 'it sucks!')

(Screen capture:Paris Champs Elysees, car-free thoroughfare, BBC News)

Now can you imagine if the boot was on the other foot how outraged the Parisiennes would be if an Australian transport company started setting up metal barriers on the Champs Elysees and then brought in the chainsaws and the woodchippers and removed their trees along their beautiful street?

I am sure you can- it would not be pretty - the French would not be happy.

Yet here in Australia reports detailing 'misappropriation of public funds, falsifying documents and money laundering' by these companies now entrusted with remodelling of our city have not shocked our elected government.

I am letting you know, children, that it is a serious state of affairs when the act of bribing government officials and politicians to land lucrative development and construction contracts becomes the order of the day (plat du jour) and does not raise a mention from our premier or his cabinet.

Why should we settle for these corrupt multi-nationals building our future irrevocably changing our city for the worse? From what we have seen so far, their track record appears poor and untrustworthy.

Why are our politicians happy with them?

Why have operations not been halted immediately?

The perception of conflicts of interests is at an all time extreme, and you have to wonder whether our very own politicians are not actually agents for these multi-nationals themselves. It truly does appear as though the 'mafiosi' or something similar has ensconced themselves very snugly into our Parliaments and Cabinets, and have morphed into our politicians.

But sadly, children, I am afraid there's more, because the french reach doesn't stop with Altrac ... sigh.

A hop skip and a jump from Anzac Parade and Alison Road we have the Inner West and the catastrophe that is being rolled out there - WestCONnex.

 

(Slideshow & song put together in 2015 by yours truly with apologies to Roberta Flak)

Yet again the venality of polticians and developers is on show. Yet again politicians and developers have conspired to gut a great city simply because the dollars $$$ smell oh so sweet.

There is nothing good about WestCONnex ... absoloutely nothing.

(Screen capture: Junkee on WestCONnex)

People's homes and close knit communities are being destroyed, more police are being deployed to act as henchmen for dubious politicians and Big Corpa, and like all the other multi-nationals which come here for a sweet sweet lucrative contract, the WestCONnex debacle too has turned out to be dodgy.

(Screen capture: Sydney Morning Herald)

Furthermore it also turns out (of course it does) the multi-nationals for the different projects are connected ... who knew ... I mean I was a little suspicious when I saw the word 'Connex' in Transdev's profile ... could there be a connection with WestCONnex, n'est-ce-pas?

And sure enough we don't have to look very far to find one.

It turns out that our Gladys, Treasurer of New South Wales, and our Duncan, Minister for Roads, Maritime and Freight, also aka Sydney Motorway Corporation (a private corporation created purely to avoid freedom of information demands with these two NSW cabinet ministers the only shareholders), have awarded the contract for the operation and maintenance of the WestCONnex motorway to Fulton Hogan Egis O&M Pty (FHEO&M).

And guess what?

It turns out that the 'Egis' part of this group is a subsidiary of Caisse des Dépôts, which guess what ... has shares in Transdev which guess what was formerly 'Connex' ... oh boy, so with all the different parents and children of Big Corpa it turns out Sydney Light Rail and WestCONnex are siblings or cousins, or maybe both.

I am afraid, children, that Mike Baird and his government do not care about you and me, nor do they care that they do not have a proper city plan. They have made that quite clear. I think we can all assume their departments to be full of experts who at some stage over the recent savage surgery of our beautiful city would have advised the government that the plan for Sydney is a disastrous 'white elephant.'

Our politicians know just as well as you and I know that the current light rail and WestCONnex plans will be ludicrously costly and will turn out to be utterly usesless. Yet notwithstanding this knowledge they continue with their crazy modus operandi because powerful people with money have asked them to do so.

Communities and community spirit are not commodities to privatise willy nilly or sweep away like rubble under the private-public-partnership carpet.

Sydney's political and business elites are transforming the city's landscape in a way that would have been unimaginable five years ago. The posturing of Mike Baird and his refusal to address the calamaties that have been created through his neo-con mindset expose the conceit of a man who actually believes the spin that he is a cool celebrity premier. As he flagrantly destroys large tracts of land in the Inner West along with the beautiful trees on Anzac Parade and Alison Road, we are losing invaluable public space as well as the vital fabric of inner city communities.

We are now in a strange situation in Sydney where defending democracy, human rights, the environment and our communities has become radical - exactly when did that become radical?

Mike Baird is our democratically elected representative, and as such he should be obeying us. He is not, so we should simply throw him out.

Once again I am so sorry for what has happened on my watch, but I promise you, children, that I will fight and keep fighting for your futures even if that means a spot of civil disobedience alongside old and new found friends.

Yours in tears and motivation,
Sue Abbott
Scone
NSW

(first published 30/5/2016 on Freedom Cyclist Blog)

Not only facebook peddles in echo-chambers

(Image: Glen Le Lievre, SMH, Wednesday 27 July 2016)

As consumers of media, we are constantly warned about the perils of getting our information throughs algorithms and the subsequent risks of being coralled into echo-chambers with diminishing moments of dissent and different views. It is certainly something to bear in mind.

But there are other 'algorithms' out there equally insidious ...

... ones which like certain social media platforms also remove dissent and the opportunity to think differently.

... ones which like certain social media platforms also create for their audience a cosy phug of consensus and affirmation.

... ones which like certain social media platforms also are a poor substitute for truth and reality.

The Northern Territory government and courts appear to have their own set of algorithms for levels of force and excessiveness and unreasonableness, ones which have lulled many who have a duty of care and ought to know better how to look after 'children-needing-our-support' into one of those dangerous and damming cosy phugs of consensus and affirmation.

Thankfully we still have the ABC and 4 Corners, and last week they cut through that manufactured judicial and legislative bubble when they broadcast their programme 'Australia's Shame' and showed the rest of us Australians images of cruel torture, images that have been around for quite some time and literally judged not out of the ordinary, for what they actually were and are ... evidence of sadistic and brutal treatment meted out to our children in our name.

Thank you, 4 Corners, you make a difference,

and ...

... Long Live The ABC (hands off, Prime Minister)

(also cross posted to Freedom Cyclist Blog)

Australia, we have a problem: we are violent sadists

ABC Four Corners: Australia's shame

Dear Malcolm (my prime minister) and Barnaby (my elected representative for the New England notwithstanding that I live in the Hunter),

Where do I start? I don't know where to start.

What hope is there for a nation that has such a blatant disregard for life?

Our scorecard is abysmal: we mistreat ...

- our environment

- our dogs

- our cattle

- our women

- our asylum seekers

- our human rights commissioner

- our elderly

- our children

... and all of this has all been conducted on your watch, in fact countless Australian govenments' watch ... for decades.

We have had endless Royal Commissions into our various atrocities but nothing ever changes.

And here we are again in what seems like some hideously macabre 'Groundhog Day' loop this time regarding our children.

Oh it's all too easy to wave your magic wand and declare

Behold, I do believe we'll hold another series of Meetings-That-Take-Forever-And-Achieve-Nothing now that I've chatted to the Human Rights Commissioner whom we bullied and threatened but just a while ago ... oh chortle chortle, a mere trifle now that we need her imprimatur

... but how will any of what you're proposing improve the immediate lives of those poor children whose images were broadcast on ABC television last night?

The sheer agony and terror we witnessed on their faces, and their bodies and their spirits, should haunt us all forever because let's face it, we all stand guilty of turning away and letting this happen ... namely because some of 'us' keep on voting for the likes of you, making you our elected representatives, only for you to subsequently permit this brutal treatment to happen in our name.

How dare you.

This dark and cruel episode is yet another example of a systemic national and cultural government fail.

The children's so-called crimes, which landed them in that dickensian reform centre, were nothing compared to the torture and 'crimes against humanity' that were incessantly meted out to them.

Yes, these state-sanctioned 'crimes against humanity' inflicted with such an obvious intent to cause suffering must make us all hang our heads in shame that:

(1) these children were terrorised at the hands of people who were supposed to be looking after them, and

(2) we endlessly vote for such cruel governments that allow such physical and psychological suffereing to happen.

We have a problem, Malcolm and Barnaby, and you and we are it.

(Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister also emailed, facebooked and tweeted, and this blog post cross-posted to Freedom Cyclist Blog)