Pollie this and that

Australian English is often incomprehensible to others outside in the rest of the world. I experienced this first hand when visiting Canada and the USA some years ago. I had to speak slowly and rephrase much of my language and try and moderate my relatively mild accent!

This election year we have had several additions to the word root "pollie" - meaning politician!

This includes:

Polifacts: http://www.politifact.com.au/ " Home of the Truth-o-Meter" A single digit effect perhaps?? Well known Australian non-verbal expression

Q and A Fact Checking by the Conversation
All these sites evaluating the Politicians.

Fact checking - now there's a non-political activity! Bound not to be read by those true believers, of various persuasions.

Even the ABC has been using the Pollie Filter. Mentioned by Jon Faine, just now on 774 Radio Melbourne!

Galah

Who judges the judges?

Again, the people of course.

No hope for Pollie Free ( in any sense). Even the Galahs are flocking and noisy, especially in drought stricken Queensland!

Magnolia flowering

Magnolia, a photo by Greenstone Girl on Flickr.

Mid winter is the time for my Magnolia stellata to start flowering.This small tree along with Camellias, Jonquils and now Hyacinths make the garden a lovely place to be on these cold but bright days.
Or even the recent, record breaking, 23 degree C midwinter day!
Such a high temperature for winter but preferable to the 40 degrees plus in summer.
The Australian Financial Review gave a succinct article on the state of Carbon policies following the Rudd ascendancy to Federal Politics and the current outpouring of policy 'changes'. Its a pity there is a paywall with all Fairfax newspapers meaning its no use linking to it, but look in your local library for "Up in the air" by Geoff Winestock and Marcus Priest, plus Alan Mitchell's "Risks in Rudd's European union", pages 14 & 15 20-21 July 2013 Perspective pages.

PS I have ordered a couple of copies of the new book "Killing Fairfax" by Pamela Williams for the library - should be a good read even though the papers are not dead, yet!

Via Flickr:
Small tree flowering after a warm spell.

Climate Change, Carbon Tax and the Coming Election

With the change of Labor leadership to a recycled Kevin Rudd, it will be interesting to see if "the greatest moral challenge of our time", that of effective response to climate change will feature heavily in the coming election.
Seeing Malcolm Turnbull on Q and A on Monday made me wince. I felt for his answers to various questions regarding the Coalition's "Direct Action" Policy - including the statement:

"The Liberal Party's policy is to do that with a range of measures, so-called direct action but that involves a lot of things. You know, by competitive bidding of carbon reduction mechanisms and a whole range of measures and but the big difference between our policy, apart from the fact it has a much lower cost than obviously the carbon tax at the moment, is that it is not designed to go any further than 2020....So it is not a long-term policy."
And "I have been a very strong advocate of market-based mechanisms. I have to say, however, being very honest - frank about it, that emissions trading schemes to date have worked better in theory than in practice. The over-allocation in Europe has really been something of a disaster in terms of the emissions trading scheme there."

My remembrance of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was that more permits were being requested for business by Malcolm (then Liberal Leader), an over-allocation perhaps!.

My early flowering Jonquils

So now we know the Federal Opposition's Direct Action scheme is short-term. So why do it and then have to change schemes?

So is the current scheme, the much maligned, Carbon Tax working?

Matt McDonald, in the Conversation "Why Labor should fight the 2013 election on climate change" writes:
"Greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation hit a 10 year low in early 2013, driven by increases in cost for wholesale electricity and an increase in the share of electricity provided through renewable sources. Both of these dynamics are attributable to the carbon tax."
And "Most industry representatives they interviewed, all from fossil fuel intensive industries, indicated support for increased government intervention to set and maintain carbon pricing mechanisms to create business and investment stability". See the Conversation for the rest and his comments today

Other interesting media discussions on the topic include "Extreme Weather" on ABC TV Catalyst show, explaining in some detail why we have been having such cold, bright weather recently.
Jonathon Holmes, now retired from Media Watch, also reprised the topic "Hot air stoking the climate change debate" on 24 June 13.

So does Kevin have the moral fibre to make this an election issue and keep the price on carbon a market based scheme?

Mid-Winter Holiday

Normally I time my annual leave to coincide with summer. I flee Melbourne to climates a bit more moderate and enjoy time with my older relatives.
This year, one of my cousins visited me in Melbourne so we took the opportunity to go away for a couple of days to Phillip Island and the Mornington Peninsula. Not too far but good to get away.
We experienced the delights of watching the Little Penguins in their nightly return to the beach in Phillip Island. The Penguin Parade, as it is known, is well patronized throughout the year. It was reasonably warm sitting on the boardwalk and watching as rafts of Penguins surfed into the beach after dark (5:46 pm), stopped to preen their feathers and chat to their neighbours, then scuttle up the hills or along the tussock pathways to their burrows.
Although the National Park Rangers do their best to make the tourists stay quiet and out of their way, the birds are certainly being managed by us humans. The burrows are often man-made and the Rangers have a fox eradication program under way to help reduce the unnatural predation by these introduced mammals.
This is the third time I've seen the birds and their numbers do seem to have increased.
No photography was allowed as the Penguins have sensitive eyes.
I liked this comment in a recent media release "And it appears the little penguins were getting in early with the average laying date of the first clutch falling on September 13, the earliest in 13 years - something that researchers expect will happen more often as the waters of Bass Strait warm up."

However photography was allowed at the Koala Conservation Centre further inland, where a number of these lovely creatures were sitting up their trees doing what comes naturally, eating gum leaves!

Lets hope the conservation efforts being made by many Australians enable us to maintain and increase the numbers of these lovely and unique animals.