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Election Comment ... and candidates
Editor
09.03.10 12:02 am
Responsibility for election comment is taken by the Editor, Lindsay Tuffin, 9 Phoenix St, Howrah, Hobart 7018. Meanwhile: Check out all the election candidates, HERE: http://www.electoral.tas.gov.au/
When the world is nothing but extremes
Dave Gaukroger, Crikey: HERE
10.03.10 6:40 am
So bearing in mind that in every issue there is at least some degree of subtlety, how do you think a major metropolitan newspaper would report a policy from the Tasmanian Greens to restore the franchise to prisoners in that state? Why, by wheeling out Martin Bryant of course. It’s an old tactic in the tabloid media, look for the most extreme consequence of a government policy and then use that a reason to damn it.
Politics | State | MediaMichelle Paine, Mercury
10.03.10 6:20 am
Dr Bleaney said the water quality investigation should be open and transparent. “It must be a public inquiry, not just government-focused,” she said.
Politics | Local | State | Forestry | Gunns | Economy | Environment | Health | LegalLiberals pledge to blow some cash on forestry PR
Bob Burton
10.03.10 2:05 am
Hodgman’s support for a spin campaign to rehabilitate the Tasmanian logging industry exposes his opposition to Bartlett’s advertising campaigns as hypocritical. Having decried Labor’s “government advertising and spin” campaigns in opposition, the Liberals are now signaling that they are willing to fund them if they get to sit on the government benches.
Writers | Bob BurtonMichael Stedman, Mercury
10.03.10 12:38 am
Last week Labor candidate Madeline Ogilvie put forward a proposal for a funicular or incline railway from The Springs to the top of Mt Wellington.
Politics | State | EnvironmentBridge plan to protect ancient site
Damien Brown, Mercury. Picture: Work on the bypass from the CPA
10.03.10 12:27 am
“If the ages for the site prove to be correct, this is the oldest site in Tasmania and among the oldest in Australia,” Mr Paton told the Mercury. “Moreover, it would be the oldest most southern site on the planet, giving us a glimpse into an unknown part of world history and the spread of homo sapiens across the Earth.”
Politics | Local | State | Environment | HistoryThe Old Bear
10.03.10 12:13 am
Catherine Deveny, also one of the presenters, writing in The Age last month, said: “The number of churchgoers in Australia is about 9% and dwindling. The diversity of spiritual belief is flourishing and atheism is going off like a frog in a sock.”
ReligionNeville R
09.03.10 11:57 pm
And when the warm eucalyptus of twilight fades
Into the crusade of night
You will find me
Agonising over dawn
Poetry
Greens launch forests strategy
Nick McKim Greens Leader
09.03.10 4:22 pm
“The Greens’ Forest Transition Strategy delivers a sustainable future for our forests, Tasmania’s timber industry, and the workers and families that rely on it for support. Assistance will be provided to any timber industry workers who are already doing in tough through no fault of their own, including vocational training, wage subsidies, relocation costs, and income support.”
Read more, Download full strategy prepared by UTAS Assoc Prof Graeme Wells, read for yourself, and comment, HERE
Greg James
09.03.10 6:08 am
Recent comments by Steven Old that the reduction of poker machines would lead to job losses are “pure ALP sponsored scare mongering and nonsense”
Politics | Local | State | Economy | PersonalTasmanian Election 2010: Exposing a Weasel Democracy
Peter Henning. Picture: Dr Alison Bleaney with her TT Tasmanian of the Year Award
09.03.10 5:14 am
“What are the people for but to assist the prince in his endeavours”. (Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, 2008) For Bartlett’s attack also illuminates quite graphically the hollowness at the heart of the Tasmanian political system. It shows that in Tasmania the use of the word “democracy” is a deception. It is a weasel word. … Deviate and get pilloried. That is the “standard” of “democracy” in the Tasmanian polity, the reality of the dumbed-down political culture of careerism, lack of transparency, cronyism and disregard for the public interest. This is the nature of the Tasmanian political culture, unchallenged by a compliant and timid local media, a generally cowed academy and a mushroomed electorate.
Politics | Local | National | State | Forestry | Gunns | Economy | Environment | Health | SocietyMessenger
09.03.10 5:10 am
But what actions will David Bartlett take if Tasmanians start dying of superbug staph infections in consequence, as happened with similar antibiotic abuse in agri-business in the USA? Duffy’s report did not go into the extraordinary public health risk antibiotic abuse in farming represents. This latest story from the New York Times does.
Politics | State | Economy | Environment | HealthGunns under fire over Gay share sale
Greg Hoffman, BusinessDay, SMH, HERE
09.03.10 5:02 am
The problem is that Gay didn’t actually give anyone a “significant market update”. He waited until after he’d sold his shares for that. “This sort of behaviour has been going on since the Dutch East India Company listed the first share on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange in 1602,” writes Johnson. But that doesn’t make it acceptable. Either ASIC or the ASX needs to be given the power to take meaningful action.
Politics | Local | National | State | Forestry | Gunns | Economy | Environment | PersonalTasmanian Times Traffic Report (2)
Lindsay Tuffin
09.03.10 12:59 am
TT aims to publish comments as promptly and with as little editing as possible. Some contributors always submit comments that require only cursory review. The notable features of their comments are that they indicate where they agree with the article or other comments, where they disagree and why and provide links to supporting information. They are also notable for having mastered the art of respectfully disagreeing with other contributors …
Blogging | MediaForgotten: The power supply issue
Editor
08.03.10 9:45 pm
One notable absence from the increasing amount of pork barreling in Tasmania is about power supply: HERE
The Burning Issue: HERE
Kym Philby
08.03.10 9:38 pm
The bush telegraph is buzzing wildly from St Helens with the appearance around town of a DHHS ‘snoop’. HERE
And, what a forester says, about ‘Something in the Water’: Mark Poynter on Online Opinion, HERE
David Bartlett, Campaign Launch
David Bartlett, Premier
08.03.10 9:18 pm
Friends,
I stand here today as Premier.
But there was a time when my future looked very different.
My birth mum was faced with the most difficult of choices when she was only 16 and I was adopted.
And I was a handful, because I had a medical condition.
Why The Pokies (and Andrew Wilkie) matter
James Boyce
08.03.10 10:33 am
Meanwhile the Productivity Commission had long since completed the first major study into poker machines in Australia, conservatively finding that forty per cent of poker machine expenditure was by addicts living sad and desperate lives. This meant that in Tasmania about three to five thousand predominantly low income pokies addicts were the core business underpinning Federal Hotels extraordinary spate of takeovers of established iconic Tasmanian tourism businesses (which the Government termed investment) and the parachuting of the Farrell family (full owners of Federal Hotels) into BRW’s list of the top twenty richest Australian families. But the addicts suffering seemed of no interest to a State Government determined to ensure that the highly unpopular status quo would be locked in well before the next election (due in 2006 - disturbingly close to the original 2008 contract expiry) whatever the cost to addicts’ families, budget responsibility, community well being, and democratic rights.
Politics | State | Economy | Personal | SocietyBartlett admits role in pokies deal
Matthew Denholm, The Australian
08.03.10 9:49 am
The deal ignored Treasury advice that an open tender should be conducted for the exclusive licence. In a trade-off for exclusivity under the deal, Federal Hotels agreed to cap poker machine numbers and to build a tourist resort at Coles Bay, on Tasmania’s east coast. Mr Bartlett was at the time senior adviser to then treasurer David Crean. He has previously dismissed his role as that of a “message boy”.
Politics | State | Economy | SocietyJohn Lawrence
08.03.10 6:07 am
But even the Premier Mr. Bartlett, imbued with a humble self assessed prescience in matters forestry (he recently described his opponents as clueless) is now believed to be against creating a world first by giving a loan to an insolvent Company.
Writers | John Lawrence | Politics | Local | National | State | Forestry | Gunns | Economy | Environment
