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New Bush Telegraph
Number 99 Late Summer 2008 [download whole paper, 2mb, here]
Apology to the Stolen Generations of Australia
download article "Next" [pdf]
It was nice to meet and pay respects to Auntie Shirley of Wallaga Lake outside the parliament in Canberra. She has many relatives in the Shoalhaven and looked so proud and pleased to be there. What a day.
To watch the speech of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to the Australian Parliament on 13 February 2008, click here. If you watch no other movies this year, watch this one three or more times. History continues to be made and for once it is positive, warm and inclusive. There is much more to be done. Read the text at the next link below.
We have had sufficient audacity of faith to advance a pathway to that future, with arms extended rather than with fists still clenched. So let us seize the day. Let it not become a moment of mere sentimental reflection...
... we see our indigenous brothers and sisters with fresh eyes, with new eyes, and we have our minds wide open as to how we might tackle, together, the great practical challenges that Indigenous Australia faces in the future. Let us turn this page together: indigenous and non-indigenous Australians... Kevin Rudd, 13 February 2008
Dennis Argall's article quotes words of his on Radio National in March 2007, about children in remote communities. This was based on a morning's teaching experience in Nganmarriyanga (Palumpa) in the Daly River country with senior girls. Here are some of them, dressed to rehearse for Crocfest 2003 with their teacher Bindi Isis. The whole text here.
Climate Change
The Garnaut Review web site is here.
You can also download the interim report of 21 February 2008 [same link].
Lake Wollumboola and RAMSAR
8 January 2008: "The National Parks and Wildlife Service has confirmed that a Ramsar listing for Lake Wollumboola in Jervis Bay National Park would allow for continued sustainable use of the lake for recreational and commercial purposes.
NPWS Director Southern Alistair Henchman today explained that the Ramsar Convention is an international treaty which was ratified in the city of Ramsar in Iran in 1971. Australia was among the first of the 116 nations to sign this treaty which is designed to provide for sustainable use and protection of internationally significant wetland sites." rest of text here.
photo Ev Pettigrew: click to enlarge
Australia 2020 Summit click here to get the form for making your submission, on paper or online. Deadline 9 April. Maybe all future rights to whingeing will be withdrawn from all persons not making submissions... hmmm Send us a copy of your submission, please! Tradeable whingeing, not just tradeable carbon emissions? What is the ecological impact of whingeing? |
Friday, 01 February 2008: The Nature Conservation Council has called on the NSW Government to celebrate the unique beauty of Lake Wollumboola this World Wetlands Day and protect it under a Ramsar listing. Lake Wollumboola is a fragile and unique place that provides a safe haven for many endangered plants and animals like the Little Tern and the Green and Golden Bell Frog.
Lake Wollumboola more than meets the criteria to be protected by an international Ramsar listing. Of the nine possible criteria for being protected under the international Ramsar listing, Lake Wollumboola meets five. Only one of these conditions needs to be met to make the area eligible for protection. A Ramsar listing for the lake would allow low impact recreational activities to continue, and encourage international nature and Aboriginal cultural heritage tourism and environmental education activities.
Lake Wollumboola is one of the largest shallow saltwater lake in New South Wales. It often provides a home for thousands of iconic water birds and waders like Swans, Chestnut Teal and Bar tailed Godwits. The lake supports at least 43 species of migratory birds large populations of local species, with bird populations estimated at over 20,000. [read more here]
To get (compliments of Google) a look at other web pages discussing the RAMSAR listing of Lake Wollumboola, click here.
Social inclusion versus antagonism
Download article "Rudd-Gillard, Obama and the Shoalhaven" - pdf
To read the speech on social inclusion by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Social Inclusion Julia Gillard to the ACOSS National Assembly in November 2007, click here.
To read an article of social inclusion (January 2008) at the NSW Government's Community Builders website, click here.
To download the Obama Blueprint for Change (600kb) click here. This is an extract:
“When I am this party’s nominee, my opponent will not be able to say that I voted for the war in Iraq; or that I gave George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran; or that I supported Bush-Cheney policies of not talking to leaders that we don’t like. And he will not be able to say that I wavered on something as fundamental as whether or not it is ok for America to torture – because it is never ok. … I will end the war in Iraq. … I will close Guantanamo. I will restore habeas corpus. I will finish the fight against Al Qaeda. And I will lead the world to combat the common threats of the 21st century: nuclear weapons and terrorism; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. And I will send once more a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says, “You matter to us. Your future is our future. And our moment is now.”
-Des Moines, Iowa,
November 10, 2007
Quotation in the article in this issue of NBT:
...History returned that day [9/11] with a vengeance... This past, directly touches my own. Not only because the bombs of Al Qaeda have marked, with an eerie precision, some of the landscapes of my life—the buildings and roads and faces of Nairobi, Bali, Manhattan; not merely because, as a consequence of 9/11, my name is an irresistible target of mocking websites from overzealous Republican operatives. But also because of the underlying struggle—between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty towards those not like us.
from Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father, 1995, (introduction to 2004 edition). For a review of this book and more comment on Obama, read this in the New York Review of Books, 6 March 2008.
Important dates for the 2008 Local Government elections:
Close of Rolls: Monday, 4 August 2008
Close of Nominations: Wednesday, 13 August 2008
Registration of How-to Vote Material closes: Monday, 25 August 2008
Election day: Saturday, 13 September 2008 [more]
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