Blacktown Greens

The Green Voice is the voice of thousands of Blacktown City voters that make themselves heard when they vote for The Greens.

Now your voice can be heard too, because The Green’s candidates in Blacktown’s Ward 5 are listening to the people of Ward 5, not “special” interests.

The Blacktown Greens don’t accept donations from property developers and never have. They make their decisions guided by their principles, in consultation with the residents of Blacktown.

Be heard today and tomorrow - Vote 1 The Greens.

Voter information.

The City of Blacktown local government election will be held on 13th September, 2003.

Fifteen councillors will be elected using a grouped proportional representation ballot. With three councillors being elected from each of five separate wards. Blacktown Greens are running in Ward 5. Ward 5 covers the suburbs of Shanes Park, Willmot, Shalvey, Bidwill, Hassall Grove, Lethbridge Park, Tregear, Blackett, Emerton, Dharruk, Hebersham, Oakhurst, Plumpton and Ropes Creek.

Voting is compulsory for all registered voters who are residents of Blacktown. You can check your enrolment details and which ward you reside in at the Australian Electoral Commission website.

Once you know which ward you live in, you can find your nearest polling booth using the ward map at the NSW elections website.

Dr John “Charlie” Veron is the former Chief Scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Recently he wrote a book A Reef in Time which has been described as the Silent Spring for the world’s coral reefs. In the book he presents the case that if humanity continues to produce carbon dioxide at present rates for another decade, the coral reefs will be virtually completely destroyed and we will see the initiation of the sixth mass extinction.

Veron gave a talk on ABC Radio National on April 7th 2008 in which he said:

Corals speak unambiguously about climate change. They once survived in a world where carbon dioxide from volcanoes and methane was much higher than anything predicted today. But that was 50 million years ago. The accumulation of carbon dioxide then took millions of years, not just a few decades. Then there was time enough for oceans to equilibrate. And for life to evolve solutions.

This is not what is happening today. Think about it. The levels of carbon dioxide we are already committed to reach, has no equal over the entire longevity of the Great Barrier Reef. Perhaps 25 million years, and most significantly, the rate of carbon dioxide increase we are now experiencing has no precedent in all known geological history.

Read more at Ockham’s Razor

Alex Mitchell writes in Crikey:

The Iemma Government is doing its best to conceal the fact that Shenhua is the frontrunner to acquire the distribution and retail sectors in partnership with Australian private investors.

It is already having enough trouble convincing its own MPs, the party’s rank and file and the trade unions to support the sell-off without revealing that control of the publicly-owned electricity industry is heading overseas to the People’s Republic of China.

Senior Shenhua executives visited Sydney late last year as the guests of Energy, Mineral Resources, State Development and Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald who, incidentally, led the left faction’s charge against power privatization when it was attempted by former premier Bob Carr and then treasurer Michael Egan in 1998 and roundly defeated.

Shenhua is China’s biggest coal mining company and the world’s second largest coal company after America’s Peabody Energy group based in St Louis. According to a glossy KPMG prospectus on China’s booming energy industry, Shenhua is “a state-owned enterprise under the supervision of China’s State Council”. (”Going for gold: China as a global mining player.”)

It operates four mining groups and produced more than 150 million tonnes of coal in 2007, almost 16 per cent more than the previous year, and is forecasting a 200 million tonne output by 2010.

(read more at Crikey)

If you don’t want your electricity bills ending up subsidising Chinese aggression in Darfur, Tibet, and all the rest of the human rights abuses pepetrated by the corrupt regime there write to your local western Sydney ALP state member of parliament (you know the guys who promised us lin the run up to March 2007 election that NSW electricity industry would stay in NSW ownership):

Blacktown
Mr Paul Gibson,
107-109 Main Street,
BLACKTOWN NSW 2148
Phone (02) 9671 5222
Fax (02) 9671 5266

Toongabbie
Mr Nathan Rees,
47 Station Street,
WENTWORTHVILLE NSW 2145
Phone (02) 9688 3770
Fax (02) 9688 3771
Email toongabbie@parliament.nsw.gov.au

Mount Druitt
Mr Richard Amery,
Suite 208,
Westfield Shoppingtown Carlisle Avenue,
MOUNT DRUITT NSW 2770
Phone (02) 9625 6770
Fax (02) 9625 9965
Email mountdruitt@parliament.nsw.gov.au

Riverstone
Mr John Aquilina,
PO Box 65,
STANHOPE GARDENS NSW 2768
Phone (02) 8883 3499
Fax (02) 8883 3355
Email john.aquilina@parliament.nsw.gov.au

As far as I can remember our national day, Australia Day was last Saturday and the accompanying public holiday was the following Monday, 28th January. Amazingly (to me at least) shops and other facilities were open on both days so it was a real good opportunity for some retail therapy or to catch a foreign flick. Or have a family day. Except if you happen to be a retail assistance or otherwise rostered on at your place of work.

Anywho over at You Tube Yakovich has posted this take on Australia Day:

Editor of The National Indigenous Times Chris Graham writes in Crikey (1st Feb)

There’s nothing like a little ‘sorry’ debate to get white Australia all red and puffy. Here’s a punter’s guide to exploding 10 of the more virulent myths surrounding a national apology to members of the Stolen Generations:

It was done by a previous generation.
Not correct. Of all the Stolen Generations myths, this is the biggest. If it were “previous generations”, then surely there’d be no-one left to apologize to? The facts are that the removal of Aboriginal children continued well into the 1960s and early 1970s. It’s worth noting it was absolutely raging during the late 1950s, when a small, lispy man named John Howard was serving as president of the NSW Young Liberals.

It costs us nothing.
Contrary to popular opinion, a national apology will have no legal affect on the capacity of members of the Stolen Generations to seek compensation. As a nation, an apology costs us nothing. Period.

I didn’t do it!
No, you didn’t. But you certainly benefited from it. Just as all Australians today, even some black Australians (hi Noel, hi Warren!) have directly benefited from the theft of Aboriginal land, all Australians have benefited from the removal of Aboriginal children. Why? Because almost all children who were removed to government institutions were then forced to work for the government or private citizens for little or no pay. In America, they called that process slavery. In Australia, we called it ‘apprenticeships’. In December 2006, both the federal parliament released a report supported by the ALP and the Liberals acknowledging the stolen wages scandal.

The people who performed the removals were good people who did a bad thing.
Big f-cking deal. Good people do bad things all the time, but that doesn’t mean they’re excused from apologising.

It won’t affect white Australia, so why worry?
The removals practice AND the use of this issue by John Howard as a race wedge is a stain on white Australia’s recent past. Just as Aboriginal people need an apology to move on, white Australia needs to apologise to move on.

The other five excuses can be found at Crikey

Meanwhile over at The Orstrahyun Dazza Mason reviews reaction overseas to THE APOLOGY and concludes:

Much of the historical summarisation in the international media regarding racist and colonial policies towards Aboriginals is harsh indeed, as it well should be, for the most part. But for an issue that is rarely mentioned in the international mainstream media, it’s still a bit shocking to see how this part of Australian history now reads to the rest of the world.

Which is yet another reason why ‘Sorry’ is a first and important step towards long-overdue reconciliation.