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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

White Shark cull, Western Australia: Someone make a film about this please

Wayne the votes in question are significant in that there were about 23 votes difference between Scott Ludlam for Greens and some dude from Palmer United, also i think another close decision between a Liberal and Independent candidate. So those votes could definitely change the outcome. On first count the Palmer United bloke got in, in the recount it went to Ludlam and i'm not sure how the other seats played out but it was very very close. I don't think the judge is prepared to call another election over it but whoever misses out could certainly challenge the result and ultimately would have a point. Tony Abbot is the only PM ever elected who is still non-prefered PM, right from day one, and has only gotten more unpopular since. A re-election or partial revote would be very dangerous for the Liberals now they have shown their true colours. Hence their ridiculous submission to the court that votes don't have to be counted to count, so long as a person gets to symbolically place their ballot paper in the box.
 
That is what I am getting at Trevor. If only three senators need to be voted on again, that would be more favourable than all of them. Imagine if the judge decided it was impossible to decide and gave the Premier his right to select a replacement he chooses normally used in the case of retirement or death of a senator (the Senators are state representatives in federal Parliament) best a three senator bi-election all around, give the people a choice.
 
Its between 4 senators and would be a WA only by election. I'm happy for the result to stand but whoever has missed out will no doubt challenge. I do like the idea of a complete do-over though, not sure Australia would vote the same way today as they did 6 months ago.

In shark news, apparently they caught and shot a monster Tiger Shark today now the contracters have switched over to using the smaller shark bycatch as bait. Also fisheries have come out saying that the impact of losing the numbers of Tiger Sharks we're seeing should be insignificant even though they don't really have any idea what population numbers we're dealing with. It seems guestimations are enough to go on in the absence of hard data.

Added below: Fisheries saying they expect 10-20 Tiger Sharks to be killed and that is what they base their opinion that the impact will be insignificant.

"The number that could be caught before a measurable change in their total population would occur is likely to be in the order of 100s. Consequently, it is unlikely that this would even have a measurable impact making the proposed strategy a negligible risk to this species."

I'm a bit concerned by the use of the terms "likely" and "unlikely" in the context of the best authority we have making a statement about potential impacts. Especially when that statement is tied to a very conservative assumption that 10-20 sharks would "probably" be killed up until April 30th. The cull has been going 18 days, 40+ sharks have been caught so far and even though many are released its unknown how many survived the trauma of that experience, probably not that many. I would say at least 10-20 shark already have been lost. We are less than a third of the way through the cull so 30-60 sharks is probably a better guess. If its 60 that is on its way to being 100, given we are talking very loose projections based of insufficient data the margin for error is large. If 100's of sharks is their conservative guess where impacts become significant, then if actual population numbers are lower, which they usually are, then the numbers that have an impact would be lower and 60 might be bad news. Given the fact no Tiger Shark has attacked a person in Southern Western Australia in the first place its pretty dumb and unnecessary anyway.

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/f...-first-tiger-shark-killed-20140213-32kdj.html
 
What has emerged in the senate has been the number of independents and small special-interest parties that have gained representation despite being minority in their respective polls. The two major parties apparently do not like this trend which is basically the will of the people expressing a disillusionment with EACH of the major parties. Hung parliaments or near-to hung parliaments are becoming less rare these days. Hung parliaments occur when both major parties are equally represented as a minority. Another smaller minority party like the Greens or independent representatives s become inordinately empowered as far as representational numbers are concerned through having influence on the balance of power. Both major parties may aspire to change the rules so smaller political entities are taken out of the game and may collude to enact laws that do so. The last Labor Federal Government was referred to as a "minority" government. They hung onto power by getting into a deal with the Greens and Indies. The Liberal Party and National Party have been forming minority governments for years. They have been in a partnership and calling themselves a coalition. They came to an arrangement where for certain seats, one or the other of the parties would not challenge against the other partner. Some cracks appeared a few years back when the Liberals through fortunate polling decided that they could go it alone and field candidates against National Party members. This brought them undone in Western Australia when the Nationals made it known that their support for the Liberals should not be taken for granted and the Liberal Government as a minority was forced into some major concessions to the Nationals in order to secure a minority government. In the most recent State election the National's power has fallen away somewhat but one might expect that there will be much care in the future not to disrespect the Nationals by taking their loyalty for granted in the future. -- For the Americans in the room, Australia's electoral system for the most part is a preferential poll versus the first-past-the-post poll you are familiar with. It provides for voters to nominate alternative - "less liked" choices of candidates. The concept is that instead of the most popular rooster getting the job, the chook who finally gets the nod is the "least unwanted" by the majority of voters. This plus our to some, - "undemocratic" compulsory voting system ensures that polls are always resourced for voter turnout and less vulnerable to procurement. In the US, unexpected voter motivation can overwhelm the resources thought to be adequate for an expected lower turnout. It is far more possible for an election to be procured by artificially manipulating the voter turnout by habitually under-resourcing the polling places, creating long waiting lines, thus generally discouraging people from getting out of their beds on polling day, the anointed zealots excepted.
 
Abbot, and both major parties really, would like electoral reform to control the Senate- by eliminating small party voices and independents- so they can push through legislation without scrutiny. But the problem is they don't have the numbers to repeal the carbon tax and keep other promises without support of these smaller parties today. Any move to reform comes at the cost of cooperation, so what they'll have to try and do is make deals with the promise they won't push to reform, then once they get their legislation through change their mind. It will be interesting. Already I think the Greens will be wary of helping them on the carbon tax after the events of the last few months such as the Barrier Reef, Sharks, Tassie old growth forrest etc. If that happens and they can't repeal the carbon tax its going to be bad news for Tony.
 
Trevor Emmerson said:
Its between 4 senators and would be a WA only by election. I'm happy for the result to stand but whoever has missed out will no doubt challenge. I do like the idea of a complete do-over though, not sure Australia would vote the same way today as they did 6 months ago.
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Yes, I forgot about the half Senate, so it might affect only 2 senators might need to be. I am aware it is a WA only election.

You guys are hopeless in WA letting a Kangaroo dung thrower in on only 6000 votes. If I had known I could have moved over there and got in (though I don't think I would be throwing kangaroo poop). ;)

Bob, for our American friends it is not nearly that simple. Unlike America we have compulsory voting, which means that in America you could literally win by one vote, that is an election where one vote is cast, so often hardly a popular outcome or first past 50% that Australian voting is actually based on. So in our preferential system it was supposed to be that if somebody did not get more than 50% of the vote the second choice of voters of candidates that did not have the numbers would be taken into account to add to these, or some such system, but has been coopted a bit to give the canidates' parties control over preferences by having a single vote for the party use the parties nominated preferences without the voter filling over 100 positions (which I had to do over 3 times in a poorly run booth with kids jostling me and people sociopathicly pulling down booths around us before people had finished voting and before the day near finished), which I disagree with (you should be able to nominate a candidate accept their preference system, but alter it by nominating where you want selected other candidates moved too etc, solve a few issues and give people maximum choice). It used to be worse, when they started this only the major parties had one vote boxes. Anyway, unlike the American system, where a minority of votes can get all candidates in as you don't have compulsory voting to make everybody turn up (and a hundred candidates could also theoretically each get around 1% of the vote by the looks of it). Instead we elect the most preferred candidate past the post. So I think it is if somebody has 49% the second 48% but the remaining 3% all prefer the 48% candidate over the 49% candidate then the 48% is first over the line with 51%. Would that be right Bob?

Anyway, by preference deals between parties is how the kangaroo dung thrower was able to get in on 6000 actual votes. Though 6000 might have put him first he was automatically preferred when many people voted for somebody else one vote, or something like that.
 
Trevor, I can tell you what the political game is. I don't get to personally advise many party leaders now days, but I think the signs are there.

The game is, that they gained control of the senate at the last election, at that time they can pass, in theory, as much legislation as they need, they don't need the greens etc, and it doesn't really matter to them, otherwise they would compromise to get the legislation through, or abandon a piece of legislation . It is all window dressing, the constant complaints about the others not letting legislation through is to demote them in the public eye, to wear down the others image, to desentitise the public to the others objectives, and condition the public to the governments own agenda. As the public turns off the rhetoric of the others, and accepts the governments comments about the others being the problem, they can turn voters onto their at of thinking, mostly swinging voters and traditional supporters draining small right wing parties. The presented ineffectiveness of the left wing minor parties starts to drain their support. So the greens can see their support decline. The government by now gets their new members in the Senate and starts victoriously passing legislation. The rhetoric of the protesters plays into their hands also. Or so the theory was supposed to go, but the WA issue is a potential fly in the ointment. They would normally tough it out, and get into other things and be seen as victorious and the protestors as nuisances, suck the public's interest in them and issues, and the protestors steam. But because, if your mass public support claim is true, and a bi-election, where the others only need to show they can do it, potentially making them bigger at the next full poll and the prospect of numbers in the Senate falling to the others potentially crippling the government which is offside with many of the others. But what were the numbers, would no government WA senators being elected swing the senate into its normal minority?
 
Of the 4 senators in question only 1 belongs to a major party and it is a Labor candidate anyway. Originally the Labor and Palmer United candidates got in, the on the recount a Greens and Motoring or sports Party- your kangaroo thrower- got in. Only a handful of votes between any of them.

Basically if the Greens and Labor refuse to repeal the carbon tax Tony Abbot can condemn them all he wants he's still failed to deliver one of his major election promises.

At each successive election for the last 20 or more years the vote has swung steadily away from the 2 traditional parties. In this recent election the polls confirmed basically what every person I spoke to regardless of demographics, nobody wanted to vote for either party because both leaders were perceived as terrible people. The Australian public grows more and more disenfranchised with politics every time we have an election and more and more votes go away from those 2 parties every time.

I've no doubt Abbot will want to play the sort of games you describe above to try and scare people away from those choices, and they will also probably try and reform to make it harder for those smaller parties to captitalise on the trend. But i don't really see how that can work since we're hardly a nation of idiots and politicians are trusted less every day. No doubt this will be the most unpopular government of all time and thats actually encouraging if you think the political landscape needs to change. In 10-15 years that trend will reach a point where smaller parties can form their own coalition and actually challange for leadership in their own right.
 
I failed maths from Grade 5 onwards. So I can't help with real number-stuff on the Senate. My concern is not so much with the system we have but that not too far down the track, executive government may attempt to pull on a form of soft coup with more "silent running" plus simply ignoring or outwaiting the Senate for as long as it can or needs, to establish its more extreme "reforms" beyond practical repeal. The upside of putting up the firewall will be to force newsmedia back into some real investigative work instead of living off leaks, feeds and choreographed doorstops. It may not suit the partisan commercial media to go the extra mile. If the independence of the ABC and SBS is neutered, then we may not see much that is not self-censored or doctored. There was an assertion back during the last campaign, that if the Senate was obstructive, that an Abbott administration would pull on a double-dissolution to achieve a full upper and lower house clean-out and an unmistakable mandate from the people. I don't see that happening any time soon but who knows. It is going to be interesting to see if our incoming Governor-General and our present Chief Justice of the High Court become caught up if the double-dissolution game is played. Both are made of much sterner and honourable stuff than Sir. John Kerr. This is all far and beyond what my feeble mind can make sense of. Maybe it is better to stick with the sharks, lay flat in the fastflowing Kimberley tide and avoid breaking kneecaps on the invisible boulders passing below.
 
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Trevor Emmerson said:
Of the 4 senators in question only 1 belongs to a major party and it is a Labor candidate anyway. Originally the Labor and Palmer United candidates got in, the on the recount a Greens and Motoring or sports Party- your kangaroo thrower- got in. Only a handful of votes between any of them.

Basically if the Greens and Labor refuse to repeal the carbon tax Tony Abbot can condemn them all he wants he's still failed to deliver one of his major election promises.

At each successive election for the last 20 or more years the vote has swung steadily away from the 2 traditional parties. In this recent election the polls confirmed basically what every person I spoke to regardless of demographics, nobody wanted to vote for either party because both leaders were perceived as terrible people. The Australian public grows more and more disenfranchised with politics every time we have an election and more and more votes go away from those 2 parties every time.

I've no doubt Abbot will want to play the sort of games you describe above to try and scare people away from those choices, and they will also probably try and reform to make it harder for those smaller parties to captitalise on the trend. But i don't really see how that can work since we're hardly a nation of idiots and politicians are trusted less every day. No doubt this will be the most unpopular government of all time and thats actually encouraging if you think the political landscape needs to change. In 10-15 years that trend will reach a point where smaller parties can form their own coalition and actually; challange for leadership in their own right.
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So there is a no loss to them, interesting they lost so severely in WA. So they might like a bi-elec;tion to gain more seats, but they would not want to be shown to not be able to win a trick either if they could not get a senator up. Still if it went all to the left, it would not be to their liking. Sorry I haven't been keeping track of numbers and who's who, been sick a bit.

Yes there are an actual lot of 'idiots' around, people's common understanding and sense is often skewed idiotic than realistic (even though they think it is realistic) but based in misconceptions and selfishnesses/biases. I always tell you guys to be the voice of reason, that is what Bob Brown tried. Meaning what you say actually adds up (but when talking to 'idiots' they are so often so far behind the 8 ball that things you say is idiotic to them as it is so far above their understanding and standing. But I see here a lot of biases, conjecture and things that don't add up too. It is always time to out compete the competition in being more reasonable and right, because in the end when people turn away from the BS they need something right to hold their attention before they turn to the next nonsense. As we move more to the American system we start loosing the roundness of sense we had.
 
Greg Hunt is pushing through legislation aimed at giving decisions made to approve mining operations that fail to take environmental impacts into consideration immunity from legal challenge, Labor supports so will go through the senate.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/13/mining-greg-hunt-retrospective-legal-immunity

Is essence, a law to that says the government can bypass environmental concerns to grant mining companies access anywhere they want to go and operate without fear of opposition. This is specifically aimed at guaranteeing the Great Barrier Reef decision cannot be challenged by anyone who thinks its worth protecting, and sets a precedent now that says nothing is off limits and obligations the government previously had to the environmental no longer apply. Disgraceful.
 
This may end up going to the High Court in a constitutional challenge if injured third parties are involved. Given that traditional owners can be rolled without compensation if they stamp their foot, now miners become exempt from prosecution in event of damage which becomes a taxpayer burden to put right, that's two strikes of over-reach. I wonder what the third will be? The Federal Government has become fond of legislating the courts out of process. The pollies themselves need to be very careful. They are not immune to having to bankrupt themselves defending themselves against allegation of corruption deemed to be cause of injury in civil proceeding, be any application judged futile or not. The lessons of NSW seem to have become quickly forgotten?? Who is to say that thirty years down the track when the population and a very different administration decides that the offences of the fathers should be visited upon the sons when it cannot be demonstrated that the sons by inheritance are not implicated with ill-gotten fortune. Current administrations have also been moving incrementally toward the French model of guilty until proven innocent. They will have only themselves to blame if a radical succession gives it some momentum. - I am going to give up on political comment from this point on. - It makes me cranky.
 
Robert its doing my head in too. Its kind of impossible to separate from the shark cull issue this thread started out focused on because that itself is a symptom of the attitude and policy of the incumbent government, but its ruined all the fun really of talking about filming and protecting sharks. I really need to get back to work on what I was doing a month ago and stop following this so closely. Its all going on file though, in couple of months when I have a bit more time I'd like to revisit and spend some time developing a doc based more broadly on the state of politics in Australia using the shark cull as one of a few focal points.
 
it never ends, guys... media/politics are just as bad here and arguably have been for awhile.
maybe it's the messiness of a democracy/republic going back and forth, maybe it's a failed experiment, maybe it's better than what we had...
depends on where you are, but the problems persist to the local/regional level. my hope is in a generation growing up with different shared understandings.
otherwise you just gotta do your thing as best you can and channel all the frustration/anger-energy into calm and positive problem-solving...

so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ3qTEH_HiY
 
Robert Hart said:
This may end up going to the High Court in a constitutional challenge if injured third parties are involved. Given that traditional owners can be rolled without compensation if they stamp their foot, now miners become exempt from prosecution in event of damage which becomes a taxpayer burden to put right, that's two strikes of over-reach. I wonder what the third will be? The Federal Government has become fond of legislating the courts out of process. The pollies themselves need to be very careful. They are not immune to having to bankrupt themselves defending themselves against allegation of corruption deemed to be cause of injury in civil proceeding, be any application judged futile or not. The lessons of NSW seem to have become quickly forgotten?? Who is to say that thirty years down the track when the population and a very different administration decides that the offences of the fathers should be visited upon the sons when it cannot be demonstrated that the sons by inheritance are not implicated with ill-gotten fortune. Current administrations have also been moving incrementally toward the French model of guilty until proven innocent. They will have only themselves to blame if a radical succession gives it some momentum. - I am going to give up on political comment from this point on. - It makes me cranky.
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Me too, but I'm coping with the dht after the recent upturn. A lot of mining stuff is covered by state government power and environmental approval, so the federal government doesn't get all its way. However, they use international trade agreements and such under the foreign affairs powers to illegitimately (opinion) override state powers. Labor did this, now the right can use it for whatever. There is no independent review such as approval and agreement of state governments and the electorate to approve these economic considerations, and only for foreign conduct (interactions outside Australia and to foreign people in Australia). These agreements should be negotiated state by state as optional in length (meaning that they can be terminated in part or in whole at anytime). This would solve many issues. This is what trade agreements become about, exploiting others, we got royally done on one.

Trevor Emmerson said:
Robert its doing my head in too. Its kind of impossible to separate from the shark cull issue this thread started out focused on because that itself is a symptom of the attitude and policy of the incumbent government, but its ruined all the fun really of talking about filming and protecting sharks. I really need to get back to work on what I was doing a month ago and stop following this so closely. Its all going on file though, in couple of months when I have a bit more time I'd like to revisit and spend some time developing a doc based more broadly on the state of politics in Australia using the shark cull as one of a few focal points.
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My work is done. If you want ideas on solutions, I am aiming to do a book related to political issues, you are welcome to contact me about it.

Love jobs are fun when you can do it now and keep the energy flowing. The fun filming stuff really turned down when it got changed to a nature doco latter. Just layout what you want to do now in a rough draft list. Ask for discussion and help and leave it at that. I think it is just that this political stuff in real life is just happening, developing and going deeper everyday in the real world at the same time. But the reality is that unless they do something else we have not talked about, we have covered much of it (but this is what they depend on we discuss run out of discussion but do nothing about it).

paulherrin said:
it never ends, guys... media/politics are just as bad here and arguably have been for awhile.
maybe it's the messiness of a democracy/republic going back and forth, maybe it's a failed experiment, maybe it's better than what we had...
depends on where you are, but the problems persist to the local/regional level. my hope is in a generation growing up with different shared understandings.
otherwise you just gotta do your thing as best you can and channel all the frustration/anger-energy into calm and positive problem-solving...
Click to expand...

No Paul, worse, it happened over there a long time ago, where do you think these people are getting it from. Problem with Australia, is they might take it to the next level.

Anyway, thanks guys. But right, more action and less talk.
 
This is interesting, not so much for the incident in itself but that it ever saw the light of day, albeit via Sky media. --------------- http://www.skynews.com.au/topstories/article.aspx?id=950379 ----------- I wonder if some elements of the self-censoring media are hedging their bets already and being careful not to burn too many bridges. The guy who has upon his sword fallen could have and may yet even be a future parliamentary representative. He'll probably cover his tracks a bit better next time. - As for the free trade agreements, secession would fix that but bring a whole lot of new ones for Western Australia to no nett advantage. It would be a fascinating bunfight to document however. - I had better be careful. In this country, depending upon the aggressiveness of the incumbent administration, this utterance, despite being balanced and hypothetical may fall within the capture of the offence of sedition. --- Now I had better make good my promise and leave the politics alone. The site administrators have been most generous in their tolerance thus far and I would not want to overdo it.
 
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What i find really interesting about the cull so far is that despite 72 baited lines being out there and Tiger and other sharks being caught basically around the clock there hasn't been any sign of White Sharks. The public has this fear and the government has this opinion that Western Australia is overrun with GWS due to a population explosion in the last 15 years since they have been protected, and yet we haven't been able to catch a single one.

I think everyone has been surprised by that. They are highly mobile and cover large distances as they move up and down the coast. Most likely if one came across a drum line it would partake in a free meal and be caught. it hasn't happened. So what is going on? Are there actually far less sharks than we thought, or are there possibly no sharks- GWS- here at the moment because they have all migrated to other parts of the world at this particular time. Maybe they are all in South Africa, maybe South Australia, who knows.

The lack of any catch serves as a population survey of sorts and it is saying our assumptions are way way off. That being the case killing any GWS it should be argued poses a potential, or to borrow from fisheries LIKELY, significant impact to the population and should not happen.
 
I mean, killing the dozens of GWS they thought they were going to catch would of caused plenty of outrage but at least it would allow Collin Barnet to justify the cull and remain defiant in the face of his critics. But catching no sharks, thats a whole different story. Really just proof that the whole thing was very ill conceived. I wonder if he will take responsibility for that, it has after all been a giant waste of tax payers money. [Waste of perfectly good Tiger Sharks too but I doubt he'd care about that]
 
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