Those of us who have been carefully monitoring the activities of Obama for some time have noticed that he has a habit of saying one thing and doing something completely different, especially when it comes to economic matters, so it came as no surprise that, yet again, he used his State Of The Union address yesterday to claim that he was hard at work reducing the debt and the deficit. All of the evidence shows this to be entirely untrue, but that’s par for the course.
It also came as no surprise that, given his flagrant disregard for the rule of the constitution, he vowed to effectively implement some sort of carbon tax scheme (or similar) via executive order if Congress doesn’t produce something along those lines, completely ignoring the facts that executive orders are not constitutionally permitted to produce that sort of scheme, or that the planet hasn’t warmed for 16 years which pretty much completely debunks the theory of man-made global warming.
To that end, it was good to see Sean Hannity and Mark Levin get together today to discuss these and related matters of Sean’s Fox News program. It’s well worth a look.
(If Fox had uploaded either of these segments to their own site, I would have used their official videos, but for reasons best known by them, they didn’t, so I didn’t).
It’s been far too long since I’ve had the opportunity to link to some of Hannity’s work or Levin’s work. I’m very pleased that they got together to so logically and insightfully discuss this topic today.
Simon Benson from The Daily Telegraph got his hands on a draft policy discussion paper from the Coalition, and wrote about it in today’s Daily Telegraph. The plan is for more dams, especially up north, for nation building and risk mitigation.
At first glance, I’m very impressed. Using all of the water which falls in the tropics has been something I have supported for many years. I have generally suggested pumping water down south, but I suppose it makes sense to dam the rivers in the north and use some of that water up there and send some of the water south (where more dams can help with distribution).
UP to 100 dams could be built across the country to prevent floods, fuel power stations and irrigate a food boom to feed 120 million people across the Asia Pacific region, under plans being considered by Opposition leader Tony Abbott.
In the second high-level policy leak in a week, The Daily Telegraph has obtained a copy of the Coalition’s draft policy discussion paper for water management of Australia.
Included in the list of dam projects, which the Coalition will consider, is a $500 million plan to raise Warragamba Dam in Sydney, and new dams for NSW in the Hunter Valley, Central Highlands and along the Lachlan River.
The last major new dam built in NSW was Splitrock – in northern NSW in 1987.
The majority of the dams would be in northern Australia, where they would be used to irrigate arid zones for agriculture and more than double Australia’s food production.
Claiming the environmental lobby had been to blame for the lack of new water infrastructure, the report from the Coalition’s water taskforce endorses a major dam-building program to “help feed 120 million people and beyond over the coming decades”.
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One of the projects involves transporting water from the Kimberley region, 1500km to Perth, using canals, pipelines and ocean super tankers or large synthetic bags towed behind tug boats.
This is what I call a useful nation building project. Unlike the Rudd/Gillard government’s overpriced school halls, lethal pink batts, or out-of-date-by-the-time-it’s-built National Broadband Network, this plan has tangible long-term benefits for both the growth of the nation, and the reduction of risk from natural disasters.
It has been my belief for a very long time that the interior sections of the country can be reclaimed and used for agriculture and domestic inhabitation if water can be pumped in to those areas. I also believe that having water in those areas will increase the evaporation and precipitation cycle in those areas. I believe that some of the desert areas can be turned in to useful land…not all, but a decent chunk.
We can increase our productivity, increase our ability to export food, and minimise the downtime and expense caused by floods through this type of plan. The $30 billion price tag would be well and truly offset, and probably completely paid for, by the long-term economic advantages. When governments talk about nation building, this is the type of forward-thinking project that should be talking about.
I applaud the Federal Coalition for considering this type of visionary plan.
I was very disappointed yesterday to see politicians from all sides unanimously support a bill which paves the way for a constitutional referendum, aimed at adding a statement about the inhabitation of Australia prior to British settlement.
PARLIAMENT has taken another stride toward reconciliation on the fifth anniversary of the national apology to the stolen generation, as campaigners urged MPs on both sides not to give up.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott put aside politics on Wednesday as the lower house passed legislation to create an Act of Recognition of indigenous people.
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The legislation, which contains a two-year sunset clause, is to pave the way for constitutional change while giving time to build community support.
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In September, the government shelved plans to hold a referendum on the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal people because of a lack of public awareness.
It introduced the Act of Recognition as a stepping stone towards constitutional change.
The constitution has a very simple and important role. It is there to set up the basic rules by which our society is ordered, to outline the powers which can and can not be granted to the various branches and levels of government, and to outline the remedies available to the people in order to keep the government in check. It is not there to act as an historical record of the comings and goings of people from the country.
The constitution can, to a limited degree, explain things or values which give context to the rules which it sets out, but it should not act as a sounding board for documentation of truth or opinion of events which have transpired.
At the level of the basic format of a constitution, that is why I oppose what happened in Parliament yesterday, but I also have a specific reason for opposing this specific proposed change to the constitution.
Having a constitution which acknowledges “traditional owners” of the land or “prior inhabitants” or anything along those lines gives immediate rise to the very real possibility of Aboriginal people being given more rights or more legal status than other Australians, and would pave the way for racially preferential legislation to be passed in their favour.
It is bad enough that, under current legislation, there is a limited ability for government to treat Aboriginal people more preferentially than other Australians (such as Centrelink payments specifically granted to Aboriginal people due to their racial background), but this will be able to get much worse if the proposed changes to the constitution are approved by the public.
It is not accident that this legislation passed on the anniversary of Kevin Rudd’s dangerous apology to the so-called “stolen generation”. I noted back then that it was a bad idea which would have dire consequences, and we have seen some small-scale examples of the potential fallout since then. It bothers me greatly that Tony Abbott, a usually sensible man, still fails to see the problems with this whole idea.
Hopefully the rest of the population are smarter than our federal politicians and see through this whole thing. Hopefully they will vote against this dangerous change to the constitution.