Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

The Choice

Australia — Stop Adani.  No coal.

So often novelist, Richard Flanagan, speaks for me on matters close to my heart.  He is spot on when he says the fight to stop the Adani Carmichael mine is not just about Adani.  (Read Richard Flanagan’s speech to the Stop Adani rally by clicking on the above link.)

The Adani mine infrastructure is needed to make other prospective mines in Galilee basin viable.  Political power broker, Clive Palmer, also has mining interests in the Galilee basin.  Mr Palmer’s political party, United Australia Party. has just signed a deal to direct preferences to the Liberal and National parties.  The tag line for the United Australia Party is “Make Australia Great”.  Seriously!  In addition, the family of Matt Canavan, the Minister for Resources in the Morrison Government, also has interests in the Australian coal industry.

Several years ago, I attended an event where the Australian Council of Trade Unions had an information and merchandise stand.  They were selling T-Shirts advocating for wind power.  I remarked to the woman on the stand that there was an inconsistency between what she was selling and the views of then leader of the Australian Workers Union (AWU), who was concerned about the how the shift to renewable energy would affect his members.  She said to me that the AWU does not represent the views of her union or the union movement as a whole.  The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (rivals to the AWU), has recently been applying pressure to the Australian Labor Party to support the Carmichael mine.  It should be noted that the PM-in-waiting, Mr Bill Shorten, was once head of the AWU.

Do I need to remind Mr Shorten and his party that the AWU and the CFMEU do not represent the views of the entire Australian labor movement?  Voters, if you come across representatives of the ALP door-knocking, remind them of this and send them a strong message that the Adani coal mine must be stopped and our environmental legislation amended immediately to ensure that the carbon footprint impact of projects is taken into account.  Carbon neutrality must be a minimum for project approval. Read more

Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

The Changing Seasons – April 2019

Take me to the April sun in Canberra (pronounced Canbra).  In the words of George Eliot:

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”

Daylight savings has ended. so we sleep in another hour.

sleeping

Read more

Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

Lens-Artists Challenge – Less Is More

This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge is hosted by Amy.  Her chosen theme is “less is more“.  Amy’s inspiration for this theme is a quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” 

Now that is a very intriguing notion to me, because it seems to me that there is nothing more perfect than nature’s design. Read more

Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

Dangerous Liaisons?

Hello Groovers, I was going to start with a joke about how I’ve been hanging out in a hotbed of radicalism, but that doesn’t seem very appropriate now.  So instead, I will tell you about how lovely it was to spend last weekend at the National Folk Festival (Canberra) with many people of goodwill.  Admittedly we were a little cranky given the political times/blame games, but we took our frustrations out in peaceful and creative ways, such as through humour, verse and songs of kindness.  Here’s how it goes. Read more

Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

We Won’t Fade Away

 

A post for the environmentally-conscious and chocolate-mad.

chocolate

Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve got Friday on my mind.  I’ve been waiting for this event all year.  For many years it has kept me going — my National Folk Festival.  It is a magnet for extremists.  I say extremists because that is the language that is now being used by some leaders to describe the environmentally and socially-conscious. In the wake of the Christchurch terrorist attack, you would think that our leaders would have learned that scare-mongering can have dire repercussions.  It legitimises the warped views of those who would seek to achieve their aims through violent action.  It is the responsibility of our leaders not to characterise peaceful, concerned citizens as extremists.  Instead, let’s have a reasoned debate on solutions given the evidence.  In other words, let’s have some evidence-based policy making without the histrionics, and then we can vote on it. Read more

Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

Two Kinds Of Music

I am having trouble organising/articulating my thoughts for my previously flagged “dear-to-my-heart” post.  When I write about serious issues, I like to think that I don’t talk crap – that my discussion is well considered (you can retire the girl from policy analysis but you can’t take the policy analyst out of the girl).  So, I have been doing some research and this has taken me down some holes that require, upon emerging, a full body scrub and several showers to feel clean again.

Anyway, this is not said post.  It is a link to a short TED talk from ex-shearer and award-winning West Australian C&W singer, Pete Byfield.  I caught a performance by Pete at a country market.

Read more

Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

The Changing Seasons – March 2019

Dear Readers, can you believe that it is already March?  So here I am, commencing my second year of The Changing Seasons challenge.  I’m feeling battered this month, like an incumbent government that is falling in the polls even though the economy is performing well.  Don’t the punters know that they have never had it so good?  I suppose that is because we don’t live in an economy; we live in a society, and there has been a fair bit of societal ugliness going round.  So yep, although I want to crawl under a rock or hide in my own little “Canberra bubble” (sorry. in joke), March was mostly good for me.

So, let’s get started. Read more

Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

No Ordinary Day

Happy National Eucalypt Day, everyone.  23 March is the national day for Australia’s iconic eucaplypt trees, of which there are around 900 species.  Eucalypts were known to have existed when Australia was still part of the super-continent Gondwana.  The oldest known eucaplypt fossil specimens (flowers, fruit and leaves) date back 52 millions years! Read more

Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

The Silo On The Truck

I’m a big fan of road trips.  There is always something new and interesting to see on the journey.  Being stuck in slow moving traffic is no hassle, but instead a photo opportunity (provided one is not doing the driving).  Here is a photo I took a few years ago.  It is perfect for Frank’s Tuesday Photo Challenge — Round.  The silo on the truck goes round and round. Read more