IT IS difficult to imagine a more wretched waste of a colossal amount of money than paying farmers to plant trees that cannot be harvested for a century.

The new Abbott government is sticking with its plan to spend $1.55 billion on the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI), part of its policy of direct action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The CFI was introduced by the Gillard government with the support of the Coalition.

Most of the money will be spent on growing trees, with the farms on which they are grown accumulating carbon credits. The original plan was for these to be bought by businesses needing to offset their emissions under the carbon tax scheme, but with the imminent repeal of the tax that market will not exist. And hopes of selling them overseas have evaporated with the rest of the world backing away from similar schemes and the virtual collapse of the EU’s carbon credits market.

Thus, apart from a small demand by companies choosing to voluntarily offset their emissions, most of the carbon credits will be purchased by the government. In practical terms, farmers will be paid by taxpayers to grow trees.

More trees may be a worthwhile goal, but this is not farm forestry.

The trees planted to generate carbon credits must continue growing for 100 years and cannot even be properly managed for fire control, otherwise the carbon credits will be lost and the farm obliged to replace the trees or repay the credits. They cannot be harvested for timber to build houses, fences or furniture, or even turned into woodchips to make paper.

Please don't read more : http://www.farmweekly.com.au/blogs/agribuzz-with-david-leyonhjelm/money-doesnt-grow-on-trees/2672368.aspx

Yes David is against Tony's direct action because trees are a waste of space... He is also against anything that limits our carbon exhausts, he is in favour of the use of guns in the streets, in schools and anywhere where crime could happen... His head of course if full of ideological crap but then again one is entitled to voice an opinion... But ruling the roost with the balance of power with loose marbles rolling in a pigeon loft... That is dangerous and really bad...

A prime example of the rubbish spread by fossil fuel fans was an opinion piece by Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm published in The Australian, writes Lachlan Barker.

WHAT HAS BECOME CLEAR to me in this debate about scrapping theRenewable Energy Target (the RET) is that the Federal Government and the conservative state governments, have been massively successful at spreading the message that the RET is a bad thing.

RET bad, coal good; or, renewable energy expensive, coal cheap.

And a prime example of this was the rubbish printed by The Australian on August 27, 2014 in an opinion piece by Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm.

This piece was entitled:

‘Ditch RET to set economy free.'

Read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/rubbishing-the-ret-for-king-coal-by-david-leyonhjelm-and-the-australian,6863

A police officer and four firefighters were among those hospitalised after a truck carrying ammonium nitrate rolled over and exploded near Charleville in south-west Queensland.

A police spokesman said the blast was so powerful the truck "disintegrated", destroying two firefighting vehicles along with it and causing "catastrophic" damage to the Mitchell Highway.

The tanker, carrying more than 50 tonnes of the chemical, rolled on the highway about 30 kilometres south of Charleville just before 10:00pm (AEST) last night.

Firefighters were trying to extinguish the blaze when the truck exploded, injuring eight people, including four firefighters, a police officer, two bystanders and the truck driver.

Authorities said the two passers-by dragged the truck driver out of the vehicle.

The driver was airlifted to a Brisbane hospital in a serious condition.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-06/ammonium-nitrate-truck-explodes-in-charleville-queensland-8-hurt/5724512

Ammonium nitrate is a powerful explosive when unstable... Usually the quantities transported or stocked create MASSIVE explosions when becoming "hydrated" or mixed with diesel... Some of the biggest explosions from fertilisers are well documented. 

I had to place the word idiots in quote in the heading of this line of blogs. I was being facetious, but the irony seems to have gone flat. It was done because, of course, David Leyonhjelm had written in an article for a mag dedicated to growing industrial crops:

"NO INTELLIGENT person would choose organic food over conventional food on objective grounds. Its support is based on a number of false assumptions."...

The silly cad...

Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm has employed an award-winning author who was once at the centre of one of Australia's biggest literary controversies.

Helen Dale - otherwise known as Helen Demidenko - won the prestigious Miles Franklin Award in 1995 for the novel entitled The Hand That Signed The Paper, which told the story of a Ukrainian family who sided with the Nazis during World War II.

At the time, the judging panel said "Helen Demidenko's first novel displays a powerful literary imagination coupled to a strong sense of history, and brings to light a hitherto unspeakable aspect of the Australian migrant experience".

But it was soon revealed Ms Dale was not the daughter of Ukrainian migrants and was not drawing on her family's history, as the author had suggested. She was in fact Helen Darville, the daughter of middle-class British migrants.

Nearly 20 years after the scandal, Ms Dale is set to enter the world of federal politics, working as an adviser to Senator Leyonhjelm who sits on the cross benches.

"Her achievements are superb; she's the youngest ever winner of the Miles Franklin literary award at the age of 20," Senator Leyonhjelm said.

read more; http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-10/david-leyonhjelm-hires-author-once-known-as-helen-demidenko/5733790

A crossbench senator has thanked Australia's smokers and attacked successive governments for increasing tobacco taxes in a speech in Federal Parliament.

Liberal Democratic Party Upper House representative David Leyonhjelm voiced his gratitude to smokers for the $8 billion they provide in tobacco taxes each year. 

"Your generosity to the nation's Treasury is truly staggering," he told the Senate.

Channelling the catchphrase of South Park television show character Mr Mackey, Senator Leyonhjelm told Parliament we can agree that "drugs are bad, mmmkay", and it is probably also fair to say that "regressive taxes are bad, mmmkay".

The Liberal Democratic Party is a libertarian party that promotes a smaller role for government and the right for individuals to pursue their activities.

The party has made similar statements about smokers in the past.

In his speech Senator Leyonhjelm argued the tax on tobacco hits the poor hardest and makes the Government's tax increase "all the more perverse".

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-01/smokers-generosity-to-nation-truly-staggering-senator-says/5782166

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What is really perverse, is Senator Leyonhjelm. Reduction in smoking in this country has lowered health cost and increased the average living age... Though one thing in favour of his lunatic views is the older one gets, the more likely one has a chance to suffer from dementia... Bugger... But overall, reduced smoking has also prevented passive smoking deaths. Although this is difficult to quantify, I am sure many non-smokers have been saved from an early grave... The senator should resign.

Australia is a "nation of victims" with citizens unable to properly protect themselves with weapons, pro-gun crossbench senator David Leyonhjelm has warned.

The Liberal Democrat said he wanted a calm, measured discussion about the right to "practical self-defence" in the wake of the deadly Sydney siege.

"What happened in that cafe would have been most unlikely to have occurred in Florida, Texas, or Vermont, or Alaska in America, or perhaps even Switzerland as well", Senator Leyonhjelm said.

He told the ABC's AM program, "statistically speaking" in those jurisdictions "one or two of the victims" would have had a concealed gun.

"That nutcase who held them all hostage wouldn't have known they were armed and bad guys don't like to be shot back at," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-18/australia-a-nation-of-victims-says-pro-gun-senator-leyonhjelm/5974684

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What an idiot... Give guns to "ordinary" people and more harm will happen. It is not time to turn this country into a US style shooting gallery. Gun laws in Switzerland are actually designed to make sure guns are only used for national service and national reservist activities which are also compulsory — and the guns and ammunition are always separated. Talking of the US gun laws in this fashion is idiotic. What would have happened then is more people would have been shot in such a situation — as is often the demonstrated cases in the US where gun laws are so lax that idiots, loopies and psychos can buy shooters over the counter in many states. Some of these loopies often join the police as well and kill innocent people with impunity.

The more guns in the streets, the more danger for the social cohesion, the more fear of everyone else. David Leyonhjelm is only a "liberal democrat" — which is a sobriquet that means nothing much democratic nor "liberal" apart from eating GM shit and totting guns at will. Even the gun lobby is weary of David Leyonhjelm stance on guns... 

"Statistically speaking", more people are shot by guns in the US than are killed on the roads, at war or by other accidents combined. 

Crossbench senator David Leyonhjelm says he can't recall whether he once referred to former prime minister Julia Gillard as a "mangy dog" but says he "doesn't give a f---" about it either way.

Senator Leyonhjelm posted the comments in 2011, before his election to Parliament, on the blog site Catallaxy Files.

Another comment he posted in the same year on breast cancer awareness day included a crude joke saying "It's not enough to perve" and advocating groping a woman's breasts instead.

When contacted by Fairfax Media to confirm if he authored the comments, Senator Leyonhjelm confirmed he published the breast awareness joke but could not recall if he had called Ms Gillard a "mangy dog".

But the Liberal Democrats senator for NSW said critics should "get real" and that it was "absolute crap" to expect politicians not to say things an ordinary voter wouldn't say.

"I don't remember [writing] it but I don't give a f--- if I did," he said.

"Get real, Australians are rude about their elected politicians," he said.

"Calling Gillard a mangy dog is mild and absolutely nothing compared to what others have said about her and what people say about Tony Abbott," Senator Leyonhjelm said.

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/david-leyonhjelm-unapologetic-about-calling-julia-gillard-a-mangy-dog-20150407-1mfxtc.html

See toon at top...

...

Senator Lambie’s office:

‘I have forwarded this to the senator, but I believe that due to it being before the courts and a sensitive issue, it might not be responsible to voice an opinion in the parliament.’

But it was the response from self-proclaimed libertarian, Senator David Leyonhjelm, which was the most disappointing, in that he obeys the atmosphere by following the U.S. Department of Justice line:

‘Mr Assange is under investigation for crimes of sexual assault. He is hiding in the Venezuelan embassy to avoid facing them, not because of his political views or activities. Until he faces these accusations properly, I will not seek to either move a motion to refer his case to a committee and/or to raise Questions on Notice in the chamber.’

Senator Leyonhjelm not only named the wrong embassy, but he failed to acknowledge that Assange was granted asylum only after a formal assessment by the government of Ecuador in relation to the current and future risks of persecution and the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in the United States in response to his publishing activities and political opinions.

At least those Senators did respond. No response at all has yet come from Senators Xenophon, Lazarus, Muir, and Madigan.

I suppose, to some extent, Julian Assange being holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London has become old news for some. Much has happened in the last four years, with significant world events reported upon more quickly, comprehensively and vigorously than ever before, and the Assange/WikiLeaks revelations having been followed by the equally sensational Snowden revelations and their immense international political fallout.

However, that does not in any way diminish the importance of how Assange has been treated and how he has been thrown to the wolves by his own country.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-australian-governments-betrayal-of-julian-assange,7669

Crossbench senator David Leyonhjelm has had a run-in with performers from a satirical group called the Flat Earth Institute outside a Melbourne hearing of a Senate inquiry into windfarms.

Leyonhjelm told the performers, who were dressed in medieval outfits as a way of highlighting what they say are parliamentarians’ backwards attitudes on renewables, to “fuck off”.

The two street performers, La Trobe University academic Liz Conor and Phil Evans from Friends of the Earth, appear amused at the senator’s proclamation.

“We proudly endorseth senator Leyonhjelm’s inquisition into wind energy. It buildeth on our legacy of denying enlightenment and excelling at witch-hunts,” Professor Greenhausen, Conor’s Flat Earth Institute pseudonym, said in a written statement.

“We presumeth that ‘fuck off’ is the customary greeting in the 21st century.”

The statement then took aim at inquiry chair, independent senator John Madigan.

“As senator Madigan hath stated ‘Submarines are the spaceships of the oceans’. Ye satanic windmills are verily heathen science bequeathed by snollygosters that fail to honour the old ways and displeaseth the coal gods,” it said.

Conor, an academic at La Trobe University in Melbourne, later told Guardian Australia that the language from Leyonhjelm was “not what you would expect from the bearer of public office”, but noted that the Liberal Democrat has a history of colourful language.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/09/david-leyonhjelm-swears-at-satirical-protest-group-outside-windfarm-inquiry

See stuff from top...

Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm says there are doubts about whether Aboriginal people were the first occupants of Australia.

"There are some anthropologists who argue that," he said this morning, when asked his view on a referendum to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the Constitution.

Senator Leyonhjelm cited the cave art known as the Bradshaws or Gwion Gwion in the Kimberley in Western Australia, although he mistakenly said they were in the Northern Territory.

"There are some anthropologists around who say they are so distinct from more recent Aboriginal cave paintings, that they suggest that there was a previous culture ... to the Aborigines," he said.

"Now I'm not saying that's true or not, I'm not an anthropologist and I don't necessarily accept that, but the fact that there is even a doubt raised about it would suggest to me that it is not necessarily a good thing to put in the Constitution."

A joint select committee has today called for a referendum to be held to recognise indigenous people.

Senator Leyonhjelm said there was a serious debate in anthropological circles as to whether or not the Aborigines were the first culture in Australia.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-25/david-leyonhjelm-raises-doubts-over-aboriginal-occupants/6572704

"Throw the book at criminals and anyone dealing in illegal firearms, but get off the backs of hard-working decent farmers and sport and recreational shooters."

If the NSW Cabinet approves his plan but other states and territory ministers do not, the Federal Government will not be in a position to lift the ban.

That would infuriate the NSW senator David Leyonhjelm, who today accused the Federal Government of backing out on a previous written agreement to trade his vote on earlier legislation for an end to the prohibition on imports.

He told reporters at Parliament House he had been "deceived" by the Coalition, citing an agreement he had reached with Abbott government minister Michael Keenan and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton in which the ban would be lifted in exchange for his vote on legislation.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-18/troy-grant-pushes-for-re-categorisation-of-adler-shotgun/7944290

Guns kill people. And tonight on &:30, Tony Abbott took credit for stopping (temporarily) the import of the Adler gun until such seven bullet gun was reclassified (possibly as a five-shot-plus-two... guffaw...) making it more "importable"... The amount of bullshit and turditional arguments is bigger than a Babar shitpat... See toon at top...

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Medical researchers who want the "politics" removed from the funding issue should stop taking taxpayer money and turn to private sources, says a crossbench senator.

Australian of the Year, biomedical scientist Alan Mackay-Sim, says he will spend the year advocating for greater public investment in medical research and calling for the funding to be extended "much longer than the political horizon".

Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm said government funding of medical research was "bound to be a poor investment".

"Everyone loves medical research," Senator Leyonhjelm told AAP on Friday.

"But world's best practice is the American model in which research is largely funded by philanthropy and private donations.

"When governments fund research we create bureaucracies and scientists who operate with all the efficiency we have come to expect from the public service."

Senator Leyonhjelm said a study had shown for every $100 of government funding, private donations go down by $73.

"It's concerning to see that after pouring more and more money into the field, the only thing we seem to be producing is a greater sense of entitlement amongst our researchers," he said.

read more:

http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/senator-slams-medical-rese...

David is a grandstanding idiot. David has no idea of the constructs of societies.

99 per cent of world medical research is done by public funds which eventually profit Pharma. YES. it is. About 80 per cent of research worldwide is done from public funds. the rest, especially in America, comes from TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS — that is to say that the public is actually funding the research BY NOT GETTING fair TAXES from the income of the rich. Capiche? Total: 99 per cent of medical research is done by public funds, including the taxes that the public is missing out on.

Lets hope the good senator does not need spinal cord repair or that he has a generous medical private insurance WHICH GETS A REBATE FROM THE GOVERNMENT (a public institution). People like him are parasites on the benches of parliament. 

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A crucial crossbench senator repeatedly voted in support of Adani in Parliament while owning a corporate bond issued by the group's Abbot Point coal terminal.

And there are no laws or rules governing how ordinary MPs should behave when faced with a potential conflict of interest.

A campaign for a code of conduct that could spell out whether MPs should abstain on voting where they have a personal interest has stretched into its fifth decade.

Movement towards a national integrity commission is also sluggish.

Attorney-General Christian Porter has flagged more work is required before the Government follows Labor's lead and pursues such a body.

"Labor's approach has been to announce a body, but provide absolutely no detail about how it would work," he said on Wednesday.

In September 2016, Senator David Leyonhjelm sought to disclose he was an investor in a corporate bond issued by the Adani Abbot Point coal terminal company through "investment vehicle" Amavid Pty Ltd.

The port company is a corporate entity within the Adani Group that, through a trust, has a 99-year lease of the terminal from the Queensland Government. It is located near coal reserves.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-24/david-leyonhjelm-revealed-as-inves...

Senator David Leyonhjelm should sack himself... Read from top...

Former senator David Leyonhjelm's state political career is over before it even began, with the NSW Electoral Commission's final count revealing the Liberal Democrats did not win an Upper House seat.

• The NSW election was on March 23, but the complicated Upper House results were finalised only today
• Mr Leyonhjelm, who quit federal politics to seek election in NSW, did not win a seat
• The Animal Justice Party was a surprise winner on preferences

Two weeks ago Mr Leyonhjelm prematurely claimed victory when he published a blog post titled "a manifesto for a crossbencher" and announced it was "evident" he had been elected.

After preferences were distributed this morning, it was confirmed he had not made the cut.

He also changed his Twitter bio, which had read "NSW MLC for the Liberal Democrats" to "former senator for the Liberal Democrats".

The Coalition won eight seats, Labor seven, two each for the Greens and One Nation, and one each for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party and Animal Justice Party.

Mr Leyonhjelm quit federal politics in January this year to contest the NSW election as he wanted to work on "nanny-state issues"...

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-15/nsw-election-results-david-leyonh...

The funny side of it: he got replaced by the Animal Justice Party... 

Read from top.