“I may live nowhere near the Liverpool plains or the Great Barrier Reef, but I sure as hell am concerned that they are protected,” Jones says. “The latest move by the Abbott government puts at risk not just our environment but our very democracy. It is quite simply unbelievable.

“This legislative restriction is divisive, it isolates us. It means we are not allowed to care.”

The government announced in August that it would try to repeal all of section 487 of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The move came in response to the federal court decision to overturn the approval for Adani’s proposed $16bn Carmichael coalmine in Queensland because the federal government had not considered all the relevant information.

The Abbott government insisted the changes to the law would stop only what it calls environmental “vigilantists” and “vandals” – the groups that brought the federal court challenge – and not farm groups.

But farming organisations believe they will also be denied standing to challenge federal environmental approvals in the court and this could stymie several planned challenges to federal approval of the controversial $1.2bn Shenhua Watermark coalmine on the fertile Liverpool plains of New South Wales, a mine also vehemently opposed by Jones.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/sep/07/alan-jones-the-voice-of-ad-campaign-fighting-environment-law-change

Former Howard minister, Larry Anthony, who lobbied for the $1.2bn Shenhua Watermark coalmine, has just been voted in as president of the National party and remains on the NSW lobbyist register in spite of claims he has removed himself.

Farmers – the Nationals’ constituency – are vehemently opposed to the mine and have vowed to campaign against National party member and agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce at the next election.

The presidency goes to the heart of the issue of land usage which is threatening to split the party over the fate of prized agricultural land on Liverpool Plains and elsewhere.

It is understood that Anthony’s candidacy was supported by the deputy prime minister, Warren Truss, and Nationals director Scott Mitchell but opposed by supporters of Joyce.

On Friday, Truss said Anthony had “taken himself off the lobbyist list” and his relationship with Shenhua was “severed some time ago.” 

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/13/nationals-elect-party-president-with-ties-to-shenhua-mining-company

Apart from shooting themselves in the head, why don't the Nationals shoot themselves in the foot?

It was always going to be a difficult morning for Alan. He’d been wrong, you see.

Just over a year ago, Jones, the Sydney broadcaster, told Malcolm Turnbull he “had no hope of ever being the leader, you have got to get that into your head”.

And here the upstart was, the leader of the federal parliamentary Liberal party. Tuesday 15 September 2015. An offence against the universe, the settled universe where Jones dictates and everyone else obeys.

As the sun rose on Tuesday, Jones was expressing the crotchety confusion that many white men of a certain cellared vintage express in Australia now that other people, less important people, can occasionally get a word in.

Alan had known “this man” – Malcolm Turnbull – “backwards”. Perhaps frontal knowledge would have supplied the vital clue that the member for Wentworth would persist against Alan’s firm prediction, that he would listen to the voters and reach the obvious conclusion the Liberals had only one shot left in their pre-election locker – unseating Tony Abbott, the leader Australian voters wouldn’t forgive.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/sep/15/a-painful-morning-for-alan-jones-who-told-malcolm-turnbull-hed-never-be-pm

 

And while 17,000 kilometres and nine hours separated them, the verdicts from Kochie and Karl on yet another leadership change were equally brutal.

"It's a joke," Koch said after calling Australia's new prime minister "self centred".

Perhaps the biggest lashing of them all was from Stefanovic, who launched into a scathing monologue about what an "embarrassment" Australian leadership had become.

"Have we, the people, become irrelevant?" he asked.

One thing is for sure: Mr Turnbull, once hailed a messiah, now has his work cut out for him.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/sunrise-match-todays-leadership-coverage-from-the-other-side-of-the-world-20150915-gjmnn0.html#ixzz3lqTVPvJ1
Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook

The social media is overtaking the breakfast TV circus, with better quips and far less equipment needed to reach the stratosphere of dumb and dumber. Here at YD, I feel left behind in these stakes as I see above my computer screen, the Penrose Annual 1960... Penrose Annuals were like precursors to Graphis journals about advertising and publishing:

"Nowhere probably in Europe do classic traditions and young experimentalism in the design, the illustration and the decoration of books exist together more competitively, as in East Germany (the DDR)." 

Here one is taken to the publications and images that would have influenced the bright young mind of a person like Angela Merkel... Of note is Taschenbuch der Mathematik, where the Germanic precision would be passed on, along side some romantic ideals.

In Australia, we're just good at fluff... Hence the fellow a few years ago who traipsed the world chitchat shows showing a jar of navel fluff and claiming the world fluff record...