Hunter Valley refugees from coal seam gas mining

More potentional refugees from the coal seam gas invasion in New South Wales.


Coal belt tightens around land and accommodation

ADAM HARVEY, REPORTER: The NSW Hunter Valley. Its rich soil and sheltered river flats are ideal for breeding and raising some very fast horses.

TOM MAGNIER, THOROUGHBRED BREEDER: We've raised a lot of champions on this land, we have Makybe Diva up here at the moment and we have So You Think coming up here in a couple of days. It's housing a lot of champions and raising a lot of champions at the same time.

ADAM HARVEY: This part of the valley is home to two of Australia's famous thoroughbred studs, Dali and Coolmore. There's one problem: they sit above an extremely valuable coal seam, and the miners are coming.

TOM MAGNIER: They want to come 500 metres there. They want to build a pond over there and a place where we're raising our young stock. They want to go underneath that.

ADAM HARVEY: Tom Magnier is worried about pollution and cracks opening up in paddocks that house foals worth millions of dollars. But perhaps his biggest concern is damage to reputation.

A thoroughbred stud encircled by coal mines will have a tough time enticing clients.

He's fighting an uphill battle against the lobbying power against an industry that contributes about $1.8 billion in mining royalties each year to a cash-strapped state.

TOM MAGNIER: It's threatening us, it's threatening our neighbours, it's threatening the Hunter Valley. We're a billion dollar industry. We employ thousands of people. This is a business that is going to be here for generations upon generations and has been here for generations upon generations. I don't see the mining industry being like that...

TOM MAGNIER: I'm really concerned because this farm is surrounded by coal mines and, you know, I moved out here with my family and I've got 135 people living on this farm with their families, young families, kids, you know... the thought that the coal mines can threaten our industry like this, it's gone way too far...

Meanwhile NSW premier Barry O'Farrell and resource minister Peter Hartcher just sit by and watch this injustice unfold all over our state.

And federal leader Julia Gillard, environment minister Tony Burke, and resource minister Martin Ferguson do nothing.

And opposition leader Tony Abbott remains silent.

Will Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young cry in parliament over Tom Magnier's livelihood being destroyed?

Or do these coal seam gas refugees have to get into a boat and paddle into Sydney Harbour to be noticed and worthy of empathy?

File under: legalised theft.

Thomas Keneally mugged by 'fraternal' diversity

Popular Australian author Thomas Keneally is an advocate of high immigration (see below). Alas, he has now been robbed by his beloved diversity.

Author lost $71,300 in bank fraud

AUTHOR Tom Keneally lost $71,300 to his thieving bank manager who he had trusted to look after his nest egg at the Commonwealth Bank.

Karen Myhanh Chau, 39 from Ultimo, appeared in the Downing Centre Local Court yesterday where she pleaded guilty to siphoning nearly $250,000 from six wealthy customers ...

Earlier, in happier times ...

Tom Keneally, Our door should always be open (video)

It's normal in times of financial uncertainty, or even at other times, to call for reductions in immigrant numbers. It has always been a false response. We are part of a world of political and climatic uncertainty, in which for economic and political reasons people are on the move ...

Imagine had the apostles of social cohesion and immigrant limitation and reduction got their way. The reality of immigration proved to be the polar opposite of what was feared ...

We have here no secular theology of immigration. We have no public monuments to ragged masses yearning to be free. We have sometimes intense initial resistance followed by tolerance, fraternity and the highest level of ethnic inter-marriage in the world... This history of immigration indicates it has enriched the community by creating wealth and cleverness and imagination - all without destroying the cohesion we want, and without creating ghettos. Why reduce these possibilities? Under the sanction of mere reason, less immigration will make Australia less wealthy, less clever, less imaginative and less of a successful polity. Who wants that?

Now I'm no scientist but it's pretty obvious that empathy diminishes across ethnic boundaries. So while, of course, crime happens everywhere, I imagine that if the "apostles of social cohesion" had got their way, there's a greater chance that Thomas would still have his money. But, hey, "who wants that?".

File under: the sanction of mere reason.

Bob Carr facilitates and warns of 'great danger'

Australian foreign minister Bob Carr, like many 'intellectuals' commenting on the rise of China, shows a reckless disregard for our national security.

Bob Carr, Lowy Institute Speech

... The danger of us being attracted to speak about an anglosphere, I think there's a great danger in this.

... no-one is fonder of the common heritage ... but I just caution Australians that to nod too vigorously in the direction of that concept would be misinterpreted immediately in the nations to our north ...

... Remember the danger we got into in the first year of the Howard Government when Pauline Hanson was running wild and when we tripped up in some key elements in our relationship with China.

... the misunderstandings ... in the region to our north, took a lot of correction.

With our heritage, that heritage of white Australia and membership of the British Empire ... it's too risky for us even to glance in the direction of talk of an anglosphere. It revives all those – what would be considered, all those unfortunate recollections and associations ...

And if we even hint to the world that our self-definition is tied up in being part of the anglosphere, we give the impression we're fundamentally more comfortable with that sphere, if it exists – if anyone wants to belong to it or define themselves as being in it ...

We'll confirm the most out-dated stereotypes about Australia. Stereotypes that a lot of people, a lot of Australian leaders, a lot of Australian spokespeople have worked hard at living down and stereotypes that are supported by the nature of the Australian population, which is more culturally diverse than the population of any other country you can think about.

A higher percentage of Australians born overseas than Americans born overseas and talk of an anglosphere is antique and presents us as something different from what we are.

If we limit ourselves, we deal ourselves out. If we allow an impression, even for a flickering moment, that Australia prefers the anglosphere, that Australia's only comfortable on the anglosphere we sell ourselves short ...

In Singapore one Australian businessman said to me, we see Singapore as an extension of the Australian economy and Singaporeans see us as an extension of their economy. And there you had, I thought, a model of Australia's economic integration with Asia. That is a good starting point for the considerations that will flow from the whitepaper on the Asian century ...

So, if Australians express any form of identity, China will immediately respond with antagonism towards us? Carr believes that China is inherently intemperate, unstable, insecure, flammable, suspicious, volatile, etc.

Carr's response to this unstable superpower is thus to watch our words, lest we say anything wrong.

But what is Carr's unspoken message? Our economic trade is facilitating the rise of a volatile superpower.

Does Carr contemplate the wisdom of facilitating this rise? Nope, he just parrots the mantra: "I'm honoured to represent an Australia ... committed to free trade".

Does Carr still think that a Pauline Hanson (Australian nationalist) is a bigger risk to national security than a volatile China? Amazingly, yes. Apparently China has no "unfortunate recollections" that should worry us.

In reality, Carr facilitates an increasingly insecure world because he is afraid to say 'boo'. He has already self-censored to appease a volatile superpower, justified by the belief vain hope that delicate China will rise peacefully if we just hold its hand.

If we know a country is volatile, we should not facilitate its rise with our trade. We need strategic trade, not free trade.

File under: trading our way to insecurity, led by a reckless bloviating appeaser.

(Via Chris Berg: There is something good in the Anglosphere)

Comedy break: Attenborough v. Lyrebird

David Attenborough v. Lyrebird: video here.



(Here is the original scene if you are curious).

Wade Michael Page: white, tattooed, incongruous

Apparently the guy who shot up the Sikh temple in the USA was heavily tattooed, steeped in neo-Nazi ‘hate music’, and founded a band named End Apathy. Sounds a bit incongruous to me.

Lawrence Auster, Heavily tattooed man murders six at Sikh temple

Wade Michael Page, a guitarist who had covered both his arms with hideous tattoos, shot to death six people and wounded three others at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

People who permanently disfigure their bodies with these monstrous and frightening tattoos have, whether they consciously realize it or not, rejected their own humanity and our common humanity. It is not surprising that one of these freaks has committed a terrible crime, since he had turned his very body into a crime, a weapon of repulsion and fear. Yet while our society obsesses about the dangers posed by members of “white supremacist” and neo-Nazi groups ..., it accepts as normal, and has not a word to say against, people who conspicuously mutilate their own bodies and by doing so declare war against society, humanity, nature, and God—against the order of existence.

I'm an atheist, so I'd withhold the God talk, but otherwise I agree that tattoos are repulsive (because our biology prefers visual norms, beauty and health). So I don't understand why white people who oppose diversity then go and nauseatingly deface their own skin. Logically, such a person would hate themselves.

File under: end apathy, but not this way.

Colbert Report - Jonathan Haidt

Professor of Psychology Jonathan Haidt discusses his book The Righteous Mind on The Colbert Report. He previously described himself as a liberal but at the end of the video says:

I was a liberal my whole life until I started writing the book and then, while trying to explain conservatives to my fellow liberals, ... I realised actually conservatives see a lot of things that liberals can't see. They actually have a very good understanding of human nature ... not to say that the Republicans are right ... but if you step back, I actually think that conservatives have a more accurate view of human nature than do liberals.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

From a previous video ...

Jonathan Haidt, What Can Liberals Learn From Conservatives? (1:15 in the video)

Conservatives, I believe, are much much wiser about the limitations of the individual, about the flaws of reasoning, and about the need to anchor us in a past. Liberals tend to be very high on openness to experience, liberals love change, love diversity, "the very fact that something is an old idea is a reason to doubt it, it probably comes from a time of patriarchy, it's outdated".

I recently discovered that the metaphor of a wall is a great acid test for separating liberals from conservatives: if you tell liberals there is a wall over there they'll say "oh well let's knock it down, walls are bad, we need to knock down walls, we need to move around them, we need free flow, and no obstacles".

And conservatives are much wiser about the need for structure, the need for limitations. If everything is possible, it's very hard for people to find satisfaction: this was the great insight of the sociologist Emile Durkheim, another liberal who, basically when you read him today, sounds like he's onto some great conservative ideas.

So I think liberals desperately need to read some conservative theory to understand that a world of freedom, mobility and diversity is a recipe for a world of chaos, anomie and social disillusion.

File under: diversity is a recipe for chaos, anomie and social disillusion.