Cranky Queenslander

I was having a chin wag with someone the other day about e-waste, and how there are many organisations that produce vast quantities of it at a time. One such example is local councils, which from time to time need to get rid of tons of old computers and other equipment.

The trouble is, that some councils are more worried about saving a few rate payer bucks than doing the right thing. Recently officials from Toowoomba council were alleged to have said, in reference to the cost of having e-waste removed for recycling, that it was a lot cheaper just to dump it all in landfill.

I haven’t had a response back from the state and federal ministers I wrote to a little while back. Today I’m writing to the Mayor’s of Brisbane, Ipswich, Toowoomba, Logan and the CEO of the Gold Coast council. I’m asking them to take a leadership role in e-waste, ensure they offer collection points for it and perhaps go as far as giving grants to small recycling businesses to build local recycling infrastructure.

Here’s hoping they take the lead on the issue, and we can get the Fed’s to jump in and help too. With the massive budget surplus we should end up with after they cut spending and raise the odd tax here and there, we should be able to fund, among other things, e-waste recycling.

It seems the state governments law and order policy revolves around booking as many motorists for driving over the speed limit as it possible can. That being said, sometimes I wonder about the way it goes about it, and I always wonder if its worth the effort.

The other day I was driving down Hale street heading for Milton road. There were three, motorcycle cops parked on the off ramp to milton road, and two of them (yeah, TWO of them!) were standing in the middle of the road aiming radar guns at oncoming traffic.

Apart from the excessive number of cops required for this job, it was also a joke due to the fact that it was peak hour and traffic was choked and slow along this stretch of Hale street.

Still, they had managed to pull over a couple of people, and one lady looked like she wasn’t too pleased about the interruption to her day.

So if we are going to continue to have police wasting their day looking for speeding motorists, how about we put them somewhere that they can catch the real speed demons; You know the sort that do 130+ and change lanes three times per kilometre? Leave the guy doing 98 on Ipswich road alone.

While we are at it, how about we RAISE the speed limits on roads? 90 on Ipswich road is a joke, and the Gateway and M1 could be 120 in large part.

Then, get rid of speed cameras and radar guns, and put all those police on the streets patrolling. Have them pull over people who are driving recklessly, tailgaiting and running red lights. These are the people that cause accidents, and they only get the message when a police officer gives it to them in person.

Having all those extra police mobile and in our city means that when some punk decided to stick up the 7-Eleven, its more likely we can get some cops there in time to nab him. I would love to see more police in our suburbs keeping us safe than parked on the site of the freeway doing nothing.

How about stiffer penalties for people who recklessly cause accidents? The fools that clog up our major arterial roads cost thousands of us as we all get stuck in their mess.  Disqualify them from driving for 3 months and force them to do advanced driver training.

Yeah, I know, it will never happen. But a guy can dream can’t he?

While I am still trying to get my head around the full story of the Heiner affair, what is clear is that the cabinet of the day did something very very wrong in destroying documents holding evidence relating to the rape of a 14 year old girl.

Former Premier of Queensland Peter Beattie told Alan Jones shortly before he left parliament that the reason the documents were shredded was because the Heiner enquiry had been setup without giving privilege to those giving evidence. So apparently, the cabinet of the day got legal advice saying that they should shred all the evidence collected thus far, so as to protect those who gave evidence from legal action.

Just last year, shortly after Premier Beattie left parliament, Senator Joyce in an adjournment speech, attempted to table the Rofe Audit Report into the affair, and was blocked by a labor member of the senate (who I have yet to identify, does anyone know who that was?)

In his speech, he made the point that the Queensland Parliament could have passed retrospective legislation to give privilege to the Heiner enquiry, thus solving the litigation problem they were so worried about, and allowing things to proceed and justice to be sought for the victims of abuse that the enquiry was setup to investigate.

So now its time I sent out some letters on the subject. I’ve come up with three so far, and I would love to have some suggestions on who else I should write to, and what else I should be asking them;

Letter to Senator Joyce – Commending him on bringing the matter to the federal parliament and asking what future steps he plans on taking to further the cause of justice in this matter.

Queensland Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee – Asking them to investigate the matter and bring charges where evidence exists of criminal conduct.

Leader of the Opposition in Queensland, asking him to get on board and publicly push for a proper investigation into the matter. As a prospective leader of our state, he should be yelling most loudly about it.

Recently in Collingwood Park the unthinkable happened. Old coal mine shafts underneath the suburb collapsed, causing severe damage to more than a dozen homes. The collapse will likely result in some of those houses having to be demolished.

These are cherished family homes, built and bought by people who trusted the state government when it said it was fine to build there. I’m hoping these home owners are getting legal advice, because if this happened to me, I’d be wanting my day in court to have the government explain why they did this.

Its about time that our state government realised that it is elected to help the people, not profit from them. Sanctioning a housing development on top of an old coal mine without doing something like collapsing the old mine shafts first, is just a cheap money grab.

Cr Paul Tully has lost the plot with his comment that the state government should be commended for its response to the issue. You’re kidding right Paul? The state government should be condemned for continuing to sell off land without rehabilitating it first. It would also be nice if he published maps of the affected areas with a few clues as to where they are; Just put one street name on the map Paul, and we’d know whats what!

I invite anyone affected by the issue to leave a comment and let me know how you personally are dealing with it, and what the state government is actually doing to help you.

Following up from Saturday’s post about changes to tax on pre mix drinks, I did a little research, and found that the tax rates on various drinks are apparently as follows (correct me if these are wrong)

Rates are dollars of tax per litre of alcohol content. Figures taken from dsica.com.au, read to drink figure from the news.com.au article previously mentioned.

This raises several questions; Firstly, why are spirits taxed so much more heavily than beer is? Why is packaged beer taxed much more heavily than draught beer? Why don’t we tax wine on the percentage of alcohol like everything else?

More importantly, why has the Rudd government decided to tax read to drink spirits so heavily across the board, instead of having a sliding scale as we have with beer?

A few comments on Nicola Roxon’s move to raise taxes on pre mixed alcoholic drinks; Firstly, according to news.com.au, all she is doing is adjusting the rate of tax to match that of bottled alcohol. I haven’t been able to find out if the tax on beer and other things is all the same too, that might be a good excuse to write to Nicola.

As long as we are going to tax alcohol, it should be a fair tax across all forms. A simple dollar amount per litre of alcohol provides a basic incentive for makers to produce lower alcohol content drinks, because they’ll be taxed less, and be cheaper. This is the case now with pre mix and bottled alcohol.

Personally, I think this is just a grab for more tax revenue (which is odd, as we are running record surpluses). There is no evidence that the move will do anything to curb binge drinking. If the $8-$12 a go these drinks cost now isn’t deterring people, another buck a can won’t do much.

What might have done something, would have been to change the way we tax these drinks. Lets have a scaled tax on "ready to drink" products, including stubbies of beer and pre mix spirits. How about those that are less than a standard drink, we tax lightly, and those that are a lot more than a standard drink, we tax much more heavily.

Of course not; That might actually work, as well as lowered our tax burden. Can’t have that.

I went for my early morning walk this morning and was once again struck by just how lazy and dirty the local population are around where I live.

The number of fast food wrappers, drink cans (including post mix alcoholic beverages), cigarette packets and other assorted crap littering the area is staggering.

I wonder if its time we went "singapore" on the issue. Dropping your garbage on the street there can result in thousands of dollars in fines and hours of community service picking up the rubbish. I wouldn’t have a problem with really high fines for littering. If we made the fine $1000, and employed just one guy to police it, he’d only need to catch two offenders a week to easily cover the cost of employing him.

That being said, I think we need more than that. How about the local high school organises groups of its students to do a clean up run every so often? In my area, a lot of the problem is caused by lazy high school students, so that idea seems to have the double effect of cleaning up the mess and educating the little darlings.

Beyond that, why doesn’t the local council install bins in public areas? On my 30 minute morning walk, there isn’t one single rubbish bin, yet there are three bus stops, four take away shops, a pub and various other service providers.

I guess it’s time to write to the local council again and ask for help!

I thought I’d title this post as a question, because I have never heard of the Heiner affair. Until today, that is, I was blissfully unaware that allegations of criminal misconduct were floating around against many prominent Labor politicians, including Prime Minister Kevin Rudd!

From what I have learned so far, the story is that an inquiry by retired magistrate Noel Heiner into complaints of sexual abuse at the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre was shut down only weeks after the Goss government came to power in 1989.

Not only that, but the cabinet of the day decided, for reasons that have yet to be uncovered in court, to shred all documentation collected thus far. These people knew that the information they were destroying was necessary to bring criminal charges against those involved in the abuse, yet they still chose to destroy them.

Various senior officials are implicated in a nine-volume audit report by leading Sydney barrister David Rofe, QC. Despite that is said to contain as many as 68 specific allegations with enough evidence to bring charges.

Some of those named include current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and his proposed new Governor General Quentin Bryce.

Those who have waited nearly 20 years for justice to be served might finally be in luck, as the Rofe report has been loged with the Queensland Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee on February 14. Its a shame that the same report was not able to tabled in Federal Parliament back on 19th September 2007. All it took was one Labor senator to object, and Senator Barnaby Joyce was unable to table the document.

Having learned this much so far, it makes me wonder what kind of people we have elected to run this country. I only hope that the facts are uncovered publicly and that whatever wrong doing has occurred is uncovered, and those responsible punished accordingly.

In the coming day’s I’ll draft up some letters to the relevant people and see if we can move things along.

It seems that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s vision for an education revolution starts not with Math or English, not with reading or writing, not even with science or technology. No, it start with learning a foreign language.

I’ve spoken to educators in the past, and they assure me that learning a second language has positive effects in all areas of learning. But still, I can’t help but ask a few hard questions;

Why is it that at my local primary school, kids attend a class they refer to as "German", but almost never actually learn any German language? For the most part, the class is more about world culture than about learning a second language.

What is the government going to do about the appalling level of education our kids are getting through primary school? Why are kids who can’t read being allowed to graduate primary school and move on to high school?

And if kids are getting to High School not being able to read english, what good would it do to try and teach them Mandarin?

1.6 Million computers are dumped into landfill every year in Australia. So called “e-waste” is growing at 3 times the rate of general waste. Much of this waste can be economically recycled, and yet, Federal Minister for the Environment Peter Garrett says he has no proposals on how to fix the problem.

Environment groups are demanding the government implement a mandatory deposit scheme like the bottle recycling scheme in South Australia (which begs the question why Minister Garrett isn’t looking to federalise that either!), and I can see some merit in that proposal. Still, its odd that he isn’t pushing for it now, as he when he was the head of the ACF, he was pushing hard for the scheme.

WSN Environmental in Sydney recently offered to collect e-waste for recycling, staging a 2 week trial to see how it would go. They collected a staggering 17 Tons of e-waste in just those two weeks. The fact is that the public wants to recycle, and government only needs to help make it easier.

Then there is Free Collect, based in Toowoomba, who are trying to build a recycling business and clean up the e-waste problem in South East Queensland. But startups like these are running into ridiculous government red tape. One local council, for example, after being offered the Free Collect service (which is to pickup all their e-waste and recycling it at no charge to the council), demanded that Free Collect pay thousands of dollars in licensing fees. Seriously. The council wanted them to pay for the privilege of taking council waste away.

Then we have other problems. A lot of the recycling could be done in Australia, however to do so requires building plant and equipment to process the waste. Small startups like Free Collect don’t have the capital to make that happen, so they are shipping the waste overseas for processing.

Here’s an idea; how about Mr Garrett funds programs with local councils to provide e-waste collection services? Provide the infrastructure to support the collection and consolidation of this waste, so that recycling firms can concentrate on what they do best?

Further to that, how about we offer grants to these startups to setup the plant required to recycle the waste here? Surely that is in the best interests of our local economy, as well as the environment?

If you’d like to add some weight to the call for government action on the subject of e-waste, you can just download my form letters; I have sent them on my own behalf to the relevant ministers, and you can just insert your details and mail them off. Feel free to change the text if you think differently than I do on the subject.

Letter to Federal Minister for the Environment
Letter to Queensland Minister for Sustainability, Climate and Innovation