That’s the dream of Queensland Premier Peter Beattie.
Premier Beattie appeared at the Brisbane Club today, to declare victory over drought to the Brisbane business community on the basis that the recycled water plant is now working.
So flushed with success was he that, having just patched the water situation, he then proceeded to pitch for a more than doubling of the Australian population to $50 million. The rain’s now falling in Brisbane and it feels like the drought has broken, which might partly explain this enthusiasm.
No mention of where the extra water infrastructure is going to be built. This is a particularly important isse as it’s not so long since his then resources minister, Stephen Robinson, declared that because of climate change rainfall in Queensland is going to decline by 70%. So we’re going to hydrate more than twice the population on 30% of the water that we get now. As one diner at our table remarked – for migrants it will be BYO bottled water.
I guess it means he thinks we can do it all with recycling and desal plants. Just as well his other big pitch was for clean coal technology (which he predicts we will be able to export to the rest of the world). We’re going to need a good source of baseload power, and he ruled out nuclear.
September 04, 2007 | Graham
50 million Australians
September 04, 2007 | Graham
Doing what’s right for Australia
There’s a small billboard at the Kelvin Grove fiveways with a Liberal logo on it and the words “Doing what’s right for Australia”. Couldn’t see an authorisation. Someone has to be setting the Liberals up, aren’t they?????? At least they don’t spell “right” with a capital “R”.
September 03, 2007 | Graham
Media outlets to take responsibility for journalists’ drug habits
Following the “Joey” Johns scandal, and in an effort to be consistent, major media outlets have decided that they will now take responsibility for their employees’ drug habits.
Johns admitted to a history of abusing alcohol and illegal drugs. Not only was he criticised by the media, but so was his football club, the Newcaslte Knights. They had known about his problems and done nothing.
In 2006 12.5% of Australians aged between 20 and 29 years used ecstasy according to “Statistics on drug use in Australia 2006” published by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Seems that Newcastle Knights star player Andrew Johns was one of them, but hardly on his own. For Australians between 18 and 19 the figure is 9%.
(It would seem that hardly anyone over 29 uses it, because total usage across the whole population was only 3%).
For alcohol his exploits were just as mundane. The same study reports that “[i]n 2004, 35% of Australians drank alcohol at levels considered risky or high risk for short-term harm and 10% at levels considered risky or high risk for long-term harm.”
A spokesman for Big Media said today that through covering the Johns scandal they had come to realise that they also bore a huge responsibility for the booze and drug-addled exploits of their staff.
“We take these young people straight out of school, put them in the public eye, pay them heaps and work them hard. Then they go out in the evening and blow-out in bars and strip joints, abusing alcohol, and prescription and illegal drugs.
“As they get older some of them even manage to hit the bars by lunchtime and never come back. We call these employees columnists.”
The spokesman said that it was no longer good enough for journalists to be judged solely on the quality of their work.
“We only want good journalists working for us, and by “good” I don’t mean “competent”, I mean “wholesome.”
The trend is expected to spread to other high-pressure high-paying employers of star performers such as law, accountancy, advertising and IT. Seminaries and bible colleges, already struggling for students, are expected to suffer as a result.