Comment

There I was last week, reading the latest Echo, nodding in agreement with Phillip Frazer, smiling at Mandy’s column, shaking my head over the weird Trump equals Julius Caesar article, when I was suddenly brought to a halt by page 10.

This is one last head-scratch about Donald Trump and the American political paroxysm before the forty-fifth president drags himself, or is dragged, away.

When we met, in 1971, Mungo MacCallum was already piercing the egos of Canberra pollies, and I was putting out a paper called 'The Digger', which championed the many movements seeking to replace cultures that had passed their use-by dates.

It’s nearly 2021! With a sigh, let’s all acknowledge the year’s trauma so we can move on, right? In the move towards a seismic awakening in 2021 – as well as building resilience for the year ahead – tinpot tyrants and their foot soldiers are on notice.

Almost every Council meeting throws up hard decisions that must be courageously tackled, such as resolving competing community uses of public land.

New to the area? Perhaps you have become Council-curious. If so, here’s a summary of perhaps the most significant item debated and voted upon at last Thursday’s Byron Shire Council meeting: the long awaited Residential Strategy.

Put simply, pork barrelling is where certain electorates are favoured by politicans with cash (grants, infrastructure projects etc) to curry favour. It’s questionable though, how ethical the practice is, given it is essentially a bribe.

Is governance, in NSW in particular, about representing your constituents, or is it about following the party line?

While the NSW government grapples with perhaps the worst state budget deficit ever this week – along with neverending scandals revolving around their lack of a moral compass, greed and hubris – there’s a bill making its way through Parliament that should concern those interested in the neverending and ridiculous ‘war on drugs’.

Something doesn’t feel quite right. It appears the NSW Liberal Nationals are moving towards a cleaner future, one that recognises climate change and isn’t coal-fired.

In case anyone missed the memo, there’s almost no housing, let alone affordable housing, available in Byron Shire. With so many people escaping the cities, Byron Shire is under enormous pressure.

In case anyone missed the memo, there’s almost no housing, let alone affordable housing, available in Byron Shire.

Measures to protect koala habitat have been diluted by the NSW government following a National Party campaign backed mainly by developers fearing the impact of tree preservation on their profits.

For more than four decades, I’ve been studying the impacts of the global techno-economic system on different cultures and societies around the world.

Terrific news! Australia is beating this global virus back and lockdowns will soon be eased.

Last Wednesday a bill went to the Lower House of the NSW Parliament supported by Geoff Provest, Nationals MP for Tweed and Janelle Saffin, Labor MP for Lismore.

Council elections would be occurring this week but it got caught up in the world series pandemic event. Instead, our benevolent NSW govcorp overlords have put it off for a year. Yet an election this week would have brought fresh new energy to local politics – it’s clearly needed.

For the North Coast, fire season kicked off early on September 1, and if you are a rural dweller, it’s worth considering what fire plan you have.

There have been no shortage of challenges in Australia in the last few years – drought, fire, flood, and now COVID-19. And we are already heading back into fire season with local crews currently on the ground in Duranbah and Stokers Siding.

Over the weekend it was reported that Greenland’s ice sheet, the largest single contributor to ocean levels rising, has melted beyond the point of no return. This should be ringing alarm bells.

Want to clear a room? Say ‘economics!’ Except – there is an extraordinary modern economist named Mark Blyth.

Happy birthday, James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987). As one of the more obscure figures who championed human rights, his activism spanned race, sexuality, and class, which contributed to major political movements of the ’60s.

There was a terrific announcement of $2.28 million in road funding for some of Byron’s worst roads by two odd bedfellows last week – the non-elected local Nationals representative and the Greens mayor.

‘Civilisation is in a race between education and catastrophe’, H. G. Wells once said. One ongoing catastrophe – and there are many – is the uncertainty of food supply for the planet’s seven billion odd humans.

While New Zealand declares itself COVID-19 free this week, Australia, particularly Victoria and now NSW residents, are bracing themselves for fresh cases of the virus.