Family That Shoots Together Stays Together??

Maybe not quite exact but The Shooters Party in NSW thinks that restrictions on children owning guns are unnecessary. The spin on this one is so ridiculous. When can we get rid of this single-issue party out of Parliament?

Daily Telegraph on The Shooters Party

There are two articles in the Daily Telegraph concerning the Shooters Party. One by Rhett Watson profiles the single-issue focus of the Party. The other by Simon Benson details the collapse in the relations between The Shooters and NSW Labor.

Labor has only got itself to blame over this critical deadlock in Parliament: Hatzistergos is the man who brokered the deal with The Greens that caused the ties with The Shooters to fragment.

We need to have an election before Christmas to remove the current government, and to alter the complexion of the Legislative Council so that The Shooters lose not gain places.

Clarence Girl on The Shooters. Read It!

Great post from Clarence Girl on The Shooters Party. Go and read it here.

Hatzistergos & Royal Flying Doctor Service

It's enough to make a cat laugh! John Hatzistergos is temporarily back as Minister for Health! Quick pass around a mass supply of Depend napkins because involuntary bladder leaks will coincide with our collective laughs! Pity the poor buggers at Orange begging Hatzi to save the Royal Flying Doctor Service out there!

This is the man who gave us the crappy (yes it included leaking sewage into wards) new Bathurst hospital. This is the man who cannot remember (it seems) that Orange has larger mental health facilities than does Bathurst. This is the man who gave us the April Fool's Joke press release: the Public Trustee would open up in Bathurst but months before it was going to open in Orange. Wait folks! Orange is held by the Nationals -- pffffffffffftttt nuh doesn't deserve any help. Ohhhhhhh Bathurst yay its Labor, quick give it a departmental office for this and that, don't spare the money just toss buckets of it to save Gerard's seat in 2011!

Just keep your hands off Coffs Harbour while you warm the chair! The mid North Coast cannot cope with any of Mr Hatzistergos' hospital decisions! Come to think of it neither can we stand his handling of law and justice in this state.

Why John Hatzistergos Should Resign

Read Richard Ackland's article about John Hatzistergos' attitude and actions concerning the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Yes it is sickening! Yes this man must not be allowed to get away unscathed. Yes he must be held accountable. Yes he should resign! Yes the public administration policy that Mr Hatzistergos apparently approves of, and which is implemented by his departmental Director General Laurie Glanfield, is appalling. Just read Beverley Kingston's article on the utter nonsense going on in the public service all because of the political games played by departmental heads.

UN Verdict on Australian Discrimination

Just read Clarence Girl's blog about racism and the indigenes of Australia as commented on by the UN.

How a Merger Caused NSW Legislative Council Deadlock

I have been rummaging around various blogs and am amazed that the mainstream media has failed to uncover the full story behind the deadlock that was caused in June in the NSW Legislative Council. It seems that the NSW Attorney General Mr John Hatzistergos and his departmental bureaucrat Mr Laurie Glanfield tipped the scales.

They managed to push through a merger of two small agencies in June by gaining the support of The Greens. In exchange for that vote The Greens got Labor to undermine support for The Shooters Party's bill on National Parks access for shooting animals. Now we have a deadlock in the NSW Upper House. How is Labor going to govern from now until March 2011??? It has alienated The Shooters; The Greens won't become Labor's little helper.

Now that Nathan Rees is about to be booted out our state government is paralysed! The ALP MPs ought to pounce on Hatzistergos and Glanfield for getting the party and the Parliament into such a fix! The vain dreams of men!

Mr Hatzistergos: Time You Resigned

This makes my blood boil. The NSW Attorney General John Hatzistergos dumps on the NSW DPP Mr Cowdery. Don't take at face value Lisa Carty's piece in today's Sun Herald. Instead compare her carefully spoon-fed morsels with the blog from Richard Gower. Carty's article is problematic because of the facts it never mentions that would show that the real problem lies inside how Mr Hatzistergos and Mr Glanfield run the Attorney General's Department.

Clarence Girl vs John Hatzistergos

I was delighted to discover the blog North Coast Voices and particularly to read Clarence Girl's 9 March 2009 piece on the blunders of the NSW Attorney General Mr John Hatzistergos. Keep it coming Clarence Girl!

Labor Party, Newcastle Uni, Elections: Recipe for Justice Precinct

I am sick and tired of the NSW Labor Government.

I am also sick of the charades played by politicians, local councils, entrepreneurs and departmental bureaucrats.

Recently the ABC-TV programme Stateline (NSW) drew attention to the deep division of opinion in Newcastle concerning proposals to cut the railway line so that the CBD can be "developed".


Newcastle University is interested in establishing a law school in the proposed Justice Precinct but is worried about the railway line messing things up.

Who dreamed up the idea of putting all your justice eggs in one basket? I doubt it was the NSW Attorney General Mr Hatzistergos. Maybe his departmental side-kick Mr Glanfield? The uncanny impression I keep having is of a Parthenon being erected just to satisfy the ego of someone more than it is about serving the community.

We will see all eggs put in one basket in this new scheme: watch the closure of regional local court houses and see them transferred out of the Hunter district and into the new Parthenon. Centralisation is all about power and control. It dumbs down the street-level realities in the wider region.

You watch for the various agencies of the NSW Attorney General's Department in Newcastle all being relocated into the Parthenon (Director of Public Prosecutions, NSW Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages, NSW Trustee and Guardian, etc). You watch for the hoopla about how this will boost business, create jobs and probably offer us the cure for the common cold too. It will see the Family Court shifted no doubt and as that is operated at a Federal level one can start joining the dots:

* Federal money injected because of the Family Court --- very nice money sweetener in time for Rudd's second shot at the Prime Minister's office.
* Selling off the railway supposedly to inject money to build the Precinct (voodoo fiscal games by NSW Labor Government) and hence "vote for me" in March 2011.
* Developers in for their chop.
* Local Council hand in glove with entrepreneurs who can only have wet-dreams about ugly concrete edifices.
* Newcastle Uni tossing in dough to build its shiny new Law School.

It might look nice on paper. It might indeed rejevunate the CBD. It might bring in money for the already privileged.

But answer me this: if the railway line goes then I'd like to know does Mr Hatzistergos and Mr Glanfield expect that everyone who lives in the Hunter region drives a car? Do they expect more people to keep using cars just to go to the one-stop shop of the precinct? Do they ever stop to think that the disabled, the elderly, the poor, and people because of medical problems rely on public transport? Don't tell me they imagine the state buses will cover the region. Don't tell me the poor can afford taxis. If you cannot ride a train into Newcastle's CBD, then how are people supposed to even travel to this grand Parthenon of the future?

Often the bleeding obvious is overlooked by fat-cats and by bureaucrats.

Newcastle Justice Precinct

Oh dear. The NSW Attorney General continues to roll out grand plans that cannot be afforded by the state's coffers and certainly cannot be carried on the budget of his own department. The latest reannouncement is the creation of a Justice Precinct in Newcastle. It will be a smaller scale version of the gargantuan expensive monster built at Parramatta but costing at least $60 million.

More centralisation in this department reflects the Ritzer theory about the worst aspects of McDonaldization in society: predictability, calculability, control and "efficiency".

Looks like yet another parthenon-like building to be erected under a tuckered out bureaucracy!

Oh and don't mind the reasoned case put up by the local legal profession questioning Hatzistergos' idea for redeveloping the Civic Centre as the site. Improvements can be made but must not be based on the current public administration policies rolled out in the NSW Attorney General's Department.

What if $60 million was invested in employing people to work in the courts and in the agencies absorbed by the Attorney General's Department? What about saving money by curtailing the extravagant expenditure of the Department?