Let me start by saying that I have actually heard far more about ‘the Beetrooter’s’ personal life than I need to and I am pretty bewildered that commercial media (never would the term, ‘journalist’ be less appropriate) think the story of Joyce and Campion is still newsworthy, let alone worth a six figure appearance fee. Everyone involved in trying to sell this scandal masquerading as news disgusts me and I have absolutely no interest in hearing about it.
But having said that I still have to admit to some sympathy for Barnaby Joyce.
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I haven’t had much chance to write much over the last couple of weeks. This has largely been to do with the birth of my daughter, which has had a profound impact on my life. As a corollary of this, a fair amount of my thoughts and observations may shift to the new topic of parenthood. I’m not planning on stealing from Sonia Kruger’s playbook and use the phrase, “as a parent,’ to make claims with no factual basis, but parenthood is a complex and fascinating area so I will be making a few comments about my experience of it on a separate page.
I never expected to hear grown adults crying about their access to balloons.
The growing problems of plastic waste and pollution are increasingly well known and it is good to see councils, governments and corporations beginning to take notice. We should all be trying to reduce our use of plastic at an individual level. I don't suggest we can easily avoid this ubiquitous material completely, but where there are easy alternatives to plastic, we should take advantage of them. Accordingly, the decision by Kingborough Council to not use balloons at their events to reduce their environmental impact seems a no-brainer. So I was both surprised and disappointed by the reporting of the decision and commentary on social media. I will never truly be surprised by inaccurate or hyperbolic reporting in the Mercury (or any other Murdoch paper for that matter), but I am surprised, as why would grown adults make such a fuss about balloons? I have little skin in the debate but Sunday’s gathering to protest the Mt Wellington Cable Car development can only be described as an overwhelming success. Some will try to downplay it by saying 5000 out of 500000 Tasmanians is only 1% off the population, but this is snide and disingenuous reasoning at best. Given that this is a local issue to Hobart, using the population of Tasmania as a whole for comparison purposes is unfair. Moreover the metrics of protests is that for anyone moved to attend a rally, there are probably ten times as many people who may not rally but still agree. This is also a risky path to go down for cable car proponents as it begs the question of how many supporters they could muster to a rally in favour if the development. It would be surprising if they could match or even manage half of last Sunday’s rally. Does that mean less than 1% of Tasmanians want a cable car? I actually am not against a cable car outright. I could certainly be convinced to support a proposal such as this under the right circumstances. |
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