Australian Federal election – How to Vote

A personal opinion from Viv Forbes who takes responsibility for any electoral comment.
23 April 2019.

This is not meant to be a statement of Saltbush Club policy – our members have enough sense and experience to make up their own minds. But I believe these guidelines will help to achieve Saltbush policies. It also explains the background for my how-to-vote opinions.

A Quick Summary:
Hold your nose as you enter the polling booth. Then –

    • Make sure to cast a valid vote.
    • Number all squares.
    • Put the Greens last, everywhere, and the ALP just above them.
    • In the Senate, vote below the line, number at least 12 squares and give preference to minor party or independent candidates of your choice.

PDF version: https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/how-to-vote.pdf [PDF, 571 KB]

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Electric Vehicles Emit More CO2 than Diesel Ones, German Study Shows

When CO2 emissions linked to the production of batteries and the German energy mix – in which coal still plays an important role – are taken into consideration, electric vehicles emit 11% to 28% more than their diesel counterparts, according to the study, presented on Wednesday at the Ifo Institute in Munich.
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Magical Mystery Tour or Highway to Hell for Labor’s Big Red Bus?

John Mikkelsen

Pollsters stay at home on long weekends, but anyone watching Bill Shorten’s magical mystery tour on the big red diesel bus could be forgiven for thinking he took a turn down the Highway to Hell with his fumbling pit stop interviews during the opening week of the campaign.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison focused attention on the costs of Labor’s tax, energy and climate change policies, and Shorten opened the door wide to accusations he lied about new taxes on superannuation. He repeatedly denied, then finally gave a firm undertaking to a Sky News journalist there would be no new taxes.  The next day he claimed he had “misunderstood the question,” admitted he ‘stuffed up’ and he should have chosen his words better.

Labor took down the policy from its website, along with negative gearing details, but has now conceded the impact of its planned crackdown on super tax concessions is $30 billion – substantially higher than the $19 billion it had previously claimed, and slightly less than the $34 billion cited by the PM.

If that wasn’t bad enough, a clearly very frustrated Shorten repeatedly dodged a question from a determined Channel 10 reporter about the cost of its climate change policy, based around 50 per cent renewable energy, 50 per cent new electric vehicle sales and a 45 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030. After waffling on about the government’s failings and ignoring demands to answer the question, he simply moved on to another journalist.
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Tackling Climate Change with Renewables and EVs

Dr D Weston Allen, MBBS, FRACGP, Grad Dip Phys Med

Man-made climate change is real, but natural climate change can be worse and faster. Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) gradually fell from about 3,000 parts per million (ppm) 200 million years ago to only 180ppm a million years ago, as carbon was naturally sequestered, and Earth became very cold, dry and dusty. Recurring orbital cycles trigger interglacial warm periods such as our present Holocene which began nearly twelve thousand years ago. Warming oceans release CO2, pushing atmospheric levels up over 280ppm, which helps plants thrive in a warmer wetter world. The previous interglacial about 120,000 years ago was much warmer than now. As temperatures fell over ten degrees Celsius (10⁰C) during the last ice-age, CO2 fell to 180ppm. Humanity thrived during the warm Holocene Climatic Optimum but suffered and endured worse cyclonic floods and prolonged droughts during the recent Little Ice Age, especially when solar activity declined during the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715 AD).

Read the full document: https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/tackling-climate-change.pdf [PDF, 225 KB]

What is Agenda 21?

UN AGENDA 21 (AG21) IN BRIEF (video 1, video 2)

Graham Williamson – February 2013

AG21 is a foreign United Nations (UN) program aimed at controlling all aspects of people’s lives. It reduces or eliminates individual human rights such as private property rights (1, 2, 3, 4). AG21 is a UN program adopted by the Keating government in 1992, later ratified by the Howard government, & implemented by successive federal, state & local governments of all political persuasions ever since. In 20 years of implementation, neither of the two major political parties has declared AG 21 as official policy, nor given voters a democratic choice.

Read the full document: https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/agenda21-in-brief.pdf [PDF, 435 KB]

The Rising Sea Level Scare

by Mike Bailey

I am a retired Surveyor who spent his whole career (1965 to 2010) measuring and recording:

  • Water depths, to enable safe navigation of ships and boats into harbours.
  • Coastal features, such as shorelines and beaches, to monitor changes in depth that occur over time.
  • Near shore constructions, such as sea walls, groynes wharves, piers and jetties and boat ramps to monitor their effect on the surrounding areas.

In order for these depth measurements to have any coherence they have to be related to a common reference level. In Australia this common reference level or Datum is the Australian Height Datum (AHD).

AHD is a mean sea level datum and was established by analysis of data from recording tide gauges which operate in ports around Australia and which in some cases have been operating for around a century. (see below) I have not found any proposal that this datum be changed due to the rising sea level.
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How Weather and Climate Work

By Viv Forbes

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/04/how_weather_and_climate_work.html

There are three big drivers of weather for any place on Earth: the latitude, the local environment, and solar system cycles.

The biggest weather factor is latitude – are you in the torrid, temperate, or frigid zone? These climatic zones are defined by the intensity of heat delivered to Earth’s surface by the sun.

In the Torrid Zone, the sun is always high in the sky. It is generally hot, often moist, with low atmospheric pressure, muggy conditions, and abundant rain and storms, some severe. Places close to the Equator get two summers per year (just one long summer) and very little winter. Farther from the equator, there are two seasons: “The Wet” and “The Dry.” The Torrid Zone produces many equatorial rainforests and also contains some deserts. Most people dream of vacations or retirement in the warm zone.
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