From today if someone walked up to you in Australia and told you they were dieing and asked about what they could do to end their suffering (not a likely situation I hasten to add) you could freely speak to them, but if they telephoned, emailed or wrote to you asking the same question it would be illegal to reply, unless you were going to try and tell them not to do it, or to tell them to do nothing.

At least they’ve not made debating euthanasia illegal yet..

Well what a suprise, the ABC is reporting that Australian “Exports plummet in post-FTA trade” with the US.

In the 12 months to October last year, Australian exports to the United States fell by 4.7 per cent while US imports rose by 5.7 per cent.

So we signed over sizeable chunks of sovereignty in return for what ? Worse economic standing & future ? Doesn’t seem like much of a deal for Australia..

Eep – they’re forecasting 37°C for Melbourne today!

NB: That’s a live forecast, so if you’re late you’ve missed it. 🙂

The original is here at the ABC, click the picture to see it in more detail, but here’s what it looks like:

Protests against the counter-terrorism laws are being held in capital cities around Australia.

Now that’s one hell of a picket line.. 🙂

This makes it sound horribly like CSIRO is going to be moving its research away from renewables and towards “cleaner” fossil energy, and exploration for fossil fuels. I’ve tried to find the report the ABC refers to, but with no success. 🙁

Update: Aha, that would be because it was leaked.

The ABC is reporting that the Federal Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC – part of the Australian government) has said the unthinkable, that under coming anti-terror legislaton Australia is taking the the first step towards a police state. They quote him as saying:

“The defining characteristic of a police state is that the police exercise power on behalf of the executive and the conduct of the police cannot be effectively challenged and regrettably that is exactly what these laws are proposing,”

The report goes on to say that the judicial review of control and detention orders is illusionary and that the experience both in South Africa and in Australia is that when the government says “trust me” with respect to not abusing their powers that trust is all too often betrayed.

“Revelation of the Palmer report demonstrates how abuses of power can occur where there is no acceptable and realistic way that people can question what is happening to them.”

The Palmer Report (PDF) mentioned there is the report into the wrongful detention of Cornelia Rau and the wrongful deportation of Vivian Alvarez.

But we are not even to be trusted to see the legislation, we cannot talk about the latest draft because the Federal Government have tightened things up so that those in the State Governments can’t reveal them to us. The only reason I can think of is that they don’t want them discussed by the public, they fear what may be found.

Please, contact your state and federal politicians and ask them to open up these laws for discussion in the public domain, let us see what is proposed and work out whether we feel they fit the threat. Surely that’s not a problem if they’ve got nothing to hide – after all, that’s what they tell us..

Now this is cute, a nice little interactive weather map using Google Maps – they have a couple of webcams in Melbourne and if you double-click a city you get a forecast and the current details..

Via Mike Davies

Update: This page shows where the Melbourne webcams are located.