Christmas Down Under

Many thanks to those who mailed or left comments on Sunday's Happy Christmas post, but in response to the Ambush Predator who said,

Happy hot, beach-bound, BBQ Christmas!

I'd say that while I was happy many others weren't, and it was neither hot, beach-y or BBQ-y round here, as this collection of photos from The Age shows.

And if you're thinking that last one looks less 'Snow Angel' and more 'Hail Mary' then your eyes are clearly over whatever alcoholic pounding they enjoyed with you over Christmas and working well. Which is also the reason why not everyone here had a happy Christmas Day at all.

Yep, on the twelfth day of Christmas Melbourne's true love gave us thunder, lightning, pissing rain, localised flooding and golf ball sized hailstones.

More than 15,000 claims have been lodged with insurance companies after savage storms tore through Melbourne on Christmas Day, as the Insurance Council of Australia today declared the weather event a catastrophe.

About a third of those claims relate to damage caused to houses and businesses in the storms, while the remainder are for damaged vehicles.

Still, on the bright side it may have killed some of the snakes and spiders.

A little light failure from The Teletubbygraph

Click for linky

Please, someone give the photo drones at The Telegraph an atlas for Christmas, or at least help them download Google Earth and show them how to work it. At the rate it's going downhill and screwing up junior school level stuff I'm going to have to stop taking the piss out of The Daily Mail.

Fellas, there's no such place as Forrest Act, but there is a suburb called Forrest in the ACT. This isn't 'Act' being shouted. It stands for Australian Capital Territory. Saying Forrest Act is like saying Port Augusta Sa or Newcastle Nsw or even, to use something the photo drones may have heard of, Washington Dc. Let me put it another way:

Got it, photo drones?

And yes, David and Janean Richards are in the Forrest that's in the ACT because a few seconds on Google found them mentioned in The Canberra Times, so I reckon we can be pretty sure it's not some weird town called Forrest Act since Forrest ACT is within spitting distance of Parliament House. See?

Er... do you think the photo drones know that Sydney isn't the capital?

Advanced calculus for journalists - UPDATED

Lesson #1:

4 ≠ 3

Police said a 32-year-old Derrimut man was taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital with fractures, while a 27-year-old Taylors Hill woman and a Richmond man and woman - both believed by paramedics to be aged 19 - were transported to the Sunshine Hospital with minor injuries.
An Ambulance Victoria spokesman said another man who was injured refused to be treated.

It doesn't equal 5 either.


UPDATE - Lesson #2, from Professor Bucko of the Department of Inadvisable Cervid Power Modifications:

First up we have the story of an unexpectedly low turnout of Christmas shoppers this weekend.

Immediately following that we have the story of an unexpectedly high turnout this weekend.

Less is less. More is more. Less is not more.

Hopefully these aren't too difficult for the subeditors to keep up with.

Free gifts - the next thing to be on the restricted activities list?

Some things don't mix well, we all know that. Street luging on public roads is one, and we saw yesterday how that makes it a restricted activity you need to get permission for. Another is alcohol and, well, if you took the opinion of every nanny and wowser out there alcohol and practically anything, including life and happiness, don't mix. Certainly at least one will tell you that alcohol and promotions by way of free gifts don't because not everyone is as bright as him, and a handful of people do very stupid things when drunk. So obviously a branding iron that's given away with bottles of Jack Daniels is a bad idea because a tiny number of complete idiots will use them to brand each other.

Yes, this is going to be just like the two guys taking it in turns to shoot each other in the arse with an air rifle to see what it's like, but with extra nannying.

And straight away I feel the need to point out that the men didn't actually suffer burns in the promotion, as the very first line of the article makes clear.

THREE WA men suffered horrific burns after branding themselves with novelty branding irons given away as part of a Jack Daniel's promotion.

See? Saying they suffered burns in the promotion makes it sound like that was either a risk or even the idea of the promotion, or at the least something went horribly wrong. Nope, nothing like that at all. It's just that if you make enough novelty branding irons eventually one will end up in the hands of an idiot.

Cue the wowsers.

Health advocates are now demanding legislation that stops "reckless" alcohol marketing.

Reckless? Seriously? The brand was intended for steaks, as hinted at by the fact it was part of a barbecue set Jack Daniel's were including with a bottle, and what's reckless about branding a chunk of long dead cow? Naff, maybe, but reckless? Hardly, since they must have turned out thousands and thousands of these things, all but three of which have not been involved in any incidents as far as anyone knows.

The men, aged in their 20s and 30s including one who branded his backside...

Pffffft!

... were admitted to Royal Perth Hospital for surgery and emergency skin grafts. The last one was operated on earlier this month.
The others chose to plunge the hot metal rod with the words "Old No.7 Brand", in reference to the Tennessee bourbon, on the back of a hand and a leg.

Okay, sounds like serious injuries, but let's remember that this is part of a barbecue set, and unless you've invited Jeffrey Dahmer nobody, drunk or sober, is going to think it's supposed to be used on living people. But even so, just in case (or more likely as required by some nannying law) Jack Daniel's provided a label on the branding iron in order to state the completely bloody obvious.

... Jack Daniel's brand owner Brown-Forman Australia says it has done nothing wrong because the product comes with a warning [which reads:]

• This branding iron can cause serious skin burns.
• Do not touch metal parts with fingers, skin or any flammable material.
• Branding iron will remain hot long after being heated. Remove this label before first use.

Surely that's enough to keep the nannies happy? Nah, 'course not. Because the nannies want everyone to be treated the same as the daftest person in the country.

[Royal Perth hospital] head of plastic surgery and burns surgeon Mark Duncan-Smith branded the gimmick "an irresponsible cocktail for disaster".

Disaster? What, like the Japanese tsunami or the Christchurch earthquake? Well, it's a stretch but I could accept it as disastrous if hospitals all over the country were getting flooded with victims of these would-be killer barbie brands and the ambulances and burns units were starting to crack under the pressure, but the reality is there've been one self inflicted burned hand, one self inflicted burned arm and one self inflicted burned arse. Disaster? Seriously? In fact even these three victims of their own machismo/masochism aren't complaining, presumably because being daft enough to stick pieces of hot metal on themselves on purpose doesn't mean they're too daft to realise it was their own fault. If so then this, in my opinion, makes them brighter than the one solitary person who did complain.

[Brown-Forman managing director Marshall Farrer] said the only injury complaints he had received nationally were from Dr Duncan-Smith in WA.

I wonder, would this possibly be Dr Mark Duncan-Smith of the Royal Perth Hospital plastic surgery and burns department? I don't think we need to ask.

"You can't stop everyone from doing something silly, but when you are actually providing a method for people to injure themselves, even though it is still their responsibility, it is providing fuel in one hand and a lighter in the other," [Dr Duncan-Smith] said.

No, they get the fuel and the lighter from Bunnings, or the supermarket or the local petrol station or any of dozens of places, and they can do plenty of damage just with those and without a novelty branding iron. But, as with the branding iron itself, almost nobody does. And it's not providing a method for people to injure themselves any more than selling barbecues is providing a method for people to cook each other.

"It is a devastating mix. The combination of alcohol and a branding iron is just crazy. It is a cocktail of diminished capacity and a mechanism to inflict serious damage. I personally think this is madness."

Interesting. I wonder if the doc would say it's more mad or less mad than taking a sample of three idiots - and a self selecting sample at that - and taking that to mean the whole country is just as dopey with a few glasses of JD inside them? Leaving aside the obvious point of Dr Duncan-Smith's hideously paternalistic view of his fellow man this argument makes as much sense as estimating that there are 615 billion cats in Australia based on the sample in this room. It's nonsense, and it's infuriating that Perth Now seem unable to call him on it.

Nor is Dr Duncan-Smith the only one whining, even if he is the only one who actually complained to the company itself.*

McCusker Centre for Action on Alcohol and Youth director Mike Daube said there was a "glaring gap in curbs on alcohol promotion".
"These are entirely predictable outcomes from an outrageously irresponsible promotion," Prof Daube said.

Oh, really, Prof? Entirely predictable, are they? Well, I'm going to call that claim weapons grade bullshit, though I'd be delighted to eat my words and apologise if you can show us exactly where you predicted it. Because I've done a web search for your name in connection with Jack Daniel's, which I'd have thought would be sufficiently broad to pick any such prediction up if it made it into press or even if you'd put it on the MCAAY (pronounced "Mmkay?" in a South Parkian Mr Garrison voice, I guess) site, and would you like to guess what I found between the beginning of the promotion and the news of these three self inflicted burns cases from West Oz? Go on, have a guess.

Oh, alright, I'll tell you: not a fucking thing.

Entirely predictable, Prof Daube? My unburnt, non-supperating, pristine and entirely healthy arse.

"There are no controls whatever none on alcohol promotions of this kind." He said he would write to the federal and state governments calling for measures to halt irresponsible alcohol promotions.

Look, the range of humanity from stupid to sensible is going to be such a wide bell curve that simply whispering that alcohol exists is probably irresponsible for someone at one extreme end, but you'd have to go to insane lengths to come up with something that's irresponsible even for everyone in the middle, much less the Spock-like people at the far end. A free pallet of booze for anyone who drives themselves to the bottle shop having snorted more coke than Tony Montana might qualify, but some piece of tat for branding your steaks certainly doesn't.

And so we turn, but only because we're forced, to the politicians. You just know it's not going to turn out well, don't you?

State Mental Health Minister Helen Morton, who is also responsible for drug and alcohol issues, supported regulation changes on alcohol promotions, but said it was a federal matter.

Well, of course she does. She's a politician seeing an excuse to get a bit of media, possibly encouraged by some of the people in her ministry who've just seen a half-arsed justification for extending the remit of their department or by people who just want to extend the role of the state in our lives in general. It's as Reagan once said, the instinct of governments is that if it moves they should tax it, if it keeps moving they should regulate it and if it stops moving they should subsidise it - they never look and think that maybe they should just leave it the hell alone. And I don't take any comfort from a state politician bouncing it up to the federal government because the federal government is likely to take one look and either tax it, regulate it or subsidise it, possible even all three at the same time, regardless of whether it moves or not.

But what I really find bizarre is that the WA Health Minister understands something about people and governments and legislation. Something most people understand, even the ones sticking branding irons in the barbecue for a bit before trying to make their own gluteus the property of an American drinks company.

"However, at the end of the day, how can we legislate against that level of stupidity," she said.

You can't, Helen. It's an exercise in futility, and that being so what the hell's the point of regulation changes on alcohol promotions? Accept that a tiny number of people will do something daft with practically anything we can imagine, and that an even smaller number of people will remove themselves from the gene pool in the process.

But never forget that the vast majority of people won't.

* I wonder if he writes to car manufacturers every time he has to hide the scars on someone who was injured because they or someone else was screwing around while driving? Or is it just alcohol that lights up his brain's complaint node?

Treating adults as children

Do you ever get that thing where you're reading something in the paper and a throwaway phrase not directly related to the article sends such a chill through your soul that the rest of the article is momentarily forgotten? I had one of those this afternoon reading a story about a woman who died in Queensland in a street luge accident. My bold:

A 50-year-old woman and mother, who is a respected IT executive in the Brisbane community, has been killed riding a luge board down Mt Cootha this morning.

The woman, who was travelling downhill at high speed, has gone too wide on a corner and tried to brake, losing control and sliding into a guard rail.

[...]

Acting Inspector Chris Pemberton said the woman was luging, or street-sledding, down Sir Samuel Griffiths Drive around 6.15am when she lost control of her board and crashed against a guardrail on the north side of the mountain.

Acting Inspector Pemberton said luge was a restricted activity and required a permit, and it is believed the two riders involved this morning had not been granted permission for the activity that led to the tragedy.

Now up to the last paragraph I quoted there I was thinking how sad it was that someone had died doing something they enjoyed and that 50 is no age to go and what a tragedy it is for her family. But then I saw the phrase 'a restricted activity' being dropped in there without comment, like it's no big deal that being a restricted activity. Like it doesn't matter because there are so many restricted activities what with there being so many things that are potentially lethal (unlike life itself, which is certainly and unavoidably lethal). Like our governments - and don't think for one moment it's just Queensland or Australia - believe we're incapable of deciding anything for ourselves anymore, even to the point where they want to be involved in our diets in case we choose a cheeseburger over a salad. And like the infantilisation of adults in western nations hasn't been going on long enough to mean that sometimes they're half right.

That's the greater tragedy in this article.: the unspoken assumption that there are restricted activities that us proles may only take part in with permission from the nannies, and that there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying that street luge is safe or sensible on public roads when someone's just died doing it and the whole idea of lying on an oversized skateboard and rolling under gravity down a hill that fat Aussie cars and utes are coming up under power is sufficiently cuckoo to keep the Bavarian clock making industry going for decades. No, I'm not disputing the Acting Inspector (who sounds like someone employed by RADA with the power to fine people for hamming it up) when he says that street luge and public roads aren't a good combo.

But lots of things aren't a good idea. Are you telling me that there's no other option but to have a list, no doubt growing all the time, of restricted activities? Clearly when it can affect someone else it's not just down to the person doing the restricted activity, and in the case of street luging there's the obvious question of what happens if they collide with another road user. The obvious answer is that someone whose head is at wheel hub height is probably going to come off worst and is quite likely to come off dead, but the other person may have damage to their vehicle or bike and may even kill themselves trying to avoid a luger, and I don't know if many have third party damage insurance. But isn't there tort law for that kind of thing, and isn't there some very basic road law that covers the use of inappropriate vehicles? For heaven's sake, if under Australian laws a bicycle is legally a vehicle when ridden on public roads how can a street luge not be? And if cyclists can be fined, and heavily, for not having lights or wearing a helmet - again, not having a helmet really affects only that individual but nonetheless places cycling in the restricted activities category - much less running red lights or disobeying other road rules, then why not someone on a street luge?

I really can't see any reason why this kind of thing can't be dealt with by something rather less Orwellian than keeping a list of restricted activities, but sadly I suspect that so many people will have read that article and not had that creepy phrase leap off the page at them and scream in their faces that adopting a simpler approach, for instance just prosecuting and fining the idiots and fuckups and letting people who can do something without affecting other risk their own necks as they choose, is probably a vain hope.

That's not a hack - this is a hack

As I mentioned back in July The Age, the Melbourne based sister paper of Sydney Morning Herald, was all over the News of the Screws phone hacking scandal like flies on a piece of shit.

The thing is that Gingery Dullard, unlike the Yanks, may have rather more cause to investigate the Aussie media. And interestingly it's not the Murdoch owned mob but their competitors, the Graun friendly, lefty-loving, phone-hack hating Fairfax group, who have been accused of being up to no good.

THE editor-in-chief of The Age, Paul Ramadge, has refused to detail his personal involvement in the newspaper's unauthorised access of an ALP database now being examined by the Australian Federal Police.

And how did this happen?

The Age accessed the database from its own computer terminals using an unauthorised password provided by an undisclosed source.
"This story came through entirely appropriate journalistic methods," Ramadge said. "Entry to the ALP database came via a whistleblower who raised concerns about private information held on it.
"This whistleblower had authorised access to this material and we reported in the public interest."
[...]
The Age used material obtained from the database to inform a story run in the final week of the Victorian election campaign about Labor keeping a "secret" file on citizens. Several people whose details were accessed were contacted by the newspaper before publication. Others, such as Mr Faris, were contacted after publication and assured their information would not be stored or misused.

Okay, so they may have had good reason but it sounds like it's fair to ask the question. And even if they have good reason if they commit a crime in the process does it somehow un-crime it? I'm not sure a good reason would let me off something as trivial as a speeding offence - actually I'm pretty sure it wouldn't - so I can't help thinking that if a crime has been committed with good intentions it's probably still a crime and that there'd be a case to answer.

And this week a police investigation looks more likely as the body overseeing elections in the state have got involved at the same time as a member of the public has placed the blame squarely on the newspaper that was so tumescent with joy when bashing the Murdoch rags in distant country for listening to people's voicemail.

A VICTIM of The Age's hacking of an ALP database has come forward claiming the newspaper breached her privacy, as The Weekend Australian reveals the Victorian Electoral Commission asked police to investigate the claims of illegal activity.
Claire Watson, 24, has expressed her concerns about how and why The Age accessed personal information about her, which she had agreed to share with a local MP but not with the newspaper. The public servant, who appeared in a story by Age journalist Royce Millar last year as part of the broadsheet's investigation into the ALP database, said her views had been "distorted" and "words had been put in my mouth".
"I feel my privacy has been breached by the journalist, not the ALP," she said. "I agreed to share information with the ALP, but not with The Age. He seemed dodgy and was pleased with himself. He was so indignant with the ALP, but it is clear he was hacking my file. He was trying to whip me into outrage about it."
[...]
"The journalist kept trying to put words in my mouth; he was saying it was outrageous, but I didn't think it was outrageous," she said. "The whole thing was weird. I tried telling him I wasn't outraged as I understood large organisations keep that sort of data. I think it is reasonable and good practice to keep the data."
She said she was more concerned Millar had then accessed the information.
"He knew a lot about me - my date of birth, where I lived, my phone number, opinions I had shared with a local MP . . . he was hacking into my file."

As with the voicemail thing 'hacking' seems to be an inappropriate term for what looks awfully like a simple, old fashioned leak, but for whatever reason people seem to want to believe that any electronically stored information that isn't given out voluntarily must have been hacked. I think this is a bit like insisting that when you can't find your car it can only have been stolen rather than thinking that you just forgot where you left it or you parked in a tow away zone, but the real point is that if this is all hacking how did The Age have the front to throw so many stones at the Murdoch media for the phone not-hacking when they too had been accessing information they had no bloody right to? Was the temptation to throw those stones and hopefully damage their competition at the Melbourne Herald Sun and The Australian so strong that they forgot they lived in a greenhouse?

An injunction by The Age against Victoria Police to stop the removal of computer equipment remains in place since Thursday's eight-hour raid. Two detectives from the e-crime squad remained at The Age overnight to ensure none of the computer equipment, which had been pulled apart, could be tampered with.
A spokesman for the Victorian Electoral Commission confirmed to The Weekend Australian that it had been the first to raise the issue with police.
Electoral Commissioner Steve Tully is believed to have been concerned about the manner in which the database was allegedly penetrated by The Age.
[...]
The Weekend Australian believes that police have been given access to ALP records and computer equipment but that there are mixed views in the party about how to handle the hacking issue. This is because of the potential blow-back on the Labor Party if The Age were to campaign against the party. "It's not something we wanted. There are some senior people who just want it to go away," a source said.
However, the fact the VEC approached police means investigators will have to push ahead with their inquiries. Either way, it appears police were honour-bound to proceed given the potential offences at stake and the role the VEC plays as an independent and impartial statutory authority.

And as I said back in July, since The Age isn't part of the Murdoch press and is fairly strongly left leaning politically this is not something British readers can expect to see in The Grauniad. You kind of get the impression that bashing lefties for their misdeeds and alleged misdeeds is against some kind of lefty journo code, but it's only fair to give The Age a little credit for running the story themselves.

Click for link - incidentally, I don't know if Paul and Royce Millar are related

Now, remind me. In all those column inches in The Graun slagging off companies for perfectly legal tax avoidance and minimisation was it ever mentioned that Guardian Media did the same thing or did we have to find out from Guido?

Then they came for the drinkers... redux

How long have I been banging on about this? Bloody long enough, I reckon, and other blogger have been at it far longer. Smokers? Pah. Oh, don't get me wrong, they're still very much in the firing line, very much the modern untermenschen. But the battleground has shifted and the current main target, whether they know it or not, are the drinkers, and quite a big gun has just been fired right at them. Less than three months ago I blogged about the tell tale signs that this gun was being loaded and remarked on how it was a gun that had been shot at smokers several times. Well, now it's gone bang and it only remains to be seen how much damage it does. En bloc - my bold.

State and territory ministers have signed off on the introduction of mandatory pregnancy warning labels on alcohol.

Ministers responsible for food regulation met in Melbourne today to consider their response to former federal health minister Neal Blewett's review of food labelling.

Dr Blewett's most controversial recommendation, that a "traffic light" system be introduced to help consumers make healthier food choices, has been rejected.

The traffic light system of colour coding would tell a consumer, at a glance, if the food had high, medium or low amounts of fat, saturated fat, sugars and salt.

Instead, ministers have agreed that public health, consumer and industry groups be consulted in the development of an alternative front-of-pack labelling system, which is to be considered in June and hoped to be in place by the end of next year.

They also want to give industry two years before making pregnancy warning labels on alcohol mandatory.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand is drafting a standard for nutrition and health-related claims and ministers also agreed to the development of a national nutrition policy.

The federal government has come under fire from public health and consumer groups for opting not to pursue the traffic light system, but the food manufacturing industry has welcomed the move.

Does this sound at all familiar? It certainly should, and it will to smokers. Anyone want to bet that it'll stop there and will not progress towards huge pictures of diseased livers covering two thirds of the label of whatever's your preferred tipple? Any takers? No? Yeah, thought not.

Don't get smug about this being more Australian nannying. It is, but I think it's as much to do with Australian politicians having less on their plates than their counterparts in some parts of the world, especially Europe and the US, and so more time to listen to the whining of the nannies, moralists, control freaks and wowsers. Wherever you are, this is coming to a label near you soon.

And I can't help but feel that if more people had stuck up for the smokers it wouldn't be happening at all.

This is one for the smokers

Fans and friends of the weed - not that weed - I present to you one of Australia's Big Things...

... The Big Cig.

And yes, it is a factory chimney (of the Tobacco Co-op in Myrtleford, Victoria) which means that like everything else the bloody thing is upside down and would have looked like someone lit the filter end. Sadly Australia's tobacco industry has been killed off and buried and after standing empty for a while the buildings are now a flour mill, the chimney having apparently been repainted a while back. Presumably it was thought to give the whole state 4th hand cancer or something just from looking like a giant cigarette, but probably the real reason was that knowing it was there was giving the antis conniptions.

Sloppy filter

I haven't blogged on the proposed webnanny/internet filter/Great Firewall of Australia plans down here for a while because things have gone a bit quiet. There have been enough colours nailed to masts, reputations staked and interests vested that I'm not all that hopeful that sense has been seen, particularly when it needs to be seen by a Communications Minister whose paternalist streak might be coming from both religious beliefs and leftie-ness, but it may be that it's been realised that a filter that promised much and failed to deliver would be worse than none at all. And I'm quite confident it would fail. Much of the illegal stuff is being shared by P2P anyway, and the filters proponents were forced to admit almost from the start that it couldn't do a thing about that. And then there's TORs and VPNs - basically it'll affect people who don't google for a way around the filter before the thing goes up, which is more or less everybody that doesn't need a filter because they won't be searching the web for baboon porn or whatever in the first place.

More interesting if you're a baboon, I imagine

But it's not just that because ISP level filters will be under attack from the other side too, as TalkTalk in the UK and some of its customers have found out.

Britain’s third-largest broadband provider has been promoting its new “HomeSafe” security product to its 4.1 million subscribers as a way of blocking pornography, viruses and other potentially harmful content.
Unlike the child safety products offered by other providers, it operates at the network level so parents do not need to install or maintain any software. The approach has attracted praise from MPs and campaigners seeking to restrict the availability of pornography on the web.
But for more than a week the system has failed to restrict access to Pornhub, which offers thousands of free explicit videos and is ranked as the third largest pornography provider on the web.
The failure was discovered by Cherith Hately, an IT expert and mother of three teenagers in south London, who tested the service last week. She found that on the Pornhub website the HomeSafe blocking page had been relegated to a small box normally reserved for advertising, leaving its adult content fully accessible.
“The ‘you have been blocked’ page has been diverted to an advertising slot within the Pornhub homepage thus opening access to it,” she said.
“The HomeSafe barrier has been knocked down, technically and literally. TalkTalk should inform all their HomeSafe customers that their children are still able to see pornography so that parents can supervise more.”

Far be it from me to tell me how to bring up your children, Cherith, and I'm sure you've already had the awkward conversation with your teens about which one had visited that site, but I'd say that parents should take this as an indication that the best filter system is the parents themselves.

A spokesman for TalkTalk acknowledged the failure and said technicians were working on a fix. He was unable to say whether the HomeSafe system had been deliberately circumvented by pornographers.

Perhaps not, but it occurs to me that if it had been to circumvent another filter that worked the same way it could affect TalkTalk too. In the Aussie context since what the nannies want is effectively ISP level filtering under government supervision all ISPs would have the same filter, and when a website manages something similar to what Pornhub's done to TalkTalk's HomeSafe this single point of failure would mean it won't affect just Telstra or iiNet or Optus customers - it'll be everyone. Hardly the end of the world because we'll be about where we are right now, but it does make the whole exercise seem a bit pointless.

“As the only network-level filter, TalkTalk’s HomeSafe is the most effective way of protecting children from content parents consider harmful,” the spokesman said.

No, I repeat: parents are the most effective way of protecting children from harmful content. The filter can't unplug the computer, withhold their pocket money or threaten to stop paying the broadband bill so there's no service whatsoever. But it can create a false sense of security.

“While no technical solution alone is able to solve the issue of child internet safety or be a substitute for parental supervision, we firmly believe that HomeSafe is a step in the right direction.”

Providing that false sense of security doesn't take over leading parents to assume that the filter is doing its job and little or no supervision is necessary, because when you concede that there's no substitute for parental supervision that would be a step in the wrong direction. Not that Britain's nannies are any more clued up about that than Australia's.

Under government pressure the rest of the big four internet providers – BT, Virgin Media and Sky – recently agreed to offer all new customers software to restrict which websites children are able to access, but stopped short of implementing network-level filters.
TalkTalk’s approach is meanwhile supported by the campaigners, and MPs including Claire Perry, a Conservative backbencher who is leading a parliamentary inquiry into online child protection. As well as network-level filters she wants broadband providers to switch them on by default.
“When I started campaigning to make access to internet pornography an 'opt-in', many industry experts said it was technologically impossible to provide a network-level filter,” Mrs Perry said.

You idiot. Of course it's impossible, we've just bloody seen that. This looks like it was circumvented at the other end without any effort on the part of the person sitting at home, and it's not like the person sitting at home doesn't have ways and means anyway. Look, I can't put it any better than an Australian blogger, Stilgherrian, put it nearly four years ago (my bold):

Real-world experience in everything from spam filters to the record industry’s futile attempts to stop copyright violations always shows that filters only block casual users. Professionals, the desperate or the persistent will always get through.

However if a politician demands a filter, pretty soon a shiny-suited salesman will appear, ready to sell him a box with “filter” written on the front. It’ll work — well enough for the demo, anyway.

“Look, Minister! Nice Minister. Watch the screen. See? Filter off, bad website is visible. Filter on, bad website gone. Filter off. Child in danger. Filter on. Child happy and safe. Filter off. Voter afraid and angry. Filter on. Voter relaxed and comfortable. Cheque now please.”

When elected nannies like Stephen Conroy here and Claire Perry in the UK wrap their heads around this and stop spunking taxpayers' money at things which at best will work until someone defeats them and at worst will never work at all they might start giving out useful advice. Advice along the lines of: the government can't stop your kids from seeing tits and arses and rooting baboons online...

... but if you get off your arse and look at what they're doing you can.

Midair shock death-risk sex horror Qantas outrage

Although I've not mentioned it for some time both my regular readers (hi Mum) will probably be aware that I think the Australian press have a bit of a thing for slating Qantas and that they do sometimes over egg that particular pudding. And here's another prime example of a classic media beat up involving Qantas, all from the online pages of the Murdoch owned papers, and all with near carbon copies of the same article.

A QANTAS pilot is under investigation over a mile-high scandal with a female passenger during a long-haul flight to Australia.
Passengers in the first class section of QF32 from London were stunned at the pilot's amorous antics with the woman.
He was seen sitting on her lap during the flight in the luxurious premium section of the Qantas A380 jet before things became quite steamy, sources told the Herald Sun.

EXCLUSIVE: A Qantas pilot is under investigation over a mile-high scandal with a female passenger during a long-haul flight to Australia.
Passengers in the first class section of QF32 from London were stunned at the pilot's amorous antics with the woman.
He was seen sitting on her lap during the flight in the luxurious premium section of the Qantas A380 jet before things became quite steamy, sources told the Herald Sun.

A QANTAS pilot is under investigation over a mile-high scandal with a female passenger on a flight to Sydney.
First class passengers on QF32 from London to Sydney were stunned at the pilot's antics with a woman in seat 2A. He was seen sitting on the woman's lap during the flight in the luxurious premium section of the A380 jet before things became more heated.

Shock! Outrage! Disgust! How dare this individual leave the controls of the aircraft for a bit of a sweaty fumble. Not only is it a disgraceful dereliction of duty but also an issue of demarcation - everyone knows that with Qantas it's the stewardesses responsibility to have sex with the passengers.* Not an unreasonable reaction to those headlines, but on further reading it turns out that nothing like that actually happened.

The pilot was off-duty and not in uniform at the time of the incident.

So what's the big deal and why the lurid headlines? Basically what we have here is a pair of passengers, one of whom happens to be an employee of the airline and whose job is to fly planes, got frisky in First Class and had to be told to pack it in a few times before the cabin crew ended up separating them. Probably happens all the time, and the only thing that makes this any different from any other incident where a couple of passengers have to have the mid air equivalent of a bucket of cold water thrown over them is that the guy's a pilot for the same airline and should reasonably be expected to know that that behaviour isn't tolerated on their planes. As a result of that he's under investigation, but it sounds more like an internal Qantas investigation than anything official - The Telegraph headline may say 'court hears' but neither their article nor either of the others mention any court at all, just what sounds like a Qantas in-house disciplinary. And of course if the guy hadn't worked for Qantas there wouldn't even be that. Hell, if he'd been ground crew he'd have had the same investigation but the papers wouldn't have bothered to report it because there's no much value in headlines like this:

Qantas check in guy gets steamy midair

Qantas baggage handler's wild blue wander as court hears of mile-high scandal

If you'll pardon the pun, they don't exactly fly, do they? But because it's a pilot we can go crazy with the headlines and make it look like it was one of the blokes flying the plane who decided to leave the flight deck and try entering the cockpit instead, at least until people get down to paragraph four when it's finally mentioned that the guy wasn't actually working at the time and had no more to do with flying the plane than the fat guy trying to sleep back in 56G or the bawling child kicking the back of his seat. It seems it's not always about what's newsworthy but about making something newsworthy out of something irrelevant, especially when it comes to the Aussie media and their national carrier. Just you wait and see how they'll cover a real emergency, like one of the toilets running out of soft paper and having to use that horrible cheap shiny stuff instead.

* Kidding, of course. It's been a while since I last flew but when I've used Qantas I've found the cabin crew to be polite, helpful, professional and incidentally pretty easy on the eye, but none of them have ever offered me sex instead of tea or coffee. Maybe you just have to be Lord Voldemort. This is in contrast to the booking departments of several airlines which have certainly fucked me in various ways, generally involving the words 'extra charge'.

Contrasting receptions

Peter Costello, former Liberal party MP and Federal government Treasurer for the Coalition under John Howard, writes in The Age on an interesting difference in receptions given to US Presidents.

When the American president addressed joint Houses of the Australian Parliament back in 2003, Greens Senator Bob Brown interjected. In fact so worked up was he that the Speaker ordered his removal from the chamber. He was yelling about Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

This time Brown joined a conga line of MPs clamouring to shake hands with the President, Barack Obama. He had to jostle with Greens MP Adam Bandt (who has a PhD on Marxism) to get his chance. Both of them were beaming. It was a good speech. The President declared America's commitment to a military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, including a new proposal to train up to 2500 marines in the Northern Territory. One can only imagine what Bob's reaction would have been had George Bush announced that 2500 US marines would be stationed on Australian soil. They would have had to cart him out of the House of Representatives.

[...]

Bob Brown was all worked up about Guantanamo Bay when George Bush visited Australia, but he does not seem to worry so much now that Obama is in charge. Julia Gillard used to complain that Australia was subservient to America. Now she claims she has made our alliance stronger than ever before.

In opposition, Labor harvested votes on the left. In government it wants to appeal to conservatives....

[...]

Labor MPs may feel happy to see Obama and Gillard standing in front of troops in the Northern Territory - it is a great photo opportunity for their side of politics. But alliances are between countries. They are designed to outlive the political office-holders of the day. In the future it could be Newt Gingrich and Tony Abbott standing there being cheered by US marines in the NT. The principle is either right or it is wrong and it doesn't turn on who happens to be in office.

That is why it is so useful to have the left of Australian politics now locked in to traditional Coalition policies. Bipartisan support has been firmly established. And in the future if there is ever a complaint about marines based in Australia, just pull out the footage of a beaming Bob Brown grasping the hand of the president who announced it.

Some excellent points made there, and while I have no more love for Peter Costello's party than the ALP - in one sense rather less love because the bastardisation of the word 'liberal' to describe a party of paternalists that like telling other people how to live their lives simply infuriates me - I can't argue that Leftists can be pretty inconsistent if not hypocritical when it comes to the US. The bottom line is this: all the things I disliked about George W Bush, the wars, Gitmo, the loss of individual liberties, cosying up to big business and lobbyists, have by and large continued under Obama.

I'm aware some that Rightists care less about what is done than that it's one of their men doing it - witness David Cameron's actions of late and the deafening silence from his supposedly right of centre party - but if anything it seems to be even more true of Leftists. Is something bad done by a right winger made less bad when a left winger takes over and carries on?

Divided by a common language

You may be aware that Australia is playing host to the Obamessiah at the moment, and I probably wouldn't bother blog about it unless his car got stuck again apart from the fact that the leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, has brought up the difference between the various flavours of English. Strine being mostly closer to English English than American English this is one I can understand.

Mr Abbott also talked about linguistic mix-ups, recounting his first visit to the US as an MP where a briefing that described him as a "ferocious liberal'' and "deeply anti-republican'' meant he spent a fortnight being introduced to communists.

Heh.

Getting around Australia's plain tobacco packaging law #5

Part 1       Part 2       Part 3       Part 4

A final few ideas for sticking a middle finger up in the direction of Canberra in response to Australia's plain tobacco packaging law. Back in post #1 of these George in the comments suggested this:

Seems to me the way round it is to supply the standard pack (with no nanny warnings or porno cancer pics) wrapped in a goverment approved paper sleeve. Buy the pack, rip it off and leave on the counter.

I'm guessing that a simple outer wrapper might be deemed not to qualify as "the packaging" for the purposes of the law, but if the tobacco companies can swing it that's an excellent idea. If not then perhaps an inverse of that, a kind of packet within a packet. Perhaps some kind of light weight card carton with the foil containing the cigarettes, and more importantly on which designs and logos can be printed, and which can be slid out from the main package which is chucked in the bin on the way out.

I'd expect it to look much better
than this quick pshop but
you get the idea

Three downsides occur to me right away. First is cost - it will make packaging a little more expensive and therefore the cost per pack will rise. However, that might be offset by a lowering in cost of the outer packet as there should be no money being spent on pack design, Canberra having taken over the job in order to inflict plain packs on the industry. The second is that the light weight inner "packet" won't do a very good job at protecting the cigarettes, but that might be useful as the nannies will fart sparks if people throw away their plain outer packs and wave around something with those hated logos and branding on - the response is that it's just an inner sleeve and you can't stop people throwing away the real packaging. The third downside is that even if this idea is legal you can be damn sure the liberty loathing, bansturbating nannies will have it banned as well before long. It might be good for a year or two but there will be a new law and that will be that. In the meantime though it might be a possibility.

The other suggestion in the first post's comments was from Marcy, who said:

There should be a good market starting up for fancy reusable cig packs, including those supplied by manufacturers with their proprietary labels, given away for free of course to anyone who wants them, made out of tin maybe and bound to become a collector's item in the future.

Tins and cases I've already covered, and I don't see any reason why Marcy's suggestion of branded accessories, tins and cases included, couldn't be made by the baccy companies. Sure, there may already be a law against it, and if there isn't then eventually there will be even if any other bugger can make them, but it's about not giving in and again it'll buy time and annoy the nannies. But it also reminded me of fakefags.co.uk and their joke health warning labels that stick on over the originals. Joke horror pictures and stick on branding could be next.

About the only thing I don't think it's worth Ausssie smokers doing is hanging on to their existing packets since the horror pictures now are large enough that the packs are semi-debranded already. If I still smoked I'd lean towards a case that fitted the normal length of a hand made cigarette or a nice leather pouch for the loose tobacco and a pocket for the papers, but if I smoked pre-mades I'd probably get some card and use a template in post #3 to make my own packets. Ehow have more detailed instructions on this here and links to a couple of videos on origami ciggie pack making, as well as instructions on how to make a very nice looking wooden cigarette case.

The long and short of it is that foiling the Australian Baccy Nannies is restricted only by imagination and the amount of effort smokers are prepared to put in to avoid carting around drab packs with the colour provided only by the horror pictures and shouty warnings. And even though I've not smoked for a few years I may make up some cigarette packets in advance of the plain pack law coming into effect... you know, just so I've got one or two handy in case I see a smoker with a boring nannied pack. The fun begins soon, and I don't see the fact that I'm a non-smoker as a reason I can't join in.

Part 1       Part 2       Part 3       Part 4

Getting around Australia's plain tobacco packaging law #4

Part 1       Part 2       Part 3               Part 5

Learn to knit... yes, seriously.

Obviously that's not a real example. There'd be no need to knit little woollen matches and woollen cigarettes as well - that'd be as silly as, oh, I don't know, a law saying that cigarettes could only be sold in a boring green box with the obligatory death cancer horror picture on. But here's what I'm thinking, right. To protect it in my pocket with change and keys and so on I keep my mobile phone in a little pouch like the one below (but plain - I'm not yet barracking for Carlton).

Looking at it there doesn't seem to be any reason you couldn't knit a similar slip on cover with whatever design you like and make it large enough to fit a 20, 25, 30 or 40 cigarette pack snugly. They're hardly going to ban wool in a country with a hundred million sheep, are they?

/ Waits for inevitable sheep sex jokes in the comments.

Part 1       Part 2       Part 3               Part 5

Getting around Australia's plain tobacco packaging law #3

Part 1       Part 2               Part 4       Part 5

Make your own cigarette packets. Google is your friend and can find all sorts of services for you, even including people who will make cigarette boxes in your own design. Don't know what the prices are like as I wasn't going to bugger around getting a quote, but if that seems like too much expense then there's the DIY option. Without too much googling I found a template and instructions to make a cigarette packet. Just in case that ever disappears I'll save a copy here for posterity, and in case either of my readers smoke (hi, Mum, and I thought you'd quit years ago) and want to give it a try.

Click for embiggerisation - or buy smaller cigarettes

I suggest a design that takes the piss out of hysterical health warnings, or possibly pre-empts the next generation of hysterical health warnings. Perhaps something like this.

Part 1       Part 2               Part 4       Part 5

Getting around Australia's plain tobacco packaging law #2

Part 1             Part 3       Part 4       Part 5

Cigarette cases - I bet they will be making a comeback here, and I'll bet you that as well as clever ones like that from TheSmokingShop.com.au above (they also do one for the car that automatically lights the cigarette as it's dispensed) there will be branded ones, either legit or made without the approval of the IP owners, appearing before long. Whether those tobacco companies whose trademarks are being infringed will have any motivation to do anything about it when they can't use them anyway is another matter. Currently they do take trademark infringers to courts in Oz but only because they're losing money from counterfeiting. If they were selling the fags that are being put inside a really cool looking cigarette tin I doubt they'll give a shit, which would be another unwanted side effect of the plain packaging law.

And if the wide variety available online doesn't flick a smoker's switch and you don't care about trying to find one with your brand on, authorised or not, why not go for something DIY such as the iPod Classic ciggie case?*

I thought I saw an iPhone version as well but it turned out to be a case for e-cigs and an actual iPhone, but I'm sure that sooner or later someone somewhere will make an iPhone-a-like cigarette case, much to the natural disgust of Apple and to the inevitable excitement of their legal department. But I'll leave you with one more example of a cigarette case that I saw among those at this online seller - one which will not only make the plain packets law here irrelevant but will drive the Righteous even further into outraged palpitations. I doubt I'll have to explain why... < evil grin >

Mwahahahahahahahahahahah!!

Tell you what, I think some of my Christmas shopping is going to get done early.

*  If any smoker reading this has a dead iPod they fancy converting into a ciggie case I'll mention there's a knack to getting into these old iPods. A watch case opener does the job but the trick is to give the iPod a gentle squeeze as you apply it. You'd still need a case opener each time though, so if it was me I'd be thinking about how to change it so it's be easier to open. Maybe remove the catches and glue in a spring loaded hinge or something. I dunno, I'm speculating there. I'll leave that to DIY experimenters.

Part 1             Part 3       Part 4       Part 5

Getting around Australia's plain tobacco packaging law #1

Part 2    Part 3    Part 4    Part 5

I'm not sure this hasn't already been covered in the legislation but as it's been reported it's going to be mandatory plain packaging, and the defence the Commonwealth government intend to use against the tobacco industry's accusation that their trademarks have been appropriated and that under Australia's constitution they should be compensated is that the trademarks have not been actually been taken, they just can't be used on cigarette packets. I'm no lawyer but we all know that the number of places the industry can use its trademarks has been diminishing and I feel that at some point you have to concede that effectively they've been taken from them, but in the meantime I wonder if there's anything to stop the trademarks being used on the cigarettes themselves. Most cigarettes have always had their makers' names on so it doesn't seem to unrealistic to use the whole cigarette. Maybe whatever ink ends up being used on the paper to do this would actually make cigarettes slightly more harmful for their users, I have no idea, but on Planet Smokophobia the alleged health benefits from the plain packets would surely offset any harm done by fully branding the cigarettes themselves instead. No, I know that makes no sense, but when we're talking tobacco legislation is that even necessary any more?

Part 2    Part 3    Part 4    Part 5

Let's get the flock out of here

Or if we're talking about pigs, the herd. And obviously that's a lot easier if the herd has its own fully signed, designated escape route which it knows because there have been escape drills. Yes, we're still talking about pigs, and no I'm not making this up. I've banged my head on the desk once or twice but this bloody article is still there.

Click for linky and loss of will to live

If fire engulfs a piggery in Monto, its residents can rest easy. That fluorescent exit sign above the doors will save their bacon.

And also saves me making that joke. Predictable, I know, but better than the 'hamstrung' one the Courier Mail used in their headline.

In one of the most ridiculous rules stifling small business in Queensland, piggery operators are required to install illuminated exit signs inside pens occupied solely by pigs.

Okay, look, I know pigs are supposed to be relatively intelligent creatures but I can spot two flaws with this. Flaw number one is that I'm pretty confident they're not that intelligent. Flaw number two, and this is important for anyone who believes you can teach a pig what a sign's for, is that's a running fucking MAN on the emergency exit sign.

But it's okay because after that the rules begin to make sense. No, just kidding, they don't.

Regulations also demand an escape door for pigs to use in case of fires...

You might already spot the potential problem here.

... but which farmers fear the animals can use any time.

Which suggests that someone in the Queensland government has failed to recognise that emergency exits aren't used all the time because you can explain to people that this exit, this one over here, is for emergencies only and that one over there is for coming and going as you please. This is simple enough even for a fairly young child to grasp, but I wish you the very best of luck if you're hoping to explain it to farmyard animals. You're going to need every bit of it.

Oh, and then there are the fire drills. Fire drills! That must have been funny enough to sell tickets for.

"Right, we'll try again. Now, Napoleon?"
"Oink?"
"When I blow this whistle you call Pinkeye and Squealer..."
"Squeeeeeeaal!"
"No, listen..."
"Squeeeeeeeeeeaaal!"
"Just listen a minute..."
"Squeeeeeeaaloinkoinkoink."
"Ah, screw it. They'll all be in bits on cold shelves in a few weeks anyway."

"A concrete block shed with steel roof trusses and corrugated iron roof, built to hold 60 pigs in four pens, had to have a fire hose, an illuminated "EXIT" sign above each of the two doors and an evacuation procedure displayed in a prominent position," former pig farmer Darryl Stewart told an industry survey.

A fire hose? But how... ?

"The biggest difficulties were teaching the pigs to read the signs and procedures, conducting fire drills so the building could be evacuated in orderly fashion and training the four most intelligent pigs as fire fighters.

Presumably chosen from among Pugh, Pugh, Barney MacGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Snouter.

And it had to be done all over again every three months because that is when a new batch replaced the old batch.
"Oh, and rounding them up from anywhere within a 5km radius after every fire drill was not much fun either."

Okay, I am actually laughing now because I've got this mental picture of pigs running in every direction apart from back to the piggery, and there is Benny Hill music. Still, this is a former pig farmer and he's probably kidding, right? Right?

Ian Hill, of Bailey Creek Piggeries in Mulgildie, confirmed to The Courier-Mail exit signs were legally required in pens.
"It's one of the council requirements that when you put a building in that they want illuminated exit signs at every piggery building," he said.
[...]
A Biloela piggery owner confirmed signs and particular types of doors that pigs could use in a fire were a legal requirement.
"We had a fire inspector come through here when we put up sheds years ago, and he made us put in fire extinguishers, put up the illuminated signs ... There's no deviation," he said.

And of course the serious side to this is that of costs to business. Someone's got to go out and buy signs which are meaningless to the inhabitants of the buildings they're put up in, plus install and maintain equipment that those inhabitants can't operate with trotters or even comprehend the purpose of - with the exception of the pig operable doors that are supposed to be for emergency use. Not only that but you can't cut corners because there are inspections, and to cap it all your taxes are helping pay not just for the inspectors' wages but also the clown who I'm guessing saw Porky the Fireman while stoned off his dial and thought it was a good idea.

Memo to the Queensland government. Don't attempt to teach a pig Occ. Health and Safety. It wastes your time and annoys the pig, but really infuriates the poor sod who has to pay for it.

Quote of the Day

Yes, another one, and again it comes from the pen/keyboard of the Carbon Sense Coalition's Viv Forbes and via the Real World Libertarian. My bold:

Since July, temperatures in Australia have soared by over six degrees centigrade. If current trends continue, we can expect another three degrees of warming by Christmas.

This rapid warming has caused massive environmental disruption – alpine snow has melted, birds are migrating, there is an epidemic of weeds and we can expect more storms, cyclones, floods, mosquitoes and solar radiation burns.

This is far more serious than the UN's forecast of a piddling 1-2 degrees of warming over the next hundred years or so.

What caused this dangerous new global warming?

The old people called it "summer".

A perfect storm of stupid - UPDATED

So we've just had the Greens' carbon tax rammed through with the support of the minority Labor government, and now it's the plain tobacco packaging, which I read...

...will pass the Senate with the support of the Greens.

Is it speculative to wonder if the price for supporting Labor's pointless plain fag packets - pointless not least because it follows recently introduced laws that generally prevent the fucking packets being on display anyway - was the carbon tax and vice versa?

Who knows? But what I am very confident of is that these two pieces of legislation, one extremely divisive and the other egregiously illiberal, will each achieve as near to nothing as makes no odds.

"If this legislation stops one young Australian from picking up a shiny, coloured packet and prevents them becoming addicted to cigarettes then in my view it will have been worthwhile," Labor senator John Faulkner told the upper house today.

It won't. Hell's bells, I'm getting tired of saying this, but just look at the illegal drug trade. Just fucking look at it. Do they have trademarks? Do they have shiny, coloured packets? No. Does the trade have any difficulty in retaining customers? No, but of course the nanny screams of "Addiction!" will be starting any second, so let's ask a different question. Does the drugs trade have any difficulty attracting new business despite the complete lack of trademarks and shiny, coloured packets? Again the answer is no. And the reason is that people want to take the bloody stuff. No, I don't particularly get the attraction either, but there's a very good chance that someone somewhere in this very suburb is getting wasted right now and we all know that whatever s/he's on came in some kind of plain and most likely ad hoc packaging. Hell, even illegal chop-chop tobacco already comes in plain packaging, and I'm sure the suppliers are just delighted that their main competition, the legal and regulated tobacco trade, are taking one in the crotch and losing one more thing that distinguishes the legal from the illegal product. And, er, correct me if I'm wrong but they don't even pay tax, do they? Christ, they must think all their Christmases came at once.

Via the Real World Libertarian

And if in return for that utter pointlessness, unless the idea really is to benefit the criminal tobacco trade, Labor brought in the carbon tax for the Greens it doesn't seem to me to be any more likely to achieve anything noticeable. As I mentioned the other day other countries seem quick to praise Australia for the carbon tax but oh so reluctant to follow suit, and with such a small population we could cut emissions to nothing at the cost of utterly destroying the economy and going back to being a pre-industrial society, and the self-sacrifice would have a measurable effect on the climate of zero. And that's making the assumption that the whole warble gloaming catastrophism bandwagon isn't garbage to begin with. The reality is that we're on our own.

Earlier this week Climate Change Minister Greg Combet rejected the idea that there are serious issues with international carbon trading and yesterday spoke rosily about the global carbon market's prospects while the EU carbon price crashed.
To support his argument Combet cited the World Bank's Carbon Finance Unit State and Trends of the Global Carbon Market 2011 report that the market has now grown to $US140 billion ($136bn). But he's clearly only read it to recite convenient anecdotes.
According to the report "after five consecutive years of robust growth, the total value of the global carbon market stalled suffering from the lack of post-2012 regulatory clarity".
Meanwhile the price of some emissions permits "fell by double-digits for the third year in a row" and "shrank as well in 2010".
A carbon market recession should hardly come as a surprise.
[...]
Before its closure in the middle of last year, the price of voluntary Chicago carbon exchange permits plunged from $7.40 a tonne to a mere 5c.
And Europe's carbon price has not been in parity with Australia's $23 a tonne price since June and now sits at about $10 following a downward price trend.
As long as the EU's emissions trading scheme accounts for 97 per cent of the global carbon market, the price will be set in Europe and a price drop there will significantly influence whether emissions cuts will be achieved in Australia.

And as that article also points out, arguments between the industrialised and developing worlds over a replacement treaty for the Kyoto Accord, itself not credited with achieving a measurable temperature change as far as I've heard, are deadlocked on the issue of whether the developing world is included this time.

Worse, like the tobacco legislation, it seems that criminals are going to gain from this too, or at least have a bloody good try.

The Australian Federal Police is preparing to investigate cases of serious fraud that could arise from Labor's carbon pricing scheme, including the possible sale of bogus carbon credits.
The AFP's deputy commissioner of operations Andrew Colvin said a working group had been established with the Department of Climate Change to discuss possible responses to carbon tax breaches.
Appearing before a Senate committee hearing today, Mr Colvin said the AFP's efforts would focus on serious fraud offences, particularly those involving the sale of counterfeit carbon permits or credits.

And of course they're quite right to if experience elsewhere is any guide.

Click for link - H/T to WUWT

So to recap, what we've got here is a couple of bits of legislation that will attract and likely benefit criminals, add to the workloads of the police, and achieve two-fifths of fuck all. But on the upside they're ideologically sound, keep wealthy lobby groups onside, and of course Australia gets to say it's leading the world even if the world isn't all that keen to follow.

Marvellous.

UPDATE - Coincidentally WUWT has a post looking at Kyoto’s effects which concludes that it did nothing in signatory countries that didn’t happen in the US too, and did quite a lot less than the financial crisis. Now, about that carbon tax, Jules and Bob…