The first day of the road trip was spent at Warner Bros. Movie World. This was my first time at a major theme park and it was a fantastic experience. Photos from the Stunt Driver show will come in the next blog post. But here are 28 photos of other parts of the day, and this is only a very small selection of what is on offer.
Tag Archives: Australia
Road Trip – Photos 1 – Surfers Paradise
Me and a friend have just spent the past few days on a road trip between Brisbane and Sydney. In total there are over 700 photos from the trip. I don’t have time to put them all online, but over the next few days I will be posting the best photos from each of the days.
To kick things off here are photos from my morning walk at Surfers Paradise.
People not criminals, freedom not detention
One of the fundamental rights of the west is the idea of freedom. Political freedom, personal freedom, religious freedom, cultural freedom. However, it seems if you come from the east in order to gain your freedom in Australia you must first be treated worse than the prisoners who founded this nation.
Throughout this week there have been a number of protests and problems at the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in Western Sydney. This week’s problems began with the suicide of a Fijian earlier this week before spreading to protests from Sri Lankans and then Chinese asylum seekers. However, in the past month there have been protests and problems at detention facilities in Darwin and asylum seekers have once again become a political football.
The Australian Government’s response these problems is both predictable and wrong. The SMH earlier this week reported:
Julia Gillard will send the Immigration Minister to East Timor in spite of a warning from the head of a government advisory group that incidents of self-harm at Villawood detention centre are beginning to spiral out of control.
The Prime Minister is forging ahead with the so-called ”East Timor solution” after speaking to her counterpart in that country, Xanana Gusmao, about building a regional processing centre for asylum seekers.
The problem of course with this is it does not solve any problem and only makes conditions for these people worse, by shifting them to a country that is not a signatory to declarations on treatment of refugees and the like and therefore creating more problems and treating these people even more like animals.
A few weeks ago another article in the SMH looked at the treatment of asylum seekers last time they were processed off-shore:
…everyone left on Manus and Nauru was gradually brought here.
Some rotted on the islands for more than five years; some went mad waiting; but in the end, the largest single group of people fed through the Pacific solution ended up where they were always heading: Australia.
It’s a unique ambition: no other country on earth has managed its refugees this way.
This is what happened last time: Australia spent about a billion dollars processing 1637 boat people on Manus and Nauru. (Do the maths: it’s a horrifying $600,000 per head.)
The the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, tight-lipped and diplomatic, is understood to be appalled by the prospect of going through all this again. The closing of the Nauru camp a few years ago was welcomed by a UNHCR spokeswoman as ”the end of a difficult chapter in Australia’s treatment of refugees and asylum seekers”.
Now it’s on again, backed by both government and the opposition. For those of a Machiavellian turn of mind, failing to find anywhere to resettle the refugees we process in some offshore dependency is frankly all to the good. The detour to Nauru was never, in itself, much of a deterrent to people smugglers. What helped kill the trade was leaving refugees to rot there for years.
We can stop the boats. That’s the ambition of both sides of politics. And it isn’t hard if we are willing to be cruel. We can order the navy to force them back to Indonesia – operations the navy loathes – or send their human cargoes off to island prisons for indefinite detention.
Those strategies work. But they leave a humane country facing a hard question: how brutal are we willing to be?
Earlier this week The Gruen Transfer had the subject of their “The Pitch” segment to be on so called “Boat People”, it is a good watch and really hammers home just how bad Australia treats people who are not from the west.
Australian Evening News Reports on Christchurch Earthquake
These are the reports from various TV channels on today’s earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. Channels 9 and 10 are missing because the broadcast aired at the same time as 7News.
5pm ABC News 24:
6pm 7News Sydney:
6.30 SBS World News Australia:
7pm ABC1 NSW News:
The best satire isn’t just comedy, it is a powerful message
Last night the Chaser did their election wrap up show. During the show they aired the clip below. The sad thing about the comedy in the skit is that the message is quite true. Depending on the final count Australia may have elected its first ever indigenous politician. New Zealand elected its first indigenous MP in 1868 and since then has had over 80 Maori MPs (20 in the current Parliament). It is good to finally see some progress in Australian politics, they are only 140 years behind NZ. One can only hope that the rest of the barriers of racism and oppression will fall and Australia will embrace their cultural roots as much as NZ does.
Australian Election Results Live Blogging from a Kiwi’s perspective
From around 6pm AEST tonight I will be live blogging the Australian Election results in this post.
Updates will be added to the post as the results come in.
My commentary will be from a Kiwi’s perspective with the focus primarily on New South Wales but also a bit of Queensland and Victoria.
Stay Tuned for more.
5.20pm update – Seven News have exit polls by Roy Morgan. First seat Herbet near Townsville is showing a swing to Labor however exit polls are not accurate and with a sample of only 300 people the result is within the margin of error (which 7 News failed to tell the viewers).
5.30pm – Seven News have their second exit poll. Lindsay to go Liberal with a 15% swing. Again massive swing and most likely because the sample size is so small.
5.40pm – Third exit poll. La Trobe, in Melbourne’s South East. ALP to win with 5% swing.
7pm – 7 News is reporting that the swing is going against Labor but instead of going to Liberal it is going towards the Greens. Still very early days with only around 1% of the votes counted.
7.30pm – It looks like The Greens may pick up their first ever House of Representatives seat by winning the electorate of Melbourne. (This is an early prediction). Predictions also showing ALP have lost two seats nationally, and LNP have gained two, so neck and neck.
8pm – With 3 million votes counted nationally on two party preferred LNP is leading 50.5% to 49.5%, so neck and neck, ALP may lose 13 seats on latest predictions. Election is very much too close to call. Sydney may also go Greens, and possibly Denison in Tasmania. Result may not be known tonight.
8.30pm – Greens have almost definitely won Melbourne. Candidate just gave a victory speech. Nationally with a little over 5 million votes ALP is now leading 50.3% to 49.7%.
9pm – A few victory speeches over the last half hour, but still too close to call in many seats.
9.30pm – Still heading for a hung parliament.
9.50pm – Greens have 12% in the Senate. Looks like 9 senators in the new Parliament. “We are seeing the birth of a new political movement” – Bob Brown, Greens Leader. “It is time we moved to proportional representation”
10pm – 7 News is calling it currently at 73 seats each, below the 76 needed to govern. With 3 independents + 1 Green.
10.15pm – Can a government be formed? Labor + Greens will not be enough to govern without two independents on current predictions.
11.15pm – Gillard takes the stage (before Abbott), “Too close to call”, “Every vote must be counted”
11.30pm – Channel 7′s panel is saying Labor lost the plot when they failed to have a backbone and pass the ETS in March or go to a Double D Election over the issue.
12am – Abbott has addressed the Liberal Party faithful. At end of the night hung parliament with 72 seats Labor, 71 seats LNP declared.
New Zealand should play no role in endorsing Australia’s racism
It is rather alarming that New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key is involved in discussions with the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard over the processing of asylum seekers: (from the NZ Herald)
Ms Gillard said she had also spoken to New Zealand Prime Minister John Key about the possibility of a regional processing centre for asylum seekers.
“John said to me that he would be open to considering this initiative constructively,” she said.
“East Timor and New Zealand are vital countries in this initiative, as they are already signatories to the refugee convention.
“And New Zealand, like Australia, is a key resettlement country.”
Currently the two major political parties in Australia are locked in a battle of who is the biggest bigot and racist. This is not a game that New Zealand wants to join. New Zealand prides itself on its multiculturalism.
Declining asylum applications from people of Afghanistan and Sri Lanka just because they are from those two countries is racist segregation in its most simple form. For any New Zealand politician to support the immigration policies of a country that is happy to endorse racism is political suicide. Crosby|Textor may have done well with John Key so far but this is one push poll that they will lose.
Australian Ministry of Truth Continues Feeble Attempts to Censor the Internet
The SMH today is reporting that Inner Party member Conroy is secretly pushing on with plans to filter the Australian internet.
The federal government is hiding controversial plans to force ISPs to store internet activity of all Australian internet users – regardless of whether they have been suspected of wrongdoing – for law-enforcement agencies to access.
The next thing they will try is for everyone in the country to wear a GPS tracker so we always know where people walk, drive, train or cycle so that we can fine them when they jaywalk or fail to indicate.
As every day goes by it seems the Rudd government is becoming more and more successful at achieving the impossible – losing the next election. For me being a computer geek all it means is that I am much more aware of my actions online and wherever possible I am using encryption for data transfer. It is not an argument about having nothing to hide and therefore needing no privacy. It is a matter that the government wants to data mine our every single action, watch our every single step and monitor every little thing we do in our lives.
I have no issue with sharing my browsing habits with people who I opt to share it with; more often than not I opt into anonymous data sharing of software usage. However, this is not what the government intends, what the government intends is complete mind control of its population. This is not censorship, censorship is a public list of banned material and the reason why they are banned which is debatable in court, this is well beyond censorship and amounts of thought control. The government is not telling you what is blocked, why it is blocked, or any way of being able to appeal sites being blocked. All in all it is a very scary idea that you would expect from a mad dictator not a democratically elected government.
Four Days in Cairns – Tropical North Queensland
I have just spent the last four days on holiday in Cairns and the surrounding area.
During this time I saw, did, and ate:
- Ate Crocodile, Emu, and Kangaroo
- Ate Crocodile Curry
- Went on the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway over the Barron Gorge to Kuranda
- Bought Mango wine
- Went on the Kuranda Scenic Railway back down the Barron Gorge
- Climbed the Red and Blue Arrow Circuits behind Cairns and saw a wild Wallaby
- Went on On The Wallaby tour into the Tablelands visiting a number of waterfalls, cycling about 15km and canoeing down a river where we saw Spiders, a Tree Kangaroo, Platypus, Turtles, and a whole lot of other cool wildlife.
- Went hunting through a riverbed to find rocks that can be used for face painting.
Right now I am very tired to go into anymore details about the trip. However pictures speak a 1,000 words, so here are 21 photos to speak 21,000 words. (Click on a photo to see a larger version).
Remembering the Glorious Dead for the right reasons
There is a very unpatriotic opinion article in the Sydney Morning Herald today suggesting that we don’t honour the ANZACs.
While the author, Martin Flanagan, does well to point out some of the history surrounding the Gallipoli campaign his tie in arguments against remembering the dead simply do not stack up.
Gallipoli was a military disaster. We should note that in justice to the young men who died there. Do we owe them less than we owe those who die in bushfires like Black Saturday? We should also note it in justice to future generations. The voices that urged Australia into the invasion of Iraq were of the same character as those that propelled Australia to Gallipoli in 1914.
Flanagan is correct in stating that Gallipoli was a military disaster, one of the primary reasons for this was that the ANZACs landed at the wrong beach. But I do not want to get bogged down in historical arguments. The most offensive and false claim by Flanagan in this statement is comparing the Gallipoli campaign to Iraq. There is a big difference in roles between the two, in Gallipoli the ANZACs were defending, sure they were invading Turkey, however the only reason for doing so was to defend the British Empire and end the war, they did not start the war but their goal was to end it. In Iraq the Australian Army is among the aggressors, they did start the war and they did make the choice to attack.
What the Australians won at Gallipoli was huge respect, including from their enemy. It really is time we started making clear to young Australians that the Anzacs didn’t die protecting Australia from being invaded. Rather, we were invading a country on the other side of the world – to wit, Turkey – with whom we had no difference as a people outside the larger politics of the day.
Surely it is time we owed Turkey, and Turkish Australians, that respect. Look at the respect Turkey shows our dead.
I ask this question most seriously. Does any country in the world – other than Turkey – permit a people who tried to invade it to commemorate the fact of that attempted invasion on their shores each year? I know of not a single one. Imagine if the descendants of the Japanese pilots who bombed Darwin held an emotional service beneath the Japanese flag on the shores of Darwin Harbour each year.
Again there is a massive difference between the attack on Gallipoli and the attack on Darwin. The attack on Gallipoli formed the basis of the ANZAC bond that has seen NZ and Australian troops work together jointly in a number of wars, exercises, rescues, peacekeeping missions, trade and politics over the last 95 years. It also formed the basis of maturing as two nations independent of Great Britain and through the war a bond with Turkey.
The services at Gallipoli are not the celebration of war they are remembering the dead, the dead who died serving their country, defending their country, and believing in their country. They are also about respecting those who fought to give us the freedoms we enjoy today – including the freedom to criticise what they fought for.
The difference with the attack on Darwin is that the scars between the actions of Japan and Australia have never fully healed. The way in which the author compares the attack suggests this. The way in which Japan and Germany among other countries avoid talking about the war also suggests that they are not at a point yet to move on from the past. The attack on Darwin was an attack and only an attack, the Gallipoli campaign was a lot more than just an attack, it was the forming of nations and what is honoured on ANZAC day is those who helped form those nations not those who needless died in a failed campaign.
