winsor68

First let me say that this is very serious and that this group doesn't do things by halves.

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Getup! is backing a class action lawsuit against the big banks to recoup for consumers over $1 billion dollars a year in unfair bank fees - fees that hit the most vulnerable Australians the hardest. Do you want to add your name to the case?

If yes go to this website and register...

GetUp! Campaign Actions

At one time or another, most of us have been charged a "penalty fee" if we've accidentally overdrawn our bank account or been a few days late in paying a credit card bill. But by definition these fees - which can be $30, $40, $60 a transaction - hit the most vulnerable Australians the hardest.

These fees aren't just irritating or unfair: there's a strong argument to be made that they're actually unlawful, because corporations don't have the right to penalise their customers, only to recoup their own costs when required. When we accidentally overdraw a credit card or account, the actual cost to banks is just a few dollars, but they charge in extreme excess of that. So why do banks pad their already profitable bottom line at the expense of their most vulnerable customers? Simple. Because they can.

The banks think they can get away with it, because we don't have the time or energy to individually dispute every one of these charges. But if we each take a moment to act collectively, as hundreds of thousands of bank customers, we can put an end to these penalty fees for good.

N.B. The Banks Getup! will take the action against are the 12 BIG Aussie Banks.

1. ANZ

2.Bank of QLD

3. Commonwealth

4. BankWest

5. Bank SA

6. Bendigo Bank

7. Citibank

8. HSBC

9. NAB

10. St George

11. Suncorp

12. Westpac

Getup! is really serious about this... and the banks know they are in the wrong. People are already reporting that the banks have stopped charging these outrageous fees... this action is about getting back the money already stolen.

Winsor68

Thanks Ozzie.

Of course Tomo... the Beech1900 is a seriously fast aeroplane. If you were flying it with the wind in your hair you would be in BIG trouble because your hair would blow off!

I checked in a pilot for a commercial flight back to Brisbane yesterday... His Police Air Wing Beech 1900 had a faulty altimeter so was grounded. I mentioned that I know a dude (MrT) who had just flown a 95.10 ultralight with no instruments... He was not suitably impressed... lol :ah_oh:

Perhaps they could leave the fees as is and stop sending the Ra-Aus mag to every member. I would be happy to buy my own from the Newsagent and save Ra-Aus the cost of postage... plus I would get it a week earlier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab-tco3s9IU

This is one of the most interesting ones... It is already on this site. Notice the control stick in his hand... It is all over in seconds.

Unfortunately the one on the sight does not show it all the way to the ground. The only copy of the full footage I could now find on Youtube has had comments written over it.

This is a report from the pilot.... Marty Lunsford's Crash

How about this one... I believe that is an old rare Bellanca.

They have had better days... I like the Twisters!

http://www.twisterduo.com/content/gallery.html

This website belongs to a young bloke called Mark Zinkel. I was surfing the web when I ran across this site a few years ago. If you link this site with Mark's facebook and youtube videos this is really cool... Learning to fly the old fashion pre95.10/US part101 way in a solo aircraft during your internship.

Way to go Mark.

pFlying Dreams - Building and Flying the Pterodactyl

That is an excellent joke:clap:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvhDYSKD9Ps

The Legend of Pancho Barnes - A Documentary Film

This would be a good DVD for the Clear Prop Shop...

I am learning to fly at an Airstrip that was a Drag strip before it was an Airstrip... Phew... The Airstrip is unusable when drag meets are held.

There is a grass strip beside the drag strip, or alternately use the bitumen return road for takeoff... or use the drag strip itself.

All in all... except for the times when drag meeting are held... it seems like a good use of the land. Probably more suitable to the private aircraft owner than a commercial operation- hence the local school is planning on putting in there own Airstrip behind the speedway next to the drag strip (making sense?). There is a ready made crown of customers for TIFs and potential students when racing events are on.

Dead right Dazza, some local businesses down the road to us employ Asians etc... Why? Because they actually WORK, and are pretty cheap too, but this particular guy usually pays them well, mostly because they are willing to work.Sadly Aussies have hit the deck with that idea... it's easier to go on the doll... hopefully that goes away, and things will start to get a face lift.

 

There's a difference between being unable to find work (which there is) but why did it happen in the first place?

 

Anyway I should stop while I'm ahead... too far out of my comfort zone here.

The reality is that Australians are no longer the "bludgers" of the world economy... we work long and hard hours for less money than any generation in the last 100 years, Young, Old and in between. Perhaps in your small community you have young dole bludgers but it is no longer a national phenomenon like it used to be.

In my industry the young blokes (although many of them still as clueless as many of us were at that age) are hard working, think nothing of working 15 hour days. The problem is that so many of them now think of this as normal.

Any company bringing in overseas labour with the excuse that Aussies don't work needs to be run out of town.

I find it ironic that there is a major threat to our jobs from overseas labour, yet in the recent election it was not mentioned. Every day at my job I see Kiwi's flying in and out from New Zealand weekly taking their $100 000 + out of our economy... and the big mining companies really couldn't give a stuff.

I say give those jobs to locals...there are thousands of us just waiting for the opportunity.

I can take it.

What I won't take is people claiming their personal opinions as Greens policy. This is a public forum and it would be wrong to let these things go unanswered with an important election tomorrow.

All I ask is that people look at the real issues before voting.

This explains things pretty well... I am not a member of the Greens. I am a member of Getup!

Some sensible evidence based policy there Turbo...

Nothing on banning fishing or hunting?

But surprise surprise none of the other nasties which are there in black and white as policies were on show in the speech.

Seems that we have become a cynical mob of suckers who are willing to believe anything the the two major parties and its trolls claim as fact.

Re. The Greens,Have any of you actually looked at Green's economic policies ---- besides a whacking great carbon tax that will push up prices across the board.

 

They include:

 

Re-Nationalization of "natural" monopolies.

 

Increased personal tax

 

Increased company tax

 

Increased indirect taxes, including widening the GST base and increasing the rate.

 

Re-imposition of death duties/estate taxes.

 

Removal of many personal tax deductions, ie; no longer deduct the legitimate costs of producing your income.

 

Removal of the health insurance rebate.

 

An even bigger tax on miners than Rudd proposed --- do any of you understand how the mining "super profit" is struck for the super profits tax calculation ----- before deduction of the cost of finance ---- effectively a tax on EBIT ---- because company tax is still payable. That might be OK for the "Big Three" who mostly finance development and expansion from cash flow, but for Australian owned mining companies it is the same kind of financial disaster as the 1961 Menzies budget. That budget disallowed interest paid by finance companies to debenture holders as a business cost, precipitating a raft of major finance company bankruptcies, with tens of thousands of "mums and dads" losing their life savings.

 

Don't anybody forget that it is the mining industry that is financing what is otherwise a major structural deficit in the Australia economy.

 

A myriad of additional auto taxes, to discourage car use ---- great if you have convenient public transport from where you are to where you want to go --- but in general in Australia, that's a rarity ----but as one candidate has alluded --- personal freedom of movement and travel is not apparently regarded as a necessary freedom in the green future.

 

Removing mandatory secret ballots for strike action. Complete removal of the building industry watchdog ---- even Labor left that organisation in place under their new industrial legislation, and the building unions hate it.

 

But wait, there's more!!

 

In addition, bans on hunting/shooting/fishing -----and given the attitude of one candidate from NSW, a ban on other than "essential" aviation would not surprise me---- and that does not include any private aviation, and a tax system to discourage airline travel --- because that has been talked about in recent times.

 

On that gave me a real laugh in the health policy was, wait for it ---- free gender re-assignment surgery --- I would not have thought that was top of the agenda of urgent public health issues.

 

Go check all these things out --- and then come back and say you are going to vote Greens.

 

Regards,

:confused:

Anybody who watched Bob Brown at the National Press Club lunch yesterday will not be in any doubt as to the fact that my original post on this thread was spot on the mark.

It leaves me in little doubt of... something that is not very flattering to people who are trying to impose there own irrational fears onto Mr Brown and the Greens. A little bit of honesty would go a long way Bill.

Ladies and gentlemen, Saturday is crunch time for Australia. In the Senate it will either be a vote for the Greens in bigger numbers, providing accountability, or a return to Coalition domination. I will come back to these options, but first I want to talk about the campaign.

Three messages have been repeated to me from people in the streets of Australian cities and towns these last weeks as I travelled from Darwin to Melbourne, from Mackay to Cygnet, from Orange to Gunghalin, from Adelaide to Perth.

First, elections are bad for business. People stop spending. Whether it's at the newsagent or the petrol pump, receipts are down. Sunday can't come too soon for small businesses across Australia.

Second, a pox on both their houses. There is enormous disappointment and frustration with both the bigger parties; at their in-fighting and failure to lay out a vision for Australia.

Third, there has been a very warm-hearted response I've had from people in the streets - ‘I'm voting for the Greens this time', ‘Good on you Bob', ‘I hope the Greens go well', ‘at least you stand for something!'

This country wants leadership and it is the Greens who are delivering leadership.

Last week, I went back to Toowoomba on Queensland's Darling Downs and, for my first time, to the nearby village of Acland. However, when I got there, Acland was missing.

This was a town of 250 people in the rich Darling Downs agricultural area, which won the title of 'Queensland's Tidiest Town' in 1989. But Acland has been demolished. Only one house remains.

Acland is where all that is wrong with Labor and Coalition politics comes together with an astonishing result which pulls the rug from under the notion that this wide brown land's beautiful plains are sacrosanct, the idea that farmlands are needed to feed future generations. No, the Acland farmlands are going. They are being converted into an open-cut coalmine. That pit will be seven kilometres across.

A few weeks ago, in the Oxygen Café in Toowoomba I met the last resident of Acland - Mr Glenn Beautel. Like a good many other bush folk I've met in my time, he's pretty quiet. But he also has that quintessential Australian stubbornness against letting the wrong thing happen. Despite the coal company's entreaties, Glenn has refused to move. His is the last house in Acland.

He is also committed to saving the Anzac Memorial Park, just down the road. His late mother and father worked for years to establish the park. He doesn't want the coalmines to destroy their Memorial Park too.

Glenn gave me a recent photo of a koala getting through the back fence. He has more photos of koalas in the deserted town's main street. The coal company is not just displacing humans and farmland; it will destroy the habitat of these koalas, our national icon. Well, where are you, Greg Hunt and Peter Garrett? When I moved in the Senate, recently, for an inquiry into the koala's fraught future, the big parties derided the move. It was voted down.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, every day we wake up to a world with more mouths to feed and less land to feed them. As I speak, climate change-fuelled drought and fires are decimating the crops of Germany and Russia. And a massive flood is moving down the fertile Indus Valley, Pakistan's food bowl.

In Australia, as in pretty well all others, top grade land for growing wheat, potatoes and fruit is being permanently taken out of production by rapidly spreading suburbs, highways, monoculture plantations and, worst of all, climate change.

The Garnaut Report to the Rudd government predicted that 90 percent of the productivity of Australia's own greatest food bowl, the Murray-Darling Basin, could be lost due to climate change-induced drought, heat and pests, later this century. Neither Julia Gillard nor Tony Abbott has ever acknowledged or mentioned this fact.

Acland on the Darling Downs, at the top end of the Murray-Darling Basin, would be, you'd think, premium safe land in the hands of our political strategists, in this age of mounting global food insecurity.

But not so! Instead of saving Acland, a coal company, which in a masterstroke of greenwash is called ‘New Hope', is getting the nod from the Labor politicians in Brisbane and Canberra, as well as the Coalition.

The coal will be burnt, loading the atmosphere with more carbon, hastening global warming and, perversely, accelerating the destruction of the productivity of what's left of the Murray-Darling Basin.

This coal madness - the NASA Institute's James Hansen, who alerted Congress to the threat of climate change back in 1988, calls it ‘criminal' - will rip 6-20 percent off the gross domestic product off our grandchildren according to Sir Nicholas Stern.

Sir Nick spoke at this very podium 3 years ago, but as far as the Coalition and Labor are concerned, he may as well have been talking on Macquarie Island. He is coming to Australia again soon and I hope the next Prime Minister will listen to him.

The tragedy of Acland underscores the planning irresponsibility of Labor and the Coalition - and their economic irresponsibility in committing to never having a carbon price. I was astonished, on Monday, when Julia Gillard followed Tony Abbott's commitment to never allow a carbon tax. Her reversion on the mining tax to the big miners a month ago, was little less alarming.

The Prime Minister's backdown to the big coal and iron-ore mining corporations will cost future budgets, after 2013 -14, some 9 billion dollars per annum. Worse, Tony Abbott, Leader of the Coalition - spell that C-O-A-L-ition - says he won't collect a dollar out of the mining super profits. His total surrender to the miners will rip some $20 billion off Australia's future budgets. That's $20 billion ordinary Australians will pay in tax, starting with small business. Or else it's $20 billion not available for nation-building: for high-speed rail between our cities; or for modern, fast, clean, efficient, cheap light rail within our cities.

Just twenty percent of that $20 billion could fund a national dental system to help the 500,000 Australians now on waiting lists to get dental care. This reasonable tax income will also enable the Greens, unlike Labor or the Coalition, to put $2 billion extra into Australia's education system.

Let me quote to you from Professor Richard Teese from the University of Melbourne's opinion piece in the Age on Monday:

"It is a failed vision of public schooling that subjects the Labor Party to the indignity of scavenging on the scrapheap of failed educational reform. The Greens, by contrast, start from the premise that public schooling is intrinsically valuable and the best vehicle to engage all children. They want a public system that is "recognised as among the best in the world". Can either of the big parties say this or mean it? Is either prepared to draw out the consequences - setting high standards for all public schools, adopting the funding priorities that this requires, and making durable improvements in the quality of the teaching force?"

Australia ranks 18 out of 30 in a comparison of OECD for funding to public education (excluding tertiary) as a percentage of GDP. Based on the most recent available figures, for Australia to be a leader in OECD, spending around 4% GDP, would require an additional $5.2 billion.

As you know, the Greens support the Mining Super Profits tax as originally proposed by Wayne Swan and Treasury which would raise that 20 billion. However as a first step in the new parliament, the Greens will negotiate an adjustment to the mining tax so that it raises an additional $2 billion that will boost the public school system to fund a range of important areas.

We would check all Indigenous children to ensure they don't lose their hearing to otitis media (middle ear infection) at a cost of just $3.5 million. Hundreds of children in northern Australia are suffering from hearing loss in this wealthy nation of ours, in some places more than 10% of children have suffered hearing loss and the Greens would put an end to it.

We will also invest $320m over four years in a Commonwealth Teaching Scholarship Program. This will provide 3000 teaching scholarships worth $5000 a year each for up to 5 years. Scholarship recipients will be required to work in a public school of high need for 3 years. The program will cost an estimated $17m for the first year and up to $80m a year on-going, and it will help address teacher shortages which are predicated to grow with increased retirements.

Our Teacher mentoring and support initiative would cost $600m over four years. It will support early career teachers who are at high risk of leaving the profession within 3-5 years, and fund trial schools up to $70 000 to employ an additional teacher, to reduce workloads of first year and mentor teachers, as well as $5 million for establishing and running the mentor training. The total cost per year will be around $150m.

The Greens will also bring back the Restoring Asian language literacy in schools program, costing $94 million over 4 years. Under-funding for the Asian language program over the past decade has resulted in a significant decline in the study and completion rate of this hugely important program.

Additional funding will be invested in the development of Australia's teaching workforce, as well as addressing the shortage of maths and science teachers. We will also use this nation's mineral wealth to better fund Australia's universities and TAFE community.

Ladies and gentlemen, the high speed rail saga showed the real value of the Greens in Australian politics. When I moved for a national study into high speed rail in the Senate, a few months back, Labor and the Coalition voted ‘no!' The Coalition branded the study a waste of people's money.

We Greens persisted. Now, in the middle of this campaign, Labor, seeing how popular the project is, has switched to ‘yes!' Remarkably, the Coalition alo switched to 'yes'. Australia will get high speed rail, carrying millions of people between our big cities, years earlier because we Greens are in the parliament.

But, with no Sovereign Fund from a 40 percent super profits tax on mining, who will fund High Speed Rail? Labor and the Coalition back the study. But won't they then complain there is no money for the connection between Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne - or between Sydney, Newcastle and Brisbane, let alone linking Adelaide and Perth?

And while public transport languishes, both major parties will pour hundreds of millions of dollars into new rail track and port facilities to export more coal, for an industry 75 percent owned overseas. Labor and the Coalition are putting coal before people, and selling out Australia's future in terms of not only public transport, but climate change and its looming potential to severely damage the nation's economy.

Whether we get High Speed Rail rather than more coal trains depends on whether people vote Green for the Senate next Saturday. I will come back to the double peril involving the Senate in a minute.

First, I want to remind you, Ladies and Gentlemen, of some of the other policies the Greens are putting before the Australian people. You may have missed them for very good reason - too much of the news pages have been too full of piffle to cover them.

The Greens will end discrimination in the marriage laws of Australia: this issue rankles out there. Young Australia is in revolt over it.

The Greens will accord with international law and give asylum seekers the respect and compassion they deserve in Australia, in an election where the dire prediction of a tsunami of boat people has proven false.

The Greens will roll out the remainder of the $16 billion schools building program. We got that through the Senate as part of the Rudd-Swan $43 billion stimulus package. The Coalition opposed this package which saved Australia from recession. Tony Abbott now threatens this school funding program, if voted into office next week. That threatens projects in both the private and public schools of Australia.

For the Senate on Saturday, I hope voters will remember it was the Greens, against Tony Abbott's opposition, who ensured those thousands of Australia's public schools, as well as independent schools which benefited from the schools building program and more, which, if the Coalition is elected, face being cut out immediately.

We will work with the next government for a triple referendum: to recognize Indigenous Australians in the Constitution; to acknowledge Local Government in the Constitution; and for a new vote on Australia becoming a republic, for an Australian as our Head of State.

The Greens propose a Murray-Darling management commission with teeth: able to make sure those urgent measures to save the nation's greatest river system will be implemented.

We advocate a National Register of the foreign ownership of farmlands and water rights.

We will legislate for truth in political advertising.

Our policy is to extend the nation's marine reserve system, including the Coral Sea, to guarantee the future of Australia's fisheries and marine ecosystems.

We will meet the aspiration of over 80% of Australian voters to end the needless destruction of Australia's remaining wild forests and woodlands and their biodiversity.

Christine Milne has announced our $5 billion national loans guarantee fund for 'first of kind' renewable energy projects like base-load solar, wind, geothermal and ocean power.

We would also extend Rachel Siewert's amendment to the workplace laws, which entitles parents of pre-school children and children with a disability to have flexible working hours. The Greens will work for flexible work hours for all carers. Carers deserve such a break - after all they contribute $30 billion to Australia's economy each year.

One topic is not up for debate with the old parties - Afghanistan. Australians may be divided on the deployment of our troops, though most Australians want the troops brought safely home. But all Australians support and honour the courage and commitment of the brave 1600 who are in Afghanistan. We should honour them further by debating their deployment in the Parliament. The parliament of The Netherlands did, to the extent of forcing an election, and so the Dutch contingent is now on its way home. I will pursue a debate on Afghanistan in our parliament - so that every elected MP contributes for once - when parliament sittings resume after this election. We politicians owe that debate to our Defence Force Personnel and to the nation.

The Greens back Labor's National Broadband Network which can deliver dedicated broadband speeds of one thousand megabits per second to 93% of the population. Whereas the Coalition can only promise that same 93% that their broadband speeds will be no worse than a peak speed of 12 megabits per second. I put on the record here that the Greens will also move to prevent the future privatisation of the NBN without an act of Parliament.

The Greens will call on the next government to commit to an international ban on the mining and manufacture of asbestos. Asbestos continues to be used in developing countries - with over 2 million tonnes produced in 2008. There are an estimated 125 million people around the world still exposed to asbestos in their home and work environment. Australia, with its own terrible experience of asbestosis, can lead in helping the World Health Organisation and International Labor Organisation to achieve a comprehensive ban on asbestos.

The Greens will also move to establish a Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), which will provide economic and budgetary advice to Parliament, similar to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in the United States. This PBO would provide alternative costings for budget and policy, removing the reliance on government departments. It would put an end to the squabbling over debates on the economy and the costing of policies between the major parties which has dominated this election campaign and many before it. A Parliamentary Budget Office will make our democracy better informed and more accountable to the people.

Which takes me to the next Parliament. Let no one undervalue the rolled-gold contribution to the House of Representatives there will be if the people of Melbourne - or of Denison or Grayndler or Sydney or Brisbane or Adelaide or Fremantle - vote a Green MP onto the floor of the House of Representatives.

Adam Bandt, if elected for Melbourne, can take into the House the program I am outlining here today. He will not be just another backbencher. He will be there to advocate and campaign, over the next 3 years, for the Greens' platform of innovation. He will be able to introduce legislation to end marriage discrimination. He will back the rights of refugees. He will move to abolish the dubious Australian Building Construction Commission, and he will advocate better funding for schools in need. A Labor or Liberal member for Melbourne will do none of these things.

In the Senate, the Coalition is one seat short of control, especially in the 11 months until newly elected senators from the six states take up their seats in July next year. However, if the Australian Capital Territory Greens' Lin Hatfield Dodds displaces Liberal Senator Humphries - he who also voted against the schools building program - she will immediately take up her seat and so ward off that domination of the Senate. She will be a Greens front bencher replacing a Liberal backbencher.

In the ACT, voters are very aware that the Abbott team is committed to cutting 12,000 positions from the Commonwealth Public Service in 2010. One study indicates that, with flow-ons, this could cost 30,000 jobs.

So the prospect of a Coalition dominated Senate looms large. Labor can't win a Senate majority. But if a Gillard Labor government is elected this Saturday, a Coalition dominated Senate will spell parliamentary deadlock. If an Abbott government is elected, and also controls the Senate, that will leave Parliament every bit as debilitated as it was in the Howard years. Remember how between 2004-07 the hugely unpopular WorkChoices laws were rammed through both houses, and Telstra was sold out of public ownership? That's why a vote for the Greens in the Senate is so important.

The ACT will save the day if it votes for Senator Hatfield-Dodds. But the Greens bonus is within the reach of every other Australian voter too. In Queensland, the Senate option is Greens candidate Larissa Waters, in NSW it's Lee Rhiannon, in Victoria it's Richard Di Natale, in South Australia it's Penny Wright, and in the Northern Territory it's Warren H Williams. And of course, Tasmanian and Western Australians can ensure the return of two of contemporary Australia's most outstanding parliamentarians, Christine Milne and Rachel Siewert.

The Greens are on twelve to fourteen percent in the polls. Yet we have injected most of the nation-building ideas into this campaign. Where the Coalition and Labor are failing the hopes of Australian, we offer stability, experience in leadership and a real vision for voters to latch on to.

We will give Australians the accountability they deserve in the Senate. We will be the people's watchdog, whichever party wins office next Saturday. That is my commitment to all Australians.

I do have a vision for Australia. And I won't be consulting the telephone book to refine it, and I won't be asking you to suspend belief unless it is written down. The Greens are the smaller party with the big ideas for Australia, up against the bigger parties with the small ideas.

That's why, next Saturday, Australians who seek an assured, secure and exciting future, should go to the ballot box with a new purpose in mind and vote Greens!

This is copy and pasted from the Greens policy at its website... No mention of banning any form of fishing/hunting. The Greens are the only party who are actually trying to protect fishing/hunting.

Please... Don't listen to the rabid wowsers... Do your own research.

Fisheries

Goals

The Australian Greens want:

the management of recreational and commercial fisheries to maintain sustainable populations and fisheries, and to minimise the environmental impacts of fishing.

protection of fish nursery habitat.

environmentally benign aquaculture industries.

a strategy to maintain adequate, biologically representative ‘no-take’ areas within each fishery and/or marine bioregion for the conservation of marine biodiversity and fish stocks.

Measures

The Australian Greens will:

complete the independent ecological assessment of Australia’s commercial fisheries under the provisions of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

expand fisheries assessments to all Australian fisheries, including recreational fisheries, and develop and implement a national framework for managing recreational and charter fishing.

increase the number of Australia's marine reserves, particularly where these improve the resilience of vulnerable fish populations.

strengthen and continue Australia’s proactive stance on illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, including assisting in the development of alternative employment opportunities for impoverished communities now relying on the illegal trade.

in cooperation with the states and territories, develop a nationally agreed framework for the assessment and regulation of aquaculture developments based on ecosystems management principles.

implement a moratorium on deep-sea bottom trawling in Australian waters and require by-catch reduction in all trawl fisheries.

maintain adequate, biologically representative ‘no-take’ areas within each fishery and/or marine bioregion.

ban all factory-ship based fishing in Australian pelagic fisheries.

These model aeroplane engines look similar and have been available for a few years now... They have not been as popular as the traditional engines but I have not heard of any problems with them...

RCV120-SP

EX -adios,Is that what you want, adios aviation at Essendon. Are you, perhaps, an EX-parrot?????

Do you actually have any idea of the uses to which Essendon is currently put ---- a broad spectrum of aviation businesses ----- if you can't answer your own question in the affirmative, what are you doing here?????

Written before the announcement of the resource tax...

Why the resources tax can be a good thing... And what it is because it seems most of us don't know.

It’s called the Resource Rent Tax and, for those of us who want to see the development of frontier mining towns into sustainable communities, it is a thing of beauty.

It is always reassuring to hear the mining industry cry poor when new ideas are put forward to share the benefits of the resource boom.

While the big companies and their lobbyists are sharpening their tongue to decry a new ‘tax’ the rest of Australia should be hoping that a new tax is exactly what emerges from the Henry Tax Review.

The tax is called the Resource Rent Tax and, for those of us who want to see the development of frontier mining towns into sustainable communities, it is a thing of beauty.

It works like this.

It is an “extra” tax levied on the “additional” profits that a firm makes because it has been given exclusive or privileged access to a limited resource - in this case the minerals owned by the Australian public.

A firm can make super or excess profits from mining because not everyone has access to the mineral resource. That is, there are only a certain amount of mineral reserves (though more does tend to be found) and the government allocates leases to only a small number of players. Further, there are other “barriers to entry” in that most firms lack the scale and expertise to get into mining.

Economic theory holds that if any industry is making excess profits (over the “normal” rate of profit of somewhere in the order of 8-15%) then competitors will enter the industry, and keep entering, until profits fall to the long-term normal rate.

But in mining the combination of government regulation and other barriers to entry can mean that there are only a few players, their output is less than perfectly responsive to market demand, they command a premium price and they make super profits.

These super profits can be taxed heavily by government without affecting the investment decisions of the few players, because they will continue to invest, and keep existing operations going, as long as they make at least a normal profit.

This is therefore an effective tax for governments to deploy, as the tax revenue is collected without (in theory) adversely affecting the level of economic activity in the industry.

Of course the mining companies will cry poor – but right now they have huge profit margins and are making billions of dollars from Australia. The existing royalties they pay are a minor part of their expenditures. And the income tax they pay? At most it is the same as other industries, even though most other industries do not get the benefit of privileged access to Australia’s public assets – its mineral resources.

The Resource Rent Tax is a crafty instrument – it is calculated on profits, on the success of a venture.

With all projections pointing to massive increases in the resource sector over the next 30 years, the tax has the potential to bring in billions of dollars of additional revenue each year – while still allowing mining companies to make large profits. Remember – it’s only a tax on profits above and beyond a generous threshold.

This will have two clear benefits to Australia.

First, in development of mining communities – it can provide a revenue stream that should have a significant chunk devoted to the rural and remote regions from where it came. Mining towns are all too often desperate and deprived places – not enough housing, schools, hospitals, playing fields, swimming pools and other community infrastructure. A Resource Rent Tax can and should improve the social infrastructure of mining towns – something mining companies stopped doing for two decades and have only recommenced in recent years in a piecemeal and inadequate effort to retain more workers.

Secondly, and just as importantly, the income from a Resource Rent Tax can be the basis of a broad sovereign wealth fund – a way of transforming wealth in the ground to long-term wealth above the ground. A source of wealth that can exist for generations after the minerals are gone – providing assets and income for future Australians in this century and the next.

Critically any decision needs to be made quickly. This shouldn’t be a debate that goes on forever. Mining communities need certainty, and businesses need investment certainty.

The Henry Review is an opportunity to be visionary in the way we build our nation. The presence of one good tax – the Resource Rent Tax – would show it is meeting this challenge.

By John Maher

I am going to vote Greens.

Well you said to come back and tell you...!

Please Bill...Post the exact references to the above scare mongering tactics you have misquoted above on the Greens Website...

I am guessing you don't know where that is because you have gotten all the above from another political source so I will post the link for you...

http://greens.org.au/meet-us

I am not saying the Greens are perfect...or that I agree with 100% or their policies... but I am yet to see a policy that has any meaning from the other parties.

Strangely enough... the use of Marijuana in the USA is double of that in the Netherlands among their populations. Don't take my word for it... do your own research. What does that tell you?

The thing with the Greens policy on drug use is that it is based upon facts, not popular fiction or fear as so many of the 2 major parties policies are, and the same applies to the Greens policy on homosexuality and Asylum seekers.

Add Mackay to that list and anywhere to the west of it...