Opinion

The Voice is not on the agenda of two of the three local governments in the Central Australian bush, and it is understood that this is also the case with the MacDonnell Regional Council ... Adrian Dixon, President of the Central Desert Regional Council, said the Voice had not been spoken about in the council and there had been no consultation about the Voice ... And  Barkly Mayor Jeffrey McLaughlin says:  “We don’t need a Voice, we want an Ear first.”

Despite the cheap price of land in the Wheatbelt, and the abundance of jobs, country towns are not being bowled over by first home buyers, so what’s going on? ... We are following the route that the rust belt States across America have experienced for the past 50 years as cities like Detroit has collapsed from 1.7m people in the 1950s to 700,000 today ... for the benefit of the National Party, Liberals and Labor if listening, here is a policy idea which you could run with at the next election.

As our nation struggles with the ambiguity and to some the divisive nature of 26th January as a national day of celebration young Australians have turned to Anzac Day for a sense of clarity in what it is to be Australian? The sight of Australian High School students shedding tears over the graves of their ancestors in the cemeteries of Gallipoli or the sense of pride they feel when hearing their National Anthem played in Anzac services in Villers Bretonneux in France or the Menin Gate in Belgium, suggest there is a need to know our nation has contributed to a higher moral cause and so generates a sense of pride in their country.

Emma Pritchard, Rodney Stevens. High school students will be banned from using mobile phones at school from Term Four 2023 in an election commitment from the Minns Labor government designed to improve students learning and social development ... While students will still be able to carry their mobile phones to and from school, the ban will apply during class, recess, and lunch ... I don’t really agree with it: Cooper.

Despite evidence to the contrary, the WA Minister for Forests (Jacki Jarvis) continues to argue that the WA timber industry had to close because it has run out of wood as a result of reduced growth rate due to climate change, quoting reports from CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology as evidence. Neither of these organisations has any involvement in the determination of timber yield.

John O'Donnell assesses the Productivity Commission's limited recommendations regarding natural disaster management in its latest report, "Advancing Prosperity", and concludes that the PC and governments have missed key opportunities to better nail natural disaster management across Australia.

An Australian-first program designed to restore critical environmental water flows to the Murray-Darling Basin, while meeting the ongoing needs of local irrigators and growers, has been proposed as an “immediate, affordable and genuine” solution to the nation’s Basin Plan – avoiding the need for short-term, unpopular water buybacks as announced by the Federal Government.

The Victorian Minister for Regional Development has completely avoided answering a question in the Victorian Parliament regarding the forced takeover of private land near the 12 Apostles ... “Why are you removing another safeguard of the private property rights which define civilised society?” Member for Western Victoria, Bev McArthur asked.

A recent report on the Water Supply and Demand in the Southern Murray-Darling Basin released by the Victorian Government conveys the catastrophic convergence of events that are unfolding under a plan to “restore the balance” and “save the Murray.” The report brings into focus the extent to which water scarcity will increase in the future as existing and new permanent horticulture plantings explode below the natural constraints of the river system and fight for dam storage.

Gavin Butcher. Analysis of publicly available data by respected scientist Dr Lachie McCaw has shown that claims by Premier McGowan and his coterie of Forestry Ministers, Jarvis and Kelly, to be without substance. The WA government had stated that one of the reasons the timber industry had been axed was because the trees are no longer growing. Dr McCaw has used published data on the long-term forest monitoring plots called ForestCheck to demonstrate that the harvested forest is growing and the uncut forest is in decline.

Leader of The Nationals and Member for Maranoa David Littleproud is calling on locals to deliver their own notice to Australia Post, by sending a loud and clear message to continue services in the area ... It comes after Australia Post removed much-loved red street post boxes from Maranoa communities in Weengallon, Guluguba, Macalister, with two boxes moved to metropolitan areas.

What is a sacred site? According to the government, sacred sites are places within the landscape that have a special meaning or significance under Aboriginal tradition. Hills rocks, waterholes, trees, plains, lakes, billabongs and other natural features can be sacred sites ... When heritage moves from easily identifiable caves, rock art, convict buildings and federation houses to mythical spaces that are not registered on published maps, widely known and regularly visited, then we face endless abuse of process, as everything everywhere becomes sacred with a price attached to any disturbance.

The frequent claim by police that it cannot act on street kids unless they are committing a crime does not seem to hold water for the person in the street when they look at Territory legislation ... These issues have been broadly discussed in Alice Springs for years, including in an ongoing campaign by Tourism Central Australia (TCA), representing the region’s economic lifeblood. “If a child is on the street at 2am or even later, they should come under the care of the Government,” says TCA’s CEO, Danial Rochford.

While the Centre is facing what experts say is likely to be the biggest bushfire season in recorded history, the question is not what the NT Government is doing about it, but what it is not. The first blaze is already under way, in the Ormiston Gorge area of the West MacDonnells.

Despite the public perception that the only way to protect species is to create more conservation reserves, Forestry Australia’s view is that koala recovery can best be achieved through a landscape-wide approach to active management of these populations and their forest habitats across all land tenures. There is considerable evidence that the National Park estate is continuing to be degraded due to unnatural fire regimes, pests and diseases, and a lack of active management to mitigate their impacts.

Dr Simon Quilty. Today,  National Close the Gap Day, while there is a lot of focus on alcohol, crime and violence in communities such as Alice Springs, it is the long-term, underlying issues that are the real problem here. We are definitely experiencing difficulty in attracting, retaining and housing health professionals right across the NT, addressing this issue in isolation of the greater social disparity only makes the problem worse.

"Farmers and landholders are keen to regenerate millions of kilometres of eroded and degraded watercourses throughout this country, but environmental and planning regulations are preventing many of them from undertaking this valuable work, due to the time and cost of submitting multiple applications, special reports and detailed designs to multiple government authorities for permission to undertake on-ground works," says Mulloon Institute Chairman Gary Nairn A.O.

Lindsay "Linz" Johanssen. Buffel grass (Cenchrus Ciliaris) is not just invasive. Environment-wise, it is  utterly transformative ... Buffel thrives on being burned. Vigorous new growth follows subsequent showers of rain, so recreating (and episodically contributing-to), a new fuel load ... Buffel’s burn / rapid-growth rebuild / ready to burn again fire cycle will, over time, simply kill or destroy everything that is not protected or cannot evacuate ...