I know that when Jones expresses an opinion, there is a bit of a grain of salt on the butter, and possibly he will go with the ultra right wing... But when Jones exposes some information, it is usually 99.997 per cent accurate... I have no idea in this case but from what I have heard around the trap and read in columns, I have the feeling that Jones is spot on... The premier and deputy premier may be bending bananas...

 

Now that Newman and Seeney are suing Jones, the Queensland electorate might discover who Jones is:

 

Alan Jones has placed himself firmly in the Queensland election, doing a special broadcast on local radio but also becoming the story himself after the premier and deputy premier filed legal action against him.

But how influential is the Sydney media personality in the sunshine state?

Informal street surveys in Rockhampton and Brisbane found most people knew who he was, younger people vaguely recalling him as a radio man and older men remembering his football career.

Jones is broadcasting during Queensland’s election campaign on Fairfax-owned radio 4BC, which last year held 6.2% of Brisbane’s morning audience, compared with the Brisbane ABC station’s 12.4%.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/23/alan-jones-is-covering-the-election-and-hes-being-sued-by-the-premier-but-do-queenslanders-know-who-he-is

 

The one interesting thing in the law suit is that the premier and his "side-kick" (Jones words) seem not to deny the deed... They "resent" the tone in which Jones exposed the "facts"...

 

After Gold Coast MP Ray Stevens'outrageous behaviour this week to avoid questions about his conflict of interest in the Gold Coast Skyride development, fellow Mermaid Beach candidate Gary Pead (ALP) recounts his long opposition to the cableway and its massive problems.

Talking, laughing and the chinking of glasses could be heard at the Courtyard Café after the 2001 election of the Beattie Government in Queensland. Then Environment Minister Rod Welford had joined us at our celebration, confirming that the proposed Springbrook cablewaywould not go ahead.

Everybody was ecstatic at the announcement, but also overwhelmingly relieved after the months and years of hard work by theCableway No Way campaign workers. Finally we could get on with our lives knowing that Springbrook National Park was in safe hands.

Our café, which we purchased in Mudgeeraba when we moved to the Gold Coast in early 1998, quickly became the meeting place of the Cable Way No Way campaigners. We organised protests, campaigners lobbied minsters; we worked hard, for years to try and put this issue to bed.

The local counsellor of the time, Peter Armstrong was felt by the campaign workers to be vacillating in his support of the Naturelink project (the cableway). So, my wife Jill ran against him in 2000 as an independent, with a clear undertaking that if she were elected to council she would not support the cableway.

Here we Joh again! The GC Skyride and The Integrity of Mermaid Ray, by David Donovan (@davrosz) http://t.co/1vRJln239E

— IndependentAustralia (@independentaus) December 22, 2014

As it happened, an independent affiliated with the LNP, Ted Sheppard, did agree to back the project if elected and won his bid to become division 9 councillor, with the obvious support of Ray Stevens, who had a personal financial interest in the Naturelink Cableway project.

Fast-forward 15 years and here we go again — only this time, Ray Stevens is using his almost unassailable position as the MP for Mermaid Beach to guarantee the success of this Skyride project, in which he has a major financial interest. To ensure the project’s success, he voted in parliament to change legislation that would allow commercial developments in national parks. Additionally, he voted to weaken the Crime and Corruption Commission’s ability to investigate the dealings of members of parliament. This is a clear breach of the trust that his electorate has placed in him to act with integrity and honesty, and to act in their best interests, not his own.

In a presentation at our café, well before the “reconciliation actions”, we learned from esteemed local Aboriginal elder, the Reverend Graham Dillon. It was the country of Graham’s grandmother's Dreamtime stories. We learned the correct pronunciation for the area was “Ma-ji-ri-bah” not “Mud-ger-ra-ba” and was reputed to mean “a place where lies were told”. This is because of an alleged aboriginal massacre by settlers in the area of today’s Somerset College. 

The lies, though perhaps not the bloodshed, appear to have continued to the present day.

The cable project was rejected 16 years ago due to a list of reasons – financial, environmental and safety – as long as my arm.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/here-we-go-again-mermaid-ray-versus-cableway-no-way-,7289

The Liberal National Party (LNP) has failed in a bid to gain a court injunction against the Labor Party over a series of polling booth signs.

The white and purple banners were hanging on voting grounds in the Redlands electorate on Brisbane's bayside with the words: "Remember to number every square".

The LNP argued in the Supreme Court that this was misleading.

But Labor state secretary Anthony Chisholm said the party was allowed to continue displaying the signs.

Meanwhile, the lobby group Get Up said the LNP had sought a Supreme Court injunction over its how-to-vote cards urging people to put the LNP last on their ballot paper.

 

read more: 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-31/queensland-election-lnp-takes-labo...

It looks that the Campbell Newman government in Queensland has been defeated in a "historical electoral earthquake"... The most boring, but most sensible economic and political comment made on the night was from Wayne Swan on the ABC 24... Check it out...

 

New Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk can claim a magnificent victory in defeating the Newman Government. Steve Bishop examines how she has failed her first test and sets out some of the challenges she must conquer.

NEW QUEENSLAND Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk faces a critical trial early on in her reign with Cyclone Marcia threatening"calamity". We can only hope she demonstrates a sure and steady hand as winds and rains batter and flood the central and south-eastern part of the State.

However, Marcia has not been her first test. Her first challenge, after winning the unwinnable election, was selecting her own Cabinet. Her own words show she has failed this test, with her admitting accepting MPs chosen by the factions.

Of the Cabinet selection, she told Brisbane Times: 

“I have put my rubber stamp on it.” 

How is “rubber stamp” defined?

 

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/new-qld-premi...

 

Please IA, give the woman a chance to find her feet... attack if you will, the former minister for marriage counselling now in charge of shafting the Aussie workers who could build submarines as good or better than the Japanese, a minister who was shafting the Aussie workers previously in the Howard Government as work choices implementator...

 

Publishing house University of Queensland Press (UQP) has been accused of rejecting a tell-all book on Campbell Newman because of decisions his government made relating to the arts by the author and former MP Gavin King.

Mr King is writing the book after losing his seat in the January 31 poll and told Fairfax radio the response from UQP was in stark contrast to interstate publishers.

"It's not that they rejected the book, it's the manner in which they've done it," he said.

"UQP were among six or seven publishers that I touched base with over a week ago.

"They were the only ones I didn't hear from and when it was announced a couple of days ago they emailed me basically saying thanks but because you cut our funding, or in fact, cut the funding to the Literary Awards, not directly to them, we're not interested, it would be a betrayal of the Queensland literary community.

"It didn't sit right with me because it's like, well hang on, you're a university, you're funded by taxpayers, where I would have thought free speech and debate and all kinds of political ideas were explored and encouraged.

"The fact [is] that they hadn't read a single word of the book. We've had other publishers [including] interstate publishers who came back to us within hours, within days asking for a sample chapter [and] all that type of stuff and they're considering it now.

"If it's a crap book, read it first and then reject it."

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-26/newman-biography-rejected-in-purely-political-move-by-uqp/6265334

 

Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman has dropped a defamation lawsuit against Alan Jones over the broadcaster’s attacks on his Liberal National government during the state election campaign in January.

Newman and his former deputy Jeff Seeney, who had accused Jones of libel by suggesting they “prostituted” themselves in support of an LNP donor’s controversial coal mine, both filed notices to discontinue the legal action in the supreme court on Tuesday. 

Their lawsuit, which was followed by similar claims against Jones by former treasurer Tim Nicholls and ex-top bureaucrat Jon Grayson, took a form that suggested it was principally intended to gag Jones, some legal sources argued.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/apr/29/campbell-newman-and-jeff-seeney-drop-defamation-case-against-alan-jones

-----------------------------------

Meanwhile:

 

The Acland coal mine expansion, controversial  approved by the Newman Government following a timely six figure 'donation' by the mine proponents, may have run into a potential road block with the new Government. Alex McKean reports.

A GREAT DEAL of attention was focused on the approval of a controversial Stage 3 for the New Acland coal mine in the recent Queensland election. Of particular interest were allegations levelled by guest 4BC radio host Alan Jones that the Newman Government had broken a promise by approving the massive expansion to the mine just prior to the election being called.

These allegations appeared to incense the upper echelons of the LNP government, particularly when Mr Jones appeared to link the unexpected approval to donations totaling upwards of $700,000 by the mine proponent to the LNP and Liberal Party coffers.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/coal-mine-expansion-approved-after-700k-lnp-donation-faces-hurdle,7640

 

---------------------------------

 

and:

 

Queensland's miners will need a miracle to profit from coal now

 

 

 

The Sea of Galilee is known, in Biblical tradition, as the location of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. According to the gospels, Jesus fed a multitude (variously reported as 4,000 or 5,000 people) with only five (or perhaps seven) loaves of bread and a few small fishes, and still had many baskets of food left over.

The Galilee Basin, in central Queensland, is on the opposite side of the world. It appears that a similar process is happening, but in reverse – with even greater doubt about the exact numbers involved.

Solar has won. Even if coal were free to burn, power stations couldn't compete

Giles Parkinson 
Read more

 

In the leadup to the Queensland state election Campbell Newman’s Liberal National party promised to deliver 22,000 jobs in the Galilee Basin, of which Adani’s Carmichael mine alone was supposed to provide 10,000. These claims were used to justify an injection of government equity into a rail line connecting the mine to the Abbot Point coal terminal.