First time first

Vikki Campion:

Welcome to the wonderful world of Disney economics, and it would be a joy to watch if we didn’t have to pay for it.

After the Labor Member for Gosford’s contribution to the NSW Net Zero Future Bill this week was to quote 25 lines of Dr Seuss’s The Lorax, we should not be surprised that this skillset filters down to departmental spreadsheets.

The latest magnum opus in the fantasia of net zero targets is an Excel spreadsheet dreamt up by some luminary who has obviously never hired an electrician themselves, hired a truck or called a tip to dump thousands of tonnes of landfill.

The Wind Energy Decommissioning Calculator, currently on exhibition with the draft Wind Energy Guidelines, starts with a wind factory of 75 towers, 137m high, the dwarf older brother of the monstrosities being built now.

Users can change certain elements, including the height and weight, but using NSW Planning figures on this particular wind farm, it “calculates” the cost of decommissioning per turbine; once the copper, steel, alloy and even concrete (at $20 a tonne) are sold for scrap, will cost a bargain $40,056.95.

Going straight to landfill is 467 tonnes of electronics, 3113 tonnes of polymer, and 3891 tonnes of carbon glass composites. Yet the pre-filled cost of landfill in the calculator is zero dollars.

It assumes turbines will go to landfills within 200km of the site. Using their hopeful figures, where every possible recyclable is recycled, that’s 560,325 tonnes of landfill.

Will local councils be ordered to accept this? Maybe they can chuck them in the creek because apparently they don’t have to comply with any other environmental guidelines.

It assumes the trucks doing disposal will travel 80km an hour. Turbines are built on steep hills on dirt roads, not the German autobahn.

In calculating transport costs, it assumes “that tower will be transported in four pieces, generator will be transported in 10 pieces and blades in three pieces. Hence there will be 17 truckloads for one turbine”.

Local transport operators in a renewable energy zone quoted around $50,000 to get 17 trucks from northern NSW to Sydney – about a six-hour drive. Yet according to NSW Planning, each truck will drive 10 hours for a mere $34,000.

It assumes it will cost $1640 for two electricians to do electrical work per day. Getting one electrician to Woolbrook for two hours to replace light fittings was more than $400, and decommissioning a wind tower is slightly more complicated.

Specialist electricians laughed and quoted “at least double and maybe five times as much” than the $82 an hour the NSW government has assumed in its calculator.

They are on whatever drugs the guys who made Fantasia were taking if they think specialist sparkies will travel and spend the whole day pulling 35,000m of cable out of each tower (again, their figures) for around $800 each.

We have learned from Snowy Hydro 2.0, which started at $2bn and is now $12bn and rising; your desktop assessments can be 600 per cent wrong and continue to climb.

What was the original spreadsheet for Snowy Hydro 2.0, like? Consider Florence the borer, who they thought would travel 300m a day – (not 150m and then stop for years). Even though she doesn’t move, the owners haven’t stopped charging. If one crew is out of sync and the others must stop, no one clocks off and waits for free.

This Pinocchio calculator is getting an awfully long nose.

A 2019 report in Minnesota puts the cost of decommissioning at $A800,000 per tower while a US Office of Energy Efficiency report puts it at more than $A300,000. Yet none go as low as NSW, which believes that once you sell components for recycling, each tower will cost just $40,000 to pull down.

Step back and ask a simple question, how much work is in a massive wind tower, and how much work is in an extension of my house?

If the Minns and Albanese governments are confident of their numbers, they should underwrite any cost blowouts.

Yet the one thing no government is doing, and nor is any proponent, is taking responsibility for decommissioning turbines. They trip over themselves giving overseas companies secret subsidies to build them, but where are Penny Sharpe and Chris Bowen taking responsibility for pulling them down? The dirty little secret is the farmer is responsible for that.

Every cent from these towers will need to be put in a bank account to decommission them in the future. Otherwise, they will end up collapsing in a paddock, and the land that rotting infrastructure is on may be unsellable.

When will they tell us who is responsible for the decommissioning of the wind towers and rehabilitation of the land, just as the responsibility is on the proponent, and underwritten by government, for decommissioning and land rehabilitation for coal mines?

Luckily, this calculator has a disclaimer saying no person or entity associated with the development of the calculator is liable for any loss or damage whatsoever that may result in the use of the template or any errors or omissions in its contents.

“Users of the calculator must exercise their own skill and judgement and should seek advice from a suitably qualified experts, where appropriate (sic).”

The net zero fantasy has so many chapters – what they think they can achieve, how much it will cost, and one of the greatest parts of this production, is at the end they magically disappear into thin air.

Eye watering numbers. Lol at the ‘calculator’ devised by someone who obviously lives in a bubble.
The general consensus is that Labor will be a one term government so that gives Bowen not much time to totally destroy Australia’s landscape, and seascape with plans for offshore wind installations. Which I think the calculator may well explode trying to work those offshore numbers.

Bugger…this should have been in bold as well:

Mr Markiewicz wrote: “How can you possibly suggest … they didn’t intend to cause ­offence? So they have no responsibility for their actions? These are educated and informed people who have to grasp complex concepts, learn and absorb a lot of information and lines. Again ludicrous and insulting”.

it’s a powder keg, and the West are paying for it.

Fetterman

confirmation of what was suspected. Possibly why the Bibas family might have been killed too.

as sickening as hamas is, the complicity of the msm is incredibly disheartening, no doubt in the cause of diversity, hamasisis apologists are who really runs too many media outlets.

calli
Dec 2, 2023 7:35 AM

May Allah receive him in the usual way.

72 goats. Who knows if they are virgins or not.
Poor goats.

due to “three people wearing scarfs”.

And in that one quip that fellow reveals himself as either dishonest or ignorant – neither of which traits recommends his company.

One thing I have picked up from people I know in the theatre scene is that actors rarely understand the works they perform in. They understand the story – the sequence of events, they understand their own characters’ motivations (at least to the extent required to make them angry or sad or happy), but they don’t understand the ideas the piece is presenting.

The Arafat rags are just another way for them to not understand things, so it comes to them naturally.

here comes the next round of pandemic scare story
because it’s the low energy political path

After 7 weeks of silence, UN chief calls to investigate Hamas sex crimes on Oct 7

What sort of democracy can “mandate” what products and quantities must be sold? I thought that went out of fashion with Soviet five year plans.

Nearly 4,000 Car Dealers Beg Biden to Stop as EVs Kill Profits

She’s EXPOSING the WEF false flag coming in 2024, Journalist Whitney Webb | Redacted

Zatara
Dec 2, 2023 8:22 AM
Trump has been ruled to have no immunity to lawsuits

They are playing an extremely dangerous game. The cops, the DC Mayor, Pelosi, Schumer, etc. enjoy ‘qualified immunity’ for their actions. That can disappear as well and shite is really going to hit the fan if so.

What is scary is that they act as if Republicans will never again win a federal election and that there will never be an accounting for their abuse of process and laws.

Meet the Roadrunner.

Why Our Legal System is Collapsing

“In the English legal system, there was the King’s Bench, which followed the law, and then there was the Queen’s Bench, which exercised “equity” for sometimes imposing the law strictly was unjust. Take the case where an 18-year-old boy has been prosecuted for child molesting a 17-year-old girlfriend because her father pressed charges. After all, he did not like his daughter dating that boy. Under the law, someone under 18 is supposed to be incapable of understanding anything and thus cannot consent to sex – but they could change their sex or be vaccinated without parents ever knowing.

This was an abuse of law. Many could be prosecuted for that crime if a senior in high school dated a freshman. It is what you would call “inequitable,” and some countries have defined that as a percentage between the ages. That is far more reasonable than this arbitrary line of being 18.

This concept of “equity” goes back to ancient Roman times. The image was Aequitas pictured holding the scales in one hand and a cornucopia in the other. However, Thrasymachus observed that there is no justice, for it will always be defined as the self-interest of those in power. Just look at the people imprisoned for being escorted into the Capitol Building on January 6th. It was orchestrated and instigated by the Deep State so that they could try to use the 14th Amendment to prevent Trump from ever holding office again.

They rigged the 2020 election, and that is something the CIA has done in other countries all the time, and the former head of the CIA has admitted doing so on FOX News. I was asked to invest $10 billion into Russia for the 2000 election to be rigged to take over Russia. On a rumor that someone sold the market to undermine the Republicans during the Great Depression, Hoover launched investigations that turned up nothing. Still, they created the Securities & Exchange Commission anyhow. As Herbert Hoover wrote in his memoirs, apologizing for those investigations:

“Sometimes when a government is enraged, it burns down the barn to get the rat.”

There is no rule of law. It is always the will of those in power – nothing more. Even Charles Dickens has written about how corrupt the legal system had become back in 1853. Dickens wrote in Chapter I of his famous novel Bleak House, “In Chancery,”

“Suffer any wrong that can be done to you rather than come here!”

Indeed, the current state of American federal courts has once again reached its lowest point, completing the revolution of the wheel of political fortune. This desperate attempt to prevent Trump from being elected is destroying the very foundation of law, and people who even hate Trump should be very concerned. Once they do this to Trump, they set the precedent and will do it to whomever they do not want to run. The very idea of a democratic system has crumbled to dust. They should fight Trump at the polls, not orchestrate fake insurrections, and try every scheme possible to stop him using laws that have never been applied to anyone else in such a manner.

Fauci was using a private email so his shenanigans would not be discovered under the Freedom of Information Act. Guess what? That is why Hillary has a private server – to hide what she was doing from being discovered. Look at Pelosi. How many millions did her husband make from stock trades on inside information that would cause anyone else to be in jail for 20 years? If I had my mother buy stock in a company I was advising on a takeover, that would have been illegal. The same rules do not apply to politicians.”

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/rule-of-law/why-our-legal-system-is-collapsing/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=RSS

No bold type being used here.

And this is NOT Investment Advice. This is being stated for the uninitiated here.

Report: Truce fell apart after Hamas proposed new talks to release male hostages instead of freeing remaining female abductees

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.

– Milton Friedman

unwra unhappy

Seconded, BJ.

Gosh, BJ is a lucky man; brains and beauty:

Black Ball
Dec 2, 2023 5:19 AM
Vikki Campion:

Welcome to the wonderful world of Disney economics, and it would be a joy to watch if we didn’t have to pay for it.

janet albrechtsen janet albrechtsen
Bruce Lehrmann and Brittany Higgins: the gladiatorial civil sequel

12:00AM December 2, 2023

For those unfamiliar with the home ground of the Canberra Raiders, the Bruce Stadium can hold a heaving crowd of 25,000. This week, a different kind of “Bruce” stadium attracting a similarly large, though virtual, crowd materialised in courtroom 22A in Sydney’s Queens Square. The defamation trial brought by Bruce Lehrmann against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson has attracted, at times, an online audience of about 20,000.

The first half of this live-streamed YouTube litigation has become the unofficial rape trial to determine whether the former Liberal staffer raped Brittany Higgins in Linda Reynolds’ ministerial office on March 23, 2019.

Once Ten’s lawyers decided to run a truth defence to the defamation claim, this latest chapter in the Higgins-Lehrmann saga was destined to become a gladiatorial civil sequel to last year’s criminal proceedings that ended in a mis­trial after juror misconduct.
Read Next

The first part of the trial dealing with the truth defence during the past fortnight will appeal to those interested in the salacious allegations surrounding the events of March 2019.

For the first time, Lehrmann is giving evidence and, more to the point, being cross-examined.

Higgins is also back in the witness box, once again giving evidence and being cross-examined, but this time she is not a complainant. This is not a criminal trial and the rules as to what evidence and what questions can be put to Higgins are markedly different.

The second half of the trial will traverse Ten and Wilkinson’s other defence: that of qualified privilege under section 30 of the Defamation Act. The defendants claim that in publishing material that was defamatory they, as a media organisation and a journalist respectively, behaved professionally, reasonably and in the public interest when airing the rape allegation against Lehrmann.

But this week, it has been all about establishing that the imputation that Lehrmann raped Higgins in Parliament House in 2019 is substantially true. Running a truth defence under section 25 of the Defamation Act can be the equivalent of knowingly buying a ticket on a runaway, driverless train. While Ten, Wilkinson and their lawyers know what evidence they have to run their qualified privilege defence, they could not know for sure what Higgins would say this week in the heat of cross-examination.

This is high-stakes litigation for all parties. A better description is a god-awful mess. The truth defence is not for the faint-hearted or the penniless. It will require enormous financial resources (in this case 40 witnesses are slated to appear), a more qualified legal team than the original prosecutors, and an understanding that, even then, the defendants are spinning a legal roulette wheel. Ten and Wilkinson must show that the imputation – conceded by them – that Lehrmann is a rapist is substantially true. The standard of proof is the balance of probabilities, but the court must take into account the gravity of the matters alleged in forming a view as to whether the standard is met.

This means that an allegation of a serious crime requires more evidence to satisfy the standard of proof than a lesser crime. Lehrmann and others potentially defamed for allegedly committing serious crimes have one of Australia’s greatest judges – Sir Owen Dixon – to thank for this bit of common sense. His obiter comments in Briginshaw v Briginshaw from 1938 ultimately were codified into section 140 (2) of the Evidence Act.

Matt Collins KC – whose chosen salutation is Dr – elicited many concessions from Lehrmann during a cross-examination that ended this week. Lehrmann admitted to buying Higgins alcoholic drinks on the night she was allegedly raped, despite earlier saying he couldn’t recall. He admitted to lying about why he went to Parliament House that same evening. Justice Michael Lee heard that, after news first broke publicly of the alleged rape, Lehrmann sent a message to a close friend saying: “They wouldn’t name, would they?” Collins put to Lehrmann that this message “reveals a consciousness that you knew the allegations were about you”. Lehrmann denied this.

Lehrmann faced more forensic interrogation from the formidable Sue Chrysanthou SC on Tuesday.

When Wilkinson parted with Ten’s legal team, she chose the barrister who was once metaphorically serenaded by a stranger writing on the letters page of a newspaper.

After Chrysanthou interrogated Shane Drumgold at the Sofronoff inquiry, this letter writer quoted Sir Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake: “With head upraised, and look intent,/And eye and ear attentive bent,/ And locks flung back, and lips apart,/ Like monument of Grecian art.” Few lawyers attract praise, let alone literary prose, from the public.

The thrust of Chrysanthou’s cross-examination of Lehrmann was to elicit from him that he believed it was Drumgold who ruined his life. While Sofronoff found that Drumgold “deliberately advanced a false claim of legal professional privilege and misled the court” to keep relevant documents from the defence”, Chrysanthou’s real aim was to remind the judge that Sofronoff found that the ACT chief prosecutor also “knowingly lied” to the ACT Chief Justice when claiming that a note about the warning he allegedly gave Wilkinson before her Logies speech was written “contemporaneously” by his instructing solicitor.

Where Chrysanthou goes, there is usually colour and movement. Her live-streamed tete-a-tete this week with Lee, who not unreasonably wanted to prevent any double-barrelled cross-examination of Lehrmann, was misconstrued by some dolts on X as a wicked male judge treating a poor female silk with disdain. Pfff. Chrysanthou gives as good as she gets, which is one reason she is a sought-after silk. The other reason is that she wins defamation cases, not just using qualified privilege but on the harder truth defence.

In August, Chrysanthou scored a legal victory for Pauline Hanson, overturning on appeal a $250,000 defamation bill Hanson copped for making claims that Brian Burston sexually abused a female staff member in his parliamentary office. The appeal court found that Burston had engaged in “degrading and humiliating” conduct towards his staffer. In that case there was corroborating evidence to support Hanson’s truth defence.

In court 22A during the past fortnight, Justice Lee has far less to work with – there are only two diametrically opposite accounts of he said-she said.

When Higgins arrived late on Tuesday afternoon to give evidence, many were reminded of a tweet she posted on December 7 last year, just six days after then ACT director of public prosecutions Drumgold announced he would not pursue a second trial of Lehrmann because of her mental health. Higgins tweeted that she was “willing to defend the truth as a witness in any potential civil cases brought by Mr Lehrmann”, adding later that it would be “in a slightly more favourable court”.

What did Higgins mean by more favourable? During the criminal trial, neither the DPP nor ACT Chief Justice Lucy McCallum was unfavourable to her. Perhaps Higgins imagined that Lehrmann’s criminal barrister, Steve Whybrow SC, would not be part of a possible civil case. If so, she was wrong: Whybrow cross-examined her again his week. And this time Higgins has faced questions that McCallum would not allow during the rape trial because in this civil proceeding the former Liberal staff member is no longer a complainant. Perhaps by more favourable, Higgins meant in a defamation trial a different standard of proof applies. That is certainly the case. But still, the likelihood of this trial establishing the truth is a 50-50 bet at best.

On Thursday, just before 11am, Whybrow’s cross-examination of Higgins began. Higgins admitted lying to police and her friend Ben Dillaway about going to the doctor for STD checks. She admitted to lying about wearing underwear on the night of the alleged incident in her early discussion with Wilkinson. Most damaging, she admitted the bruise on her leg that she photographed might have been caused by her “tripping up the stairs” while drunk that night. Under oath at the criminal trial she said the bruise was sustained “during the course of the assault”. She made the same claim to Wilkinson to corroborate the allegation that kicked off a national scandal.

Whybrow put to Higgins that she tried to save her job by claiming she was raped in the minister’s office. Higgins rejected that. Whybrow’s contention is that Higgins had a pattern of adjusting her version of events when new material came to light, and that she had financial incentives from her book deal to maintain the lie that Lehrmann raped her.

In a moment of high drama, or maybe high farce, Higgins told Justice Lee: “If I ever actually finish the book, I will donate all $200,000 whatever to charity. I don’t care about the money.”

The trial has exposed inconsistent statements and lies by both Lehrmann and Higgins. Who knows how many more lies there are? While on social media the Higgins and Lehrmann camps have bunkered down, lobbing vile abuse at their chosen nemesis, including the lawyers, Justice Lee will have to determine who, on the balance of probabilities, is lying.

So far, the legal fraternity is divided. Some say Lehrmann’s admissions have destroyed his chance of negating Ten’s truth defence. Others say the opposite, that there is no smoking gun and judges see inconsistencies and lies elicited in the witness box all the time without it being fatal to a defamation claim.

The second part of the trial, presumably starting next week, will be the main attraction for those more interested in the role of the media. Ten and Wilkinson are relying on qualified privilege in airing the allegation in the way they did some two years after the relevant events. We will learn whether they acted professionally, checking sources, distinguishing between allegations, suspicions and proven facts, and whether it was in the public interest for them to air The Project interview. More on that here next week.

However, the main issue for thoughtful Australians won’t be on trial in the Federal Court. The question we must all wrestle with is how serious #MeToo allegations should be dealt with.

Should allegations be ventilated in public, and litigated in large part by the media and political classes before they get to a court? If so, how does one preserve the presumption of innocence, due process and an uncontaminated jury pool?

#MeToo advocates may have been delighted at the momentum started by The Project interview with Higgins, and unconcerned about any damage to Lehrmann. Critics, on the other hand, worry that the ends cannot justify the means, that the wider public interest in maintaining a defendant’s presumption of innocence bled away every time Higgins was celebrated for her bravery, treated as a victim by political and media supporters, not to mention by the ACT Victims of Crimes Commissioner, and promoted as the face of #MeToo in Australia.

Whatever your view on this larger issue, it cannot be denied this case became a media, political and legal circus – and a travelling one at that – from federal parliament to every part of the media, to the ACT Supreme Court to the ACT board of inquiry into the handling of the criminal trial and now the Federal Court. All because of one early decision by Higgins. Telling her story in the media before she had formalised a police complaint had the effect of unleashing a baying crowd free from the constraint of the rules against pre-trial publicity.

Higgins and Lehrmann are the most obvious victims of this god-awful mess, but there are so many others, including Kimberley Kitching, Fiona Brown, Linda Reynolds, Michaelia Cash and their many traumatised staff, all tortured by the media and political trials.

As always, the only winners will be the lawyers. Except for those noble ones who, effectively, have acted pro bono.

This just in:

Martin Armstrong’s sentient AI supercomputer has just predicted the assassination of Julius Caesar—to the very day!

As always, the only winners will be the lawyers. Except for those noble ones who, effectively, have acted pro bono.

Bastards.

Joe Burns top scored in Qld’s second innings against WA in the Sheffield Shield. Hopefully he is in line for a call up to the Aus Test team this summer.

Farmer Gez
Dec 2, 2023 10:26 AM

We need Jesus back to heal the clueless.

Ta Farmer Gez. Brilliant. I’m stealing it and going to use it.
Looks like I will have to attened a turnout with Mrs Beertruk’s ‘Cuzzies (IN Zid™).’
Especially on one of them, a 30ish knowitall greentard voter who works for Tel$tra if the opportunity arises.

“If I ever actually finish the book, I will donate all $200,000 whatever to charity. I don’t care about the money.”

Who said noblesse oblige was dead?

Most people will tell you litigation is all about the principle. The entire process is noble.

calli, 8.02am, condolences on your sad loss.

Awhile back I spent 6 weeks at the Mater, in ICU and recovery in the same surgical unit after contracting a flesh-eating bacteria which did its best to carry me off. Thanks to the skill and care of the medical and nursing staff I made a full recovery, but it was the full commitment and kindness of the people there through some touch-and-go moments, to my family as well as myself, that stays with me.