The water was like glass, reflecting the harbourside lights. The dawn stuck the Opera House sails, burnishing them rosy gold as the ship’s engines turned a 90 degree angle to dock at the terminal.

There are only two other cities that compare – NYC on the Hudson, past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and Venice with the Grand Canal and Santa Maria della Salute.

I cruised home into the Harbour three times and each time it was absolutely stunning. Only Vancouver harbour comes close to the beauty of it. Cartagena in Colombia and Panama City were also pretty but still not as good as Sydney Harbour.

Miltonf, a suggestion while you are in Deni. Find some time to visit Lawson’s Siphon just out of town. (The info centre will give you details.) This is an incredible engineering site where a channel is diverted under the Edward River. I stood and looked at it for ages, then read up on it later and I still can’t get my head around it.

Best Man tried to explain it all to me and I nodded and thanked him, but have no idea how it works. I think it’s a bloke thing.

https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-147322047/view

Ah, just looked at that photo (enlarged) and finally, I see what they did. Quite amazing.

How it works is one thing. How it was constructed is another.

I know a dude who’s on the board of one of these large super funds connected to the unions. I don’t see him often, but when I do, I ask him how the fund is doing. He’s always telling me how the private investment side of the fund is doing really well and it’s holding up investments in publicly listed entities.

Sure.
He would say that, wouldn’t he?
The fundamentals of CBD property (which industry funds are yuuugely exposed to) are so obviously screwed.
And the irony is, they have been screwed by left-leaning politicians cultivating a work-from-home culture.

Seven answers claims of missing documents in Bruce Lehrmann case
By stephen rice

• NSW Editor
• 8:29PM April 8, 2024

A search of the Seven Network’s email systems produced just four emails between its staff and Bruce Lehrmann during the more than six months it negotiated with him to appear on the Spotlight program, according to an affidavit sworn by the network’s outgoing commercial director, Bruce McWilliam.
The full affidavit was released by the Federal Court on Monday as lawyers waited for judge ­Michael Lee to announce when he will deliver judgment in the defamation case brought by Mr Lehrmann against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson over an interview with alleged rape victim Brittany Higgins. Justice Lee is now expected to deliver his judgment by the end of the week, after being delayed last week when Ten successfully sought to reopen the case, citing fresh evidence from disaffected former Seven producer Taylor Auerbach.
Auerbach alleged perks were provided to Mr Lehrmann while Seven was trying to convince him to hand over his exclusive interview rights, including reimbursing him for sex workers and illegal drugs, and admitted to charging his Seven corporate card with thousands of dollars for massages for himself and Mr Lehrmann.
Auerbach also claimed Mr Lehrmann provided Spotlight with confidential information from his criminal rape trial as part of his interview deal. Mr Lehrmann has denied giving the program such information. Auerbach also alleged in the affidavits that he deleted material after the show aired, at the request of Seven executives and due to his “understanding” of a comment made by a lawyer, a request that if made after two sub­poenas were issued by the court last year could constitute a contempt of court.

Justice Lee ordered Seven to produce an affidavit explaining why it had produced fresh documents in answer to a subpoena it was compelled to respond to a year ago. Ten barrister Matthew Collins KC told the court it “beggars belief” Seven had only been able to produce one communication between Mr Lehrmann and producers in the months leading up to his interview.
The court was told last week that Mr McWilliam had signed an affidavit saying the network initially only conducted “limited searches” of communications between Mr Lehrmann and the Spotlight production team, relying on “untested assurance” from Spotlight executive producer Mark Llewellyn there were no communications to produce.

Mr McWilliam says in the affidavit that when Seven was first served with the subpoenas in June and August last year he “believed that all appropriate searches and enquiries were undertaken” to comply. However, the network had become aware last week from media reports of Auerbach’s allegations “that there was additional material in Seven’s possession”.
After a search, the company was able to locate accounting records showing payments for travel arrangements Auerbach had claimed were for the benefit of Mr Lehrmann.

However, those payments pre-dated Seven’s contract with Mr Lehrmann, Mr McWilliam said, and “were not believed to be payments ‘in relation to the Lehrmann Spotlight programme’.”
Four emails were located relating to a real estate inspection of the property rented for Mr Lehrmann; a shooting schedule for the program; travel arrangements; and a copy of a promo for the second Spotlight program.
Mr McWilliam said he had been informed by Mr Llewellyn that the members of the Spotlight team “only spoke on the phone or in person with Mr Lehrmann, with the result that I believed there were no communications to produce”. “Given Mr Llewellyn’s status as Executive Producer, I had no reason to doubt his indication that no written or electronic communications with Mr Lehrmann existed,” he said.
“Consistently with that indication, the extensive searches of Seven’s email systems that have now been performed were not performed at that time.”
Seven has denied it reimbursed Mr Lehrmann for any expenditure used to pay for illegal drugs or prostitutes, and says it complied with all its obligations in responding to subpoenas.

Australian woman in her home on Oct 7th butchered, not so much outrage from the current foreign minister.

Why ignore her Israeli citizenship?

Why ignore her Israeli citizenship?

Confirmation of death of Australian woman in Israel | Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs (foreignminister.gov.au)

Fuk off you piece of shit.

NDIS for predator Wayne Wilmot in Janine Balding killing

• exclusive

By christine middap

• Associate editor, chief writer
• 9:30PM April 8, 2024

One of the country’s worst serial sex offenders, who was involved in the brutal 1980s abduction, rape and murder of Janine Balding, is set to be released from custody with the help of an NDIS support package.
Wayne Wilmot, a remorseless criminal with psychopathic traits who poses a “significant risk” of carrying out further ­attacks on women, will be freed under tight supervision and electronic monitoring.

I would have volunteered for the firing party that shot that filth, at dawn, and gone on to eat a hearty breakfast with every evidence of enjoyment.

The Green-Left Radio (now Half) Hour formerly known as AM has a kitten as they discover time of use metering and “smart” meters. The connection with the death of The Little Reef that Could which followed immediately afterwards may have escaped them.

Who would have though The Legover Man was the answer to the cost of living crisis?

Speak of the devil!

At its heart, Bruce Pascoe’s Black Duck is a love story of both people and CountryBy Tony BirchApril 9, 2024 — 5.00am

Listen to this article
5 min
MEMOIR
Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra
Bruce Pascoe with Lyn Harwood
Thames & Hudson, $34.99
When Bruce Pascoe published Dark Emu with the Indigenous-owned publishing house Magabala Books, he could not have foreseen the phenomenon that the book would create. Ten years after its release in 2014, Dark Emu has sold close to 400,000 copies. It has had a major impact on our understanding of the relationship between Aboriginal agriculture and Country.
The book has also met with controversy, most of it surfacing when it became obvious that the reception of Dark Emu was also producing energetic dialogues of inclusion and respect between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.

Pascoe’s critics took aim at his argument that Aboriginal people could not be relegated to the status of mere hunter-gatherers. The irony should not be lost that those who suddenly sought to privilege the concept of the hunter-gatherer, were defending a trope that had historically supported the legal sleight of hand, terra nullius, being that Aboriginal peopled wandered on Country and had no productive claim to it.
What Bruce Pascoe highlighted with Dark Emu was a sophisticated interconnection between agriculture, sustainability and Country.
:
While some argued over the interpretation of archival documents and footnotes, others influenced by the book accepted the generosity offered by Pascoe in subsequent lectures, writers festival conversations and the inevitable Ted-Talk.
Pascoe was able to harness a willingness, or more perhaps an existential desire, among a sector of the non-Aboriginal community to end a narrative of conflict, to reconsider their relationships to Aboriginal people and Country, and to proactively address the ecological damage to land caused by colonial agricultural practices and increasingly, climate change.
Dark Emu was primarily a challenge to existing power structures and the marginalisation of Aboriginal people. Pascoe was able to build strong and sustainable relationships, which were themselves a threat to the inequitable status quo. Aboriginal communities became interested in Pascoe’s work.
It was gratifying for Aboriginal people, particularly in south-eastern Australia, to realise that, finally, their traditional land-management practices were being valued, and that young people in their communities could engage with Country with renewed pride. Non-Aboriginal rural communities and farmers were also influenced by Pascoe’s research. Some have since forged partnerships with him.
Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra is structured as the story of a year’s activities on Yumburra farm, a property on far south-east Gippsland where Bruce Pascoe and his partner, Lyn Harwood, run the enterprise Black Duck Foods. It is a venture they were able to establish due to the commercial success of Dark Emu.

The book visits the six seasons of Indigenous culture on the farm, from “late summer”, through “autumn”, “winter”, “early” and “late spring”, before ending in “early summer” the following year. We are provided with an insight into the commercial operation of the farm, and Pascoe’s poetic eulogising of the bread baked from harvesting indigenous grain. He sure loves his bread.
We also meet the many characters, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people who have been drawn to Pascoe’s vision. But Black Duck is far more than a log of a farmer’s year on the land, a story of the occasional eccentricities of rural life, or Pascoe’s need to habitually mention the Richmond Football Club. (An annoying, decades-old tic of his.)
This is a deeply philosophical book. It is the story of a man and the woman he loves deeply, their growth as individuals, as a couple, and parents and grandparents, deeply respectful of Country and the need to live humbly with it. At its heart, Black Duck is a story of watching, listening, reflecting and hopefully, growing.
It may seem odd to describe the book as a “comfort read”. The book addresses the difficult issues of frontier violence and massacre, the heartbreak of seeing a loved dog in pain and having to shoot it, and the continuing damage done to Country by the ill-informed and wilfully ignorant. The concept of comfort could also dilute the power of Black Duck, particularly when the political etymology of the work conjures memories of ex-prime minister John Howard’s “relaxed and comfortable” recipe for engaging with the past.

Black Duck reinforces our need to actively care for Country. There are many people across Australia doing so, regardless of the obstacles they face. I take comfort from the fact that having faced damaging bushfires, droughts and the increasing occurrence of un-natural events, people such Pascoe, Harwood and many others reject a sense of helplessness. They are on the front line of ecological activism in the truest sense.
I take great comfort in my understanding that Aboriginal communities across the continent are the knowledge holders we need to protect Country into the future, and to fully value the non-human animal and plant species that create the balance we require to become genuinely inclusive.

Don’t you feel the need to rush out and buy a copy? Naah, me neither.

Tim Blair:

Cowardice is probably too strong a word.

Let’s just say instead that a significant number of Australians have in recent times obviously converted to a chicken-based neurological threat assessment system.

This isn’t a merely local issue. Rather, what we are looking at here is a matter of global realignment.

It should concern us deeply as a nation that we have become more frightened and panic prone than even the French.

Yes, the French, fairly or otherwise long held to be international symbols of spinelessness.

The Simpsons mocked the French as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”. Formerly funny satire site The Onion once referred to Paris’s celebrated Arc de Capitulation, a monument that will stand forever – or “at least until it is hammered into rubble by a foreign conqueror”.

Such slurs should now be rightfully directed at us, for unlike the French, we Australians are spooked by even the basic idea of nuclear energy.

Lord only knows how we’d cope with the reality. Picture half the nation’s workforce staffing red-hot help lines in-between suffering trauma meltdowns themselves.

By comparison, the French – allegedly so timid and meek – have absolutely blitzed the entire nuclear issue. They aren’t alarmed by nuclear energy today and they weren’t alarmed decades earlier.

Back in 1998, British-born, US-based journalist Jon Palfreman visited France to see how the country’s latest nuclear facility was coming along.

“Civaux in southwestern France is a stereotypical rural French village with a square, a church and a small school,” Palfreman reported for the American PBS network.

“On a typical day, Monsieur Rambault, the baker, is up before dawn turning out baguettes and croissants. Shortly after, teacher Rene Barc opens the small school.

“There is a blacksmith, a hairdresser, a post office, a general store and a couple of bars.”

It all sounds lovely. Until we hit the next line, which is certain to distress nervous Australians. Trigger warning.

“But overlooking the picturesque hamlet are two giant cooling towers from a nuclear plant, still under construction, a half-mile away … the Civaux nuclear power plant comes on line sometime in the next 12 months.”

Oh no! Surely everybody was irradiated and killed! Or else they bunged on such a hissy fit that the plant was stopped on account of it endangering local baguette farms or mimes hanging out at the escargot hatchery.

Nope. Possibly to Palfreman’s surprise, the locals adored it.

“In France,” he wrote, “nuclear energy is accepted, even popular. Everybody I spoke to in Civaux loves the fact their region was chosen.

“The nuclear plant has brought jobs and prosperity to the area. Nobody I spoke to, nobody, expressed any fear.

“From the village schoolteacher, Rene Barc, to the patron of the Cafe de Sport bar, Valerie Turbeau, any traces of doubt they might have had have faded as they have come to know plant workers, visited the reactor site and thought about the benefits of being part of France’s nuclear energy effort.”

That was 26 years ago. The Civaux plant presently employs some 1300 people and churns out loads of delicious high-grade zero-carbon non-lame sparkles every single day.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, by the way, the plant is “flexible in operation according to the needs of the grid operator” and can ramp up “from 30 per cent to 95 per cent of full power in only 30 minutes”.

Well, how about that. It recharges faster than your average EV.

Keep in mind that line about nobody in Civaux expressing any fear about a nuclear facility in their backyard. A report in The Sunday Telegraph noted the opposite when it came to proposed nuclear sites in NSW and Victoria.

“Coalition sources said focus group research carried out in the Hunter Valley in NSW and the Latrobe Valley in Victoria in recent weeks found hostility to the proposed polices,” the piece revealed.

“It found that while voters were aware of the general arguments for nuclear power, they were hostile to plans for reactors in their own areas.”

Dear God. Just consider for a moment how far we have fallen.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the Hunter Valley, and am not unfamiliar with Victoria’s Latrobe region. Fine people. Honest people. Strong and straightforward people.

But, now they reject something not only useful but also completely harmless. They don’t want their area spoiled by something that won’t spoil their area at all.

Perhaps a study tour is required.

Perhaps we should send a delicate delegation from the Hunter to Civaux, so they could meet and be consoled by croissant jockeys, beret babies, truffle wranglers and other rugged French bruisers.

It would be quite the spectacle, wouldn’t it, planting some fearful Australians in a Civaux cafe with a couple of nuclear cooling towers just 800m away.

I am available for hand-holding.

He’s very good is Mr Blair.
As for the poll that shows a bit of a NIMBY attitude, I reckon that could be bullshit, perhaps a ruse by Labor to never allow nuclear. ‘Coalition sources’?
A spot 5km from town here would be perfect for a smallish set up. Already an electricity grid installation. Solid foundation, leveed from flooding. ‘Dr’ Anne Webster might not want it but nuts to what she thinks, for she is worse than useless.

Albanese risks his lasting legacy being the Albovilles.

Just like Hoovervilles but without the charm.
?

What Bruce Pascoe highlighted with Dark Emu was…

the gullibility of many on the prog-left.

Top Gun: Maverick lawsuit rejected by US judgeStaff WritersReuters
Tue, 9 April 2024 6:37AM

Paramount Pictures has won the dismissal of a lawsuit claiming its 2022 Tom Cruise blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick borrowed too much from a 1983 magazine article that inspired the original Top Gun film.
US District Judge Percy Anderson in Los Angeles said the sequel was not “substantially similar” to Ehud Yonay’s Top Guns, about the US Navy’s Top Gun fighter pilot training school in San Diego.
Yonay’s widow Shosh Yonay and son Yuval Yonay, heirs to his copyright, said they deserved some of the sequel’s profits, after Paramount built a billion-dollar franchise off an article that “breathed life into the technical humdrum of a navy base.”
The plaintiffs will appeal, their lawyer Marc Toberoff said.

“Once Yonay’s widow and son exercised their rights reclaim his exhilarating story, Paramount hand-waved them away exclaiming, ‘What copyright?’” Toberoff said in a statement. “It’s not a good look.”
Paramount said in a statement, “We are pleased that the court recognised that plaintiffs’ claims were completely without merit.”
Top Gun: Maverick featured Cruise reprising his role as US Navy test pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.
It grossed $US1.5 billion ($A2.3 billion) worldwide, becoming Cruise’s biggest film, and is the 12th highest-grossing film according to Box Office Mojo.
The plaintiffs, both from Israel, claimed that the fictional “Maverick” was “derivative” of nonfictional Top Guns because of similar plots, characters, dialogue, settings and themes.
But the judge said copyright law does not protect factual elements such as the identities of real people in Top Guns, or familiar plot elements such as pilots embarking on missions, being shot down or carousing at a bar.
He also said copyright law does not protect themes such as “the sheer love of flying,” or the only specific dialogue – “Fight’s on” – identified in both works.
“No reasonable juror could find substantial similarity of ideas and expression,” Anderson wrote.
Anderson also said Paramount was not required to credit Ehud Yonay in the sequel, as it had in the 1986 original Top Gun with a “suggested by” credit, after the Yonays in 2020 terminated Paramount’s exclusive movie rights to his article.
The article was published in the May 1983 issue of California magazine.

As for nuclear not being viable, tell that to Gates:

Next Wave of Nuclear Can’t Come Soon Enough | RealClearEnergy