This is a lightly edited diary of the Parliamentary Defence Exchange 3-13 April 2012 to Al Minhad, Tarin Kot, FOB Mirwais and Kandahar Air Field. Thanks in particular due to Captain Simon Petie, whose patience and generosity in looking after four special needs individuals made this trip so valuable. Day 1 – Al Minhad Airbase, UAE It’s about 8:30pm local time, on a bunkbed with the sound of an air conditioner and the roar of cargo planes for company.
The 2010 election delivered up a ‘plague on both your houses’ outcome that is still kicking out the occasional aftershock. To a visitor from Europe there would be nothing particularly remarkable about the idea of a multi-hued Parliament in which political parties and independents are forced to sit down and negotiate on the passage of laws. That, after all, is what Parliaments were designed to do. But there’s something in the Australian political culture, from the press gallery to the opposition benches, that refuses to understand or assimilate the reality of a minority government.
I rise to speak on the Mining Tax bills with mixed feelings. This comes partly from being a Western Australian Senator. Dealing with these bills has exposed the degree to which Canberra views my state as little more than a lucrative and ever expanding hole in the ground. I want to set one myth to rest at the outset: the idea that the support of the Greens for fair taxation of this industry means we are anti-mining. Of course we are no such thing – a big wind turbine, perhaps for many people the symbol of the transition that
Created on the eve of the mining tax debate in the Senate – in an effort to visualise the numbers behind the policy and express a certain frustration in the outcome. Created mainly in adobe after effects 5.5 with help from photoshop and a little bit of carrara 5. Music composed in logic audio. Script mainly by ebony bennett, with help from david paris, clare ozich and john hawkins. i’d like to be able to do more of this stuff.
In introducing a document of this kind, the first thing to note is that the text speaks for itself. This is not a work of analysis or opinion, but a straightforward chronology of accident, incompetence and disaster spanning seven decades. The key unifying theme here is nuclear technology, roaring into modern history out of the blinding singularity that lit the sky over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The twin industries of nuclear weapons and civil nuclear power hold a unique and forbidding place in our lives as the 20th century recedes and the forgotten struggles of the Cold War
Midnight, December 31 2011. Fireworks lit up world capitals timezone by timezone. The cheerful familiarity of the Sydney Harbour Bridge passing the pyrotechnic baton to Taipei; the Burj Dubai; the London Eye; a packed Times Square. No matter where you were that night, maybe you missed the news that at while nobody was watching, US President Barack Obama was signing the 2012 National Defence Acquisition Act (NDAA) into law.
Created for ‘The East Perth Power Station History Project‘, a wonderful piece of online history documenting the evolution of the Swan River Colony’s first power station. The 3D model was built up using original plant schematics dating back to 1916, with a lot of help from Dr Richard Hartley and other good folk at Engineers Australia. Big thanks to Marjolein Towler for letting me in on this great piece of work. 3D work in Carrara 6, compositing in after effects 5, music composed in logic audio.
No-one was celebrating when it became apparent that the dense hour of argument and counter argument in the vaulted courtroom number 4 in London had resulted in a further stay of extradition for WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange.
Much of the debate around uranium sales to India – inside the ALP and in the broader community – will be viewed through the lens of the self-evident interest in maximising revenues from a commodity that Australia already sells to a dozen other nations. I suspect most people, if they’re interested at all, will wonder what the fuss is about. We sell the stuff to a nuclear-armed communist dictatorship and the organised crime syndicate formerly known as Russia, so why not sell it to the world’s largest democracy?