Anidav posted:

YOU CANNOT BE SETTLED IN AUSTRALIA

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/immigration-spends-more-than-defence-on-medals-for-its-staff-20160116-gm78gi.html posted:

The cost of the medals comes on top of the millions of dollars spent on the rebranding related to the creation of Australian Border Force, the department's paramilitary frontline agency.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

Hope they get them all a bravery medal like last time.

adamantium|wang posted:

There is something deeply, darkly humorous about this

https://twitter.com/AuskarSurbakti/status/852843213152858113

Bogan King posted:

Chicken Parmigiana posted:

Seems like a shame to have not changed every instance of his name to 'Sucker MC' while they were at it.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

Staff apparently aren't willing to return, due to safety concerns.

Could this be what gets the camps closed down?]








lol no they'll just get scabs.

quote:

It was a brutal killing. Almost three years ago, 79-year-old farmer Ian Turnbull shot dead state environment officer Glen Turner on a country road near Moree in north-western NSW.

Turner and colleague Robert Strange had pulled over to take photos of piles of fallen trees on fire in a field owned by Turnbull, whose family had been previously prosecuted for illegal land clearing.

When the farmer arrived in his ute with a rifle, he shot Turner in the chin without warning. As the 51-year-old went down then staggered back to his feet, Turnbull shot him again in the shoulder.

For more than 20 minutes, Turnbull menaced Turner and Strange as they crouched behind their vehicle, setting off an emergency beacon and ringing 000 to get help.

When the environment officer ran for cover in nearby trees, Turnbull shot him in the back and left him to die.

Convicted of murder and sentenced to a maximum 35 years in jail, the patriarch of a family of grain farmers whose land holdings cover more than 4000 hectares died in custody at the age of 82 last month.

As soon as the murder hit the headlines, it fascinated film-maker Gregory Miller, whose credits include environmentally themed documentaries on climate change (Cool School Antarctica) and China (New Beijing: Reinventing A City).

"I went up to Moree and did research," Miller says. "And as soon as I got up there, it was like touching a raw nerve.

"Everyone was totally on edge. Everyone you spoke to had an opinion. Even though the murder took place 40 kilometres outside Moree, in a little town called Croppa Creek, everyone was connected."

Miller has now finished the documentary Cultivating Murder, which looks at the consequences of the killing and the tensions between farmers and environmentalists over land clearing for large-scale cropping. It starts a series of screenings around the country on April 20. 

"We thought we were making a film about a poor farmer who had been driven to the edge but as things went on it became very clear that wasn't the case," Miller says. "The evidence showed he was not a poor farmer to start off with; he was rich.

"He wasn't unduly under financial stress as a result of the Office of Environment and Heritage investigating him. And the court decided that he wasn't suffering from any mental illness.

"It was a businessman trying to make a point – a public statement for a number of powerful business interests in the area, of which his family was one, that they were not to be pushed around.

"They had a sense of entitlement about their business operations. They thought 'I bought this land freehold and people shouldn't be coming and telling me how I should be running it'."

Miller goes as far as describing Turner's death as a political murder.

"It was a strike at the government, a bold statement, and also a personal vendetta," he says.

Cultivating Murder shows Turner's partner, Alison McKenzie, daughter Alexandra, son Jack and sister Fran Pearce struggling to deal with his death.

"Some days are just quite normal," McKenzie says of life with her children. "Other days they'll get very, very sad. It could be that they've got something on at school or just something that they want to show their dad. All I can do is hug them and tell them that their dad would be proud of them."

She agreed to be in the documentary because "she doesn't want Glen's memory to be lost", Miller says. "She believes the circumstances around the murder are still not fully known. For her, it was an assassination."

The film also shows the environmental damage that land-clearing has caused in the area, including the destruction of koala habitats.

"Koalas all over the east coast of Australia are under massive threat," Miller says. "It's bizarre that we're not just killing off the Great Barrier Reef, we're killing off our iconic native animals."

A phone conversation by Turnbull that was recorded from prison gives his perspective. "How are we going with the bloody thing as far as fighting these bastards and paying the bloody fines and whatnot?," he says to a family member. "The main thing is to get the bloody EP and H off our bloody back so the boys can go ahead and farm."

Outside the court, the film shows Turnbull's son Grant calling for changes to the Native Vegetation Act, which covered land clearing in the state at the time of the murder.

"The politicians need to listen," he says. "It's not just my father. It's many people out in rural NSW that are extremely frustrated ... with the way it's administered and the act itself." 

While it is not mentioned in the documentary, a judge in the Land and Environment Court ordered Grant Turnbull to carry out repairs worth $4.5 million last year for illegally clearing 508 hectares of land. 

Cultivating Murder raises questions about the impact from the state government's review of its environmental legislation, with the Native Vegetation Act replaced by the Biodiversity Conservation Act, following a push by the Nationals and the Shooters and Fishers Party for greater land-owner rights to clear land. 

"There's a small group of land developers and wealthy farmers in the area of which Turnbull was one," Miller says. "They pushed the agenda to get the law changed because it doesn't suit their business model to preserve the environment in any way. It suits their business model to have complete carte blanche."

Miller believes the threat to the rural environment has increased because the new legislation was rushed and badly written. 

"Similar acts in Queensland have led to a great increase in clearing and in NSW we're starting to hear of reports but it's not being investigated," he says.

"There's very little land left out there to maintain species, to maintain bio-diversity of any sort."

As he made Cultivating Murder, Miller sat in the court most days during the eight-week trial. 

He believes the murder was triggered when Turnbull was caught red-handed clearing protected land even while being investigated. 

"The photographs show that," he says. "They show piles of timber on fire. [Turnbull] decided that this was the moment he was going to act.

"Two years earlier, he had threatened to shoot Glen. He said 'what can they do to me? I'm an old man. If I do it, I'll be out on bail, it'll take a long time for the court case, I'll probably be dead by then.'

"So he'd worked it out. He was up for it."

Miller hopes the documentary will contribute to tougher legislation to restrict land clearing around the country.

"I think that's what Glen would have liked," he says. "The film is very much dedicated to Glen. He didn't just work for the Office of the Environment and Heritage, he was very concerned about the environment.

"He owned a beautiful property outside Tamworth and he planted a thousand trees on it. He believed in what he was doing."

Cultivating Murder's national screenings include Sydney's Chauvel cinema on April 20 and Melbourne's Australian Centre for the Moving Image on May 13.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

Staff apparently aren't willing to return, due to safety concerns.

Could this be what gets the camps closed down?]








lol no they'll just get scabs.

The Age posted:

It's one of the most recognisable museum exhibits in Melbourne, where thousands have tested themselves against perhaps Australia's greatest athletics star.

A man is taking legal action against the Scienceworks museum after he ran "flat out" into a wall and fractured his spine while racing a virtual Cathy Freeman display.

Dean Smith, 44, filed a writ in the Victorian Supreme Court last week against the Museums Board of Victoria claiming he had been unable to work since suffering the severe injuries in June last year.

According to court documents, Mr Smith was running on the 10-metre dual-lane track against the computerised sprinting champ when he ploughed into a wall, injuring his skull, ribs and spine.

The digital exhibit, which has been a feature of the Spotswood museum for more than a decade, consists of a series of images of Freeman that illuminate in quick succession to reflect her speed on the running track.

Patrons can pit themselves against the 400m gold medallist by trying to beat the images as they light up.

Mr Smith told Fairfax Media that he was attending Scienceworks with his partner and two children on a family day out when he decided to try out the exhibit. After one warm-up effort, he wanted to have another go at beating Freeman.

"All these little things made me think I could beat her, I got a bit competitive thinking 'I can take on Cathy Freeman'," he said.

The digital exhibit, which has been a feature of the Spotswood museum for more than a decade, consists of a series of images of Freeman that illuminate in quick succession to reflect her speed on the running track.

Patrons can pit themselves against the 400m gold medallist by trying to beat the images as they light up.

Mr Smith told Fairfax Media that he was attending Scienceworks with his partner and two children on a family day out when he decided to try out the exhibit. After one warm-up effort, he wanted to have another go at beating Freeman.

"All these little things made me think I could beat her, I got a bit competitive thinking 'I can take on Cathy Freeman'," he said.

Mr Smith's injuries, which are detailed in his statement of claim, include fractures of the C1 and T3 spinal vertebrae, a rib fracture and bilateral occipital condyle fractures at the rear of the skull.

"Straight away I could feel my back was broken. The pain was intense, I couldn't speak properly, I couldn't breathe properly," he said.

The vertebral artery supplying blood to his brain had also been crushed, Mr Smith said, causing him to have a stroke since the incident happened.

The former pool fence installer said he still feels pain in his neck and back is seeking damages including loss of earning capacity due to being unable to work since the incident.

"No one wants to run flat out and put their head into a wall," he said.

"I'm just thankful that I can walk, it could have been so much worse.

"I have been told that if I had just moved my neck a certain way then I could have been paralysed."

In his writ, Mr Smith claims the operators of Scienceworks were negligent because they failed to provide adequate room to run and stop, failed to supply padding to prevent injury and failed to provide sufficient lighting in order to see the wall.

Supplying a track with a wall at the end of it was also negligent, the writ alleges, as was failing to warn Mr Smith the wall was there.

Nick Korkliniewski from the law firm Arnold Thomas and Becker said his client was only millimetres away from becoming a quadriplegic.

"Mr Smith was enticed to run as fast as he could in a poorly lit exhibit with only a very short stopping distance at the end of the race, no warnings or appropriate signage," he said.

"The lack of duty of care on the part of Scienceworks has led to these significant injuries."

A Museums Victoria spokesman said they were unable to comment on the matter due to active legal proceedings.

Bogan King posted:

So it sounds like you should not run flat stick into a wall trying to outrun a digital Cathy Freeman over a 10m track. There goes my long weekend plans.

Kurtofan posted:

the article doesn't say if he won the race

Bogan King posted:

So it sounds like you should not run flat stick into a wall trying to outrun a digital Cathy Freeman over a 10m track. There goes my long weekend plans.

I, Butthole posted:

Melbourne man outsmarted by hundreds of thousands of children not running into wall at museum

adamantium|wang posted:

https://twitter.com/australian/status/853200250277957636

adamantium|wang posted:

https://twitter.com/australian/status/853200250277957636

adamantium|wang posted:

https://twitter.com/australian/status/853200250277957636

Starshark posted:

Paul Kelly is someone who really needs to hope the Heaven/Hell thing isn't real.

Sydney Mining Homosexual posted:

Mr Medich replied that because he used to have chef, he had never learnt to cook, so he was forced to eat out.

Bogan King posted: