Barry O'Farrell Resigns

Today’s announcement that NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell has resigned comes as just the most recent in a long history of parliamentary scandals. From sexual harassment accusations to misused union credit cards it’s beginning to make us wonder exactly how much of this shady business is going on behind the closed doors of Australia’s Parliament House. 

It all started to crumble for Mr O’Farrell on when we was called to give evidence at the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s (ICAC) Sydney hearing into the relationship between Australian Water Holdings (AWH), Sydney Water, and the state's politicians. On Tuesday Australian Water Holdings head, Nick Di Girolamo told the enquiry that he had given Mr O’Farrell a $3,000 bottle of 1959 Grange wine as a gift in congratulations for ending "16 long, hard winters in opposition". Di Girolamo told the hearing that he had received a “thank you” note from O’Farrell shortly after O’Farrell had received the gift. 

Later Tuesday afternoon Mr O’Farrell denied that he had received the gift saying that in his 19 years of politics he had not received many gifts over the declarable value and that if he had received the bottle of Grange he would have remembered it. 

The scandal came to a close on Wednesday morning as Mr O’Farrell resigned from his position as premier after the ICAC revealed a hand written thank you note for the Grange signed by O’Farrell. 

Shortly after the announcement was made on Wednesday morning Greens member for the New South Wales Parliament John Kaye released a media statement making no secret of his feeling about the news. 

“What has happened is bigger than ICAC and Australian Water Holdings. It goes to the heart of the political system in NSW where major parties do the bidding of the big end of town,” he said.

In a phone interview later in the day MP Kaye made statements saying that this incident wasn’t something that was limited to the Liberal Party. 

“The Coalition has shown that it is not that much different to Labor when it comes to scandals. It’s been going on for at least 16 years in New South Wales and it’s time for the next premier, whoever that might be, to step in and clean up the culture of lobbying,” he said.

 

With a long standing history of dodgy dealing MP Kaye was quite right that all sides of politics have been responsible for their fair share of scandal. The NSW Labor party have had their own scandals, famously the resignation of former NSW Health Minister John Della Bosca who resigned after a sex scandal he was involved in was uncovered in September of 2009. 

“I’ve made some poor decisions, I have taken the consequence of those decisions. I’ve resigned my job as Health Minister and as Leader of the Government in the Legislative Council,” he said at the time.

MP Kaye is outraged over the seemingly constant string of scandals within the NSW government.

“New South Wales Politics is sick. The loss of a liberal premier, after the loss of many Labor premiers shows that there is something deeply wrong with the very foundation of politics in New South Wales. The flood of gifts that Mr O’Farrell received shows that there are far too many people out there trying to buy favour with the premier,” he said. 

It’s not just NSW that has dealt with dishonesty in Parliament House. Less than five months ago independent member for Redcliff Scott Driscoll resigned after he was found guilty of contempt and misleading the parliament about his financial interests by the ethics committee. Driscoll dishonestly told he had resigned as president of a retail lobby group in meeting that was later found to have never taken place. Subsequently Driscoll also failed to inform the parliament of income that he and his wife were receiving from the lobby.  

But the deceit goes much further than state politics and even becomes juicer as we look into some of the most recent scandals in federal politics. A hot topic at the moment is the sentencing of former MP Craig Thomson after he was found guilty of misusing his union credit card to pay for unsolicited expenses including escorts.The ordeal that started with an inquiry in 2008 ended with a 12 month prison sentence with a two year suspension of nine months in March of this year. 

From accepting bribes to buying your own perks with government money Australian politics is littered with claims of corruption and dodgy doings. The resignation of New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell certainly wasn’t the first resignation in Australian politics caused by being caught out for wrong doing and it probably won’t be the last.

Profile: Larissa Waters

Humanitarian leader Mahatma Gandhi was famously quoted saying “be the change that you wish to see in the world,” but few manage to live this message as thoroughly as Green’s Senator Larissa Waters. The 37 year old environmentalist and feminist is taking Australia’s future into her own hands. After 10 years of practicing as a lawyer, the Brisbane environmentalist and feminist decided that too many Australian laws were sub-par in too many areas, and that she would be the one to step up and call for change, if that was what it took.

“It was a few years of trying to tell people ‘yes, I agree that environmental destruction is terrible but you have no legal rights to stop it’. Just realising that whilst I loved practicing the law that the laws weren’t strong enough to do what I thought they should be able to do. So I figured ‘Well, you’ve got to get into parliament to change those laws. So here I am,” she explained in an interview in the open air kitchen of her flawless rooftop Paddington office.

“I had to wait for about 18 months for them to find a place and to do a refurbish because this is an old bank building so they had to do quite a bit of fixing it up and then they wanted to put in all this nonsense security stuff so I had to wait for this office but I’m really glad that I waited. We used a local architect who is very into eco-friendly design, so we’ve used all locally sourced fabrics with no toxic components and recycled camphor laurel, which is obviously a weed species. We’ve tried to have a green office in the little ‘g’ sense of the word,” she said, her eyes gazing over my shoulder to take in the breath-taking city view.

In the August, 2010 Federal Election Waters was elected into the senate becoming the only Greens senator for Queensland. Waters is in the minority being one of 31 women in the senate and of only nine senators for the Australian Greens party. 

Reminiscing about how much she loved practicing law Waters admits that while she enjoys her work in politics she’s still not your typical politician.

“In terms of the parliament itself, it’s full of old, grey, slightly chubby men who are relatively well off. It’s very much a stereotype of privilege,” she laughed, her legs crossed towards me on the comfortable retro-flower printed orange and khaki brown lounge. A light lipstick mark was left on her mug as she sipped her black coffee before going on to detail the ongoing battle for gender equality still present in our community.

“We’re making gains in female representation. We’re at about 30% now in parliament which is better than it used to be but it’s no 51% which is what we are in the normal population figures. You can certainly sense that the institutions itself has some inherent sexism but we’re gradually changing that.
 But it looks in recent times that we’ve taken some significant steps back with only one woman in cabinet now and with the assistant minister for women saying that she’s not a feminist and bizarrely the Prime Minister saying that he is because he’s got three beautiful daughters,” she said.

Not surprisingly more than half of Waters’ staffers are female, something that her office manager, Dominic Jarvis, says is probably a mix of chance and Waters’ manner of leading by example.

“I think it’s just how it fell this time. But I do, I think there’s something to it,” he said.

Waters’ passion for the environment has been prevalent throughout her life. In her first speech as senator she spoke about her early moves towards environmental activism.

“I won the environment prize at Rainworth State School in grades 4, 5 and 6, and my sense of injustice was ignited in my early teens when reading David Day’s Whale Wars about the international whaling fights of the 1980s. At 14 I turned vegetarian because of my love for animals and later for ecological reasons, and have continued that decision for 20 years now,” she said.

The deep respect for the environment that is so prevalent in both Waters’ personality and political career stemmed from the teaching of her parents at an early age.

“My folks have always been nature lovers and bushwalkers and kind of respected that it’s our role as human beings to look after the planet and that we’re not worth more or less than other creatures.


We’re just part of an ecosystem and need to live in harmony and pass it on to future generations in ideally a better condition than what it is. I guess I just grew up believing that and it’s just always been something that I’ve felt and wanted to work to try to see happen,” she said.

Waters is further making an impact on future generations by guest lecturing for university students in Brisbane and, like her parents, influencing her daughter with her beliefs at a young age.

“She’s a beautiful little girl and she’s really funny because she comes out saying things like ‘we have to save the reef from Tony Abbott’ and things like that,” said Vandeleur.

From the “Earth Choice” dishwashing tablets sitting in the eco-friendly kitchen to taking time when she has none to speak with university students about the issues that are important to her, there’s no doubting the fact that Waters lives and breathes the example of change that she hopes the world will follow.

This beautiful city of ours

**note to OJ1 tutors, while I wrote this months ago I'm tagging it #qutoj1 not for it to be marked but to give a background on why I decided to do this blog topic**

Grew up in a small town
And when the rain would fall down
I'd just stare out my window
Dreaming of what could be
And if I'd end up happy
I would pray

It's amazing how much feeling and emotion something so small can instill in you. Last night, as I walked home through the spitting rain from the ferry that had brought be home from the casino the song that occupied much of my childhood rushed into the forefront of my mind. As every small child does, I really felt like this song was about me. I did in fact grow up in a small town leaving us with not much to do but exercise our imaginations. My head in the clouds demeanor may be, in part, attributed to this upbringing.



As a child I always knew that I wanted bigger things. Each year as our family of five, packed into the back of a Ford Falcon, drove over the Gateway bridge in an epic conclusion of the mammoth 12 hour drive I would look at the city lights and know that I was better suited to a city of thousands.

To be fair, I loved growing up in a small town. Our house was surrounded by grass fields and towering sugar cane paddocks. I was all but unable to comprehend the notion of worrying about privacy. Our primary school, only a short walk away had guinea pigs and goats, and there was a caravan park beside the school that sold lassos for 5c a piece. It was the perfect, quaint, upbringing.

Still, this didn't stop me dreaming. Each time we visited our family in the city was like a new adventure to me. I think that growing up in a small town and seeing the same people in the same places doing the same things every day made me more excited for the potential to meet people and experience new things than someone who had seen this their whole life. Sometimes I get together with the friends that I grew up with who have also made the move and the wealth of culture and entertainment possibilities that surround us never seems to elude any of us.

This beautiful city that we are so privileged to call home has an infinite number of possibilities to entertain us each day and I think we take that for granted all too often. What I'm trying to say is that only boring people get bored. I don't know that I have been able to describe myself as "bored" once since moving down here (well, sitting in lectures excluded) because there is always so much to do and as country kids all of it is still new and exciting to us. If you ever feel bored in your city open your eyes and view is as a tourist, what would you do if you only had 24 hours in your city?

  

Self Evaluation

As I transition into adulthood I have been looking for a sustainable income to get me through the coming years. Luckily I've already scored a few job interviews which have made me realise that nothing makes you question yourself like a job interview.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
What are your biggest weaknesses?
How would the people in your life describe you?

These are some of the hardest question that you can be forced to answer about yourself. How would the people in my life describe me? Is the way they see me very different to the way I see myself? Do I think more or less of myself than they do? Does the positivity that I try to carry with me shine through or do my weaker moments in which I complain about trivialities let me down? Do I always succeed in treating others the way I would like to be treated? Maybe it's healthy to be forced to self evaluate every once in a while but that doesn't make it any easier.

In addition to being asked a myriad of difficult questions, in a job interview, particularly for the events and retail jobs that I've been interviewing for, you're trying to show the full extent of your bubbly and engaging personality in as little as 5 or 10 minutes all the while trying not to reveal your sweaty palms and hiding the stutter that is prone to resurfacing in stressful situations.

In the end I suppose that these stressful situations are character building, if nothing else. So go, apply for jobs you're not qualified for. The worst that could happen is a chance to practice your interviewing skills and what should we be aiming for if not to learn and make ourselves better?


Nb. This post is shorter than usual because just before I sat down to write it my roommate and I decided to make fairy floss which ended in a splatter of molten sugar and a now very painful, very blistered and unusable dominate hand.

To see the world through the eyes of a kitten

I am a girl obsessed. Yesterday my roommate and I made the commitment of bringing home two gorgeous kittens, Olive and Pandora (Panda).  Already we have spend hours dangling strings for them, watching them tumble over one another and boldly exploring the house. They are the sweetest creatures and I fail to believe that I could ever lose my adoration for them.

One thing about them that I have found myself enjoying is the way our kittens approach the world. Everything is new and exciting to Olive and Panda. The world is their oyster and each doorway reveals a whole new world to be discovered. Furthermore for these two kittens the land beyond the front door isn’t to be feared but it holds so much promise for excitement and new experiences. Even though both Panda and Olive have had rough times in their short lives, both fighting equally difficult paths to find themselves at the RSPCA for adoption, they are both full of curiosity, love and adventure. Despite the wrong that has been done to them by other people and animals they have taken us into their hearts and are already showing a full capacity for love and forgiveness. 

Some will say “small things amuse small minds” but I admire Panda’s ability to spend hours playing with a piece of al-foil that I rolled into a loose ball for her. That kitten doesn’t have much but she loves and appreciates the little that she has been given.

I am sure that by now my analogy is running thin, but this something that has stirred an interest in me. Why do we claim that being amused by small things is a sign of a simple mind? Why do we often write off curiosity and optimism as naivety? And why do cats, an animal generally seen as inferior to ourselves, have a greater capacity to forgive and give each person a fresh opportunity to make an impression than we do?

I have heard friends and acquaintances use specific examples of unfortunate events and wrong doing to justify racism that I have called them out on, but if an animal beaten by it’s owner is able to open it’s heart to other people, and we claim to be of a higher level of sentience, then why would we ever accept this justification for prejudice? This is a level of ignorance that I am not willing to tolerate.

What is it that drives us to criticism others finding enjoyment in things? Is it formed by some form of bitterness and jealousy of those unable to enjoy as much of what is around them? I have decided that I don’t mind if you make this snarky comment at me. I will simply tell you to stop and smell the roses and then I will leave with the satisfaction of knowing that I am enjoying things in life that others are incapable of.

I wouldn’t mind if I could learn to see the world the way my kitten does, she seems blissfully happy.