

Here's just a few reasons to ponder why the Cairns community will throw out this Council in March 2008... and what it's all really about...
These are just some of my favourite things....
It's a sad day when this is the best defence the incumbent mayor and his loyal lads can put up to retaining the same build-em-up mentality.
They also now infamously employ the tactic of using legal action to silence open debate about issues that are of importance to the community. This has to cease.
Dennis Quick was the Council go-between in the legal action Mayor Byrne took out to silence CairnsBlog from debating his 7 or more all-expenses paid trips to China on our money. It was this forum that asked many questions about the purpose of this Council to spend such large amount on money and send a load of officials there every year. Year in, year out. And what did they do? Give us the answers? No sir ree!
Anyway, there's a lot more to the China Syndrome in the Mayor's office than you've heard so far, and we'll be sharing that with you in the New Year.
I should also acknowledge all the many supporters that donated to the CairnsBlog Fighting Fund to back our right for free speech in this town.
Like Howard, and Brendon Nelson virtually confirmed this after the Federal election, Byrne and what's left in his ratpack, have simply run out of ideas. There's no innovative thinking. There's no plan for the future or engaging the community to seek our input to how this town should be shaped.
All we see is an abuse of power and twists and turns when it comes to those that want to have their way on land they have purchased.
These ill-thought out multi-story apartment complexes, now sprawling in many communities, have to be curtailed.
To suggest that Council and the developers are coming to the rescue of the poor and underprivileged to give them affordable housing, is the worst insult an appointed official can espouse.
Their time is up and it's long overdue for a big change of direction in this once beautiful town we call Cairns.
This photo is of Clifton Views, however what views the eventual residents see is questionable. This development is located on the other side of Clifton Road to Clifton Waters (both being built by Glencorp) with construction just commencing.
There are around 25 complexes with 246 units going in on this site. Council have given dispensations given on proximity to Deadman's creek, only 10m. The building takes up about 90% of the land site.
Thanks to KiwiBlog, I was reminded of the infamous Hooters bar chain in the US with their update of the old festive favourite, Little Drummer Boy.
And here's the original, with a young David Bowie and Bing Crosby...
"We all know that there are some current Councillors who own or run businesses," Kirsten Lesina says.
"These Councillors, and all other candidates, must declare whether they will devote all of their working time to their constituents or whether they will neglect them in favour of their own personal interests."
"I call on all candidates for the March 2008 Cairns Regional Council election to declare their intention, so that voters can make an informed choice on March 15," she says.
Richie Bates, candidate for Division 5, agrees.
"With the salary that Councillors in the Cairns Regional Council will be receiving, they have no excuse for not treating their role as Councillor as a full-time job," Mr Bates said. "Councillors who do not work as a full-time councillor will be short-changing the residents who elected them."
Both Lesina and Bates are members of the Cairns 1st Alliance.
"If I am elected, I will work as a full-time councillor, addressing the issues and concerns of the residents I represent." Lesina says.
"To do otherwise is not repaying the trust that voters place in a Councillor when they elect them."
The State Government recently announced that Cairns Regional Councillor salaries will range between $75,940 and $88,590 pa.
"This is enough to attract high quality candidates who will work full-time for their constituents." says Richie Bates.
If someone decides to run for Council, then one assumes that they have thought long and hard about what they will be doing about their current "day jobs", a commenter posted on CairnsBlog recently.
'Jude J Troublemaker' went on to say:
This comment was posted earlier by a regular on CairnsBlog "Captain Cairns".
I felt it deserves top billing!
See these photographs, although it has been this way all weekend - cars parked along the Cook Highway. Vehicles pulling in and out of the road directly from these illegal car parks, putting approaching traffic in jeopardy, and all without new movie theatres.
What will it be like next year with a larger population and five movie theatres and no more parking?
Council always tells the community "these buildings are complying with the building code", however it is obviously grossly inadequate.
Haven't we learned anything from the mess Brisbane has been turned into by "small thinkers"?
Thanks Cairns City Council - for no leadership or planing for the future.
Here's the first televised Christmas message in 1957.
Something for you to do amid the turkey and cranberry and that rude drunken visiting uncle tomorrow afternoon.
A US conservative philosophers, Francis Fukuyama, known for his book The End Of History - published as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 - argues that the conservative movement in the US has reached a kind of exhaustion:
The Cairns Heritage Group
A non profit Group dedicated to the preservation of Cultural Heritage.
Principal: Rob Williams j.p.(Qual.)
mailto:dixiejazz@westnet.com.au
Tel 0418 774 175
Friday, 21 December 2007
The Hon Paul Lucas MP
PO Box 15009, City East
Queensland 4002
Dear Minister,
Your letter of the 17th Inst refers : ref : MC07.7831.
Your letter does not tell me anything that I don’t already know. In fact I am probably in possession of a lot of pertinent information that you do not have. We know the lengths to which the CPA and your government has gone to get rid of this Historical Building, but we haven’t finished yet.
Whilst we have empathy with the Cairns Yacht Club Committee, their future in is their own hands. Under duress they made an agreement with the CPA to move. That is their problem. My group has been single minded fighting to save the Historic Aquatic Clubhouse (existing 100 year old Cairns Yacht Clubhouse) right where the building has been since 1895. A date I might add precedes the Cairns Harbour Board by 9 years.
The building had such significance that the Cairns Historical Society mounted a Nomination for State Heritage after previous attempts had been headed off by threats from the CPA on the immediate future of the Cairns Yacht Club. We have all that first hand from previous executive officers of the CYC Committee.
Through the freedom of information, we have also obtained a great deal of information about the way the Queensland Heritage Committee dealt with the Nomination. We haven’t been able to prove political interference yet but we are very close to it. “We challenge the sidelining of Dr.Wegner to vote, when the Chairman had publicly stated in the Cairns Post, that he would support the Nomination himself.” Dear me.
Because of the Wartime involvement of the Clubhouse, we have launched a National Nomination. That is with the Federal Minister for Heritage as I write. That may or may not be successful but it has the support of the Cairns Historical Society, The Australian Council of National Trusts and is on The National Trust of Queensland Register.(31st March 2005).
The Cairns Yacht Club has announced a Centenary Regatta for the week ending 30th March 2008. The Cairns Tropic Jazz Club, of which I am the President, has combined with them to produce a Festival of Music to commemorate the musicians who have played the Aquatic over the past 90 years.
Here are some comments on the statements made in your letter to me.
The question is, how can you put all this injustice right and give the people of Cairns what they justly deserve to have. A place that they have cherished and helped build over a hundred years. A place that is an integral part in the history and fabric of Cairns Community like no other building in the City.
I suggest that the Government remove the Certificate of Immunity you have placed on the Cairns Yacht Club building and allow Cairns City people the chance to re - nominate the building for further consideration of a State Heritage Listing.
This way you will save face and be not embarrassed when the Centenary hits the National papers in March.
Yours faithfully,
Rob Williams
Chairman
Cairns Heritage Group
President
Cairns Tropic Jazz Club Inc.
CairnsBlog thought we'd contribute to the spirit of the joke season nearly upon us... so we'll share a few of our jokes with you...
What does Santa Claus and Michael Jackson have in common? They both leave childrens' bedrooms with empty sacks!
..and here's some more jokes...
CairnsBlog contributing writer Sid Walker ponders the Good Ship captained by Bligh...
We now have the odd, although perhaps not entirely unexpected, situation whereby people who grew up under an oppressive State Government - a Government that often used repressive laws against ‘dangerous drugs’ (among other things) to persecute political opponents - now uphold, justify and from time to time further extend those same laws.
In the early 1970s, when most members of Team Beattie (now Team Bligh) were in short pants or mini-skirts, and a few were still in nappies, Jo Bjelke Petersen was Queensland Premier and his soul-mate Richard Nixon held sway in Washington DC.
Just like Nixon's counterparts in Britain and Canada, the US President appointed a rather conservative group of people to investigate the ‘marijuana problem’ and recommend solutions.
Nixon then encountered the same problem faced by his overseas equivalents. his expletive-deleted Inquiry didn’t say what he wanted.
Rejecting alarmist views about Cannabis (aka Marijuana), views that were popular in reactionary circles at the time, the US Shafer Report said that "neither the marijuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety," and recommended to Congress that "citizens should not be criminalized or jailed merely for private possession or use."
Nixon wasn’t happy – but at the time, the public didn’t know just how pissed off he was about the Shafer Report. Nor did we get a rounded account of the grounds for Nixon’s displeasure.
However, the former US President’s audio-taped conversations at the White House were soon to become public property in the most spectacular fashion, bringing his Presidency to an abrupt end. Yet not all the tapes were released in the 70s. Some surfaced more recently.
In a tape released to the public just a few years ago, Nixon discussed the Shafer Commission and his outright rejection of its conclusions. Parts of the transcript, with commentary, are reproduced below.
Consequently, we can now examine - in all their glory - the intellectual foundations of the 30+ year old ‘War on Drugs’, a ‘War’ formerly declared by Nixon in the early 70s that has never ended since.
It is the War that predated by three decades the even more farcical and bogus War on Terror.
It’s a War that has spawned a trillion dollar illegal industry worldwide.
It’s a War that continues, each week, even in our pleasant part of the world, in magistrates courts, police stations and prisons - to the detriment of the persecuted but the undoubted advantage of all those involved in prosecuting this never-ending assault on freedom of choice, from police helicopter pilots to prison workers, defense lawyers to psychiatrists and social workers.
Now, you may be wondering, what does it matter what that old goof Nixon said in the White House all those years ago? After all, Nixon is long gone. The political elite in power today is far more rational and sophisticated, isn’t it?
Well, perhaps… but it would be nice to see the evidence.
After all, far from pulling up stumps on the prohibition of Cannabis, the Labor Government in Queensland has extended Prohibition into areas of life previously unaffected.
Meanwhile, at least one prominent Australian who claims to speak on behalf of some of the most disadvantaged people in this country, calls openly for ‘Zero Tolerance’ on ‘drugs’ (even Tricky Dicky himself might have found that a little over the top!)
One day, when historians gain access to the records of our times, we may learn that a high quality discussion actually took place around the Beattie cabinet table in the late 1990s, when Queensland passed a law that has since been used to criminalize people who own pamphlets about Cannabis horticulture. It may be that particular curious twist in ‘our’ War on Drugs (which goes much further than the USA ever did) was discussed, debated, subjected to scrutiny and finally agreed because of clearly articulated, logical arguments. We may even obtain a transcript of high-quality ALP Party Room discussions from the time it was debated at length by caucus.
Perhaps those tapes exist – and historians in coming times will bring them to light… but if so, it’s odd that nothing resembling quality discussion ever seems to make it into Hansard.
Indeed, Parliamentary debates in Queensland, where civil liberties are at stake, are notable for their vacuity.
If these folk are looking after our civil liberties, no wonder our liberties are disappearing fast.
How quickly veterans of the moratoria seem to have forgotten what it’s like to be on the receiving end of irrational criminal laws applied in a selective, discriminatory way!
In this policy area, if not in others, we have a State Parliament comprised largely (perhaps entirely?) of Me-Too’s, each willing to play his or her own little role to raise the stakes just a little higher within this jurisdiction, in support of the 35+ Drug War. I call that sad.
But enough of the present!
Let’s not criticize ourselves - or wince at the politicians we choose to represent us. Let’s not bemoan their shallow conformism, hypocrisy and failure to exercise scrutiny when legislating away even more of our rights and freedoms.
Instead, let’s all enjoy a chuckle at someone non-threatening, whom we can all agree was a real funny guy – someone now safely gone from our lives (except for the small matter of his legacy).
Ladies and gentleman, I give you Richard Nixon…