The Tussock Times

is an A4 Newsletter circulating in the

Anembo-Jerangle-Peak View area in New South Wales, Australia.

Our bias is unashamedly pro-rural and pro-Australian.

We can be contacted at thetussocktimes@activ8.net.au

To read 2010 News and Views, click here.

For 2011 News, click here.

All material on this site is copyrighted under a Creative Commons Copyright which means that you are free to copy, use and distribute but with attribution to The Tussock Times, www.thetussocktimes.com.au

A Small Concession to Country People

The December 2011 Business Paper for the Coma Monaro Shire Council Meeting included as a simple administrative act, the endorsement and acceptance of the existing policy on cattle grids. The existing policy had been adopted in 2004 and most of the Councillors, having been elected since that year, had no idea of what the policy entailed.

There was in the gallery, one old Cocky who apparently does not have enough work on his plate because he is at the Council meetings every month, offering free advice to the Councillors.

He spoke against adoption of the policy on the grounds that the policy included the charging of a massive application fee for any person proposing to install a cattle grid on a Council road.

According to this speaker, gates across public roads were an abomination and rather than imposing an application fee, Council should contribute $1,000 towards the cost of any grid that would contribute to the amenity of rural life.

This was something new to Councillors who were surprised to learn from the Director of Engineering that there was indeed an application fee of $1,100 to be paid by any person proposing a cattle grid for a Council road.

The Mayor, Cr Dean Lynch, was also unaware of this fee and admitted that he could see no purpose for it and committed Council to have another look at the policy and to bring it back to the January meeting.

The Tussock Times did not report on December's meeting, deciding to wait for the final outcome.

At the January meeting the Mayor was able to inform the old Cocky that the policy on cattle grids would be interpreted to meant that the application fee would apply only where an applicant wanted to put an additional obstruction on a road and that where the proposal was to replace an existing gate across a public road, no fee would be charged.

We know from feedback we get that The Tussock Times has a number of readers around the world, thanks to Google. G'day to Russia, Germany and South Africa.

It has been requested that we should explain those idiosyncrasies of Australian life that might not be clear to our overseas readers.

We wonder if other countries have the problem with roads and gates that we have in rural Australia.

Because New South Wales was set up as a penal colony by the English and administered by soldiers who main skills were in flogging and hanging prisoners, the actual planning of the state left a lot to be desired.

The rural districts ended up with a lot of the roads running inside the farms on a narrow strip of land owned by the Government. The farmer was allowed to put gates across the road as part of his fencing program and all persons wanting to travel the road had to stop and alight from their vehicle, open then drive through the gate, alight from the vehicle again, close the gate, remount the vehicle, travel to the next gate and then repeat the procedure. A very aggravating business and any farmer with any sense of civilised behaviour would have replaced his gates with cattle grids.

Since replacing a gate with a grid is an act of consideration towards the travelling public, charging an application fee of $1,100 for the permit to make the change is counter productive.

The Invasion Continues With a Fifth Column In Our Midst.

It has long been said that it was the English who invented racism and with two English migrants competing for the position of Prime Minister of Australia, it is hard not to see their attitudes as being racist.

Both the present Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the Leader of the Opposition who wants to be Prime Minister, agree that people arriving in Australia without consent should be stopped.

They offer minor differences in the reasons given for wanting to stop the boat people and in the methods they propose to use but generally they agree that something should be done to discourage this steady trickle of mostly dark skinned people.

Most people, whether Australians or New Australians, tend to agree with that idea.

What is curious is the deafening silence from Gillard and Abbott about the almost 300,000 other people flocking to Australia, mostly from Europe. Could it be that these two migrants hope to fill Australia to maximum capacity with their fellow Englanders?

We often hear comments of surprise that recent migrant families living in the western suburbs of Sydney are now opposed to the open-door immigration policy that allowed them into the country in the first place.

I think that migrants to the country do not take long to realise that the Australians are no smarter than the migrants and they most certainly do not work harder. Having noticed this they start to wonder how it is that Australians are so wealthy.

Most Australian wage earners cannot explain how it is that their wages are so much higher than they would getting in another country.

One of the popular explanations is that “Australia is a wealthy country and can afford to pay high wages”. That piece of illogical thinking simply indicates that wages here have been high for so long that we have forgotten the mechanism that makes the high wages possible.

The wage system is Australia dates back to the years around 1900 when the population was only a few million people, a very large national sheep flock and high prices for wool on the world markets.

The Government of the day came up with the idea of sharing that wool income around by introducing the concept of minimum wages. Something that most of the world still has not embraced.

This way the wool income was used to guarantee a wage level throughout the country that would enable all wage earners to live in “modest comfort”. All migrants quickly learned to recite “Australia rides on the sheep's back” when asking for a pay rise.

For more than a hundred years since then the Australian economy has staggered along without collapsing, giving inspiration to one Donald Horne in the 1950's, to write a book named The Lucky Country.

Unfortunately few people read the book and even fewer understood his argument. Most assume that the book was simply a celebration of their good fortune in having been born into a country where wages were set at a level that was often higher than the economic value of their labour.

Horne's argument was that the Australian economy had been totally mis-managed and was unsustainable and should have collapsed on numerous occasions due to the incompetence of our politicians but on each occasion had been saved from collapse by the “Good Luck” that had rescued the economy without the politicians needing to understand what was happening.

The present mining boom is yet another in a long list of fortuitous happenings that have saved our bacon. Just imagine Australia today without the mining boom.

Even with the mining boom, many people not directly involved, are finding it difficult to maintain their established lifestyle.

This is the reason why the Gillard Government has sought to increase the level of taxation on the mining companies. In the true Australian tradition. Even their stated intention to squander the proceeds of that taxation by enabling more Australians to retire from work indicates a level of mis-management that is exceeded only by the Abbott led Oppositions rejection of the idea of increasing taxation on the foreign companies that are ripping out and exporting out irreplaceable mineral resources. Trying to get them all sold before any world shortage develops and causes a rise in price for those minerals.

The Fifth Column to which I refer? That is the religious people who think that they will earn for themselves a better seat in heaven by badgering the Government into maintaining the open-door immigration policy, the Lawyers who make a fortune by representing in Court those people who do get refused admission, I hear that the Government has so far paid out sixty million dollars for legal representation for persons denied entry.

Also included are the members of national groups that work together to increase their groups size in Australia. Saw an interesting article about Chinese manipulation of our immigration laws on the ABC website on 15 March. The most understandable group of fifth columnists is those persons who, having made it into Australia themselves, want to gain admission not for millions but just for the members of their own family.

These are the Pupils at Jerangle Public School in 2012

And this is the Playground Equipment that their parents and friends bought for them.

Although the equipment had been in use for some weeks, the official opening of the playground took place on Thursday 5^th of April. The teacher at our nominally “one teacher” school, Pam Anderson, spoke to those present and expressed admiration for the Parents and Friends of the school in having raised the money for this equipment.

Only seven families are represented among the students and over the past couple of years the parents have engaged in a large number of money making activities ranging from the conventional cake stalls in nearby towns to catering for sporting events and dealing in recycled metals.

There is a rumour around that some of the cost was contributed by the Department of Education and Training but we would advise our readers to ignore rumours unless they originate from this site.

The culmination of the opening ceremony was a fine piece of synchronised scissor work as the five senior students simultaneously cut the ribbon into numerous pieces.

The ceremony was followed by a spaghetti luncheon served by the students to the parents and visitors. Well done, Jerangle Public School.