Quip of the month

The future is not what it was.

Thank God that's over!

The national parliamentary session has finally come to an end and it's goodbye to all that rancour, pettiness and negativity for a month or so.  Even the looming Silly Session appears attractive, when compared to the disappointing reality of this year's politics.  In other countries where voters have returned 'hung' parliaments (the UK, for example) politicians and the media have  managed to accept the consequences of the people's vote and to get on with their job in an adult, mature way.  Perhaps their more diverse media might even have conceded that the passage of over 250 pieces of legislation by a 'hung' government deserved some modest recognition, rather than today's depiction of the government's achievement as  'a political year riven by crisis... and that ends that way'. (The Australian).  It was left to an amateur blogger (Greg Jericho ) to attempt a more considered analysis of the political year's passage.  See here.

And it is to the public broadcaster that we have to turn to find an invaluable data-set with which to inform the debate on coal-seam-gas mining.  Using the tools that computerised data-mining provide the ABC has come up with an innovative web site (here) where multiple sources of information have been aggregated  to show in map form all 4000 sites, where coal-gas-seam mining currently occurs.  Interrogating the map allows readers to find information about all sites and has been prepared in anticipation of an expected expansion to 40,000 sites. 

Would that more journalists would follow this model!

Plumbing the depths

Can there be anything more unedifying than politicians haggling over which of their 'tough' policies would have prevented the latest tragic boat-people disaster, where desperate men, women and their children have lost their lives trying to get to Australia?

Retribution

The fall of a tyrant is once again filling our TV screens; this time in savage reality as Moamar Gaddafi is dragged from a drain, pummeled, man-handled, and his half-naked, bloodied body delivered up to his captors.  Shortly thereafter he is shot dead.  Humiliation and brutal, unexpected death.  Retributive justice ? execution ?  But no mercy.   Having lived by the sword he died by the sword, like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden before him.

No mercy for these tyrants the last of whom died this week, at a time when we commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Siev X disaster. There was no mercy for the hundreds of men, women and children who perished on Siev X in the sea ten years ago, either.

And no justice yet for these innocent victims.

Pyrrhic Victories?

Against all the odds the PM has legislated to impose a price on carbon (a task attempted without success by four previous political leaders).  This was a considerable achievement.  However, the Opposition leader has 'pledged in blood' (!) to repeal this legislation as soon as he achieves office.

In the meantime the PM has had to give up on her plan to maintain off-shore processing of asylum-seekers arriving here by boat, after the High Court ruled this processing illegal.  The Opposition refused to support new legislation to empower executive government to maintain off-shore processing, even though they support off-shore processing  too.  Not sure who failed here.


We will have to wait to see the repercussions of the actions of the PM and the Opposition leader his week.


But if the Opposition is elected to government in 2013, it would appear that the PM's carbon pricing legislation will  be repealed, rendering today's achievement meaningless.    But an Opposition victory on this matter could prove to be messy and difficult to realise and will bring with it its own painful, political price.  Perhaps we will see new tax slogans appear, as the compensation for the costs of the clean energy legislation are withdrawn.


And could it be that, if the Opposition comes to government, it too may have to embrace some sort of 'Malaysian solution' as the only off-shore processing option available to them to stop the boats in the face of the inevitable court challenges to Nauru?


Pyrrhic victories all round this week, except for the asylum-seekers, of course.

Australia fair?

A 14 year old Australian is arrested in Indonesia for possessing cannabis and this makes headline news here, causes Ministerial statements and considerable public anxiety over the imprisonment of a minor, while his actions are investigated.  Meanwhile, back in Australia, 79 under 18 year old boys are arrested off our shores, sent to an isolated Australian centre in the middle of nowhere and imprisoned there in high security, under guard 24 hours a day.  Their crime ---seeking refuge in our country.
But their imprisonment and future fate hardly raise a murmur here.

UPDATE:
Pure Poison doesn't want to suggest that 'we have more sympathy for an Australian boy imprisoned in Indonesia than an Indonesian boy imprisoned in Australia (who’s not even alleged to have committed a crime) out of anything so base and repugnant as racism… but '.....
     Read More

Of Things Being Various

Yesterday an award-winning collection of poetry Of Things Being Various (40 Degrees South Publishing) was launched in the Hobart Bookshop in Salamanca Square.   This book showcases accomplished and engaging poems from Karen Knight, Liz McQuilkin, Liz Winfield, Christiane Conesa-Bostock and Megan Schaffner. 
Yet more evidence of the vibrant arts scene in Hobart.

Quip of the month

People who live at the foot of a mountain seldom climb its slope.

  (Trudeau)

Reality show?

What's going on?

The Australian media keep spruiking talk of a leadership challenge to the PM based entirely on reports from the Opposition.

There is turmoil on the global markets, where in Europe, Merkel and Sarkozy are  engaged in a grim danse macabre and in the USA dysfunctional politics threatens to tip their country into recession.  A case of politicians turning difficult economic conditions into catastrophe.

Meanwhile our politicians are obsessed with a manufactured 'crisis' about a small number of asylum-seekers  coming here by boat. This hokey-pokey is just part of

                 the growing tendency on both sides of politics to put the Left
                 policy in, and take the Right policy out, the Left policy in until
                 voters shake us all about. Then do a quick opinion poll and
                 turn around, and that’s what it’s all about!  See here

A prophet in his own land

Tasmanian author, Richard Flanagan delivered a moving closing address at the Melbourne Writers' Festival this week.  He made a  prophetic call for a return to truth in public discourse and to courage, independence of thought and concern for a larger good in our individual lives.  Richard spoke of the rise of non-freedom and the decline of empathy in an Australian society overrun with the disease of conformity, desensitised to the desperate plight of refugees, prone to glossing over fundamental problems, making too much of our impoverished politics and lacking courage to disagree with power-brokers, who offer only consumerism and cynicism in place of the truth.

Hung parliaments

Has the hung parliament in Tasmania finally managed to bring peace to our forests after 30 years of conflict?  It seems increasingly likely that there will be an end to old growth forest logging with compensation for those leaving the industry, now that the government, Forestry Tasmania and Gunns Ltd have signed off on a state/federal government agreement.   Would this have happened, if it were not  the fact that we now have a Green/Labor government?


And will it be a federal hung parliament that finally succeeds in bringing in  a price on carbon?

Quip of the month

Will Qantas still call Australia home, if it only flies here for sleep-overs?

Poor fella this country

As if Pakistan hasn't enough problems!
The Economist is reporting escalating ethnic warfare in Pakistan’s most populous city, Karachi.  This conflict is so bad that Karachi’s ambulance service now has to send out a driver matching the racial make-up of the destination district to pick up the victims of gang attacks. Otherwise, the district’s gunmen will not let the ambulance through.

Karachi’s ethnic wars have claimed some 1,000 lives this year, with more than 100 in the past week alone. By contrast the Taliban and other religious extremists kill tiny numbers in Karachi.

Read more here

Cognitive dissonance

How can it be that there is so little confidence in Australia at the moment, when most Western countries would be more than happy to be in our  economic shoes?     Does it have anything to do with the way media is busy constructing politics and society as a sort of tv reality show, full of strife and with misery to come?  The preoccupation with gloom and doom seems particularly unreal to one who has seen Australia survive many truly difficult times in the past century and who has just returned from Europe, where there really are considerable economic problems to worry about.

Quip of the month

The future is already here----it’s just not evenly distributed.

William Gibson

A literary delight

This week I had the pleasure of attending  the Annual Lecture of the Hamilton Literary Society, the oldest continuing literary society in Australia. In accordance with tradition the current president is the wife of the Governor of Tasmania, Mrs Frances Underwood.  Mrs Underwood  invited members and guests to Government House to celebrate the 122nd anniversary of the society by holding the Annual Lecture there.  Ms Heather Rose, a respected, award-winning Tasmanian author, gave a stimulating and engaging lecture on Anna Karenina.  Heather wove together insights into the themes and characterisation of Tolstoy's novel with perceptive comments on the pleasures and transforming power of the act of reading.

It was an interlude of civil discourse in another of Tasmania's gems (Government House) and a sad contrast with the current state of shrill, partisan, opinionising that too often passes for public debate in today's Australia. 

Robert Shrimsley has painted a light-hearted picture of the News Corp debacle in


The Financial Times :


With somewhat overheated rhetoric, a number of commentators are talking of the “British spring” – the moment when the political class followed the example of the Arab revolts and threw off the old order; turning against the aged dictator Rupert “Hosni” Muburdoch. The FT was there to witness the scenes from freedom’s latest front line.


They came after elevenses and vowed to stay all day. For years they had been warned to stay silent but suddenly it seemed they were no longer afraid. Out of the House of Commons they streamed and made for Parliament Square, now renamed “Freedom Square”, sticking tulips in the rolled-up papers of the Muburdoch press. Others moved to occupy the main TV positions on the green opposite the House of Lords. Inside the Commons, we heard remarkable reports of politician after politician daring to denounce the ageing and feared media dictator.


They knew the risks. Muburdoch’s secret police were known to hack phones and private records; they bribed police officers and ran smear campaigns to destroy anyone identified as an enemy. The MPs’ courage outshone even the Arab revolts. In Syria dissenters faced only tanks and bullets, but in Britain they knew that Muburdoch’s feared redtops might run a picture of them in their underpants or dig up dirt on their love life.


Read more

Botanico

               Deep in this green world visitors wander

                          listening to ancient lays,

                          that the birds have been singing here

                          for hundreds of years.  

                          Lilting notes that float gently down
                          from the tracery of trees and drift
                          through the stillness till they finally fade.
                         A silence of memories prevails.

                         Centuries of history rest in this soil

                         memories of passion and dreams

                         from the first sod turned, the first seeds sown,

                         when more than a garden was made.

                         Plantings were trialled here and theories tested,

                         collections preserved and described in new ways,

                         shared with the world and their lineages argued.

                         A science of plants was begun.

                        When the birds fall silent, their eulogy finished,   

                        the visitors leave, but the garden lives on,

                        its green world has fashioned a union still flourishing

                        where nature and culture are one.

                       500 years later the garden's enticing

                       for botanists to savour and scholars to probe,

                       but the greatest delight of this special place

                       ---its survival for us to embrace.

Carbon tax

Rod Burgess believes we have three positions on tackling climate change :

     Labor's hybrid 50/50 capitalist-socialist scheme, 

     the rationalist-socialist policy offered by the Coalition, 

     and the romantic-socialist position of the Greens. 

Read more... 

Back to Unreality

The News of the World hacking scandal exposes the worst of contemporary journalism.  But Britain still has first class newspapers to give some sort of balance.  It was, after all, the dogged journalism of the Guardian that finally brought to light the extent of the problems of the Murdoch tabloid.  Returning to Australia I have been once again reminded of how our lack of media diversity and a public appetite for national discussion of issues as if they were  football matches have combined to drag journalism down to less scandalous, but just as disappointing, depths.  And the fact that the owner of News of the World controls 70 per cent of the metropolitan newspaper market in Australia, while its only major competitor Fairfax is struggling to survive, is no source of comfort.  To put this British affair into an Australian context readers will find this site illuminating The Failed Estate


Update: There is a very interesting article in Crikey today by Margaret Simons

Same old London

For any Australian visiting London there is a familiarity about this vast metropolis that is both welcoming and challenging.  The splendours of London are still there to delight in---the British Library, the British Museum, the Tate, the National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery, the parks, the palaces, the traditions, the art, music, films, drama and the buzz.  But there is also the size, complexity and the density of population to challenge you every day.  The capacity of public transport to move a billion people across an underground system (begun in 1863 and still far from modern), or to bus masses of travellers through a maze of old, narrow streets and traffic-clogged roads or other sagging infra-structure is amazing, but not always reliable. So it is a brave antipodean grandparent, who sets off alone from one side of London to the other to visit family.


This undertaking  involves first a bus journey, then an underground train, a change to another underground train, a final bus trip and a walk, so you can be sure that there will  be something to challenge you in this endeavour.  It might be that you negotiate the first stages fairly easily and then arrive in the tourist-packed area of London to catch the bus that leaves from Westminster Bridge, only to find that the bus-stop has been

o

 temporarily moved and there doesn't appear to be a replacement stop in sight.  This will probably entail walking across Westminster Bridge (and further) to try to catch the bus at the next stop 

Memories of Europe

My trip to Europe seems like a dream now, but images still swirl up of the gilded spires and domes of the Altstadt in Dresden, its reconstructed harmony of landscape and buildings, churches and museums all nestling round the river and its terraced green hills.  Dresden is an appealing, beautiful city and the sculpted saint who looked down onto the destruction of the Frauen Kirche (and everything else) and wept during the war must be overjoyed today to watch over the city's restored wonders.

Dresden is unforgettable and Padua is too.  So many amazing old churches, museums, galleries and houses to wonder at, as they appear around every corner. Most spell-binding of all though was the overwhelming experience inside the Scrovengi chapel, where Giotto created in 1305 a landscape of frescoes covering all the walls and all the ceilings.  Such beautiful images from so long ago and inspiring as much awe today as they must have done then. An amazing set of images telling a story for the illiterate populace of the times still casting a spell on visitors from another age just beginning to be dominated by image and icon again.

Home again

I'm now back in Tasmania sympathising with those travellers isolated here because of air-line problems with volcanic ash.  All our flights went off without a hitch and all our connections worked, providing smooth journeying between Hobart and Dresden, Dresden and Venice (via Dusseldorf) Venice and London and London back to Sydney.

Now for the memories.

Quip of the month

Smile, breathe and go slowly.

  Thich Nhat Hanh

Once more in transit

The first step in any journey is often taken long before it formally begins.   For me it usually starts with memories of past journeys---the time in England when I got lost on the morning of my son's wedding, the panic I experienced in Paris, when I nearly missed meeting up with a school-friend, because of misunderstood French instructions, the day all planes in London were grounded by a terrorist threat and I was stranded in Crete with my English grand-children, those happy days in Pakistan, before it descended into its current fragile state and all those moments in far-off parts of the northern hemisphere that have given me a sense of home-away-from-home.   

Tomorrow I am off again on a journey to see my grandchildren in England.  Which means, of course, a long flight.

Suspended here in coma land

so far above all friends and home

that life itself seems left behind

time has me trapped, inert, confused

in dimmed half light in shadow land
                                 

and all around the strangers flit                                 

they come and go, unknown, unreal

they make me eat, they do their rounds

a kind of hour glass they become 

they mark the time like silent sand.

For here time’s dressed in strange new garb

which does not fit its normal frame
it is not day, it is not night
not what’s below, not what’s behind, 
not yet the time of when we land.

So far above each travelled land
time cannot be the way it was
before my zones of numbed existence
were crossed to meet my children’s children.

           The price I pay to hold their hand.

The end of Osama

When we're fighting a war in Afghanistan to destroy terrorist training camps that are actually inside the land of Pakistan (our ally), it is only to be expected that the iconic terrorist Osama bin Laden will be captured near Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan and within cooee of an elite military academy and an important military base.   It is doubly ironic that he was captured and eliminated on the order of that well-known softie, Barack Obama, who (we're supposed to believe) wasn't really born in the USA and is, in fact, a secret Muslim!

Peace in our own time?

The bands are playing Waltzing Matilda all over Australia this morning over ninety years on from that first Anzac day. And still young Australians are fighting far from home in today's conflict zones, while in the Middle East yesterday's battlegrounds now witness the slaughter of citizen protesters by their own rulers.

A professional journalist !

The CSIRO last week released their report on the Home Insulation Program begun in 2009.
As many would know, the reality of the Home Insulation Program (HIP) was always very different from that suggested by easy, sensational media headlines.  Using the CSIRO data,  Possum Comitatus here provides a model for how the MSM could have reported  this important public policy in a numerate and objective way.  He has found that :
         the Home Insulation Program reduced the short term fire rate by   approximately 70% compared to what was happening before it.  It was over 3 times safer than the industry it replaced in terms of the numbers of fire experienced within 12 months of getting insulation installed.
        the long term rate for the post-12 month period is already starting to average around the 0.66 fires per 100,000 houses installed mark, compared to the 2.06 fires per 100,000 houses installed seen from the pre-HIP industry installations.

In short, the HIP was safer over both the short term (the fire rates over the 12 month period from installation) as well as the longer term (the residual long term fire rates that occur from 12 months after the insulation was installed).
 Another enlightening Possum  blog.

Update:  See also here (Grog's gamut--Shouting fire from a pre-Budget theatre.)

Remembering Yuri

50 years ago this week Yuri Gagarin became the first man to journey into space, thereby launching the space race and a decade of competition between the USA and the USSR to explore space, to reach the moon and eventually to collaborate on space stations and work together beyond earth in space.  This was truly one great step for humanity.

Making budget cuts (US Style) 2

There has been a lot of attention this week on the possibility of a shut-down of the US government because of deep political divisions over budget cuts.    And it did seem that the final bargaining appeared to be more about ideological issues than about monetary cuts. 


However, this battle is a mere skirmish compared to what is likely to occur, if the next Republican Budget plan is any guide.  This (Ryan) plan proposes:
        $4.3 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years.

Two-thirds of these cuts come from programmes aimed at low-income Americans: Medicaid, food stamps, grants for low-income students etc.     [Medicaid cuts of $771 billion, $1.4 trillion from repealing the health reform law's Medicaid expansion and its subsidies to help low-income people purchase health insurance etc]

       

       $4.2 trillion proposed in new tax cuts

The top rate goes from 35% (under Bush) down to 25%, lower than at any time post New Deal.
 The enormous cuts do essentially nothing to balance the budget: 98% of the proposed savings  from spending cuts go to finance new tax cuts.

For good measure the Republican plan also repeals the Dodd-Frank reform of financial regulations, passed (July 2010) after the recent GFC meltdown.

Quip of the month

The dew of compassion is a tear

Byron

Sayonara

The earth cracked open yesterday
again

this time ferocious buckling, ripping terror.

I cannot trust the ground beneath my feet.

The sea sucked back its water yesterday,
then spewed it out again in monstrous mass,
engulfing, swallowing, destroying all in sight.

I cannot walk along a beach again.

The air exploded yesterday
sent nuclear ash long drifting on the wind.
Insidious, seeping fear infecting all who breathe.

I cannot trust in others to be safe.


My world cracked open yesterday,

with earth and water, fire and air 

conspiring to deceive 

till faith in life has gone.


Farewell  trust.

Meanwhile

Unrest in the Middle East, nuclear uncertainty in Japan, but meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Tea Party in the US are bringing in legislation like this:
A Kansas State Republican legislator said it might be a good idea to control illegal immigration the way the feral hog population has been controlled: with gunmen shooting from helicopters.

Rep. Virgil Peck, R-Tyro, said he was just joking during a discussion by the House Appropriations Committee on state spending for controlling feral swine.  After one of the committee members talked about a program that uses hunters in helicopters to shoot wild swine, Peck suggested that may be a way to control illegal immigration.  Asked about his comment, Peck was unapologetic. “I was just speaking like a southeast Kansas person,” he said.

In other news, in recent weeks Tea Party state members have introduced various bills in state legislatures, including:

Utah (passed): the state must recognize gold and silver as legal tender

Georgia: the state should abolish driver’s licences because licensing violates the “inalienable right” to drive on state roads and highways

South Dakota: every adult would be required to own a gun:

References:
    
Utah
Bill HB 317, sponsored by Rep. Brad J. Galvez and Sen. Scott K. Jenkins,  "recognises gold and silver coins that are issued by the federal government as legal tender in the state"

GeorgiaState  Rep. Bobby Franklin, R-Marietta, has filed House Bill 7, calling it the "Right to Travel Act."  In his bill, Franklin states, "Free people have a common law and constitutional right to travel on the roads and highways that are provided by their government for that purpose. Licensing of drivers cannot be required of free people, because taking on the restrictions of a licence requires the surrender of an inalienable right."

South Dakota Bill HB 1237, requires every South Dakota citizen at least 21 years old to “purchase or otherwise acquire a firearm suitable to their temperament, physical capacity, and personal preference sufficient to provide for their ordinary self-defense” within six months of turning 21.











\

A week of anguish and anxiety

Another week of sorrow in our nick of the woods as the Japan catastrophe appals us all. Even as it shows us yet again the awesome power of Nature it also reminds us of our common humanity.  

Anguish and horror, but compassion, empathy, and courage too.
 

International Women's Day

It's salutary to remember on the centenary of International Women's Day that we have gained equal pay for equal work.  It's just that we keep on gaining equal pay over and over again.

Quip of the month

A goal without a plan is just a wish

(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

Shock and awe

A summer of sorrow in Australasia - a winter of discontent in the Middle East.  It's hard to know which is more destructive - the enormous power of Nature's floods, fires and earthquakes, or the implacable resistance of dictators to the people power of courageous human beings. 

More Botannical Art

From the cover of the 

               PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF QUEENSLAND

December 2010     Volume 116

Acacia macradenia Benth.; Common name: Zig-zag Wattle

Artist: Dr. Tanya Scharaschkin

Making budget cuts (US Style).

One item in the White House's proposed budget for fiscal year 2012 will halve funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Its allocation will be reduced from just over $5 billion to $2.5 billion.
Roughly 8.3 million people used the program last year. Its target population is the elderly and the disabled. It is estimated that the reduction would amount to 3.1 million households going without assistance on heating and cooling costs.

Overall the Obama budget produces    $25 billion savings  over 10 years.

The cost of extending the Bush tax cuts
for those earning over $250, 000                     is $700 billion over 10 years

The projected cumulated shortfall
in the Obama budget                               is $7,200 billion over the next 10 years

Aftermath

When the tumult and the shouting dies, will the Egyptian people find their promised land? 
The demonstrations in Egypt this week brought back memories of the fall of the Berlin wall.  But Egypt faces enormous challenges to meet the aspirations of its people, especially its youth and its middle class.  Theirs will be a more difficult transition than that of Germany in 1989.
Compared with the problems of Pakistan, however, Egypt  seems more likely to come through its demonstration of people power to a better future.  Recent demonstrations in Pakistan have not been built on a strong middle-class base, do not propose a worthwhile future for the young and have ambivalent support from the army.  More often than not demonstrators have supported jihadist causes.
The aftermath of the Egyptian uprising may be uncertain, but it has dealt a death blow to the old entrenched regime, which is very likely to impact on the Arab Muslim world in general.   Unfortunately, however, it is not likely to provide a model for a better future for Pakistan.

The trees looked just like matchsticks

More disaster --- a category 5 cyclone struck the coast of north Queensland this week.  With extensive preparation,  effective emergency management and a degree of good luck the consequences were less disastrous than might have been expected.  Nevertheless there has been immense damage to infrastructure and agriculture and many people lost homes and possessions from the terrifying winds that stripped all the foliage from all the trees leaving them standing like matchsticks among the desolation and ruin.
There has been much media cover of the destruction and of the emergency responses.  There has been little consideration of the causes of these repeated exceptional natural disasters.  Ross Garnaut is reported in a recent article as saying that climate change is happening more quickly than he suggested in his first report, while Clive Hamilton goes so far as to say Queensland is being sacrificed to Australia’s and the world’s unwillingness to take global warming seriously.

Quip of the month

Adversity is the first path to truth

(Byron)

Music is a place

A highlight for me of our recent Museum of Old and Modern Art festival (Mona-Foma) was an interview with Philip Glass, accompanied by a recital from talented Hobart group 22SQ of Glass's brilliant Concerto for Saxophone Quartet.  After a dazzling performance the group received an enthusiastic ovation from the audience and praise from Glass, who then sat down with Mona-Foma curator Brian Ritchie to talk about saxophones, India and the way Glass's music had developed.   It was an interesting and engaging conversation, during which Glass revealed that he  had always wanted to know where music came from.  Eventually he realised he was asking the wrong question.  

Music, he said, is a place.

This event was held in the beautiful Bahai Centre in Hobart, a work of art in itself and well worth a visit.  The soprano, Joan Edwards, also performed there during the festival.  She sang two song cycles composed by Andrew Ford, the last one with a string quartet.  She sang beautifully and the blending of voice and instruments was particularly appealing.
 

Afterwards

Now that the Queensland floods have receded from an area as large as France and Germany combined (and Brisbane has begun to send around 200,000 tonnes of resulting rubbish to landfill) water has since covered 25 % of Victoria and will soon reach South Australia.  Only the tail end of the rain reached Tasmania, but even so it was enough to cause considerable damage to northern roads and farms.  Following the long dry these floods have been calamitous personally and nationally.

Yet another cause for reflection on the management of our land of drought and flooding rains this coming Australia Day.

Deluged

I was in Brisbane around Christmas visiting family.  It is hard to reconcile my memories of the Brisbane CBD and its marvellous cultural precinct with the today's tv images of a vast surging expanse of water covering a ghost city.  There have been truly shocking images of the inland tsunami that hit Toowoomba and extremely poignant stories from some of the survivors from the 12,000 houses that were inundated, the 15,000 that were partially inundated and the 5,000 businesses that were affected in Brisbane alone. There have also been impressive performances from the local, state and federal authorities, as well as outstanding volunteer and community involvement.  It's hard to avoid comparison with the Hurricane Katrina disaster.  At least this catastrophe hasn't been made worse by negligent authorities.  It will still be a long, hard year for Queensland, though.