Budget Black Hole

So tell me....who do you blame for this $12 billion black hole ?

Who's fault is it ?

Do we blame Gillard and Swan ? Do we blame the treasury officials who made these revenue forecasts.

I was pretty impressed by the Prime Minister yesterday in the way that she tackled the issue head on.

We need strong Government here.....now ultimately whatever Gillard and Swan do in response to this black hole will be a temporary measure because they're going to be sent packing in September, but for me it was pleasing that at least they were talking the talk of fiscal conservatism.

Although....on a day when even Christine Milne is talking about increasing taxes, you know things are rough don't you.

Look, for me the biggest thing to come out of this drama is the apparent incomeptence of a Government that up until 4 months ago was still promising a budget surplus by hook or by crook.

Swanny's got no idea. Gillard's got no idea.

Hockey and Robb and others had been warning of this revenue shortfall for months. How could they not see it ?

It's never too late to be talking about big tax changes, but it's too late for this Government. They've lost us all.

What's happened here is the fault of the Gillard and Rudd and Governments....and as we're learning very clearly this week, the Howard Government.

The last ten years of national administration got lazy in assuming that the resources boom would last forever and it was never going to.

Populist policies will eventually get us all into strife and they have.

What we need now is strong leadership.

The challenge as far as I'm concerned is much more in the court of the Coalition.

Will Abbott and Hockey and co. be brave enough to make the hard decisions...the decisions that disappoint people......the decisions that will get this country back in the black.

As a nation we have been living beyond our means.

We're not as rich as we think we are and things have gotta change.

Big Foot Adventures

Have you been out to see the buildings being lit up for Enlighten.

I went out and had a look last night and wow ! They really are spectacular.

I was a little surprised by the crowds.  There was a lot of people out last night for enlighten.

I was out as a part of something very special.  Michael Milton, the paralympian invited me out to take part in a new business venture of his. It's called Big Foot Adventures.

Now what Michael's doing is putting on small group bike ride tours of the parliamentary triangle.  You can either ride your bike or one of his.

So we met at the Acton Ferry terminal.  We rode from there off to the Carillion.  We got to ride around the track on Aspen Island...then off over Kings Avenue Bridge.....up to Parliament House.

We rode around the training track that surrounds Parliament House....I didn't even know that it existed. Stopped and had some nibblies on the lawn out front of Old Parliament House...thanks Penny and Rowdy and Matilda.

Then we were off to National Gallery and Questacon and Library.

We wrapped up the ride soon after 9.

That was good fun.

Let me tell you though....up by Parliament House. We'd just done the training track around the building...we were back on the road on Parliament Drive and Michael Milton says to me......race you down to Federation Mall.

Off we've gone.

Now, I reckon he had trouble with his gears at the start, cos I left him behind early.

Picked up a real good speed down the hill to the left hand turn.  Michael is much more a thrillseeker than me....I would have had a 10 metre lead on him at the turn, but he took me on the corner and raced to a 2 bike length lead.

I didn't think I'd peg him back on the flat.  I got out of the seat and went hard....and I got him. Nailed him well and truly.

I must be said, I had a road bike and he had a mountain bike, but when you can beat a champion like Michael Milton, I'd take if if he was riding a tricycle.

I think the rematch may well be on soon

Climbing to the top

There are a handful of things that all Canberrans should do if they get the chance.

 Spending a whole day at the Prime Minister’s XI cricket match is a must as is having a swim at Manuka Pool. To be a true Canberran, I think you have to attend question time at Parliament House at least once and to go along to the Old Bus Depot Markets. If you ride a bike, you’ve gotta ride the Cotter loop, if you’re not you really must stroll around Lake Burley Griffin including the whole west basin.

I’m also of the belief that all Canberrans should climb Mt Kosciusko at least once. The highest peak in the country is just down the road from us and up until this year all I’d done is look longingly at it from the lookout at Charlotte Pass. In January, Luisa and I decided to change that and to hike to the top.

From Charlottes on the “Summit Walk” it’s 9km’s each way.

We rocked up at the top car park at Charlotte Pass about midday on a Sunday armed with water bottles, chocolate bars, insect repellent and hats.

When we started the walk the incline was so slight that we may as well have been on a flat surface. You walk on what used to be the ‘road’ to the summit so it’s not all that challenging. There are even those who ride mountain bikes on the path. At the start we strolled amongst the gum trees with a gorgeous view of the Snowy River in the valley down below. Beside us on the other side of the track we could hear the beautiful noise of the never ending mounting streams trickling down from higher peaks. After a while you find yourself above the tree line and in the genuine Alpine zone. It is breathtakingly beautiful.

Don’t dare try the walk without serious insect repellent. Mountain flies are hard working, boisterous mongrels. They will not leave you alone for a moment. The insect spray deters most of them, but without it, I fear the flies may just pick you up and carry you away. Swearing at them appears to have little effect.

After about 5kms of virtually flat walking you descend into the valley and cross the Snowy River before a relatively steady climb up towards the mountain. On the way you stroll past historic Seaman’s Hut. This structure has been in place since 1929 after a few skiers perished in a blizzard.

The last couple of Km’s are very much uphill. When we got to the top Luisa and I were very much ready for a big rest. The views from the summit are absolutely awesome and there’s something very special about being at the very top of the country. Walking back down is a lot easier than the walk to the summit. The whole thing took 4 hours for us and at the end of it, I was ready for a big long bath.

Do give it a go before winter arrives. You won’t be disappointed.

Harness racing at Thoroughbred Park

Autumn is a wonderful time for racing in Canberra.

I’m counting down to Black Opal day at Thoroughbred Park. This is our Melbourne Cup day in Canberra.

Last year the Canberra Racing Club’s committee made the bold call to combine their two feature race days into one. It was a rip-roaring success. Again this year we’ve got Black Opal, Canberra Cup, the National Sprint and the Canberra Guineas on the one program. It’s a racing purists dream. Add to that the fashions and a live performance by Evermore and this is huge.

A fortnight after Black Opal, we’re set to see history made out at Thoroughbred Park. On March 23^rd we get a fully fledged Saturday afternoon TAB meeting here in Canberra which is a rarity in itself. But, the history making aspect is that the six thoroughbred races will be complimented by three harness races. For the first time ever, we’re going to see harness racing at Thoroughbred Park.

The harness events will be non-TAB, so you’ll be able to bet on them on course, but not in a TAB agency.

The gallops will be on the grass track, the trots on the synthetic.

Greg Nugent from the Canberra Harness Racing Club told me that the three races will be contested over 1900 metres racing in a clockwise direction. So we’ll see a mobile start in front of the grandstand before doing a full circuit.

“We’ve had one trial over there so far and the drivers have loved the cushion track,” Nugent said. “The wheels of the carts don’t dig in which was our biggest concern.”

He’s hoping to have full fields of 10 in each race. What a blast that will be amongst the thoroughbred races.

At some stage in the future it’s envisaged that all three racing codes come together permanently at the one venue in Canberra and this experiment in March will go part the way of testing those waters. If and when we do get that 3 code venue in Canberra it’ll have to be built from scratch and I know that Greg Nugent and others have some very bold visions including a straight 1200 metre track for harness racing.

Can you imagine a ‘straight 6’ track for the trots ?

Under that scenario the synthetic track would have to be the outer track with the grass surface inside of it and the 1200 metre track would be a chute which connected to the home straight. The chute itself would have to be much longer than 1200 metres to accommodate a mobile start, but it could curve somewhat in the lead up to the start point. The barrier draw would become irrelevant and even on a synthetic surface, winning horses could record some stunning mile rates.

There’s a lot of water to pass under the bridge before we get our all codes racing venue in Canberra, but when we do, put me down as a vote for a straight 1200 metre harness racing track

Too young.

Isn't cancer a shit.

It's a bloody mongrel of a thing.

Look, I know we've all gotta go sometime, but this horrible disease takes far too many far too early.

It's not fair.

In the last week pancreatic cancer took two larger than life characters from us.

I speak of Chris Peters and Peter Harvey.

The deaths of both of these men has had a profound effect on those around them.

I don't know if you saw the piece from Peter's daughter Claire in the Telegraph on the weekend.

Here's some of what she said.

Pancreatic cancer took nearly five months to claim him, from the day he first turned bright yellow (an unseen, unfelt tumour had blocked his bile duct) while on a romantic holiday in Venice with my mother, Anne, to the day he died in Royal North Shore Private Hospital. And they were five wonderful months.

We - my mother, brother Adam and his wife Eliza, and me and my husband Ross - were incredibly lucky to have that time with Dad. We were all acutely aware that some families never get the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones. We had a long, sweet, precious goodbye. Everything was said. We had great conversations about memories and the future. Dad cracked bad jokes. He texted his buddies and tweeted. He told everyone - especially Mum - he loved us, over and over. "Every day's a great day," he said one evening as we said goodnight at the hospital.

He was right was Harves. Every days's a great day. Make the most of today.

Argo

We decided to download Argo on iTunes on the weekend and to watch it again.

What a flick ?

If you are yet to see it...do yourself a favour and either buy it...cos it's on sale now in most of the variety stores or rent it in whatever form you choose.

It's just a wonderful cinematic journey.

I don't know how much you know about it, but this is the best picture winner at the Oscars. It's based on true events for Iran in 1979/80.

I was 13 years old at the time and I can so remember how dark the whole Iranian situation was there.

Of course On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, taking 52 Americans hostage with hopes of exchanging them for the recently-deposed Shah. The movie opens with those scenes...and they are just frightening. What followed was a 444-day ordeal which would last long after the Shah died in exile without standing trial.

While all that was going on almost no one knew that a half-dozen Americans had managed to steal away unnoticed during the assault and taken refuge in the home of the Canadian Ambassador, Ken Taylor who is played by Victor Garber.

If the Iranians had known they would have hunted them down like dogs.

The US were aware of these 6 hidden Americans and they assigned the rescue mission the CIA's Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), an exfiltration specialist with a perfect record of freeing captives from such perilous predicaments.

So, in the movie, Ben Affleck's character hatches an attention-grabbing scheme which was just too crazy for words. As he explains it to the powers that be, this was the best bad idea they could come up with.

His high-profile plan involved creating a cover for the stranded diplomats by making a movie that was actually nothing more than a CIA front. First, he enlisted the assistance of a veteran Hollywood executive (Alan Arkin) and an Oscar-winner (John Goodman) sworn to secrecy, to lend an air of authenticity to the ruse by posing as the picture’s producer and makeup artist, respectively.

It's a great story, told so well.

There's been criticism that it's not entirely accurate, but I don't really care. You won't when you see it either.

You'll love it. Argo.

Isabelle White

The News Ltd papers and websites have got a fascinating story this morning regarding young Isabelle White.

You probably haven't heard of Isabelle.

Izzy is being touted as one of the big reasons why the Prime Minister has decided to camp out in Rooty Hill for the next week.

She's 22. She's a uni student. She also works at one of the Gloria Jeans outlets in western Sydney.

And she's a serious chance of unseating Ed Husic in the Federal seat of Chifley in September.

She is the Liberal Party's candidate for the electorate named after Labor great Ben Chifley, a seat Labor had not contemplated the possibility of losing until recently.

So she's 22....she's already a Blacktown councillor. She's reported as saying that sceptics thought she was too young and aiming too high when she was preselected in July, but Labor's fortunes in western Sydney have become dire, leaving her a chance in the seat held by Ed Husic by 12 per cent.

Isabelle, is studying education at Sydney University and between council duties is a shift manager at a local Gloria Jeans, has doorknocked two entire suburbs.

And so During door knocking, what do you think were the big issues being raised by voters....what do you think they were up in arms about ?

Carbon tax and boat arrivals. And as I've discovered, the people who are angriest about the boat people situation are immigrants who have reached Australia via regular means.

Isabelle White...good luck

Doctors on keyboards

I remember when I was kid....I can remember my science teacher Mr Davies waxing lyrical about the upcoming age of the computer.

“They'll change our lives,” Mr Davies said

He was right.

What he wasn't right about is that he and so many others continually suggested that they would make our lives so much easier because, he said “ they'll end up doing most of our work for us.”

In 21^st century reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

Computers don't do our jobs for us. They tend to create much more work. Thanks to 24 hour connectivity, we never seem to finish work.

Computers haven't simplified things, they've made them much more complex.

Talk to them at Canberra Hospital about how complex IT has made their lives.

IT at Canberra Hospital has been in the news a lot of late.

We had the drama involving the complete breakdown of their emergency room computer systems earlier in the week.

And we're being told this morning that the Canberra Hospital will push ahead with new computer security measures designed to help prevent a repeat of the infamous emergency department data-doctoring scandal.

Of course it's all history now that executive Kate Jackson last year confessed to changing the emergency department performance figures and she suuggested that other people might also have been interfering with the system. Now, we don't know if they were, but we know it was well and truly possible.

Investigations into the whole thing weren't helped by the fact that so many of the staff use generic log-ins such as ''nurse'' and ''doctor'' to access the hospital's Emergency Department Information System (EDIS).

Last year the Auditor-General recommended that the staff be given unique log-ins but the ACT Health Directorate was concerned that this wouldn't be practical in a busy emergency department.

Peggy Brown is the Director General of the Health Directorate. She said yesterday that slow log-in and log-off processes would have brought the casualty department to a standstill because doctors and nurses needed to quickly enter information into computer terminals in between seeing patients.

According to the Canberra Times, Dr Brown has changed her position. She's now saying that it this planned upgrade to the EDIS would enable the use of ''rapid log-on'' technology.

Lets hope we can move forward here, because we certainly don't want a repeat of this week in ED or last year with Kate Jackson

Stop the boats

When the Coalition wins Government in September many things in this country will change for the better.

The Liberals asylum seeker policies will be a game changer for the people smugglers.

They'll be tough.

They'll be out to prove to all and sundry that it's just not worth getting on a leaky boat to come to Australia.

Scott Morrison is the man for that job. He will be tough and uncompromising....but it will be important that he finds some compromise in his uncompromising stance.

There are some grey shades in immigration and I do fear that sometimes Morrison goes a too far.

He's gone too far with these calls to create special laws for those on bridging visas to treat them like some sort of subhuman species....well I think he has anyway.

Scotty is trying to whip western Sydney into a frenzy of fear over the crime wave created by these dastardly asylum seekers. There is no crime wave. This incident involving the Sri Lankan asylum-seeker seeker was extremely regrettable, but it was also far from the norm

This morning we've been told that asylum seekers living in the community on bridging visas are about 45 times less likely to be charged with a crime than members of the general public.

There is no need to blow a loud whistle to warn people of the crimes of asylum-seekers because the official figures show that they're just not committing. Sure there are some bad eggs in every batch, but I think Scott Morrison would be much better served focusing on how to stop these people from coming in the first place.

An open letter from humans to magpies

Dear magpies,

We don’t want your babies.

I understand that you’re just trying to be a good parent, but seriously,  you have to re-think this whole attack the humans thing because WE DON’T WANT YOUR BABIES.

Have you ever been inside a supermarket ?

If ever you bother to check out Coles or Woolworths or Aldi, you’ll see row after row of food. Some of it’s fresh. Some of it’s pre-packaged and ready to heat and eat. None of it has feathers on it. This is where most of us humans secure our sustenance and we really don’t need to supplement it with your chicks.

I understand that it’s the male magpies doing the attacking and that to some extent it’s about proving your worth to your mate, but guys, there has to be a less extreme way to do it. Rather than be the macho guy, may I suggest a romantic approach or even just taking the rubbish out or doing the dishes because this kamikaze stuff is going to catch up with you one day.

As a regular cyclist, I seriously cannot comprehend the level of intensity in your regular attacks on me.  I still don’t understand what makes you believe that I’m coming for your young when I’m zipping past ‘your tree’ at 40km/h.  I don’t even look like slowing down, so why oh why must try to impose yourself on me. If I was to stop the bike and start climbing the tree towards your nest, then I could fully understand you getting a little hot under the collar, but isn’t it clear that I don’t give a toss about your little ones ?

I’m the guy who feeds you mince meat and bacon from my back deck.  I’m the guy who comes out to listen to your beautiful songs. Honestly, what makes you think that I want to destroy your family ?  You need to chill a bit. I think you’ll be a better father if you can just get a grip and relax. Go catch some worms or hassle the crows, but for God’s sake leave us humans alone.

To the particularly crazy magpies including the demented bird just south of Murrumbateman on the Barton Highway and the noisy warrior who lives down by Isabella Pond, I do hope your beak was jarred by the hard exterior of my bike helmet. Were you trying to scare me, or was that a genuine attempt to kill me ? And to the crazy bastard on William Slim Drive at Giralang, yes you did draw blood. I hope you’re satisfied.

Please can we just get along.