Unis fail simple entry test
THERE’S a lot more rain on the way.
And maybe quite a blow for us, depending on which way Nora goes.
What a change from just a few weeks ago when the city’s supplies were so depleted that even more harsh restrictions – watering with buckets – threatened. Or were they? Some people tell me Mayor Jenny Hill was right all along, that there was no crisis.
Tell that to the turf farmers and nursery suppliers who have lost their livelihoods and to people whose gardens have been ruined by drought and the city’s water restrictions.
One wag tells me we breezed through the millennium drought and that, with average rainfall around 1100mm, we have a catchment where just 450mm of rain more than half- fills our dam. That’s more than a year’s demand at normal consumption, he says, and we have a back- up pumped supply used once in 30 years before the most recent drought.
Perhaps the rush to build the new pipeline really does have more to do with local government election timelines.
Even so, we plan more storages like Hells Gates Dam.
This “multi- billion” project 120km northwest of Townsville is technically viable, according to a leak this week from a $ 2.2 million report.
Meanwhile, Charters Towers Mayor Liz Schmidt pleads for $ 20 million to build Big Rocks Weir to secure their “foreseeable future” and sources tell me the Hells Gates water will be too expensive for irrigated farming.
Time will tell on that when the report is released.
And then there is the Burdekin Dam stage one.
I’m told that during the recent rainfall event here, the water spilling over the dam could have generated more than 1500mW 24/ 7 had the originally planned hydro station been built.
That is enough to power North Queensland and send some south.
Yet the water flows out to sea and not a turbine in sight. How come?
Perhaps, as we watch the rain, a little more focus is required, not from Brisbane or Canberra but among ourselves. OUR universities are failing their own tests.
A staggering three quarters of students being admitted to university are failing the most basic of entry standards.
This week a report was released from the Mitchell Institute at Victoria University showing an amazing 131,555 students were admitted using something other than the ATAR score given to students at the end of Year 12.
This is yet another example of how broken the university system is.
We all agree there should be some flexibility in the system for kids who just fall short, or overseas students who pay upfront, or like me they find a place for you because someone makes a case for you. But when the exception has now become the rule, what’s the point of even trying at school when you’ll get in anyway?
The fatal flaw in our tertiary sector is that courses are paid for upfront by the taxpayer, thus incentivising universities to not draw a line where admission is based on the marks you get.
Until this is fixed, we cheapen the value of the degrees and waste billions that will never be paid back.
Clubs don’t need to know
There’s no need for local clubs to hold on to your data.
While the media has been focused on the data breaches at Facebook, there is a far more worrying breach happening here in Australia.
This week we learnt that 20,000 members of a workers club near Newcastle had their data hacked.
This wasn’t just names and birthdays like the Facebook breach. These people took driver’s licence numbers and in some cases passport details.
A name, address, passport and date of birth would be enough to open a bank account in someone’s name. Crooks use these accounts to run up debts and take out loans you end up having to pay thousands to get out of.
In the age of the cloud, we need to rethink why would a club need so much data to become a member.
In the old days they needed all of that because the only way to join these clubs was to be recommended by an existing member. But now clubs offer lifetime membership for a dollar. I know because that’s what I was able to do in lots of clubs across Queensland.
Clubs don’t need all that data. They need the basics for you to sign up and that’s it. Especially when stealing data can be as valuable as robbing a bank for some criminal syndicates.
Labor caught in the act
Labor’s election result should be fatal. There’s no excuse for the Victorian Labor Party rorting taxpayers money to get an unfair advantage at the last election.
They used up $ 388,000 in funds that were meant to be for people to work in electorate offices to fund political activists for Labor. Even worse, the Government spent more than $ 1.5 million to stop investigations into the scheme.
The Ombudsman was scathing in her detailing of the rort, saying this clearly crossed the line. But Premier Daniel Andrews says everything is OK because they paid it back after they were caught. Please, this doesn’t just fail the pub test, it fails the bistro test, the gaming room test, the storeroom out the back test and the people who live next door test.
If a politician racked up $ 388,000 in dodgy travel they’d be hounded out of office. But Andrews is committed to doing nothing.
So here’s hoping the people of Victoria make the choice for him at the coming state election in November.