The West Tamar Council held its annual Australia Day Citizenship Awards Day yesterday at the excellent Riverside Community Centre. Welcome to our newest Australians who took their oath of allegiance yesterday.

It really was quite a moving ceremony and I admire these newest Australians for the journey they are undertaking. If you have been born in Australia and lived all your life here, it is hard to imagine the stresses of moving country and citizenship and what that entails, so well done.

The second verse of Advance Australia Fair (you know – the one we have no idea what it says!) has these lines in it:

For this who’ve come across the sea
We’ve boundless plains to share

The West Tamar Council also handed out the following 2012 Australia Day Awards:

Community Group Of The Year: Esk Valley Orienteering Club

Young Citizen Of The Year:  David Adams

Citizen Of The Year: Janet Frost

Well done to all concerned for their achievements and thanks to the West Tamar Municipal Band and the Tamar Valley Voices for making the event quite enjoyable.

If you have never been to and Australia Day citizenship ceremony, go next year, You will probably find it a very enriching experience.

Australia Day Thursday January 26^th

On Australia Day we come together as a nation to celebrate what is great about Australia and being Australian. It is the day to reflect on what we have achieved and what we can be proud of in our great nation……a day for us to re-commit to making Australia an even better place for the future.

Australia Day, 26 January, is the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet of 11 convict ships from Great Britain, and the raising of the Union Jack at Sydney Cove by its commander Captain Arthur Phillip, in 1788. Australia Day is however much more than barbeques and fireworks. It is more than another public holiday. It is more than the pride and excitement of new citizens who call themselves Australian for the first time on 26 January after being conferred citizenship via the ceremonies we will all see on the news.

At its core, Australia Day is a day driven by communities, and the celebrations held in each town, suburb or city – unified by the celebration of just what is great about Australia and being Australian – are the foundation of its ongoing success.

Once upon a time, well, back in the 1960s as far as I remember, there used to be a splendid cake and pastry shop in the centre of Brisbane called The Shingle Inn. It really was as good as it got.

I still remember people lined up in Edward Street just to get in the doors and purchase their special treat for the week like a chocolate ring cake which was neatly packed in a square cardboard grey container, tied with string and a bow and festooned with a little white label on top that simply said The Shingle Inn.

They would then board the number 69 tram to Balmoral or the 71 tram to Salisbury and nurse their precious cargo all the way home, sitting there watching Brisbane go by from the rickety tram window, rickety if you were in an old drop centre tram, and salivating over the chocolate feast that waited them in that little grey box.

And so it went for many many years and the Shingle Inn prospered and their reputation grew larger and larger as a premium supplier of quality goods.

Sadly of course, as with many other niche suppliers, rents in the Brisbane CBD soared as the smaller merchants were forced out by the ubiquitous multi nationals from their prime positions through unaffordable rents and The Shingle Inn and its magnificent original store fittings were dismantled and stored awaiting their rebirth at some point in the future……which kind of happened near the Macarthur Centre but not exactly like the old one.

A newer  Shingle Inn – a branch office, umm, sort of –  now resides at the mega super giant bigger and better Hyperdome bears absolutely no resemblance to those glorious child hood memories in looks. I mean, why would you want a unique looking shop front when you can look just like every other shopping centre business in every other mega hyper bigger and better acreage site in the whole wide world?

We stopped by for lunch today.

Sadly, I must offer the opinion there is no resemblance in food quality as well.

Oh well – put it down to progress.

Here are the real numbers* in the table below of how we are already over-serviced by State politicians:

                                      * Figures from Wikipedia, August 2008

It is worthwhile noting that while the Northern Territory does actually have more State politicians per head of population than Tasmania, they do service an area 21 times the geographical size of our State (1,420,970 sq. kms. as compared to our 68,401 sq. kms.)

Add in a dozen Senators and five federal members and, really, you’ve got to be joking.

Here are some figures you may find interesting. The TOTAL Tasmanian Government Budget for 2008 / 2009 was $4 billion. In New South Wales in 2008 / 2009, the budget for roads alone was $4 billion. Now who’s kidding who?

If the current State politicians can’t stand the heat and workload, it is time to vacate the kitchen and stop whining!

At the end of the day, here’s the no brainer – do you want more politicians or more nurses and more operations at the LGH?

All parties in Tasmania want more politicians – WHY?

What an absolute joke.

Their very record demonstrates they could not run a chook raffle but now they want even more of their mates and party faithful to be an even greater tax on the community at their $160,000 a year jobs?

Most of them have clearly shown that they are not WORTH $160k a year and that this is the largest salary package they are EVER going to enjoy.

And now they want even more incompetents to join them? What for? To make the existing ones look good?

People do not need more politicians.

We need a hospital / health care system that works. And works for every body at every level.

Everything else is just secondary flotsam and jetsam and the political manipulating of numbers.

This does not wash with me. I thought we had had this debate a year ago. Which part of NO is too complicated for these simpletons understand?

What a load of rubbish we are seeing about poker machines. All politicans are now posturing according to how they think the public will react and making quite stupid proposals to pacify the nanny-staters.

Here is the bottom line: I like gambling BUT hate poker machines because I think they are a stupid way of gambling.

People have gambled for thousands of years and will continue to gamble long after I am gone.

The accidental member for Denison, Andrew Wilkie, whose main claim to fame was being a whistle blower (that is code for someone who cannot keep their mouth shut despite any personal oaths they took!) and good old Bob Brown, do not have any grand plans to save people from themselves.

Brown and his $1 limit on pokies is stupider than even I would have given him credit for. What is it going to achieve? Nothing.

Well, maybe what it will achieve is keeping the pokie junkies on the machines longer and away from their families for longer until they blow the lot.

Wow Bob – that is a positive move?

Apart from that it will achieve  NOTHING else, is a waste of time and quite duplicitous.

Another scam by Brown and his cohorts to make it look like they are actually doing something.

Welcome to my web site and a new exercise in blogging at which I am totally a tyro but I am sure we will pick it up as we go along or else I shall quickly shut it down and revert to a more tradional web site…… and of course pretend that I never attempted it so as not to look incompetent and foolish.

The object of the exercise is to keep people informed of local issues in the West Tamar municipality and hopefully shed some light on associated matters that you may find of interest.