Tess Lawrence asks:

"Is [Better Place] the same electric car company
headed up by a former Victorian pollie ?"

Tess, I have no idea. Can you give me something to go on, like a name, or something?

The Keneally involvement with Better Place, and within that involvement that of Israeli billionaire Shai Agassi, I learned of by using the Google search terms ["Ben Keneally"+electric car]. The first page of search results showed up thus: http://twitpic.com/4qezkq and http://twitpic.com/4qezzi

The 'United Israel Appeal - Refugee Relief Fund' entry (the second-last listing in the second Twitpic of the first page of Google search results) caught my eye in the light of the then current controversy surrounding Marrickville Council's attempt to involve itself in a BDS campaign against Israeli interests. It seemed strange, on the face of it, that four Labor councillors would have voted in favour of the sanctions, sanctions that appeared as if they might adversely affect the private business interests and prospects of the then-Premier's husband, together with those of Better Place and the recently or about-to-be privatised Energy Australia, the other interested parties in the emergent electric car recharging grid enterprise.

I just wondered as to whether Ben Keneally was seen by other competing commercial interests possessed of some 'inside track' advantage with respect to the wider Labor party at large, as effectively doing some 'freelancing' that was seen as threatening some much more encompassing scheme of asset-stripping the NSW public of its generating capacity whilst getting the Australian taxpayer to fund the entry of, say, a major energy consortium into effective oil-replacement energy supply.

Bilking the Australian public of tens of billions of dollars of potential 'profit' PER ANNUM in the process, were both existing, and future replacement, electricity assets to remain in public ownership and substantially displace oil as a road transport fuel.

Why should the Australian public fund Big Oil into electric road transportation with Labor's proposed carbon tax and not own lock, stock, and barrel the business it thereby builds?

Crikey, Tess, I don't believe it! Surely forensic journalism research can't be this easy.

Without you having given me so much as a name to go on in the question posed in your post of Wednesday, 27 April 2011 at 2:20:36 PM, just to fill in time while waiting for one to come along, I entered this search term into Google:

[Victorian politician+"Better Place"] See: http://twitpic.com/4qqlnl

Bingo! The first listing on the first page of Google results connects the names 'Thornley' and 'Better Place' in the abstract. Clicking it brings up this item: http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/01/23/thornleys-better-place-may-be-last-years-business-model/ .

By crikey, does 'Crikey' know a thing or two about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)!

It looks from that item I may have been right on the money in speculating upon the Keneally involvement in the Better Place electric vehicle recharging network enterprise as being seen as a form of 'freelancing' at the expense of other Labor politicians.

No wonder in a way, perhaps, that Keating was so opaque in his reference to his having explained the selling-off of NSW electricity assets with the use of the term "consistent" with the setting up of the National Electricity Market (NEM) in his now highly-publicised castigatory 'Dear John' letter of non-congratulation to John Robertson, the now leader of the Labor Opposition in NSW. See: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/45678.html

Isn't it just as well there is going to be a Royal Commission into the NSW power sell-off. I mean, it could hardly fail to ask a few penetrating questions, make a few connections (!) as it plugs (!!) along, could it? Especially with forensic journalism research being so easy and 'enabled' in this digital day.




Tell me, Tess, is it you teaching me, or is it me teaching you, when it comes to forensic journalism research?



I'm beginning to like these little chats, Tess. Learning isn't as much of a drudge as one might think, is it?

Oh, and I don't think I would refuse an electric car, provided they didn't charge too much for them, although many see them as revolting.

Ciao for now.

Dear Cheeky Forrest Gumpp, one of the reasons I love teaching so much is that I always learn more than I teach. And I'm afraid with me, the more I learn, the more I realise I have so much to learn.
What's great about these interative forums is the exchange of
information and discussion they encourage.
Tess Lawrence

Deep down, Tess, I just knew it was all too good to be true. The seeming astounding ease of forensic journalistic research on Google, that is.



Earlier in this thread, in discussion as to a pair of 'killer heels' losing a State but gaining a nation, the matter of the NSW Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Amendment (Automatic Enrolment) Act 2009 came up. See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11834#202588

As can be seen if one clicks that very long link in the above post, the NSW Electoral Commissioner has thrown me, and the public at large, a bone in the form of a reference on page six of that annual report, under the heading of '2009/10 at a Glance', to the new SmartRoll legislation. That reference, verbatim, reads:

"New SmartRoll legislation was
assented by Parliament on 28/04/10"

The very wording rang alarm bells: Parliament does not assent to legislation, as any Electoral Commissioner ought very well know. As is my perverse way, I wanted to have a look at this SmartRoll legislation for myself. I had already found the 2009 legislation, which was asented to on 14 December 2009, and proclaimed on 22 September 2010 as coming into effect on 24 September 2010, referred to in the Commissioner's Annual Report, on the internet without difficulty.

A Google search using the terms [SmartRoll+NSW+legislation+28April2010] gave me just five results,none of them useful. See: http://twitpic.com/4r9xyi

The search term [NSW legislation assented to 28 April 2010] yielded, among the results, this page: http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/epub?bulletin=20100430 , and on it an entry for 'Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Amendment Act 2010 No 11' as receiving Royal Assent on 28 April 2010.



Problem is, that Act had nothing to do with the electronic voting and enrolment provisions of SmartRoll. http://twitpic.com/4radmj



The detailed SmartRoll provisions were in the 'Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Further Amendment Act 2010 No 126, assented to on 7 December 2010. http://twitpic.com/4rae82

Talk about buried information!

I wonder whether the then NSW Opposition would have supported the 2009 legislation if it knew the details of SmartRoll revealed in late 2010?