Wanna see a politician tapdance?

Next week, the NSW Government releases the findings of the inquiry into the sale of farmland at Hurlstone Agricultural High School, nearly a year to the day since the issue first hit the headlines. Since that time, there’s been a lot of water under the bridge and many public statements of varying veracity:

From the time when a bellicose Rees government had factored 239M of land sale proceeds into its forward planning; to a realisation that the plan incorporated a war memorial and flood plains, as well as productive farmland and valuable green space; met by a revolt from local and national politicians, agriculture experts and community groups; to a pitiably one-sided public debate; to an eleventh-hour (and overdue) heritage listing for the land in question; and finally to a low-key public inquiry which has already ‘soft-launched’ its findings to the government ahead of the public release next week.

To my knowledge, there has not been an argument proffered in support of the sell-off, outside of an Excel spreadsheet, and a feeble attempt at wedge politics by the government in accusing Hurlstone of hoarding assets which could be transmogrified into policemen or nurses or teachers for other schools.

The counter-argument has been well-prosecuted by SHEAP, and congratulations should go to the team for their co-ordination and clarification of the important issues in the public debate. Well done, team.

Word is that the inquiry is likely to recommend a small sell-off of land in order to save face, acknowledging the lack of a case for a wholesale sell-off. I believe the inquiry will explicitly encourage the school to re-commit itself to the service of NSW and Australian agricultural education and propose some changes in the schools brief to ensure Hurstone is seen to be making the best use of its land allocation.

What then of the Government’s dreams of a Hurlstone-led budget bailout? It will be awkward: the role of local Labor members will be loudly trumpeted in advocating on behalf of Hurlstone, the state treasury will point to a recovering economy as a reason for not needing as much money (rather than seek to sell more land elsewhere), but later use the inquiry’s ‘snub’ in justification of the state’s further failing financials.

I’m cautiously optimistic – I believe the case has been made for Hurlstone’s Farm. Let’s see on Monday.

It’s BONWAG’s 15th Birthday. As good a time as any to execute a long-overdue Web2.0 makeover.

I’ve been threatening to make some changes for a while, but didn’t have the time to devote to learning all the new code I needed – BONWAG has always been hand-coded with love. This weekend, though, I’ve decided to stop tinkering and start prioritising form over function. To start writing for humans, not robots.

So I’ve moved everything over to WordPress – archives, mail, everything. It’s always been a close competitor to my first-love blogging tool Movable Type. Let’s see what colour the grass is on the Dark Side.

Sure, it means I won’t have the freedom to have things exactly the way I would like, but I’m happy to tinker within the restrictuions I have.

I’ve been impressed at the ease with which I’ve been able to bring all the BONWAG archives from the old site, and to add in many features that I used to spend evenings developing from scratch. I also like the way you’re able to post from almost anywhere.

A lot of the old content is missing, and I’ll be building it back in as I see it emerging in the search archives.

One big improvement I’ve been meaning to add is the iPhone version – it’s automatically served up if you’re using Safari On The Small Screen.

Also, for the geeks, I’ve moved the whole family over to Google Apps so we can all use our email and calendars together, and be freed up from the expensive and lacklustre domain management of our local ISP. Another smooth migration, even if it does require some significant DNS gymnastics.

And, in the upshot, a recommitment to keep posting. Sure, I (and the other family members) will be using our TwitFaceMySpace microblogging tools, but the web’s too transient at the moment. No, 140 characters is not enough for BONWAG.

Even if it is a teenager, now.

The battle to save the farm and land at Hurlstone Agricultural High School (my alma mater) from property developers just got tougher: politicians representing the region having returned from their ‘community consultations’ with a clear message – Hurlstone’s farm is not for sale.

The Four Labor MPs- Andrew McDonald (Macquarie Fields), Graham West (Campbelltown), Geoff Corrigan (Camden) and Phil Costa (Wollondilly) are now on record saying they will join the fight and speak directly with Nathan Rees voicing their opposition to the proposal.

Stay tuned, sports fans – there are irresistible forces and immovable objects at play now. In the red corner, the Department of Education already decided that the sale is crucial to local services and has already planned to spend the money they make on the land sale on police, health and education. Team Macarthur leaps the rope to joins the fight in the blue corner, carrying the weight of 2 government ministers, shouting to the crowd as one that the farm ’should not be sold’.

The opposition to the sale is now so overwhelming that it appears the only people in support of the sale are the bean-counters in the NSW DET and Treasury. If caucus members can’t be convinced of the merits of the sale, is there any more cause to proceed?

The government no doubt is waiting for the outcome of the current inquiry into the sale so they can save some face. It’s up to those who support the continuation of Hurlstone as a practical agricultural education to contribute their submissions to the inquiry and make it obvious to the Powers That Be.

Here’s hoping that the strength of opposition to this insane decision is enough to keep this off the political agenda for another 15 years, at least. As Tiff Spears said in the press – if Team Macarthur can’t change the government’s mind, what good are they?

It’ll be an fascinating test of whether grass-roots democratic process is still important to Labor.

Charli and her partner Nick have returned from the National Capital DanceSport Championships with a few trophies in their hand luggage: they scored a 4th, a 3rd, a 2nd and a first place in only their second competitive outing on the floor. Photos and more as they comes to hand (and the iPod Touch holds off jumping the gun with another empty blog post!)

Welcome to the world , Sebastian David Robinson-Cook, born 2:15PM today. Mum and bub are happy and healthy.

UPDATE: News and Photos are here   – bookmark it!

For a good overview of the Hurlstone Saga, ABC’s Landline sent some cameras out to the school. Sean Murphy has more.

Most sides of the argument are represented, with only one – the Government’s – in support of the proposal to sell Hurlstone’s farm for housing.

It seems like Caleb and Olivia’s time in the spotlight has ended. Only to be replaced by Anthony and Allanah on the Front page of ‘Online Danceline’.

Many more more people are waking up about the looming ‘Digital Dark Age’ – the Sydney Morning Herald warns of a cultural ‘black hole’ spanning the mid-90s up to about now, where most of our memories are being archived on volatile media that might not survive.

(I first mentioned this back in 2004 – do I get any extra points?)

I’m proud to say that one of my former ventures, ACM, is part of the Pandora project that this article mentions.

Again, the main problem is that none of the media on which we currently choose to store our data (read: memories) is able to last more than 10 years or so. If I were investing in technology ventures in the medium term, I’d be looking to archival technologies that will let us Generation Xers show and tell Generation X+3 what the sea levels looked like before the Great Warming and Innundation of 2012.

Future historians will be better informed about the back catalogue of New Kids On The Block than The Backstreet Boys. Sobering thought.

And, speaking from personal experience – BACK STUFF UP! PRINT THE IMPORTANT STUFF OUT on ARCHIVAL QUALITY PAPER AND INK! NOW! You can’t afford to lose those memories, even if some of it lives on perishable optical disks for a time. If your disk crashes, you will have some explaining to do to both future and current generations.

Any ideas on what the next wave is? Should we go back to stone? That’s the only thing that seems to last, at least, according to Time Team.

<voice=”Mal Garvin”>
Or maybe, just maybe, our memories are best stored in the lives of others – they can be heard as echoes of the laughter of those who share stories of us when we’re long, long gone. Where do you store YOUR treasures? It makes you think.
</voice>

Good job, guys. Posting a major spoiler for the Hancock movie right there on the front of the DVD. Very thoughtful.

Caleb and (new partner) Olivia have been featured on the main page of ‘Online Danceline’ following their successful debut at the Metropolitan Championships on the weekend.

Great photo – and great results for their first comp – two first places, two seconds. See it here (for a limited time)