GordonMoyes.com

The NSW Government has scrapped plans to allow Sydney University to build a campus for 5,000 students and 400 staff at Callan Park in Sydney’s inner west. Next week the Legislative Council will vote on a Private Member’s Bill from the Green’s Sylvia Hale that would strip the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (SHFA) of control and management of the 60-hectare site in Rozelle. Under the plan, 40 hectares out of the total of 60 hectares will be handed over to Leichhardt Council under a 99-year lease.

Over twenty years ago, ministers who were discerning the times, noted that Biblical scholars were examining most Christian beliefs in the light of the most recent discoveries in archaeology, new manuscripts, new understanding of the Jewish mind-set in the time of Jesus, and re-examining well-accepted Christian understanding as they did in the 1880’s, 1908, 1928, and 1948.

People in this country know little of Assyrian culture, language and history, although we may recognise the names Sargon II, Sennacherib, and Ashurbanipal from our Bibles. But are we aware that the Assyrian empire at its peak stretched from the Caspian Sea to the island of Cyprus, and from Anatolia to Egypt? It was a vast civilisation, the cradle of modern civilisation, with learning, culture and an indigenous language that survives today in what is now modern Iraq.

This years marks the 20th Anniversary of Coptic Orphans, an award winning international Christian development organisation that works with vulnerable children in Egypt to transform their local communities by breaking the cycle of poverty and injustice through literacy, education, advocacy, mentoring and providing basic needs. It works with vulnerable children in Egypt regardless of their religion.

Many of us garden just for the sheer joy of it. My wife gardens because she really loves it, the digging, the planting, the propagating, the weeding, and the harvesting. I do not enjoy most of that. But I love reading about it, seeing it, talking about it, walking in it, and above all planning out what we can do, how we can do it better and how we can make a significant capital improvement to our property.

Yesterday, NSW Premier Nathan Rees has decided to abolish RailCorp and legislation will be introduced in Parliament when it resumes later this month to abolish RailCorp’s four-year experiment as a corporate entity. The legislation will remove the commercial board of RailCorp and return the organisation to a statutory authority under the direct control of the Transport Minister, David Campbell.

The Wall Street crash of 2008, the Main Street Housing mortgage crisis, the Australian Stock Market crash, the Government rescue packages in every country, and the belt tightening by every citizen everywhere is the fruit of decades of financial greed, lack of regulation, and speculative use of the share and property markets. It means that Gordon Gekko and his philosophy “Greed is good” have finally brought the world to a halt.

This month, in the NSW Parliament House Fountain Court area, the Honourable Tony Stewart MP, Member for Bankstown, hosted an Art Exhibition presented by the Australian Egyptian Council Forum, from 2nd through the 26th of September. This art exhibit was made possible by the generous sponsorship of the Arab Bank Australia.

I have told you previously that Beverley and I are keen on our garden. In the article “Grow Your Own Veggies” I described our two vegetables boxes, waist high and four metres long by a metre wide. That is so that, as we grow old, we do not have to stoop or kneel to tend the vegetables. The boxes are built from thick, rot resistant timber slabs, and filled with a layer of rocks for good drainage, then a thick layer of soil, then a layer of composted soil, then a layer of cow manure and finally some mulch.

Readers will know that from the beginning I opposed the sell off the State electricity generators and production capacity. There were many reasons – the poor economic return for the sell-off, the bad Iemma-Costa campaign to the public, the loss of jobs involved and the potential huge increase for families in the costs of electricity based on the experience of other states, and so on.