Hervey Bay Gossip

As Mother’s Day approaches, jewellery advertising has come under close scrutiny from Australia’s consumer protection agencies.

State and territory Offices of Fair Trading and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission are scrutinising catalogue advertising and contacting jewellers to test claims that consumers will make savings by paying less than the normal price.

“The lead-up to Mother’s Day is a prime time for jewellery advertising”, ACCC Chairman, Mr Graeme Samuel, said today. “Retailers must ensure that their advertising is accurate.

“The agencies are concentrating on two-price advertising, such as ‘was $150/now $100′ or ‘$150 $100′.

“Such advertising implies that consumers will now save by paying less for an item than they would have paid earlier. But if those savings are not real – for example, if the item was never on sale at the ‘was’ price - such claims are likely to breach fair trading laws.

“Two-price advertising is popular in some sections of the jewellery industry. As part of the monitoring the agencies are requesting information from jewellers to support price savings claims made.

“Responses will be carefully considered to see if any further action is required.

“Already a number of jewellers, including larger businesses, have been asked for information about claimed price savings.

“The monitoring follows a period of active education of jewellery industry members of their obligations under fair trading legislation. Last year the ACCC published an industry-specific guideline, Advertising and Promotion in the Jewellery Industry: A Guide to the Trade Practices Act.

“Earlier this year, the ACCC and the Jewellery Industry Association conducted a number of seminars around Australia to help industry participants understand their obligations under fair trading laws”.

If you want to meet the Maroons before this year’s first State of Origin clash then be sure to be in Maryborough next Wednesday because that’s the venue of this year’s “Fan Day”.

Tough new measures were passed by State Parliament today to target drink drivers.

Transport and Main Roads Minister Paul Lucas said Parliament approved amendments to legislation that would see serial and high range drink drivers facing immediate licence suspension.

“These reckless drunks who are caught and charged by police won’t be allowed back behind the wheel until the matter is dealt with by the courts,” Mr Lucas said.

“Some people have a death wish by repeatedly drink driving on a single day, or driving at over three times the legal limit.

“It shows that they have a death wish but all too often death becomes reality for other innocent parties.

“If you are a repeat or high range drink driver your licence will be suspended until the court deals with the matter.

“Further, if you drive during that time it will be treated as disqualified driving with a penalty of between two to five years disqualification and that’s on top of the original drink driving penalty.

State Parliament also passed laws relating to the supervision of learner drivers.

“This means supervisors of learners must have the required blood alcohol concentration, in most cases .05, as they need to be driving the vehicle in question.

“Statistically, supervising a learner driver is the safest time to be on the road but the operative word is “supervising”.

“How can anyone expect to supervise a learner if they’re over the limit on grog?

“And I remind people that supervising a learner driver means just that. Don’t expect them to drive you home on L plates on a Friday night because you’ve been on the booze,” he said.

The Minister said the changes were among a whole raft of measures the government was introducing to make Queensland roads safer.

Latest figures reveal that more than 290,000 extra people - the equivalent of approximately 735 passenger packed jumbo jets - will call Queensland home over the next twenty years, Premier Peter Beattie, announced today.

Mr Beattie said on the top of high numbers already anticipated new population projections indicate another 294,929 people will settle in the Smart State by 2026.

“When we last released population projections back in 2003 we expected the Queensland population to climb to more than 5.3 million by 2026,” Mr Beattie said.

“Now, on the back of a number of factors including our strong economic growth, we expect that figure to increase to more than 5.6 million people.

“To put it in perspective that is the approximate equivalent of 3 times the size of the population of Toowoomba, 735 packed jumbo jets or 5 full houses at Suncorp Stadium on State of Origin night.”

Mr Beattie said the new figures took into account new data and new perspectives on fertility, mortality and migration.

He said they had been determined by Queensland Treasury and the University of Queensland demographers and will be officially published in July.

“Not surprisingly the Brisbane Statistical Division has by far recorded the largest change - now expected to rise to 2.53 million people by 2026 - 240,988 more than predicted in the previous projections,” Mr Beattie said.

“Using the same comparison Darling Downs is up 17,144, Fitzroy 13,802 and Mackay 26,446. On the other hand Moreton, Wide Bay Burnett and the Far North have decreased marginally.”

Mr Beattie said the figures proved yet again that Queensland remained Australia’s premier growth State.

He said it also vindicated yet again the hard work that the Government was doing to plan and provide infrastructure and services for the State’s ever-growing population.

“We have done more than any other Government in Australia in terms of planning for growth as evidenced by initiatives such as our $55 billion South East Queensland Infrastructure Plan, the South East Queensland Regional Plan, Blueprint for the Bush and the Queensland Future Growth Fund.

“We are investing more in road, rail, water, energy, health, education and community infrastructure than any other government in the history of this State.”

The Howard Government is attempting to delay the annual Queensland minimum wage adjustment, state Industrial Relations Minister Tom Barton said today.

Mr Barton told State Parliament that the Federal Government made a submission to the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission (QIRC) arguing for the Queensland state wage case decision to be delayed until after the Australian Fair Pay Commission makes its first decision.

“The Queensland Government supports the state wage case and has lodged a submission to the Commission to increase minimum award wages by $20 per week,” Mr Barton said.

“There was absolutely no justification for the state decision to be put on hold. With this action Canberra is clearly wanting to impose a wage freeze on the lowest paid employees in the community who rely on the minimum wage or the award rate of pay.”

Mr Barton said the Federal Government would be better off trying to fix the mess that is WorkChoices, rather than interfering in state wage cases to argue that increases for employees on the minimum wage of $484.40 a week should be delayed.

“The Beattie Government supports a fair and reasonable wage increase for low paid workers and a $20 increase is responsible and affordable given the continuing strength of the Queensland economy,” he said.

“This position ensures that workers who are unable to negotiate with their employer for an increase in wages are not left behind, particularly since the Federal Government stripped them of important rights and entitlements.

“Right now no-one knows when the Australian Fair Pay Commission will actually sit to consider the national minimum wage.”

Mr Barton said that despite the Federal Government’s wish for a delay, the state wage case will be heard by a full bench of the QIRC from next Monday, 15 May 2006.

“Even after the introduction of WorkChoices, the state wage case continues to have a significant role in determining wage increases for employees in Queensland who fall outside the federal system and rely on state awards and the Queensland Minimum Wage.

“A $20 increase to state awards and the Queensland Minimum Wage will also ensure our state maintains a strong and viable industrial relations system.

“Any wage increase awarded by the QIRC will benefit up to 126,000 employees, predominantly low income earners who work in unincorporated businesses and rely on the state award rate or the Queensland Minimum Wage,” he said

Unfortunately they’re not expanding the Hervey Bay Centro just yet but they are expanding into the US market after they agreed to purchase seven shopping malls in the US and combine them with another 13 US properties they already own.

As you look through the Hervey Bay Gossip you will see quite a few photographs that were taken by me using a digital camera.

You can find some that I took at Woodgate Beach and published as recently as yesterday and more here and here.

I’ve been taking photos with a digital camera since 1998 and I would never go back to a normal camera. The fact that you can simply discard the poor shots without paying to have them printed is a big plus.

Another advantage when using a digital camera is that you can be more daring and shoot in lighting conditions that would never work for a normal camera. Of course many of those type of shots then have to be cleaned up using computer software but that just adds to the fun.

But many people, even after they have purchased a digital camera, don’t quite know what to do with it. The instruction manuals can be daunting, the controls can be hard to master and it all becomes too hard.

If you’re one of those people then there’s a new website out that can help you (no it’s not one of mine). Digital Photography School is produced by Darren Rowse - an Aussie who happens to be quite an accomplished digital photographer.

You will find that he presents some valuable lessons in a very easy to read style and the site updates almost every day.

For visitors to this beautiful place it might be a little hard to believe that anyone would want to go anywhere else. But for those of us who live here it sometimes is good to get out of the place for a day every now and then.

If that’s what you would like to do then how about Woodgate? It’s just 37 kms out of Childers and on an autumn Sunday morning it can look like this:

There are gas-fired BBQs overlooking the beach and you can have the beach to yourself. Just be sure to check for spiders in the ladies loo

We live in an age of information technology where incredible amounts of information about every topic under the sun is right at our finger tips. But just as all that information is becoming available to us our personal information is being harvested and made available to others.

For example every time you do a search on Google the search engine collects information about you. If you use Gmail (another Google product) everything you write in an email or receive in an email is kept on file by Google. If you use Google Desktop then Google is collecting information that is stored on your computer.

Google is not the only one collecting information about you. There are many online entities that are collecting information about you and storing it away for future use.

There are many experts who believe that the scenario depicted in this short video by the American Civil Liberties Union is not far away.

Yesterday I was writing a piece for Aussie Motoring about the new Audi Q7 - a high tech state of the art 4 wheel drive that no one in their right mind would ever think of taking off-road.

One of the features of this vehicle is a keyless ignition system that not only automatically unlocks the vehicle if someone carrying the key is standing nearby but also allows the car to be started without actually inserting the key.

I thought that sounded pretty cool and rushed off to find she-who-must-be-obeyed so I could dazzle her with this technical marvel. I didn’t think she would be very interested because cars and high tech stuff are a blokey thing and women just don’t understand those things do they?

She displayed about as much interest as I expected she would and dismissed it with a derisory ” That’s just making those things easier to steal.”

Ha! What would she know - I mean she’s a very astute businesswoman but cars and high tech stuff are blokey things so what would she know?

A few condescending words on my part - but nothing like ‘You wouldn’t understand’ (An auto service manager tried that one on her once and he still crosses the street when he sees her coming) - and the subject was forgotten. After all, what would she know - cars and hi-tech stuff are blokey things right?

Ah … wrong.

Today I just wrote another piece about stealing high tech cars and they’re just as gone in 60 seconds as an old clunker. In fact they’re even easier to steal because the thief doesn’t even have to sidel up to the car and jemmy a door. He just walks up and gets in as if he were the owner. Follow the link to read about Electronic Insecurity.

Of course I admitted my error of judgment to she-who-must-be-obeyed. She’s a fine forgiving woman who managed to last a whole five minutes before she just had to say:

“I told you so!”

Women!!!!!