THE BYRON SHIRE
114th annual
Volume 28 #23 Tuesday, November 12, 2013 Phone 02 6684 1777 Fax 02 6684 1719 editor@echo.net.au adcopy@echo.net.au www.echo.net.au 23,200 copies every week
CAB AUDIT
BANGALOW SHOW
CONVICTIONS ARE MORE DANGEROUS ENEMIES THAN LIES – FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
National What’s new, totes Jack Johnson Artists actively New meat in Inside interview abounding this parliament: Rupert’s Recycle Week & amazeballs – p28 – p32–33 – p18–19 – p22 week front bench – p16–17
Byron Shire Council Notices Page 47
Mullum best in show Farewell Mr Ades Vale one of Australia’s finest improvisers Mandy Nolan
An action-packed weekend saw crowds in their thousands and plenty of everything rural at the 106th Mullum Show. The whole community were involved, from the Farmers Market, Bay FM, the Mullum Music Festival to all the local schools, local businesses and farmers. Photo Jeff ‘Dodging Horses Is Part Of The Job’ Dawson
Last Friday November 8 at 2.20am Bangalow resident and musician David Ades died peacefully in his home after a battle with lung cancer. The internationally recognised and nationally lauded saxophonist was on his deck, enveloped in the sweet scent of gardenias and surrounded by the three most important women in his life, his girlfriend Claire, his daughter Amelia and his sister Ruth. Longtime friend Deborah Pearse said the women were devoted to David. ‘There is no other world for it. Meeting Claire was a great gift from the universe for David. She got to meet him before he got diagnosed and so he got to have her with him through the whole thing. It made a huge difference.’ David himself had nursed his wife Melissa Jane, who died of breast
cancer just over seven years ago. She also died peacefully at their Bangalow home. ‘I don’t know many men who could have done what David did,’ says Deborah. David Ades played how he lived, with passion and openness. It was part of what made him such a character both on and off stage. ‘I don’t know anyone with such an appetite for life,’ says Deborah. ‘He had that incredible passion for lots of things: for music, for surfing, for his family and friends.’ I first met David Ades 25 years ago when he moved into the house behind me in Byron Bay in the early nineties. He was the kind of person who made his presence felt even before you met him. You don’t hear saxophone like that without knowing that you are hearing something extraordinary. continued on page 7
Companies ‘stealing’ solar power: Greens MP Chris Dobney
The state’s privatised electricity companies are taking solar electricity generated on consumers’ rooftops during peak times without paying, according to NSW Greens MP John Kaye. Dr Kaye told audiences at Mullumbimby last week that, as a result of the government closing the solar bonus scheme, excess electricity generated by grid-connected solar panels was being siphoned off by the companies for anything between $0 and eight cents per kilowatt hour.
The same electricity could then be retailed to a neighbour for as much as 35 cents per kilowatt hour, he said.
Theft on a grand scale Consumers with grid-connected panels were effectively subsidising the fossil-fuel electricity industry, he said, while adding many were still getting massive electricity bills. He described the practice as ‘theft on a grand scale, with the state’s privatised electricity retailers and the distributors harvesting hundreds of millions of dollars each year in unearned profits’.
NSW Greens MP John Kaye. Photo Jeff Dawson
‘The absence of a feed-in tariff that rewards households for the energy they generate is deeply unfair
to people who invested in cleanenergy technologies,’ said Dr Kaye. ‘It is also undermining the future of a technology that will play a crucial role in moving NSW off coal and coal seam gas,’ he added. ‘One million solar households around Australia have already helped avoid the massive expense of a new coal-fired power station. ‘They are taking pressure off the climate by avoiding greenhouse gas emissions and they created thousands of new jobs.’ The Greens are planning to introduce a bill into state parliament
that would set a fair rate of reimbursement by electricity companies to retail customers for their excess rooftop-generated solar power. ‘As part of a package designed to wean the state off coal- and gas-fired electricity, the new tariff would reward existing solar households and encourage others to join them,’ Dr Kaye said. ‘If the north coast National Party MPs are serious about taking the pressure off their constituents’ power bills they will support our bill.’ Q Read more on this story at
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