NEWS SHIRE OF THE
April 1, 2015 Vol XXIX No. 42
www.echo.net.au/NOTS
Echo on the move
On the occasion of our traditional bumper Easter edition, The Echo is announcing a change of direction. For nearly thirty years we have chronicled the life of Byron Shire as honestly and accurately as possible. We refused to talk down to readers, we avoided sloganistic solutions to complex social problems, we tried to be rational, progressive and responsible. Well, stuff that. Those who actually run the joint have shown us that there is no future in the fair go, in protecting the earth or guarding our heritage. It’s coalmines all the way. Coalmines the size of Sydney Harbour in the Hunter Valley, dredgers and coal freight-
ers fouling the Great Barrier Reef, coal seam gas poisons in our aquifers. And we’ve just had an election between two sets of thieves and liars who take bribes (‘donations’) to remove power from the people and give it to the filthy rich. From now on The Echo will stop kicking against the zeitgeist. We’re copying Murdoch in the race to the bottom because that’s where the money is. Bleeding-heart liberals and tree-hugging hippies will get no support from us. We’ve put up a picture of Tony Abbott in the office and applied to join the National Party.
Q Next week: the page 3 pin-up will be Cr Sol Ibrahim.
JOBS? GOTCHA!
All the new Byron developments have put a twinkle in the eye of struggling local Tania Strudle. The 23-year-old brunette bombshell is a qualified builder but she’s had to rely on bar work during our so-called Green council’s attack on progress and development. Tania can lay bricks too. ‘The second lane for Shirley Street, West Byron estate, the hospital, etc all need bricks,’ she said, ‘and Byron with its excess sand is perfectly placed to make its own “Byron Brick” – a natural grey square to signify the town’s new direction.’
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We must face the threat within – AG
EXCLUSIVE: Guest columnist Attorney-General George Brandis gives the new-look Echo a drop! My fellow Australians, our country stands on the brink of a danger so perilous, so over-arching and all-encompassing, that I hardly know how to describe it. Even the many thousands of books in the hand-built shelves lining my office walls cannot
do justice to the ever-growing menace. These learned books on international affairs are by authorities such as Robert Ludlum, Len Deighton and John Le Carré, but they fail to scratch even the surface of the threat that lies before us.
That threat is us. That is to say, within us – parts
of us, elements of us, the unAustralian minority of us – there is a treacherous dissent that questions all that we do, that poisons the very body politic that maintains freedom and
order. Trust me, while I sit here in this office our national security is at risk. It is true that we have security services designed to keep us safe, but there is only so much they can do. In the face of the terrifying and ever-changing assaults
on everything we hold dear we must resolutely make the sacrifices necessary to hold the foe at bay. Much has been achieved but there is still much to do. National security requires that those suspected continued on page 3