Air waves
As the state's auditor-general Colin Murphy noted recently, Western Australia exports nearly 50 per cent of the nation’s trade so, fingers crossed, nothing happens to disrupt the comings and goings at some of our most important.
Mr Murphy said this “business continuity” at our ports was crucial to ensuring the flow of this trade is not interrupted or compromised. No doubt a few treasurers, both state and federal, would agree.
And they would be especially concerned that the auditor-general found the giant export facility at Port Hedland was one place that needed a bit of work, stating that it, along with the smaller but more accident-prone port of Esperance, had “yet to develop mature business continuity management”.
“A lack of mature business continuity management at our ports exposes the state to significant economic, social and environmental risks,” Mr Murphy stated.
He noted that port authorities that were less mature in their management of business continuity had been going through “substantial structural and executive change over the last few years”.
The risks he highlighted were:
• Harbour closure due to an oil spill or ship grounding.
• Infrastructure damage through storm, fire or chemical explosion.
• Workers’ disputes.
• Information and telecommunication systems breakdowns.
So The Note thought it was good to see that the awkwardly named Port Hedland Port Authority, has made a major leap toward in addressing the last of those concerns by installing a new state-of-the-art radio communication system (shown in this picture of its control tower).
The new equipment is so fancy that on-site technical teams are not required because support and monitoring can be done remotely and instantly from Perth.
Year of the public statement
This week's edition is heavily China-focused, so The Note thought to ride on those coattails by observing the Department of Transport’s release of a new Zodiac number plate range for those who feel the need to tell every other driver about themselves by personalising their vehicles.
Many accuse social media of ending privacy as we know it, but some vehicle owners have led the way, what with those all-tooinformative My Family decals, their 'Save the (insert cause here)' stickers and plenty other back-window adornments be they risque, rude, corporate or quaint, which leave you in no doubt about their predilections and peccadillos.
These days some cars have so much sticker-action you don't even need a good mate in the police force with access to the vehicle registration system to know almost all you need about the person in the car in front.
Which is why The Note reckons these new Zodiac plates make perfect sense: it might not give you an actual age, but at least you can have a stab at identifying their year of birth.
Just to show we are not too inhibited, we lay claim to the Year of the Monkey.
