"At this rate, it will take Australia 267 years to make the kind of shift to solar that California has planned for 10 years - a million solar roofs by 2017."

- Senator Christine Milne (The Greens), 8.5.07

Senator Milne is referring to the extensions in the solar panel rebate program, or PVRP - Photo Voltaic Rebate Program announced in the 2007-08 Federal Budget. Extensions worth $150 million - that's $7 per capita. Seven dollars.

There's three main areas that I have been focusing on in studying this Federal Budget:

1. Environmental management
2. Millennium Development Goal No.1 on foreign aid
3. Tackling indigenous poverty

And the Government is not scrubbing up too well in these areas.

Let's start with foreign aid, and the two opening paragraphs from Alexander Downer's press release on the Overseas Aid budget announcements:

Even Peter Costello who, one way or another, will not be Treasurer in 2005,...

- Rick Eyre, 1.10.04

Peter Costello is still in parliament, still in government, and still the treasurer, and tonight he handed down his 12th budget. He's been lucky that China has been such an avid buyer of Australian natural resources, a phenomenon that is better known under the expression "The Howard Government's strong economic management".

A short item on the ABC Rural News yesterday grabbed my attention, about a Namibian scientist talking to locals in far west New South Wales about harvesting water from fog.

There's more on the Fog Collection Project at the Gobabeb Training and Research Centre website, and on the Canadian website fogquest.org.

That living advertisement for 100% inheritance tax has been sentenced to 45 days in jail.

The attempted private equity buyout of Qantas has failed!

Both Chelsea and Manchester United miss out on the European Champions League final.

Japan has been sidestepping international whaling bans for two decades under the euphemistic banner of "scientific research". Japan intends to add humpback whales to their culinary scientific research list later this year.

Among the countries Japan has brought on board in their attempts to stack the International Whaling Commission are six in the Caribbean: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines. No doubt there's a promise of foreign aid in there. Maybe they'll build sushi bars in all those brand new cricket stadia.

It would be remiss of me if I ignored the fact that today is the fourth anniversary of the end of the Iraq War, as proclaimed by Fighter Pilot Dubya Bush.

(Refer my post for three years of Mission Accomplished).

Oh, and check this item from the Peek blog on Alternet.org about the Commander-in-Chief recently being presented with a Purple Heart.

As Mitchell Johnson decides what to do with his one-fifteenth share of Australia's $US 2.24 million prizemoney for winning the 2007 World Cup, spare a thought for his Queensland team-mate Ashley Noffke. And wish him a happy 30th birthday today. If things had gone just a little differently over recent years it could have been Noffke, not Johnson, sitting in the dug-out watching the Australian eleven thrashing the daylights out of all comers without making a single World Cup appearance of his own.