Carbon tax 'will destroy' major centres such as Port Pirie and Whyalla
THE state's two key industrial cities will be "wiped off the map" by a carbon tax, a major union warns. The tax would strip thousands of jobs from Whyalla and Port Pirie, the Australian Workers Union state secretary Wayne Hanson said.
The internal revolt from Labor's industrial heartland threatens not just the reform but the Government's survival.
Mr Hanson yesterday stepped up his union's opposition to the tax, claiming the future of both cities would be in serious doubt because both had economies based on the high-emission production of steel, iron ore and zinc. "Goodbye. They will be off the map," he said.
His opposition to the tax appears to be a calculated manoeuvre by the AWU and follows last week's surprise about-face by the union's national secretary, Paul Howes, who declared the AWU's support would be conditional on absolutely no jobs being put at risk in the steel sector.
The Gillard Government's support base now appears to be fracturing, threatening the future of the Prime Minister's signature reform for this term.
With Whyalla's main employer, OneSteel, and fellow steelmaker BlueScope in Canberra today for talks with the Federal Government over the proposed tax, the fact that such an important union has broken ranks and is openly campaigning against the Government is highly significant.
The AWU, the oldest and most influential union in the ALP, is demanding either an outright exemption for the steel industry or a 100 per cent compensation package.
An estimated 3000 to 4000 jobs are dependent on OneSteel's Whyalla operations alone. The company produces some 1.3 million tonnes of steel per year from its operation there, accounting for around 20 per cent of the national industry.
Adding to Ms Gillard's woes, food manufacturers are now also seeking special treatment. "We don't oppose a price on carbon, but industry is opposed to a tax that will increase the cost of food and grocery manufacturing in Australia, which is already under intense pressure," the Australian Food and Grocery Council's Kate Carnell said in a statement yesterday. "Whatever decision is made, the Government must ensure that Australian-manufactured food and groceries will not be made less competitive."
The Government now faces a wall of opponents as groups across the political spectrum from employers and industry bodies, to unions and the welfare sector, seek exemptions or more compensation.
The unpopular tax, which the Government is struggling to sell - not least because it has not designed it yet - is also a factor driving Labor's support into the basement. The latest Neilsen poll showed Labor at its lowest level in 15 years.
Mr Hanson said union members at Whyalla's OneSteel plant, and at Nyrstar's lead and zinc smelter at Port Pirie were rightly worried. "It's ridiculous to consider (a carbon tax) when you don't have other countries that are prepared to adopt a common approach," he said. "To allow your steel industry to disintegrate is just reckless. Should we be the trail-blazer?"
That argument appears to be straight out of Tony Abbott's anti-carbon tax playbook after he called for a people's revolt on the tax on the grounds it would destroy jobs and send investment off-shore.
However, the state Labor MP for Giles, Lyn Breuer, said the Federal Government understood what was at stake. "Why would the Federal Government send an industry broke, put in jeopardy the jobs of thousands of workers, particularly in my area in Whyalla? ... I'm confident that we'll be able to make some sort of arrangement that will satisfy everyone," she said before acknowledging: "without the steel making operations at OneSteel, the town (Whyalla) would not have a future."
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More Gillard stupidity
JUST as even her friends felt free to stab her in the front, and it appeared impossible she could alienate another single person or group, given that pretty much everybody who could be, had been, Julia Gillard has united the most vulnerable and the most venerated in the community against her government.
It takes a rare kind of talent to contemplate a measure that compels three outraged mums from Bendigo to jump on a bus for Melbourne, or for a couple whose son had just been diagnosed with a brain tumour to travel from Bathurst to Sydney to join terminally ill patients, researchers in lab coats and office workers in their thousands in cities across Australia.
Only a truly methodical approach could weave together such a coalition, including Nobel Prize winners, the Greens, the independents and the opposition. Yet the government has achieved just that thanks to plans to slash $400 million from medical research funding in the May budget.
And it is happening as Tony Abbott attaches a plus to his name and minimises the negative by addressing issues such as welfare reform, indigenous intervention and infrastructure spending.
It could take a while for his approach to penetrate and his next chance to prove he is serious will be his budget reply speech, but if he persists, people could begin to think he has the odd good idea and maybe is a viable option. Stranger things have happened.
As a former health minister, Abbott is well acquainted with the value of medical research and also the potency of any campaign that its supporters may mount, so he found it difficult to believe, as did others, that the government would even think about cutting research funding.
Let's assume it is not true. One simple sentence from the Prime Minister would have killed the story stone dead.
She could have said: "I'm not in the business of ruling things in or not, but just let me say I have always placed a high premium on the work done by our medical researchers. It has been recognised internationally and it is valued highly here, and as a government we would not do anything that would endanger that."
End of story. Literally end of an extremely damaging story. Spare us the twaddle about refusing to rule in or out any pre-budget speculation. They do it when it suits and usually in those terms.
In fact, Gillard used a bullhorn last week at Luna Park to rule welfare reform into the budget.
Unless the reason it could not be denied was that it was true. Which, unhappily, it was.
The pre-budget season is always marked by different varieties of leaks. Portfolio ministers brief friendly journalists on their success in saving pet projects from the razor gang's slicing and dicing.
Occasionally the Prime Minister's office or even the Treasurer's feeds out juicy titbits to generate excitement, or unsavoury ones to prepare people for the worst, saving the best for the budget.
The leak on medical research was different, and what it revealed was deep frustration and divisions in the government over its operations, priorities and political risk assessments.
According to sources, the leak to the medical community came first from within cabinet then was backed up by the bureaucracy. It was leaked to them deliberately to warn that a $400m cut was on the way and if they wanted to stop it they had better mobilise quickly because they had only about a week to stop it.
They were told the government had decided medical research was ripe for cutting because it was not a "front of mind" issue for "ordinary Australians" that would trigger angry calls to Alan Jones, Neil Mitchell, Ray Hadley, Howard Sattler and the rest.
Let me declare an interest here and also provide an anecdote to illustrate a couple of points. In 1999, when I was Peter Costello's media adviser, I received a phone call from Jonathan Cebon, head of the Ludwig Institute cancer centre at Melbourne's Austin Hospital.
Cebon had overseen treatment for my sister Christina, who had died a few months before. He rang because he was concerned that a big report recommending a boost to medical research funding would be overlooked.
We arranged a meeting with medical researchers who pleaded with Costello to nurture the culture that had produced such greats as Howard Florey (penicillin) and Frank Macfarlane Burnet (Nobel Prize in medicine).
Costello doubled funding for medical research in the May 1999 budget, and I pinched the line about nurturing the culture from the researchers for his speech.
In those days the Liberal Party's pollster Mark Textor conducted focus groups each budget night. Tex produced a tape of the audience reaction using people with Worm-O-Meters attached as they watched the speech. The worm went off the chart when Costello announced the medical research funding.
It was gratifying but unsurprising, given the high regard in which Australia's medical research community is held.
A succession of surveys confirms this, including a study last year commissioned by Research Australia, which found 90 per cent of Australians rated support for health care and hospitals above stopping asylum-seeker boats, reducing government debt, reducing taxes or introducing an emissions trading scheme to fight climate change, and that most people thought spending on research was already too low.
Australians are well acquainted with the calibre of research here and the life-changing and life-saving discoveries it has brought, from the early humidicrib, to spray-on skin for burns victims, to a vaccine for cervical cancer.
So why this government thought it would be able to cut $400m and nobody would notice is perplexing.
If the Gillard government had been more prudent in its spending and more rigorous in its administration, the budget would not be in the parlous situation they would have us believe it is in now, but even so, cutting medical research will not save, it will cost. Every dollar spent on Australian medical research results in savings on health spending of $2.17.
Late last week the size of the cut was "being negotiated". If it comes in at half the $400m planned, the government thinks it will be able to placate its critics with another well worn post-budget tactic: see, it wasn't so bad after all.
Here's a hot tip. It won't work. There is zero tolerance for any cut in this area. Long after the headlines have disappeared, the patients, their families and those who try to help them remember.
A young woman with Parkinson's disease told one of the rallies that what the researchers gave her, and she thanked them for it, was hope. That is priceless. Money helps keep it alive. Wayne Swan of all people should know that.
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Save us from the gamble of living
Paul Syvret gets fired up by an attack on two-up, Australia's traditional gambling game
THE world can be a dangerous place. Luckily though, we have the forces of law, order and social engineering to guide us through its perilous waters.
Thus it was a relief last week to see our authorities threaten a Cairns hotel with all manner of perdition should the publican persist with thumbing his nose at the law by hosting a two-up game on Anzac Day.
Two-up is, after all, one of the most villainous of gambling pursuits in that it is one from which the Government can't rake any tax revenue.
But why stop at the Red Beret Hotel in the north, given that on Monday there will hundreds of pubs and clubs across Queensland openly flouting the laws of our land?
We should have squads of crack police mobilised across the state ready to swoop at the first sign of a couple of pennies spinning through the air in a lazy arc; ready to batter down the doors of any drinking den from within which can be heard the beery cries of "head 'em up".
Normal policing duties should be suspended for the day, so that our officers can once and for all wipe this scourge from our midst. Federal Independent Andrew Wilkie has the right idea with his fixed-bayonet charge at the poker machine lobby.
Mind you, it's all very well to propose we issue "licences" to people who want to have a flutter, set pre-determined spending limits and decrease the amount you can wager but we're still being sort of half-pregnant here, aren't we?
Even we casual punters, who don't mind the occasional bet on the silly things, would be better off with that $20 in our pockets than the coffers of some rapacious leagues club which will only squander the money on yet more sporting facilities or subsidised Sunday roasts for the nannas.
If pokies are such a pestilence, wreaking misery on the hapless minority who don't know when to stop, why not ban the things altogether?
Then we could return to the good old days when pokies were illegal, and the gaming machine business was run quietly and efficiently (and out of the public eye) by organised crime rings and certain entrepreneurial elements of the Queensland Police Service.
One thing I don't understand though is why some forms of gambling (the pokies) are considered so much more evil than others.
The long-suffering Mrs Syvret and I were at the local leagues club on Saturday night to watch the mighty Broncos flog the Roosters rather than for the purposes of the punt and sitting in the sports bar.
At the next table was a posse of very well lubricated young men who had amassed a spectacular collection of losing TAB and Keno tickets, which eddied in great swirls around the empty pot glasses.
They looked to be having a whale of a time (and had a thirst you could photograph), but surely there lay in those piles of discarded betting slips the same seeds of ruination that were being planted by the purseful by the little old ladies in the gaming room next door?
And booze is part of the problem here. With the tobacco industry fighting a rearguard action and Andrew Wilkie's war on the pokies being prosecuted with brutal resolve, the demon drink appears to have slipped under the radar of those tireless social engineers whose self-appointed task it is to save us from ourselves.
We need labelling akin to that planned for a pack of smokes, depicting diseased livers and torn, bloodied faces of glassing victims.
And if a licence to gamble, accompanied with pre-set bet limits is good enough for the punters, then perhaps similar self-harm minimisation mea- sures should apply to tipplers.
Why not a licence to drink, accompanied by a weekly ration card that would allow no individual more than two standard drinks a day with a couple of days off the grog altogether? Admittedly there could be a just a wee problem in controlling the subsequent black market in ration card trading, but it would certainly make shouting a round of drinks at the local pub a lot more affordable.
The protectors of our physical and moral fibre also need to cast their eyes farther afield than the so-called sin industries of smoking, drinking and gambling, for there are myriad other traps lurking amid our everyday lives.
While much attention and debate has been devoted to the hazards of junk food, what of seemingly innoc- uous foodstuffs that harbour potential nastiness?
Why, for example, is the carton of full cream milk in my fridge not plastered with confronting health labels warning me about the dangers of cholesterol? Surely some photos of diseased arteries from the cow juice would save lives?
And salt. You can buy the deadly stuff by the kilogram with not so much as a single cautionary word of warning to be seen on the packet.
So please, someone, take responsibility for our lives and remove the temptations of all potentially risky life choices. We clearly don't know what's good for us and are incapable of making our own decisions.
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Opposing gay marriage doesn't mean I'm barking
By Barry Cohen, who is homosexual and who happens to be my favourite Australian politician, sadly now ex. His book, "The Yartz" must be about the funniest book I have ever read -- JR
I'M in love with Jamie and Hamish, before that it was Fergus and Dougal. Now that I've got that off my chest I sense an enormous feeling of relief. No more regrets. No more hiding my preferences. Everyone knows now. I can relax.
Despite that, I don't plan to marry any of them, primarily because I don't like nails down my back during the night even if they are those of a border collie. Which brings us into the topic du jour: gay marriage.
When I first saw it mentioned about 20 years ago I nearly had a conniption. What a wonderful sense of humour these boys and gels have. Then I realised they were serious. My amazement was exceeded only when I saw recent polls sponsored by the gay movement to show the majority of Australians actually support marriage between same-sex couples. My, how things have changed.
If I had any doubts, they were removed while watching a recent episode of ABC1's Q&A.; The subject was raised and any doubts as to whether Q&A; stacks its audience with a Left bias were dismissed by the sneering, booing and ridicule at any member of the panel who was less than enthusiastic about gay marriage. The inference was that those who opposed it were homophobic and-or barking mad (no pun intended).
This tactic has been used by the Green-gay lobby because they are well aware there is nothing the cognoscenti and commentariat dislike more than to be called right-wing, neo-conservative or redneck. One's views on same-sex marriage, climate change, hatred of Israel and the US guarantees you acceptance by the cafe latte set. Just in case you hadn't realised it by now, I'm of the view that the idea of two people of the same sex being "married" is absurd. But homophobic, I think not. Unlike many of the "in" crowd I have runs on the board.
Let me take you back to October 18, 1973, in the House of Representatives.
John Gorton, member for Higgins: "I move that in the opinion of this House homosexual acts between consenting adults in private should not be subject to the criminal law."
A stirring address by the former prime minister was followed by Moss Cass (Maribyrnong), John Cramer (Bennelong) and Bert James (Hunter). The debate was cut short due to the visit of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Please, no jokes about queens.
The question was put and carried by 64 to 40. Among those who voted yes were Les Bury, Jim Cairns, Clyde Cameron, Moss Cass, Don Chipp, Frank Crean, Kep Enderby, Gorton, Bill Hayden, Phil Ruddock, Ian Sinclair, Tom Uren, Gough Whitlam, Ralph Willis and you guessed it, yours truly.
On the "no" side were Lance Barnard, Kim Beazley Sr, Lionel Bowen, Rex Connor, Cramer, Fred Daly, Paul Keating, Jim Killen, Phil Lynch, Billy Snedden, Bill Wentworth. Gradually the states followed suit.
My philosophy was simple. It is enshrined in a column I wrote in The Australian (January 25, 1995) when gays started to get serious about what most Australians thought was a huge joke.
I wrote: "It concerns me not at all what adults do in the privacy of their own bedroom or for that matter their kitchens, bathroom or laundry. Should they choose to stand on their heads, wave their legs in the air or swing from chandeliers, providing they do not do each other a serious mischief, it is, or should be entirely a matter for them."
Having held that publicly expressed view for as long as I can recall, it will not surprise readers that on those occasions when I was called upon to vote in the House of Representatives on such matters I voted against legislation that discriminated against homosexuals. I have since applauded any measure by any government or institution that has broken down the prejudice against those with a different sexual preference.
A lot has happened in the past 40 years that has been of benefit to the gay community. Some I agreed with, others went too far, but marriage between people of the same sex giving them equal status with heterosexual couples, in my view, goes way beyond the pale. They argue that the present law discriminates against them. It does. And it's the same reason why I can't marry Jamie or Hamish.
And how about the discrimination against pedophiles, prohibiting sexual relations with children? Why do we discriminate against 15-year-old girls and boys for what used to be called carnal knowledge? Why do we ban men from entering women's toilets or vice versa? I could go on but I'm sure you discern my drift. We discriminate because society believes it is the right and moral thing to do.
Marriage was considered, until recently, sacrosanct. Bigamy and polygamy are banned. Why should we discriminate against men who want more than one wife, or wives who want more than one husband?
With all its flaws, and few marriages are perfect, marriage is the bedrock on which our society is based. It won't be if these twerps have their way.
The time has come for us "neocons" to fight back and tell the gay community that we've gone from prohibition to tolerance to acceptance, but we won't accept that gay marriage and conventional marriage is the same thing.
They might have got some of what they wanted if they had asked for a gay marriage act, quite separate from conventional marriage but can you expect them to accept a gay marriage certificate proclaiming them to be a gay couple?
It is to be hoped that those who support conventional marriage as one of the building blocks on which our society is built will stand up and tell the gay community it's not going to happen. Not even if hell freezes over.
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Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
An absurd government monopoly that killed a lot of people
It is against the law for private meteorologists to disseminate weather warnings, but at least one weather expert wishes he had broken the law.
Anthony Cornelius, a meteorologist with the private forecasting service Weather Watch, says he and others on the blog site predicted the extreme flash flood in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley on January 10 but his hands were tied to get the message out.
"By law we are not allowed to issue warnings and as a private meteorologist we are not allowed to contact the media or other authorities and warn them of something that the bureau hasn't warned for, but at the same time I wish I didn't obey that law that day," he told ABC Radio. "It is something, unfortunately, you have to live with."
The torrent of water hit Toowoomba and rushed down the range into the Lockyer Valley, killing 22 of the state's 35 flood victims.
Mr Cornelius said he made a submission to the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry, which is hearing evidence in Toowoomba on Monday.
He said in his submission he calls for private meteorologists to have more power. "There is a lot of things that need to be fixed throughout the warning systems and the way we get weather information out to the public," he said.
"The private meteorological companies, they can play a fairly significant role in these things, and they should be able to have the authority to be able to contact people in the know if they honestly believe there is a situation that at least warrants having somebody look at the event."
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Carbon guilt trip just won't wash
Julia Thornton
FROM time to time, when governments realise they're not getting anywhere with us, they turn to the politics of guilt to get us to support their pet projects or policies. The latest is the carbon tax.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet addressed the National Press Club this week and gave six key arguments that summarise the Gillard Government's response to the climate change challenge.
The first one was Australia is one of the world's top 20 polluters and we release more pollution per person than any other country in the developed world, more than the United States even.
I used to think Americans had the monopoly on big cars and icemakers, but apparently we are worse. This explains why so many Hummer drivers have been tailgating me lately.
The first thing that came to mind is we must have a garbage island similar to that of the great toxic plastic garbage island the Americans have floating in the Pacific between Hawaii and Japan. Apparently it's twice the size of Texas.
But I know we don't have a great big toxic garbage island and being told that, as an Australian, I produce more pollution than an American annoys me.
Australia emits per capita the most carbon emissions because of our mining industry. The mere fact we open the ground up and take stuff out of it creates carbon emissions. The use of the coal in electricity produces carbon emissions.
And these are factoids which go into the statistic which says Australia is one of the world's top 20 polluters and we're worse than the Americans.
It hasn't bothered me that the Government has used guilt from time to time to get us to toe the line. We've reduced deaths on the road by reducing the incidence of drink driving and speeding, for example. But now it's getting very personal.
For all those people who have conscientiously recycled and composted, it's a statistic which doesn't do them justice. There is enough anecdotal and actual evidence in the media and on opinion pages to show Australians are highly aware of their waste and their pollution and they want to do their bit to reduce it.
Shortly after the carbon tax was announced by Prime Minister Gillard, Mr Combet offered us advice as to how to reduce the cost of a carbon tax. He suggested we avoid using airconditioning and change our high-energy lightbulbs to low-energy ones.
Minister Combet is a Victorian who spends a lot of time in Canberra. He doesn't really get Queensland, does he? Those of us who were not in the thick of flood clean-up or in the middle of a cyclone, were experiencing the usual late summer temperatures which make airconditioning not so much a luxury, but a cool relief.
Telling us we're more wasteful than Americans isn't fair. And it isn't right. Just as an example, if you've ever been to a restaurant in America, you'll be given a frosted glass full of ice with a little bit of water. At the turn of the 1900s, New York went through a heatwave unlike any before. Ice became a sign of prosperity and it remains a habit. Visit any American hotel and they have ice makers in the hallways and an ice bucket in the room.
Here in Brisbane, in high summer, I've asked for a glass of water and got a tiny little glass with a dying ice cube. And that's ok, because I am an Australian with sensitive teeth.
We need the full facts on how a carbon price will affect us and how much it will cost. We don't need the politics of guilt on this one.
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Qld. Premier slams judges as 'out of touch'
Mandatory sentencing is always a second-best solution but the actions of some judges would seem to make it a better system than what we have at the moment
PREMIER Anna Bligh has accused the judiciary of losing touch with the community after two controversial decisions involving serious child sex offenders in as many days.
Attorney-General Cameron Dick has been ordered to review a decision that allowed an Ipswich man, 45, to walk free on bail after being charged with 24 offences, including four of rape and 20 of indecently dealing with a minor.
Mr Dick will also review the case last week of a child sex offender in Cairns who was jailed for seven years for raping and abusing six girls.
Ms Bligh yesterday said the State Government would do whatever it could to appeal the decisions. "People want to see these types of offenders treated very harshly and that isn't what they have seen in the past two days," she said.
Bravehearts executive director Hetty Johnston said an inquiry was needed on sex offenders. "The system does not protect children. We want an opportunity to sit down and try to find some logical solutions to a very difficult problem," she said.
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Greens' wilting appeal
Miranda Devine
NOW we know that the meddling ideological extremism of the Greens cost them the inner-city seat of Marrickville in the NSW election last month. What should have been a shoo-in in one of the most barmy left electorates in the country resulted in more than one-in-three voters rejecting the Greens because of Marrickville Council's Israel boycott, according to a poll by a Jewish group.
This is a boycott that, by the Green-controlled council's own figures, will cost it as much as $4 million to stop using Israeli-linked products such as Hewlett-Packard computers (apparently used at Israeli checkpoints) and Motorola telephones.
The voters were first to show some backbone, after abiding years of Green dabbling in Middle East politics. But last week Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd slammed the boycott as "nuts" and NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell threatened to sack the council if it doesn't reverse its stance.
Sensing the end of his dream run, even the Greens' supreme leader, Bob Brown, rejected the boycott and distanced himself from his failed state candidate, Marrickville mayor Fiona Byrne, although he can't help offloading blame onto what he calls the "hate media" for costing his party the seat. But he should look a little closer to home for the culprit.
Jake, a 55-year-old Jewish health professional with friends in Marrickville, was so incensed by the council's Israel boycott that he took three weeks off work to wage a guerrilla campaign against the Greens, plastering the suburb with posters late at night, accusing them of homophobia for boycotting gay-friendly Israel.
"I felt so angry," says Jake, who wants to remain anonymous. "I couldn't sleep at night, so I organised the posters, hired some utes and ladders" and enlisted the help of his son and his friends. Greens supporters harassed them, ripped down the posters, called police, and tried to intimidate Jake's young helpers, posting footage of them on YouTube.
Two nights before the election, a "black sports car with neon high beams and a pseudo photographer kept flashing his camera right up on our eyes . . . It slowed us right down."
Another night "cowboy" greenies in a Toyota Camry started following them home, until Jake confronted the driver at a roundabout. "It was like something out of a movie".
On election day, Jake and his son organised 10 friends wearing T-shirts with "Boycott the Greens" logos to visit polling booths, prompting "Zionist pigs" abuse from greenies.
"The Greens knew we were the enemy, but the Labor people all nodded and smiled and gave us the thumbs up. Anthony Albanese [whose wife Carmel Tebbutt was ALP candidate] shook my hand and thanked me. We must have had quite an effect.
"On Sunday I took the boys out to dinner. It's not often in life a private citizen can make a difference." And make a difference he did. The Greens lost to Labor by fewer than 700 votes, in a seat they were favourites to snare.
The backlash was quite a shock to the Greens, whose extremist ideological baggage is at last costing them votes.
After all, as Jake points out, if they actually cared about the environment or human rights they would realise Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and the only country in the region where people can be openly and proudly gay. Israel's neighbours, meantime, routinely stone homosexuals to death.
Israel is also the Middle East's Eden, having greened the desert with millions of trees, eco friendly exports, and superior water conservation.
And if anti-Israel Greens are so concerned about children in the Middle East why haven't they lamented the fate of the Fogel children of Samaria -- 11-year-old Yoav, four-year-old Elad and three-month-old Hadas, murdered in their beds by Palestinian terrorists just two weeks before the NSW election.
The Middle East conflict is not a game. Yet it has somehow become a vehicle for moral preening half a world way and a badge of belonging for lazy leftists whose talents are best suited to fixing potholes, which, by the way, abound in Marrickville.
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Coldest March On Record In Australia, says BOM
Is this why we need a carbon tax?
Maximum temperatures nationally were the coldest on record with a national anomaly of -2.19°C. Most of Australia recorded below average mean maxima with parts of the north and south of the country recording their coldest March on record.
This was partly due to increased cloudiness across most of the country associated with the above average rainfall recorded throughout the month. March 2011 included some contrasts between the majority of Australia and the west and east coasts, which were the only areas that experienced above average daytime temperatures.
Temperatures were coolest in the central part of Australia where rainfall was most abnormal, with maximum temperatures more than 3°C below average Similarly, drier conditions matched up with areas of above-normal maxima in western WA.
More HERE
It is against the law for private meteorologists to disseminate weather warnings, but at least one weather expert wishes he had broken the law.
Anthony Cornelius, a meteorologist with the private forecasting service Weather Watch, says he and others on the blog site predicted the extreme flash flood in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley on January 10 but his hands were tied to get the message out.
"By law we are not allowed to issue warnings and as a private meteorologist we are not allowed to contact the media or other authorities and warn them of something that the bureau hasn't warned for, but at the same time I wish I didn't obey that law that day," he told ABC Radio. "It is something, unfortunately, you have to live with."
The torrent of water hit Toowoomba and rushed down the range into the Lockyer Valley, killing 22 of the state's 35 flood victims.
Mr Cornelius said he made a submission to the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry, which is hearing evidence in Toowoomba on Monday.
He said in his submission he calls for private meteorologists to have more power. "There is a lot of things that need to be fixed throughout the warning systems and the way we get weather information out to the public," he said.
"The private meteorological companies, they can play a fairly significant role in these things, and they should be able to have the authority to be able to contact people in the know if they honestly believe there is a situation that at least warrants having somebody look at the event."
SOURCE
Carbon guilt trip just won't wash
Julia Thornton
FROM time to time, when governments realise they're not getting anywhere with us, they turn to the politics of guilt to get us to support their pet projects or policies. The latest is the carbon tax.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet addressed the National Press Club this week and gave six key arguments that summarise the Gillard Government's response to the climate change challenge.
The first one was Australia is one of the world's top 20 polluters and we release more pollution per person than any other country in the developed world, more than the United States even.
I used to think Americans had the monopoly on big cars and icemakers, but apparently we are worse. This explains why so many Hummer drivers have been tailgating me lately.
The first thing that came to mind is we must have a garbage island similar to that of the great toxic plastic garbage island the Americans have floating in the Pacific between Hawaii and Japan. Apparently it's twice the size of Texas.
But I know we don't have a great big toxic garbage island and being told that, as an Australian, I produce more pollution than an American annoys me.
Australia emits per capita the most carbon emissions because of our mining industry. The mere fact we open the ground up and take stuff out of it creates carbon emissions. The use of the coal in electricity produces carbon emissions.
And these are factoids which go into the statistic which says Australia is one of the world's top 20 polluters and we're worse than the Americans.
It hasn't bothered me that the Government has used guilt from time to time to get us to toe the line. We've reduced deaths on the road by reducing the incidence of drink driving and speeding, for example. But now it's getting very personal.
For all those people who have conscientiously recycled and composted, it's a statistic which doesn't do them justice. There is enough anecdotal and actual evidence in the media and on opinion pages to show Australians are highly aware of their waste and their pollution and they want to do their bit to reduce it.
Shortly after the carbon tax was announced by Prime Minister Gillard, Mr Combet offered us advice as to how to reduce the cost of a carbon tax. He suggested we avoid using airconditioning and change our high-energy lightbulbs to low-energy ones.
Minister Combet is a Victorian who spends a lot of time in Canberra. He doesn't really get Queensland, does he? Those of us who were not in the thick of flood clean-up or in the middle of a cyclone, were experiencing the usual late summer temperatures which make airconditioning not so much a luxury, but a cool relief.
Telling us we're more wasteful than Americans isn't fair. And it isn't right. Just as an example, if you've ever been to a restaurant in America, you'll be given a frosted glass full of ice with a little bit of water. At the turn of the 1900s, New York went through a heatwave unlike any before. Ice became a sign of prosperity and it remains a habit. Visit any American hotel and they have ice makers in the hallways and an ice bucket in the room.
Here in Brisbane, in high summer, I've asked for a glass of water and got a tiny little glass with a dying ice cube. And that's ok, because I am an Australian with sensitive teeth.
We need the full facts on how a carbon price will affect us and how much it will cost. We don't need the politics of guilt on this one.
SOURCE
Qld. Premier slams judges as 'out of touch'
Mandatory sentencing is always a second-best solution but the actions of some judges would seem to make it a better system than what we have at the moment
PREMIER Anna Bligh has accused the judiciary of losing touch with the community after two controversial decisions involving serious child sex offenders in as many days.
Attorney-General Cameron Dick has been ordered to review a decision that allowed an Ipswich man, 45, to walk free on bail after being charged with 24 offences, including four of rape and 20 of indecently dealing with a minor.
Mr Dick will also review the case last week of a child sex offender in Cairns who was jailed for seven years for raping and abusing six girls.
Ms Bligh yesterday said the State Government would do whatever it could to appeal the decisions. "People want to see these types of offenders treated very harshly and that isn't what they have seen in the past two days," she said.
Bravehearts executive director Hetty Johnston said an inquiry was needed on sex offenders. "The system does not protect children. We want an opportunity to sit down and try to find some logical solutions to a very difficult problem," she said.
SOURCE
Greens' wilting appeal
Miranda Devine
NOW we know that the meddling ideological extremism of the Greens cost them the inner-city seat of Marrickville in the NSW election last month. What should have been a shoo-in in one of the most barmy left electorates in the country resulted in more than one-in-three voters rejecting the Greens because of Marrickville Council's Israel boycott, according to a poll by a Jewish group.
This is a boycott that, by the Green-controlled council's own figures, will cost it as much as $4 million to stop using Israeli-linked products such as Hewlett-Packard computers (apparently used at Israeli checkpoints) and Motorola telephones.
The voters were first to show some backbone, after abiding years of Green dabbling in Middle East politics. But last week Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd slammed the boycott as "nuts" and NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell threatened to sack the council if it doesn't reverse its stance.
Sensing the end of his dream run, even the Greens' supreme leader, Bob Brown, rejected the boycott and distanced himself from his failed state candidate, Marrickville mayor Fiona Byrne, although he can't help offloading blame onto what he calls the "hate media" for costing his party the seat. But he should look a little closer to home for the culprit.
Jake, a 55-year-old Jewish health professional with friends in Marrickville, was so incensed by the council's Israel boycott that he took three weeks off work to wage a guerrilla campaign against the Greens, plastering the suburb with posters late at night, accusing them of homophobia for boycotting gay-friendly Israel.
"I felt so angry," says Jake, who wants to remain anonymous. "I couldn't sleep at night, so I organised the posters, hired some utes and ladders" and enlisted the help of his son and his friends. Greens supporters harassed them, ripped down the posters, called police, and tried to intimidate Jake's young helpers, posting footage of them on YouTube.
Two nights before the election, a "black sports car with neon high beams and a pseudo photographer kept flashing his camera right up on our eyes . . . It slowed us right down."
Another night "cowboy" greenies in a Toyota Camry started following them home, until Jake confronted the driver at a roundabout. "It was like something out of a movie".
On election day, Jake and his son organised 10 friends wearing T-shirts with "Boycott the Greens" logos to visit polling booths, prompting "Zionist pigs" abuse from greenies.
"The Greens knew we were the enemy, but the Labor people all nodded and smiled and gave us the thumbs up. Anthony Albanese [whose wife Carmel Tebbutt was ALP candidate] shook my hand and thanked me. We must have had quite an effect.
"On Sunday I took the boys out to dinner. It's not often in life a private citizen can make a difference." And make a difference he did. The Greens lost to Labor by fewer than 700 votes, in a seat they were favourites to snare.
The backlash was quite a shock to the Greens, whose extremist ideological baggage is at last costing them votes.
After all, as Jake points out, if they actually cared about the environment or human rights they would realise Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and the only country in the region where people can be openly and proudly gay. Israel's neighbours, meantime, routinely stone homosexuals to death.
Israel is also the Middle East's Eden, having greened the desert with millions of trees, eco friendly exports, and superior water conservation.
And if anti-Israel Greens are so concerned about children in the Middle East why haven't they lamented the fate of the Fogel children of Samaria -- 11-year-old Yoav, four-year-old Elad and three-month-old Hadas, murdered in their beds by Palestinian terrorists just two weeks before the NSW election.
The Middle East conflict is not a game. Yet it has somehow become a vehicle for moral preening half a world way and a badge of belonging for lazy leftists whose talents are best suited to fixing potholes, which, by the way, abound in Marrickville.
SOURCE
Coldest March On Record In Australia, says BOM
Is this why we need a carbon tax?
Maximum temperatures nationally were the coldest on record with a national anomaly of -2.19°C. Most of Australia recorded below average mean maxima with parts of the north and south of the country recording their coldest March on record.
This was partly due to increased cloudiness across most of the country associated with the above average rainfall recorded throughout the month. March 2011 included some contrasts between the majority of Australia and the west and east coasts, which were the only areas that experienced above average daytime temperatures.
Temperatures were coolest in the central part of Australia where rainfall was most abnormal, with maximum temperatures more than 3°C below average Similarly, drier conditions matched up with areas of above-normal maxima in western WA.
More HERE
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Time for action on heartbreak highway
Why is the ALP wasting billions of the people's money on nonsense schemes when real problems like this need fixing?
BARELY a week goes by without it claiming a life. Every second day, on average, it's impassable. It is littered with blackspots and plagued by potholes. The Bruce Highway, the state's main artery and Queensland's contribution to National Highway 1, is a national disgrace.
As the Federal Government prepares its Budget, the need to fix our highway of shame is more apparent than ever. In the first three months of this year, the road has been cut 84 times because it can not cope with seasonal flooding.
Leading the charge for action are grieving families of the almost 200 people who have lost their lives in the past five years, frustrated truck drivers and local mayors fed up with years of pleas for funds falling on deaf ears.
The State Government shifts the blame to its federal counterparts, with Roads Minister Craig Wallace calling for more funding from Canberra. "Both sides of federal politics have ignored the Bruce Highway for nearly 40 years and it will take time to reverse these years of impact," he said. A recent report released by Mr Wallace claimed $5.3 billion was needed to flood-proof the highway.
Miners, businesses and farmers say Queensland can no longer afford to keep vital freight and produce trucks waiting at flooded crossings. "There are goods and services we need, like fertilisers and chemicals, that get held up because we've got trucks sitting on the road for a week to 10 days," Bowen and Gumlu District Growers Association president Carl Walker said.
Whitsunday Mayor Mike Brunker said flood-prone sections were a severe threat to development and tourism. "Up near Sandy Gully which is going to be a state development area and could be the biggest coal port in Australia the whole state's resources are going to be held up by flooded creeks," he said. "If Abbott Point takes off in the next two years, you could have 3000 workers on one side of the creek not being able to get to work."
Upgrading of the Bruce Highway has long been stymied by political buckpassing, with state and federal governments arguing the other should be doing more.
The Queensland Government claims it will spend almost $1 billion between 2006 and 2014 but argues that given the Bruce Highway is a crucial part of the national network, the bulk of future funding should come from the Federal Government.
The Federal Government points out there is nothing stopping the states contributing more to the upkeep of their most important roads.
Federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese said the Labor Government had committed $3.2 billion until 2014. He blamed the current state of the Bruce Highway on the Howard Government, saying average annual spending had increased by $281 million since Labor took office. "Despite having 12 years to do something about this road and the record tax revenues to pay for it, they chose to do very little," Mr Albanese said.
Shadow Transport Minister Warren Truss said the blame game had to stop. "It's high time federal and state Labor worked together to ensure Queenslanders have a major highway they can rely on," he said.
State Opposition Leader Campbell Newman said the LNP would unveil details before the next state election outlining how it would deliver better flood protection. "The LNP is committed to addressing the state's infrastructure needs," he said.
The RACQ said the condition of the Bruce Highway was "totally unacceptable". "We need a quantum leap in investment to bring it up to standard," RACQ executive manager traffic and safety John Wikman said. He said the highway was 10 years behind current traffic volumes and more four-lane stretches were vital.
IT'S been more than five years since the Bruce Highway claimed Jamie McTackett's wife and daughter and he's still waiting for it to be fixed. In August 2005, Karryn McTackett, 33, and 12-year-old Jessica were killed in a head-on smash with a semi-trailer while returning to Bowen from a junior football match in Townsville.
While he says he has never blamed the truck driver involved, Mr McTackett called for extra lanes to be added to the troubled Bruce Highway. "If it was a four-lane highway, the chances of (his wife's accident) happening would've been pretty scarce," he said.
He said Queenslanders had been neglected by policy-makers for far too long. "Get your finger out and fix the road," he said. "Our national highway's a disgrace."
SOURCE
Government attacks fantasy environmental problems while real environment problems are virtually ignored
Senator Barnaby Joyce
I relax by taking a walk behind Red Hill onto the ridge that overlooks the city; the lights of our nation’s capital lay below with all their troubles resting before the next day’s frenetic activity. As you fly in, the Brindabella’s are sometimes dusted with winter snow that can be seen amongst the snow gums, ribbon gums, stringy barks, acacias, banksias and callistemon. If you are interested in botany or even if you are not, there are interesting walks around Parliament.
A local builder, Joel, took me for a walk out near Mt Stromlo to the top of Camel’s Hump. I could have been a million miles from work as we sat and had a couple of beers on what was a pretty cold afternoon, but a spectacular view.
It is very hard to go bushwalking in Canberra, or in Australia for that matter, and not be near a member of the Myrtaceae family. The ubiquitous eucalypt, angophora with its masses of white honey scented blossoms, the massive tallow woods which form part of the Corymbias, paper barked Melaleucas on your creeks, rivers and coasts, for the more inquiring, the leptospermums and for the smarty pants, the Metrosideros.
An introduced fungus has now placed our arboreal heritage at risk. The carbon sequestered by these plants will be severely hampered by what appears as a yellow fungus, yet this issue does not rate a mention in the carbon debate.
Uredo Rangelii is spreading from the initial sighting at Gosford in last year across the Myrtle (Myrtaceae) family of Eastern Australia. Myrtle rust as it is commonly known is part of the Guava Rust (Puccinia psidii) complex and both are similar in their DNA.
Guava rust was discovered in Brazil in 1884 and causes severe damage to Australian plants of the Myrtle family. The introduction of this fungus was not planned but that amounts for nought now that it is here.
The Federal Government’s concern for what could be a devastating environmental problem amounts to $1.4 million. I am sure they have stopped work at ANU to line up for that!
Do we have to hope and pray for a Dr Jean Macnamara coincidence, who while researching poliomyelitis in the US bumped into Dr Richard Shope researching Myxomatosis on rabbits?
Obviously we are hoping that a fluke of associated research like this by somebody else will bring a solution. While living carbon in trees dies the government says it is essential to sequestrate carbon.
The Government’s attention thus far is culpable. Whether you are a bush walker or a logger, a gardener or just conscientious this is an issue for you.
If we were clever we would be inspiring the acumen of diligent minds and motivated researchers to deal with a problem that is within our capabilities to fix. If our Government had started earlier we could have isolated this disease.
On a similar environmental front we now could isolate the great threat to apiarists and native honey bees from the Asian honey bee, another introduced pest marauding its way across our nation.
The Government is outraged by 400 head of cattle in the Alpine National Park but does nothing about the hundreds of thousands of deer, tens of thousands of pigs or thousands of brumbies.
Multiple billions of dollars are to be spent on something we cannot possibly affect, the temperature of the planet, while these other afflictions that we could deal with are running rampant. If we cannot stop a fungus in Australia it is highly unlikely that we have the acumen to change the temperature of planet earth. If a bee is beyond our control, is it then rather a large step to convince the globe that atmospheric recalibration is within Australia’s grasp. What is bad about a cow that is good about a feral pig?
If we see one day great swathes of our local environment effected by Myrtle Rust, then concerns about insolvable problems and the money expended chasing rainbows whilst a raging fire was burning at our back door will leave us all negligent.
We should target our research to tackling solvable problems at home, such as Myrtle Rust, rather than be lured into an absurd Wizard of Oz type multiple billion dollar carbon frolic.
SOURCE
Incompetent weather bureaucrats again
AN AMATEUR weather buff predicted what trained meteorologists did not, a flash flood that threatened lives in the Lockyer Valley, 90 minutes before it struck. Neil Pennell, a medical sonographer who monitors the weather as a hobby, told the Queensland Floods Commission he feels "considerable guilt" that he did not do more to warn people of the impending disaster.
Seventeen people died and 150 homes were damaged or destroyed when a wall of water rushed through the Lockyer Valley on January 10.
Mr Pennell, who lived in the nearby Fassifern Valley for most of his life, was watching the weather develop that day. At 1.10pm, under the username Buster, he posted on the Weatherzone online forum. "Those rain rates between Esk, Crows Nest and Toowoomba are truly frightening. I fear that there could be a dangerous flash flood very soon, particularly in Grantham. Am I overreacting?"
Half an hour later, Mr Pennell posted again: "I live in an area that is equally not used to being so saturated and equally not used to falls of that nature … I just know that 56mm in an hour right now here would produce a flood of frightening proportions and one likely to put lives at risk … I repeat my question … Does someone in Esk, Grantham, Toogoolawah need to know what's possible? Who do we tell?" Some time between 2.30pm and 3pm, the "inland tsunami" swept through Grantham.
In his submission to the commission, Mr Pennell said he is "carrying a burden for the shattered lives in the Lockyer Valley". He blames himself for not contacting the Bureau of Meteorology or the local police that day, believing they could have given locals at least 45 minutes' warning of the deluge.
Mr Pennell wants the commission to thoroughly investigate why "someone with my limited formal meteorology/hydrology experience could be made to sound like Nostradamus while the Bureau of Meteorology remained silent about the impending danger in the Lockyer Valley".
He argues that the fact the catchment was saturated and the upper Lockyer creek was already at minor flood levels meant it did not take much rain to cause the disaster.
The commission's first week of hearings focused on whether Wivenhoe Dam could have been managed better to prevent the city flooding. But Mr Pennell, whose own house in the Brisbane suburb of Rocklea was flooded, believes concern about the dam should be a "distant second" to the loss of life in the Lockyer Valley. "Grantham needs to be the number one focus of the inquiry. Things are one thing, people are another."
Mr Pennell was reluctant to discuss his experience. "I'm just a bit of a nobody," he said. "The only reason I [made a submission] is because what happened in Grantham is just beyond the pale. Those people weren't doing anything. They were just at home living their lives and the flood came to them."
The Floods Commission will hold public hearings in Toowoomba tomorrow and Tuesday.
SOURCE
Federal solar scheme hits the poor
Inequity spurs grant rethink
SOLAR panel rebates could be slashed again after the Government confirmed it was still concerned the scheme was driving up electricity prices for the poor.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said he was deeply concemed about the equity of the program that some experts estimated was already costing families that couldn’t afford panels about $100 a year. That’s because the cost of the uncapped solar credits scheme that offers grants of about $6000 is passed on to consumers by electricity retailers, rather than being a cash grant in the Federal Budget. Electricity users pay again when a feed-in tariff scheme “pays” the solar householders who produce more electricity than they use.
Mr Combet has already said the rebates will be slashed from about $6000 to $5000 from July 1, prompting a stampede of customers. "It is a program that we inherited from the Howard government. And it was a thoroughly poorly designed, inequitable program,” he said. “We’ve progressively wound back the levels of assistance. I announced before Christmas a fluther wind»back to take effect from July 1.
“In the meantime, I’ve been watching closely the levels of demand that are still being created by this scheme. The thing that's appropriate for me is watch it very closely, to take steps to reduce the levels of subsidy, which I am doing
Mr Combet said the surging demand for solar roof panels was “not purely a function of a federal govemment level of assistance". “Various state govemments have what’s called a feed-in tariff. The NSW feed-in tariff led to a complete explosion in demand. “They’ve both contributed to very high levels of demand. As well as the high dollar, because it means that the solar panels being imported from China are relatively cheaper. So I am very mindful of that and I am watching it very closely, because I have been particularly concerned about the equity of that program. Because it is effectively a subsidy that is paid through electricity prices.”
For families who can afford it, the generous scheme can reduce the cost of installing solar panels from $10,000 to just $4000
The above article by Samantha Maiden appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on 17 April
Your regulators will protect you -- NOT
Lazy Queensland Office of Fair Trading blasted for inaction in rain tank rip-off
QUEENSLAND'S fair trading regulator is under fire after failing to act on a tip-off about a rainwater tank venture that left a $1 million trail of debt. More than 600 people paid deposits or in full for tanks advertised by companies Aqua Conscious and Columbus Sales Group. They are now fighting to get their money back after the tanks never arrived.
It has emerged the Queensland Office of Fair Trading received a phone call and written complaint about Aqua Conscious more than three months before a public warning was issued by NSW Fair Trading on January 28. During that time, the companies continued advertising, attracting buyers across three states.
Leisa Donlan, the chief executive of the Association of Rotational Moulders, the peak body for tank manufacturers, phoned Fair Trading on October 12, but could not progress beyond the call centre despite insisting it was urgent. Ms Donlan then sent a fax the next day warning that Aqua Conscious was taking payment for tanks she believed may not exist. "We have used our industry resources to establish that this company currently has no contract for supply in place," the letter warns. But no reply was received.
"It's very disappointing and certainly helps someone doing the wrong thing to go on and create even more damage for players in the industry."
Fair Trading in NSW was the first to act after consumer complaints.
A spokeswoman for the Queensland Office of Fair Trading said the complaint appeared to have gone to the wrong area. It is not clear why the complaint was not passed on to the complaint intake unit and there was no record of it.
SOURCE
Why is the ALP wasting billions of the people's money on nonsense schemes when real problems like this need fixing?
BARELY a week goes by without it claiming a life. Every second day, on average, it's impassable. It is littered with blackspots and plagued by potholes. The Bruce Highway, the state's main artery and Queensland's contribution to National Highway 1, is a national disgrace.
As the Federal Government prepares its Budget, the need to fix our highway of shame is more apparent than ever. In the first three months of this year, the road has been cut 84 times because it can not cope with seasonal flooding.
Leading the charge for action are grieving families of the almost 200 people who have lost their lives in the past five years, frustrated truck drivers and local mayors fed up with years of pleas for funds falling on deaf ears.
The State Government shifts the blame to its federal counterparts, with Roads Minister Craig Wallace calling for more funding from Canberra. "Both sides of federal politics have ignored the Bruce Highway for nearly 40 years and it will take time to reverse these years of impact," he said. A recent report released by Mr Wallace claimed $5.3 billion was needed to flood-proof the highway.
Miners, businesses and farmers say Queensland can no longer afford to keep vital freight and produce trucks waiting at flooded crossings. "There are goods and services we need, like fertilisers and chemicals, that get held up because we've got trucks sitting on the road for a week to 10 days," Bowen and Gumlu District Growers Association president Carl Walker said.
Whitsunday Mayor Mike Brunker said flood-prone sections were a severe threat to development and tourism. "Up near Sandy Gully which is going to be a state development area and could be the biggest coal port in Australia the whole state's resources are going to be held up by flooded creeks," he said. "If Abbott Point takes off in the next two years, you could have 3000 workers on one side of the creek not being able to get to work."
Upgrading of the Bruce Highway has long been stymied by political buckpassing, with state and federal governments arguing the other should be doing more.
The Queensland Government claims it will spend almost $1 billion between 2006 and 2014 but argues that given the Bruce Highway is a crucial part of the national network, the bulk of future funding should come from the Federal Government.
The Federal Government points out there is nothing stopping the states contributing more to the upkeep of their most important roads.
Federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese said the Labor Government had committed $3.2 billion until 2014. He blamed the current state of the Bruce Highway on the Howard Government, saying average annual spending had increased by $281 million since Labor took office. "Despite having 12 years to do something about this road and the record tax revenues to pay for it, they chose to do very little," Mr Albanese said.
Shadow Transport Minister Warren Truss said the blame game had to stop. "It's high time federal and state Labor worked together to ensure Queenslanders have a major highway they can rely on," he said.
State Opposition Leader Campbell Newman said the LNP would unveil details before the next state election outlining how it would deliver better flood protection. "The LNP is committed to addressing the state's infrastructure needs," he said.
The RACQ said the condition of the Bruce Highway was "totally unacceptable". "We need a quantum leap in investment to bring it up to standard," RACQ executive manager traffic and safety John Wikman said. He said the highway was 10 years behind current traffic volumes and more four-lane stretches were vital.
IT'S been more than five years since the Bruce Highway claimed Jamie McTackett's wife and daughter and he's still waiting for it to be fixed. In August 2005, Karryn McTackett, 33, and 12-year-old Jessica were killed in a head-on smash with a semi-trailer while returning to Bowen from a junior football match in Townsville.
While he says he has never blamed the truck driver involved, Mr McTackett called for extra lanes to be added to the troubled Bruce Highway. "If it was a four-lane highway, the chances of (his wife's accident) happening would've been pretty scarce," he said.
He said Queenslanders had been neglected by policy-makers for far too long. "Get your finger out and fix the road," he said. "Our national highway's a disgrace."
SOURCE
Government attacks fantasy environmental problems while real environment problems are virtually ignored
Senator Barnaby Joyce
I relax by taking a walk behind Red Hill onto the ridge that overlooks the city; the lights of our nation’s capital lay below with all their troubles resting before the next day’s frenetic activity. As you fly in, the Brindabella’s are sometimes dusted with winter snow that can be seen amongst the snow gums, ribbon gums, stringy barks, acacias, banksias and callistemon. If you are interested in botany or even if you are not, there are interesting walks around Parliament.
A local builder, Joel, took me for a walk out near Mt Stromlo to the top of Camel’s Hump. I could have been a million miles from work as we sat and had a couple of beers on what was a pretty cold afternoon, but a spectacular view.
It is very hard to go bushwalking in Canberra, or in Australia for that matter, and not be near a member of the Myrtaceae family. The ubiquitous eucalypt, angophora with its masses of white honey scented blossoms, the massive tallow woods which form part of the Corymbias, paper barked Melaleucas on your creeks, rivers and coasts, for the more inquiring, the leptospermums and for the smarty pants, the Metrosideros.
An introduced fungus has now placed our arboreal heritage at risk. The carbon sequestered by these plants will be severely hampered by what appears as a yellow fungus, yet this issue does not rate a mention in the carbon debate.
Uredo Rangelii is spreading from the initial sighting at Gosford in last year across the Myrtle (Myrtaceae) family of Eastern Australia. Myrtle rust as it is commonly known is part of the Guava Rust (Puccinia psidii) complex and both are similar in their DNA.
Guava rust was discovered in Brazil in 1884 and causes severe damage to Australian plants of the Myrtle family. The introduction of this fungus was not planned but that amounts for nought now that it is here.
The Federal Government’s concern for what could be a devastating environmental problem amounts to $1.4 million. I am sure they have stopped work at ANU to line up for that!
Do we have to hope and pray for a Dr Jean Macnamara coincidence, who while researching poliomyelitis in the US bumped into Dr Richard Shope researching Myxomatosis on rabbits?
Obviously we are hoping that a fluke of associated research like this by somebody else will bring a solution. While living carbon in trees dies the government says it is essential to sequestrate carbon.
The Government’s attention thus far is culpable. Whether you are a bush walker or a logger, a gardener or just conscientious this is an issue for you.
If we were clever we would be inspiring the acumen of diligent minds and motivated researchers to deal with a problem that is within our capabilities to fix. If our Government had started earlier we could have isolated this disease.
On a similar environmental front we now could isolate the great threat to apiarists and native honey bees from the Asian honey bee, another introduced pest marauding its way across our nation.
The Government is outraged by 400 head of cattle in the Alpine National Park but does nothing about the hundreds of thousands of deer, tens of thousands of pigs or thousands of brumbies.
Multiple billions of dollars are to be spent on something we cannot possibly affect, the temperature of the planet, while these other afflictions that we could deal with are running rampant. If we cannot stop a fungus in Australia it is highly unlikely that we have the acumen to change the temperature of planet earth. If a bee is beyond our control, is it then rather a large step to convince the globe that atmospheric recalibration is within Australia’s grasp. What is bad about a cow that is good about a feral pig?
If we see one day great swathes of our local environment effected by Myrtle Rust, then concerns about insolvable problems and the money expended chasing rainbows whilst a raging fire was burning at our back door will leave us all negligent.
We should target our research to tackling solvable problems at home, such as Myrtle Rust, rather than be lured into an absurd Wizard of Oz type multiple billion dollar carbon frolic.
SOURCE
Incompetent weather bureaucrats again
AN AMATEUR weather buff predicted what trained meteorologists did not, a flash flood that threatened lives in the Lockyer Valley, 90 minutes before it struck. Neil Pennell, a medical sonographer who monitors the weather as a hobby, told the Queensland Floods Commission he feels "considerable guilt" that he did not do more to warn people of the impending disaster.
Seventeen people died and 150 homes were damaged or destroyed when a wall of water rushed through the Lockyer Valley on January 10.
Mr Pennell, who lived in the nearby Fassifern Valley for most of his life, was watching the weather develop that day. At 1.10pm, under the username Buster, he posted on the Weatherzone online forum. "Those rain rates between Esk, Crows Nest and Toowoomba are truly frightening. I fear that there could be a dangerous flash flood very soon, particularly in Grantham. Am I overreacting?"
Half an hour later, Mr Pennell posted again: "I live in an area that is equally not used to being so saturated and equally not used to falls of that nature … I just know that 56mm in an hour right now here would produce a flood of frightening proportions and one likely to put lives at risk … I repeat my question … Does someone in Esk, Grantham, Toogoolawah need to know what's possible? Who do we tell?" Some time between 2.30pm and 3pm, the "inland tsunami" swept through Grantham.
In his submission to the commission, Mr Pennell said he is "carrying a burden for the shattered lives in the Lockyer Valley". He blames himself for not contacting the Bureau of Meteorology or the local police that day, believing they could have given locals at least 45 minutes' warning of the deluge.
Mr Pennell wants the commission to thoroughly investigate why "someone with my limited formal meteorology/hydrology experience could be made to sound like Nostradamus while the Bureau of Meteorology remained silent about the impending danger in the Lockyer Valley".
He argues that the fact the catchment was saturated and the upper Lockyer creek was already at minor flood levels meant it did not take much rain to cause the disaster.
The commission's first week of hearings focused on whether Wivenhoe Dam could have been managed better to prevent the city flooding. But Mr Pennell, whose own house in the Brisbane suburb of Rocklea was flooded, believes concern about the dam should be a "distant second" to the loss of life in the Lockyer Valley. "Grantham needs to be the number one focus of the inquiry. Things are one thing, people are another."
Mr Pennell was reluctant to discuss his experience. "I'm just a bit of a nobody," he said. "The only reason I [made a submission] is because what happened in Grantham is just beyond the pale. Those people weren't doing anything. They were just at home living their lives and the flood came to them."
The Floods Commission will hold public hearings in Toowoomba tomorrow and Tuesday.
SOURCE
Federal solar scheme hits the poor
Inequity spurs grant rethink
SOLAR panel rebates could be slashed again after the Government confirmed it was still concerned the scheme was driving up electricity prices for the poor.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said he was deeply concemed about the equity of the program that some experts estimated was already costing families that couldn’t afford panels about $100 a year. That’s because the cost of the uncapped solar credits scheme that offers grants of about $6000 is passed on to consumers by electricity retailers, rather than being a cash grant in the Federal Budget. Electricity users pay again when a feed-in tariff scheme “pays” the solar householders who produce more electricity than they use.
Mr Combet has already said the rebates will be slashed from about $6000 to $5000 from July 1, prompting a stampede of customers. "It is a program that we inherited from the Howard government. And it was a thoroughly poorly designed, inequitable program,” he said. “We’ve progressively wound back the levels of assistance. I announced before Christmas a fluther wind»back to take effect from July 1.
“In the meantime, I’ve been watching closely the levels of demand that are still being created by this scheme. The thing that's appropriate for me is watch it very closely, to take steps to reduce the levels of subsidy, which I am doing
Mr Combet said the surging demand for solar roof panels was “not purely a function of a federal govemment level of assistance". “Various state govemments have what’s called a feed-in tariff. The NSW feed-in tariff led to a complete explosion in demand. “They’ve both contributed to very high levels of demand. As well as the high dollar, because it means that the solar panels being imported from China are relatively cheaper. So I am very mindful of that and I am watching it very closely, because I have been particularly concerned about the equity of that program. Because it is effectively a subsidy that is paid through electricity prices.”
For families who can afford it, the generous scheme can reduce the cost of installing solar panels from $10,000 to just $4000
The above article by Samantha Maiden appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on 17 April
Your regulators will protect you -- NOT
Lazy Queensland Office of Fair Trading blasted for inaction in rain tank rip-off
QUEENSLAND'S fair trading regulator is under fire after failing to act on a tip-off about a rainwater tank venture that left a $1 million trail of debt. More than 600 people paid deposits or in full for tanks advertised by companies Aqua Conscious and Columbus Sales Group. They are now fighting to get their money back after the tanks never arrived.
It has emerged the Queensland Office of Fair Trading received a phone call and written complaint about Aqua Conscious more than three months before a public warning was issued by NSW Fair Trading on January 28. During that time, the companies continued advertising, attracting buyers across three states.
Leisa Donlan, the chief executive of the Association of Rotational Moulders, the peak body for tank manufacturers, phoned Fair Trading on October 12, but could not progress beyond the call centre despite insisting it was urgent. Ms Donlan then sent a fax the next day warning that Aqua Conscious was taking payment for tanks she believed may not exist. "We have used our industry resources to establish that this company currently has no contract for supply in place," the letter warns. But no reply was received.
"It's very disappointing and certainly helps someone doing the wrong thing to go on and create even more damage for players in the industry."
Fair Trading in NSW was the first to act after consumer complaints.
A spokeswoman for the Queensland Office of Fair Trading said the complaint appeared to have gone to the wrong area. It is not clear why the complaint was not passed on to the complaint intake unit and there was no record of it.
SOURCE
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Gillard's carbon tax dead on its feet
Her political judgment is woeful. Abbott gets the steelworkers on his side
THE Gillard government's plans to put a price on carbon have suffered a body blow, with key unions demanding exemptions for industry that are unacceptable to the Greens. With his own job under threat from a hostile membership, the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Paul Howes, demanded yesterday that the steel industry be given a complete exemption from the carbon scheme and that there be generous compensation for the aluminium, cement and glass sectors.
Mr Howes issued the demand after a fiery crisis meeting with nine union branch secretaries from across Australia. It is understood Mr Howes, who is up for re-election before the next federal election, faced being dumped if he did not issue the demands. The AWU is influential in the Right faction of the ALP and was instrumental in Julia Gillard's coup against Kevin Rudd last year.
Immediately after Mr Howes's announcement, he was backed by the powerful Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, which influences the party's Left. The loss of support from the industrial wing of the party leaves the government stuck between the unions and the Greens, whose support is critical.
The government is negotiating with the Greens to put a price on carbon and one key sticking point is the level of compensation for trade-exposed industries. The other is the starting price for a tonne of carbon. As a starting point, the government was proposing the same generous levels of industry assistance devised under the emissions trading scheme negotiated with Malcolm Turnbull. The Greens derided this as "backroom deals for rent seekers" and want less compensation this time.
As well as exempting steel altogether, Mr Howes wants the compensation for aluminium, cement and glass to be "at least" as generous as that negotiated under the old scheme.
If the Greens vote for this, they would be signing on to a weaker scheme than the one they blocked in 2009 because, in part, they felt the compensation was too generous.
The Greens climate change spokeswoman, Christine Milne, was unhappy with the unions' backdown but said she would confine her negotiations to the multi-party climate change committee which meets again next week. "Conducting negotiations is not well served by threats to withdraw support if you don't get your way," she said. "Paul Howes should follow the example of many of his colleagues in the union movement who, like us, see the tremendous jobs potential in building a new clean economy."
The unions stuck with the Rudd government during the original ETS process and, until yesterday, had been rock solid with the Gillard government. But the steel sector, which is a big exporter, has been crying foul for weeks, saying it is already under pressure from the high Australian dollar and high input costs caused by rising prices for ore and coking coal.
This week the Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, challenged the industry, saying a carbon price of $20 would add just $2.60 to the price of a tonne of steel.
But Mr Howes sided with the steel makers yesterday. "We think there is a special case to be made for steel," he said. "Steel is going through a hard time at the moment, not because of carbon pricing. "When the dollar sits at 1.05, all export-based industries are under a huge amount of pressure. But there is no solid argument we shouldn't be making steel in this country."
Tony Maher, from the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, said Mr Howes has "got a very good argument and I would urge the government to consider it". "The economic circumstances of today are not those of two years ago."
Mr Combet refused to exempt steel. He said current economic circumstances were already being factored in and steel would again be in line for generous compensation. "A very significant level of assistance has been proposed," he said. "This assistance will be designed to stop 'carbon leakage' of jobs overseas and is the subject of continuing discussion with the steel industry and other industries."
One source said the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, had undermined Mr Howes by whipping up worker resentment during recent visits to BlueScope at Port Kembla, and OneSteel in Victoria. Mr Abbott welcomed Mr Howes's stance yesterday.
SOURCE
Youth vote splits as young desert Labor
LABOR'S youth vote is diving under Julia Gillard, with young voters close to being evenly split between the Coalition, the ALP and the Greens.
Tony Abbott has defied commentators who claimed he would have a problem with young voters by stabilising youth support for the Coalition on a primary vote of 31 per cent.
But an analysis of Newspoll surveys over the past decade shows Labor's youth vote has been hemorrhaging, with many of their young supporters defecting to the Greens since March 2002.
The Newspoll data shows Labor's youth vote crashing from 46 per cent in 2002 to 32.1 per cent for the corresponding quarter this year.
This was from a high of nearly 52 per cent in 2007, as the "Kevin Rudd for prime minister" momentum was building for Labor.
The Newspoll analysis shows Labor's youth support fell 10 points in the year to last month. Ms Gillard assumed the Labor leadership in June last year.
The Newspoll graph suggests that if the trends continue, Labor is in danger of falling below the Coalition's youth support numbers.
But both major parties have been left to watch the Greens' support among the young soaring to 27 per cent, while in 2002 Bob Brown's minority party could attract only 8 per cent support among the youth vote.
Newspoll chief executive Martin O'Shannessy examined data from the most recent March-quarter demographic analysis of voting intentions, comparing it with the same quarter for each year going back to 2002.
He notes that the Greens were a big winner in total primary vote growth over that period. "However, the rise of Tony Abbott as Liberal leader has restored the Coalition primary vote to past levels generally and within the youngest cohort of voters," he says.
Analysis of separate Newspoll figures taken about the same time as the so-called Tampa election in November 2001 shows that rather than losing the youth vote during the controversy, the Coalition picked up support.
The longer-term challenge for Labor appears to be that the growth in the Greens vote across all ages has been in part at the expense of the ALP.
More HERE
Pro-Asian, anti-Muslim will deemed discriminatory
A man wanted to leave his estate to people whom in his opinion would benefit most from it: Non-Muslim young Asians. There would be many people in that category but anti-discrimination laws mean that his executors cannot advertise for people of the sort he specified
A man who instructed the funds of his estate be donated only to non-Muslims may have his wishes overturned by the Queensland Supreme Court. Abraham Werner, who died in Brisbane in 1989, has had his will deemed discriminatory in several states. The estate executor, Perpetual Trust, has sought a court order to allow them to distribute the funds outside of his strict conditions.
Mr Werner's will bequeathed almost $700,000 with conditions the executor "first consider destitute male orphans of Asian parentage without any known relatives". Further conditions were that his money not go to followers or devotees of Islam, those not in "good health and mentally alert of good intellect and of good behaviour" or to anyone older than 21.
He also wished his funds not to go anyone involved in "using or marketing any form or drug of addiction" and that beneficiaries "must speak English adequately or undertake to learn to speak English within two years".
Mr Werner, who was originally from Holland, had never married nor had children. He donated his body to science.
In documents filed last month in the Supreme Court in Brisbane, Perpetual Trust says between 1991 and 2001 it managed to grant funds to charities which fell within Mr Werner's conditions. But in 2002 lawyers advised the organisation the criteria they put forward on Mr Werner's behalf could be unlawfully discriminatory in three Australian states and the ACT.
Lawyers considered the exclusion of "followers of Islam" was unlawful in Tasmania, Western Australia, the ACT and possibly unlawful in New South Wales.
Andrew Thomas, of Perpetual Trust, wrote in an affidavit the organisation "had difficulty identifying potential benefits because it could not advertise for applications given the discriminatory nature of criteria to be applied".
"Charities that assist disadvantaged children could not provide any assistance to Perpetual Trust as they either could not distinguish between individuals on criteria such as those set out in the will, or were not prepared to," Mr Thomas said.
He said the organisation ceased dispersing Mr Werner's funds in 2005. Almost $600,000 remains in the estate.
The court documents seek an order from the court to allow Perpetual Trust to distribute the remainder of Mr Werner's money to The Smith Family. Perpetual Trust say the charity would then pass on the money in a manner as near as possible to Mr Werner's wishes. Mr Thomas said Mr Werner's funds would go to a program The Smith Family operates to assist disadvantaged children.
"Negotiations with The Smith Family .. confirmed it is not able to confirm the religion [of children] and it's not its practice to collect such information," he said. "Perpetual Trust considers that it now has no other option but to make this application to the court for an order to apply the income from the trust [as close as possible."
The case has been adjourned will return to court on a date to be fixed.
SOURCE
Dodgy traffic forecasts in the gun at last
Less than two months after the spectacular collapse of listed toll road operator RiverCity Motorways, its traffic modelling forecaster Aecom faces a $700 million class action.
Litigation funder IMF will bankroll the class action and alleges that Aecom's statements in the PDS were misleading and deceptive and failed to provide investors with full information about another set of traffic figures it compiled on the project 18 months earlier.
The case will be a landmark as it is the first time a traffic forecaster has become the target of a class action. It could also open up a can of worms as the spotlight turns to other traffic forecasters, particularly given the poor track record of such forecasting in toll road projects in the past decade.
What will make this case interesting is that Rivercity provided an indemnity if the modeller was sued. The action will rely upon the insurance of RiverCity. RiverCity collapsed on February 25 after it was found that it only had enough cash to cover interest payments for a few months.
The class action will be thrown open to all shareholders who took up shares in the float of RiverCity, which floated on the ASX in 2006.
The issue of two instalments at 50 cents each raised $690 million. A number of shareholders went back into the market and bought more shares when the share price started to tank on the basis they still believed the traffic forecasts in the PDS.
The nub of the claim is that in the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) Aecom forecast daily traffic numbers in the Clem7 Tunnel, which were chronically inaccurate.
Aecom also failed to mention that it provided a different set of traffic figures 18 months earlier to Brisbane City Council's Environmental Impact Study on Clem7m, which were vastly different and would have raised questions about the viability of the project, according to the claim.
In the PDS distributed to shareholders, Aecom forecast the average daily number of vehicles using the tunnel would be 90,676 within six months of operation and jump to 94,706 after 12 months. By 2011 they would hit more than 100,000 passing through the 6.8 kilometre tunnel, which runs between Bowen Hills in the north and Kangaroo Point and Wolloongabba in the south.
In the PDS, Aecom refers to this earlier study and suggests that the modelling in the PDS is an “enhanced” form of the modelling used in the environmental impact study. What Aecom did not reveal in the PDS was that in their modelling for the EIS Aecom had forecast traffic volumes in 2011 of only 57,000 per week assuming a $3.30 toll.
The PDS contains no reference to the fact that Aecom's PDS forecasts for 2011 are more than 65 per cent higher than its EIS forecast, made only 18 months earlier.
IMF believes investors may have rights to recover their losses in RiverCity under the Corporations Act 2001 because Aecom's statements in the PDS were misleading or deceptive; and/or Aecom omitted to provide investors with critical information relevant to their decision to acquire the units.
The actual traffic numbers are averaging less than 24,000 per day. RiverCity's financial performance has been so disastrous that on 25 February 2011 it was placed in administration.
RiverCity was a tale of woe from the beginning, and follows a number of other listed tollroads across the country that have suffered similar failures and left shareholders will little or nothing.
SOURCE
Her political judgment is woeful. Abbott gets the steelworkers on his side
THE Gillard government's plans to put a price on carbon have suffered a body blow, with key unions demanding exemptions for industry that are unacceptable to the Greens. With his own job under threat from a hostile membership, the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Paul Howes, demanded yesterday that the steel industry be given a complete exemption from the carbon scheme and that there be generous compensation for the aluminium, cement and glass sectors.
Mr Howes issued the demand after a fiery crisis meeting with nine union branch secretaries from across Australia. It is understood Mr Howes, who is up for re-election before the next federal election, faced being dumped if he did not issue the demands. The AWU is influential in the Right faction of the ALP and was instrumental in Julia Gillard's coup against Kevin Rudd last year.
Immediately after Mr Howes's announcement, he was backed by the powerful Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, which influences the party's Left. The loss of support from the industrial wing of the party leaves the government stuck between the unions and the Greens, whose support is critical.
The government is negotiating with the Greens to put a price on carbon and one key sticking point is the level of compensation for trade-exposed industries. The other is the starting price for a tonne of carbon. As a starting point, the government was proposing the same generous levels of industry assistance devised under the emissions trading scheme negotiated with Malcolm Turnbull. The Greens derided this as "backroom deals for rent seekers" and want less compensation this time.
As well as exempting steel altogether, Mr Howes wants the compensation for aluminium, cement and glass to be "at least" as generous as that negotiated under the old scheme.
If the Greens vote for this, they would be signing on to a weaker scheme than the one they blocked in 2009 because, in part, they felt the compensation was too generous.
The Greens climate change spokeswoman, Christine Milne, was unhappy with the unions' backdown but said she would confine her negotiations to the multi-party climate change committee which meets again next week. "Conducting negotiations is not well served by threats to withdraw support if you don't get your way," she said. "Paul Howes should follow the example of many of his colleagues in the union movement who, like us, see the tremendous jobs potential in building a new clean economy."
The unions stuck with the Rudd government during the original ETS process and, until yesterday, had been rock solid with the Gillard government. But the steel sector, which is a big exporter, has been crying foul for weeks, saying it is already under pressure from the high Australian dollar and high input costs caused by rising prices for ore and coking coal.
This week the Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, challenged the industry, saying a carbon price of $20 would add just $2.60 to the price of a tonne of steel.
But Mr Howes sided with the steel makers yesterday. "We think there is a special case to be made for steel," he said. "Steel is going through a hard time at the moment, not because of carbon pricing. "When the dollar sits at 1.05, all export-based industries are under a huge amount of pressure. But there is no solid argument we shouldn't be making steel in this country."
Tony Maher, from the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, said Mr Howes has "got a very good argument and I would urge the government to consider it". "The economic circumstances of today are not those of two years ago."
Mr Combet refused to exempt steel. He said current economic circumstances were already being factored in and steel would again be in line for generous compensation. "A very significant level of assistance has been proposed," he said. "This assistance will be designed to stop 'carbon leakage' of jobs overseas and is the subject of continuing discussion with the steel industry and other industries."
One source said the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, had undermined Mr Howes by whipping up worker resentment during recent visits to BlueScope at Port Kembla, and OneSteel in Victoria. Mr Abbott welcomed Mr Howes's stance yesterday.
SOURCE
Youth vote splits as young desert Labor
LABOR'S youth vote is diving under Julia Gillard, with young voters close to being evenly split between the Coalition, the ALP and the Greens.
Tony Abbott has defied commentators who claimed he would have a problem with young voters by stabilising youth support for the Coalition on a primary vote of 31 per cent.
But an analysis of Newspoll surveys over the past decade shows Labor's youth vote has been hemorrhaging, with many of their young supporters defecting to the Greens since March 2002.
The Newspoll data shows Labor's youth vote crashing from 46 per cent in 2002 to 32.1 per cent for the corresponding quarter this year.
This was from a high of nearly 52 per cent in 2007, as the "Kevin Rudd for prime minister" momentum was building for Labor.
The Newspoll analysis shows Labor's youth support fell 10 points in the year to last month. Ms Gillard assumed the Labor leadership in June last year.
The Newspoll graph suggests that if the trends continue, Labor is in danger of falling below the Coalition's youth support numbers.
But both major parties have been left to watch the Greens' support among the young soaring to 27 per cent, while in 2002 Bob Brown's minority party could attract only 8 per cent support among the youth vote.
Newspoll chief executive Martin O'Shannessy examined data from the most recent March-quarter demographic analysis of voting intentions, comparing it with the same quarter for each year going back to 2002.
He notes that the Greens were a big winner in total primary vote growth over that period. "However, the rise of Tony Abbott as Liberal leader has restored the Coalition primary vote to past levels generally and within the youngest cohort of voters," he says.
Analysis of separate Newspoll figures taken about the same time as the so-called Tampa election in November 2001 shows that rather than losing the youth vote during the controversy, the Coalition picked up support.
The longer-term challenge for Labor appears to be that the growth in the Greens vote across all ages has been in part at the expense of the ALP.
More HERE
Pro-Asian, anti-Muslim will deemed discriminatory
A man wanted to leave his estate to people whom in his opinion would benefit most from it: Non-Muslim young Asians. There would be many people in that category but anti-discrimination laws mean that his executors cannot advertise for people of the sort he specified
A man who instructed the funds of his estate be donated only to non-Muslims may have his wishes overturned by the Queensland Supreme Court. Abraham Werner, who died in Brisbane in 1989, has had his will deemed discriminatory in several states. The estate executor, Perpetual Trust, has sought a court order to allow them to distribute the funds outside of his strict conditions.
Mr Werner's will bequeathed almost $700,000 with conditions the executor "first consider destitute male orphans of Asian parentage without any known relatives". Further conditions were that his money not go to followers or devotees of Islam, those not in "good health and mentally alert of good intellect and of good behaviour" or to anyone older than 21.
He also wished his funds not to go anyone involved in "using or marketing any form or drug of addiction" and that beneficiaries "must speak English adequately or undertake to learn to speak English within two years".
Mr Werner, who was originally from Holland, had never married nor had children. He donated his body to science.
In documents filed last month in the Supreme Court in Brisbane, Perpetual Trust says between 1991 and 2001 it managed to grant funds to charities which fell within Mr Werner's conditions. But in 2002 lawyers advised the organisation the criteria they put forward on Mr Werner's behalf could be unlawfully discriminatory in three Australian states and the ACT.
Lawyers considered the exclusion of "followers of Islam" was unlawful in Tasmania, Western Australia, the ACT and possibly unlawful in New South Wales.
Andrew Thomas, of Perpetual Trust, wrote in an affidavit the organisation "had difficulty identifying potential benefits because it could not advertise for applications given the discriminatory nature of criteria to be applied".
"Charities that assist disadvantaged children could not provide any assistance to Perpetual Trust as they either could not distinguish between individuals on criteria such as those set out in the will, or were not prepared to," Mr Thomas said.
He said the organisation ceased dispersing Mr Werner's funds in 2005. Almost $600,000 remains in the estate.
The court documents seek an order from the court to allow Perpetual Trust to distribute the remainder of Mr Werner's money to The Smith Family. Perpetual Trust say the charity would then pass on the money in a manner as near as possible to Mr Werner's wishes. Mr Thomas said Mr Werner's funds would go to a program The Smith Family operates to assist disadvantaged children.
"Negotiations with The Smith Family .. confirmed it is not able to confirm the religion [of children] and it's not its practice to collect such information," he said. "Perpetual Trust considers that it now has no other option but to make this application to the court for an order to apply the income from the trust [as close as possible."
The case has been adjourned will return to court on a date to be fixed.
SOURCE
Dodgy traffic forecasts in the gun at last
Less than two months after the spectacular collapse of listed toll road operator RiverCity Motorways, its traffic modelling forecaster Aecom faces a $700 million class action.
Litigation funder IMF will bankroll the class action and alleges that Aecom's statements in the PDS were misleading and deceptive and failed to provide investors with full information about another set of traffic figures it compiled on the project 18 months earlier.
The case will be a landmark as it is the first time a traffic forecaster has become the target of a class action. It could also open up a can of worms as the spotlight turns to other traffic forecasters, particularly given the poor track record of such forecasting in toll road projects in the past decade.
What will make this case interesting is that Rivercity provided an indemnity if the modeller was sued. The action will rely upon the insurance of RiverCity. RiverCity collapsed on February 25 after it was found that it only had enough cash to cover interest payments for a few months.
The class action will be thrown open to all shareholders who took up shares in the float of RiverCity, which floated on the ASX in 2006.
The issue of two instalments at 50 cents each raised $690 million. A number of shareholders went back into the market and bought more shares when the share price started to tank on the basis they still believed the traffic forecasts in the PDS.
The nub of the claim is that in the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) Aecom forecast daily traffic numbers in the Clem7 Tunnel, which were chronically inaccurate.
Aecom also failed to mention that it provided a different set of traffic figures 18 months earlier to Brisbane City Council's Environmental Impact Study on Clem7m, which were vastly different and would have raised questions about the viability of the project, according to the claim.
In the PDS distributed to shareholders, Aecom forecast the average daily number of vehicles using the tunnel would be 90,676 within six months of operation and jump to 94,706 after 12 months. By 2011 they would hit more than 100,000 passing through the 6.8 kilometre tunnel, which runs between Bowen Hills in the north and Kangaroo Point and Wolloongabba in the south.
In the PDS, Aecom refers to this earlier study and suggests that the modelling in the PDS is an “enhanced” form of the modelling used in the environmental impact study. What Aecom did not reveal in the PDS was that in their modelling for the EIS Aecom had forecast traffic volumes in 2011 of only 57,000 per week assuming a $3.30 toll.
The PDS contains no reference to the fact that Aecom's PDS forecasts for 2011 are more than 65 per cent higher than its EIS forecast, made only 18 months earlier.
IMF believes investors may have rights to recover their losses in RiverCity under the Corporations Act 2001 because Aecom's statements in the PDS were misleading or deceptive; and/or Aecom omitted to provide investors with critical information relevant to their decision to acquire the units.
The actual traffic numbers are averaging less than 24,000 per day. RiverCity's financial performance has been so disastrous that on 25 February 2011 it was placed in administration.
RiverCity was a tale of woe from the beginning, and follows a number of other listed tollroads across the country that have suffered similar failures and left shareholders will little or nothing.
SOURCE
Friday, April 15, 2011
Do-gooder was a goon
His current political campaign is to "protect" people from spending too much of their money on gambling
INDEPENDENT MP Andrew Wilkie says he cannot remember ordering military cadets to honour Adolf Hitler. But he says he is regretful of other inappropriate behaviour when he was at Duntroon Military College almost 30 years ago.
As a senior cadet in 1983 Mr Wilkie allegedly forced his juniors to salute the 50th anniversary of Hitler's rise to power, News Ltd has reported.
"I honestly cannot remember anything about that specific allegation," Mr Wilkie told reporters in Hobart today. "But I have never made a secret of the fact that I was one of many cadets involved in the bastardisation scandal at the Royal Military College Duntroon in 1983. "In fact I was disciplined for misconduct at the time." Mr Wilkie said he was "obviously regretful" of that.
He acknowledged the behaviour was wrong and inappropriate but insisted it wasn't physical or sexual. "I've obviously grown up a lot in the last 30 years."
Mr Wilkie said he was a cadet in his early 20s at the time. "That sort of behaviour at the time was wrong, and I regret I was in any way involved in that sort of behaviour," Mr Wilkie said.
"I am absolutely appalled at the stories that are coming out of the defence force academy these days, I applaud the Defence Minister Stephen Smith for intervening and taking the strongest possibly action to stamp out misconduct at the academy."
Mr Wilkie refused to apologise over the Nazi allegations because he couldn't remember "that particular incident".
"If there's anyone in this country who, to this day, feels aggrieved in any way by anything I've ever said or done to them, then I apologise unreservedly," he said. "But I will not apologise for the allegation in the paper because I honestly have no recollection."
The Tasmanian MP noted he gained security clearance to undertake intelligence work later in life and passed "repeated" character tests during his military career. "So I would hope that no one would have any doubts over my character these days, particularly as a member of parliament.
"This is happening ... against the backdrop of the poker machine industry launching its campaign ... against the government and me personally."
Mr Wilkie said it was as much a cultural problem as an issue with specific events. "What happened to me as a cadet when I was bastardised and then what I did to other cadets was endemic at Duntroon at the time to many cadets involved," he said. "It would probably clean out the senior ranks of the defence force if we were to search out and remove every person who in anyway brushed up against bastardisation."
Mr Wilkie urged the government to conduct a specific review of Duntroon in the wake of the Skype sex scandal. "I have no reason to think that there's a problem at Duntroon these days," he said. "(But) if we are going to have a fresh look at what's going on ... it would be healthy to not just look at the (Australian) Defence Force Academy but to look at Duntroon as well."
ADFA provides university education for officer trainees from all services while Duntroon trains army officers.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard noted the alleged events took place when Mr Wilkie was a "very, very young man".
But she wouldn't comment on the detail of the report. ``I didn't know the Andrew Wilkie of 30 years ago, I'm sure he can speak for himself," Ms Gillard told Austereo. ``Andrew Wilkie is the only person who can tell his life story."
An anonymous barrister has also publicly described the mental, physical and sexual abuse he and others suffered at Duntroon in the early 1990s.
Former cadet Brendan Etches said he was disappointed to be rebuffed by Mr Wilkie after making an appointment to see the Member for Denison on Tuesday. He was at first assured that Mr Wilkie would speak to him but later told the politician refused to discuss his time at Duntroon.
Mr Etches said he has wondered if and when the independent MP would speak out against the harsh treatment that the then Senior Cadet Wilkie and others condoned - and sometimes inflicted - on teenage cadets.
In his book Axis of Deceit, Mr Wilkie admits he was a "larrikin" while at Duntroon and that he set "some sort of record" for incurring punishments for offences such as "giving junior cadets a hard time".
Mr Etches, whose grandfather had fought against Hitler's troops at Tobruk, said he had been shocked at orders to salute the Nazi regime. "He was drilling us before breakfast," Mr Etches said. "I have a memory of him in a dressing gown, watching as the other senior guys were running around giving us a hard time."
SOURCE
Aboriginal sophisticates betray bush sisters
Marcia Langton
LARISSA Behrendt's foul Twitter message about Bess Price's comments on the absence of rights for Aboriginal women in her community on ABC Television's Q&A; program is an exemplar of the wide cultural, moral and increasingly political rift between urban, left-wing, activist Aboriginal women and the bush women who witness the horrors of life in their communities, much of which is arrogantly denied by the former.
Whereas Bess, a grandmother who resides in Yuendumu, is a first-hand witness of terrifying violence against women, lives in one of Australia's poorest communities, and campaigns for the needs of women and children, especially their safety and everyday physical needs, professor and lawyer Larissa Behrendt lives in Sydney in relative luxury as compared with Bess's situation, has no children, has a PhD from Harvard and is the principal litigant in a case against conservative columnist Andrew Bolt, who published several columns accusing the "fair-skinned" Behrendt and others of falsely claiming to be Aboriginal to get the perks.
Australians, whether they support reconciliation or not, must be astonished at the viciousness of the twittering sepia-toned [not black] Sydney activists. Andrew Bolt should be rubbing his hands with glee - Behrendt has delivered on all of his stereotypes, and this time I have to wonder if he is not right after all.
What indigenous or human rights, or for that matter, civil rights, are Behrendt and her Twitter followers defending in this extraordinary exchange? Which Aboriginal woman should I listen to, many must be asking.
On Monday night this week, Bess was the subject of shocking personal abuse by Behrendt in a Twitter message following Bess's appearance on the Q&A; program that focused on the sex scandals in the ADF and the calls for reform of the culture of abuse of women.
Behrendt twittered: "I watched a show where a guy had sex with a horse and I'm sure it was less offensive than Bess Price." This was one of several Twitters circulating among the Aboriginal protestati of Sydney. While none were as offensive as Behrendt's, at least one that consisted of outright lies was far more damaging to her and her husband's reputations.
I have never in my life witnessed such extreme disrespect shown by a younger Aboriginal woman for an older Aboriginal woman, except where the perpetrator was severely intoxicated on drugs or alcohol. Nor have I witnessed, except once or twice, such snide dismissal by a younger Aboriginal woman of an older Aboriginal woman's right to express her views. Those of us who were brought up in the Aboriginal way were taught from a young age to show respect for our elders and not to speak while they are speaking. This is a fundamental and universal law in Aboriginal societies.
What Bess said to incite such abuse was this: "Equal opportunity doesn't exist for our women, and once the military have done their overhaul of their men and policies . . . maybe they could come our way and sort some of our fellas out, because what's happening now women just haven't had a voice." They "want to move forward and be respected and be seen as equals". What happened to the girl whose complaint brought these matters to a head "was not right", Bess said.
Asked by Emma Beard what was the most important thing that could improve the standard of living for Northern Territory Aboriginal people, Bess replied: "Education is the first one on the top of the list . . . from six up to 18, children don't know how to write their names." She responded to another questioner who cited "treaty obligations" that if the UN indigenous rights rapporteur who visited the Northern Territory had been a woman, there would have been more understanding and a better outcome for Aboriginal women.
Asked by Tony Jones if she still supported the intervention, Bess said: "I am for the intervention because I've seen progress, I've seen women who now have voices. They can speak for themselves, and they are standing up for their rights. Children are being fed, and young people more or less know how to manage their lives. That's what's happened since the intervention."
I met Bess Price on the banks of the Katherine River with her husband in 1980. It was a delight to meet a well-educated young Aboriginal woman. Bess and her husband were engaging and optimistic, and we were in agreement on so many things in those heady days when land rights were new and great changes in the administration of Aboriginal affairs were afoot.
More here
Minister unleashes his inner Germaine Greer
By Ted Lapkin, who served as an infantry officer in the Israeli army. He has an important point but I still think officers can be gentlemen
THE sex scandal at the Australian Defence Force Academy has sent the Gillard government into a conniption fit of political correctness.
In a gross overreaction to this sordid episode, the Prime Minister has set in train a contradictory set of initiatives that would be ludicrous if they weren't so tragic.
The Sex Discrimination Commissioner has been directed to investigate the defence force with the intention of rooting out loutishness in the ranks. But Defence Minister Stephen Smith also wants to see women serving in front-line roles where they will encounter close-quarters barbarism of the worst sort imaginable.
The rank incoherence of these policies is obvious. If women require special protections against a bit of coarse sexual barrack-room banter, how can they be expected to deal with the unbridled savagery of infantry combat?
The battlefield is a brutal, physically exacting and unforgiving environment where there's no Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to be found.
Appeals to fair play will do nothing to help an infantrywoman against an AK47-wielding jihadi who seeks to thrust a bayonet into her chest.
There is no place for special dispensations in war. Our enemies couldn't care less whether our armed forces operate according principles of gender equality.
The government has seized on the ADFA scandal as the trigger for a full-fledged assault on what it sees as the army's culture of machismo-laden aggression. Yet the Defence Minister seems oblivious to the reality that martial belligerence is what wins wars.
The military is a killing machine that in the final equation exists to vanquish Australia's foes by shooting people and blowing up things. It's an institution that has no parallel elsewhere in civilised society.
And, as such, the Australian Army operates according to a unique set of rules that are designed to fit the exceptional circumstances it encounters when the bullets fly. Nowhere else can you be ordered to advance against people who are trying their best to kill you, and nowhere else can you be sent to prison if you refuse. Nowhere else do you receive accolades for slaughtering human beings wholesale.
Since time immemorial, groups of young men have been melded into effective fighting units through a chest thumping, testosterone-laden macho warrior culture. Shakespeare perfectly captured this emotional dynamic with in his famous Agincourt "band of brothers" speech from Henry V.
A singular sense of brotherhood is what makes soldiers willing to assault an enemy machinegun when every rational instinct screams at them to run like hell the other way.
The integration of women into combat units will disrupt the psychological small group dynamic that forges rifle companies into effective fighting machines.
Military feminists seek to impose on the war room a set of principles taken directly from the boardroom. The arguments in favour of a gender-neutral Australian military are all couched in the civilian language of equal opportunity.
No one even tries to claim that permitting women to serve as infantry soldiers will enhance the combat efficiency of the ADF. Activists pushing for this revolutionary change in military culture are utterly indifferent to the impact it will have on the army's ability to fulfil its most basic purpose, winning our wars.
And then there's the inevitable issue of sex. The lifestyle of any ground combat unit in the field is rough, rude and raw.
Writer Sebastian Junger accompanied a unit of American paratroopers three years ago through their 15-month deployment to Afghanistan.
In his bestselling book War, Junger described his platoon's outpost as "a hilltop without hot food, running water, communication with the outside world or any kind of entertainment".
Anyone who believes that there'll be no hanky-panky if young men and women are posted in such conditions is naive to the ways of the human heart. And romantic affection, with its instinctive passions, jealousies and favouritisms, will wreak havoc when injected into the tightly knit fraternity that is a rifle platoon.
It's also time to dispel the mythology about the status of women in the Israeli military that has been bandied about in this debate.
In its 1948 War of Independence, the Israeli army quickly scuttled its egalitarian experiment with female fighters. It turned out that male soldiers were so focused on protecting their female colleagues that they neglected their unit's mission objectives.
And today women still do not serve in the front line units of the Israeli army that engage in close combat with the enemy. The single mixed-gender "Caracal" battalion is assigned to gendarmerie duties along the sleepy Sinai border between Israel and Egypt. Women also carry out rear area security duties with the paramilitary border police. But there are no female fighting personnel in Israel's infantry, tank or combat engineer units.
Elevating the theory and principle over tactics and practicality, the Gillard government seeks to transform the Australian military into a softer and more sensitive institution. But close quarters combat is a savage business and a feminised army will not fare well at the sharp end of war.
The ADF must never be used as a laboratory for trendy social experimentation because the stakes are so high. Getting it wrong means dead Australians and battlefield defeat.
It's fine that Smith has discovered his inner Germaine Greer. But in that process he's dragging the Australian Army down the primrose path of political correctness that will ultimately kill people. The wrong people. Our people.
SOURCE
GREENIE ROUNDUP
Three current articles below
Friends and foes flay carbon tax
THERE is now a common view among the Gillard government's friends and foes about the additional costs to industry of a carbon tax.
That is, it could be the straw that breaks the camel's back in relation to future investment, the survival of some of the manufacturing sector and the full recovery of a still fragile, patchwork economy.
Company chiefs and shop-floor workers find they are now on the same side. There is also a common view among employers and employees that the government's process and timetable are flawed, short on detail, politically motivated and not guaranteed of success.
Such sentiments may have been shared by some of those same people during the Rudd government's negotiations of the failed carbon pollution reduction scheme, but there have been dramatic changes to the economy, industry, jobs and the body politic since 2009.
Not least among those is the fact the Gillard government is now a minority one dependent on independents and the Greens to get its agenda passed.
Perhaps the biggest difficulty the government faces is that workers' concern for their jobs, whether based on the real impact of the carbon tax or not, is so deep the previous goodwill on climate change, faith in Labor looking after Australian workers and suspicion of Tony Abbott are evaporating. Labor's working heartland is rebelling because of concern for job security and not because they are climate change deniers or extremists. Chief executives of big companies and welders on the shop floor are seeing eye-to-eye on the threats from a carbon tax and the government appears to be losing the argument badly on compensation for want of detail since Julia Gillard announced the carbon tax on February 24.
These changes and difficulties are not just about more complicated and delicate negotiations with MPs on the cross benches but go to the heart of the challenges faced by the government: a lack of authority, a sense of growing cabinet and leadership tension, emboldened critics, community scepticism towards reassurances and a growing list of sections of industry and the community angry with government policies.
A negotiated government born without electoral momentum is sinking as its friends question its ability to get things done and its foes press home an advantage.
Not least among those foes is the Leader of the Opposition, who has played up industry and business concerns on the effect of the tax on investment and development, harped on increased prices for food, petrol and electricity, and argued that the tax will not cut greenhouse emissions.
What's more, Abbott has not only attacked Gillard's integrity about going back on her promise about a carbon tax and run a highly successful negative campaign, he also has started to split Labor from its formal allies in the Greens and labour movement.
Three weeks ago Climate Change Minister Greg Combet told industry leaders the compensation for business for the carbon tax would not go beyond the compensation earmarked for the CPRS in 2009-10 under Kevin Rudd's prime ministership. He told the coal industry not to expect any compensation for coalminers and exporters beyond 2009.
Industry and unions want it to be the starting point.
Combet was told oil refinery investment in Australia was threatened by a carbon tax, help for the natural gas sector had to be revisited and a range of exporting industries were threatened. Shell and Caltex expressed concerns about the future of oil refinery investment in Australia because a series of taxes and costs were accumulating and the carbon tax represented the fatal straw.
Since then the liquefied natural gas industry has sought an exclusion from the tax, at least a rise in free permits to emit greenhouse gases to 94.5 per cent, because of fundamental changes in the industry and as it ponders investments in the near future of $130 billion. Shell has signalled the closure of its Clyde oil refinery in Sydney with the possible loss of 500 jobs and Ford has announced a downsizing of 240 jobs. To cap it off, Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes has declared he is facing a workers' revolt on the tax and that if one job were to be lost then the union's in-principle support would also be lost.
Howes has been forced into the open by Abbott's dual campaign against Gillard and the tax and against the union leadership for not addressing members' concerns. Since the announcement of the tax Abbott has visited at least 16 workplaces, including a steel works and a cement plant, to campaign against it. At the OneSteel rolling mill at Laverton in Gillard's electorate of Lalor in Melbourne, Abbott observed the growing opposition of workers and drove a wedge between union officials and their members.
"The steel market is highly competitive. They're under a great deal of competitive pressure, particularly from imports, and that's why Julia Gillard's carbon tax is a dagger aimed at the heart of manufacturing in this country . . . it will cost jobs big time," Abbott said. "Most of the workers here are members of the Australian Workers Union and I think if Paul Howes was doing the right thing by his workers he would be talking to the Prime Minister and saying: 'Think again, if we want manufacturing jobs in this country, think again about this bad tax.' "
Don Voelte, chief executive of the biggest Australian-owned LNG company, Woodside Petroleum, argued that while existing projects would not be affected future investment could be directed elsewhere in the world and "carbon leakage" meant China's contribution to global carbon emissions would increase at the cost of Australian LNG exports.
On the face of all this, Combet tried to turn the public discourse back in the government's favour this week by releasing a compensation package for households. It had a guarantee that more than 50 per cent of the revenue raised would be used for permanent compensation to households.
But the package, like all the others, lacked the detail that would enable those fighting for a carbon price to actually have something to use in an argument rather than assurances and moral arguments. As well, the basic concern being felt on the shop floor, worry about keeping your job, wasn't addressed at all by reassurances of compensation for rising costs. When Howes and Voelte agree that workers are worried about the same thing the debate's not favouring the government.
SOURCE
"Green" senator from a distinguished Communist background unrepentant in her hatred of Israel
Her parents were both lifelong members of the Communist Party of Australia and her own views are Trotskyite. Trotsky was the chief murderer of Russia's Red revolution
INCOMING Greens senator Lee Rhiannon says she will support a controversial boycott of Israel right up until she enters Federal Parliament. She will continue to speak out for the sanctions against Israel even though it clashes with the policies of federal Greens leader Bob Brown.
And Ms Rhiannon insisted the stance, part of the Greens' New South Wales platform, is not anti-Israel. She told Sky News the aim was to "bring forward policies that will work for Palestinians because at the moment Palestinians just don't have a lot of the human rights we take for granted".
"I said that yes, we have that position in NSW and I'll support the NSW position. But it's not something we're taking to the Federal Parliament," she said.
Mr Brown suggested Labor should share some of the flak over Marrickville Council's decision to ban Israeli products.
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd earlier today slammed the boycott as "nuts" but Senator Brown said that it was not just the NSW Greens that had voted for it. "It was four Labor councillors that made that policy possible," he told reporters in Canberra. "Kevin Rudd's Labor party is as every bit responsible for the outcome ... as the Greens were. "So he might address that issue."
The federal coalition has already called on Prime Minister Julia Gillard to distance herself from the Labor councillors who voted for the boycott in December. More than 20 ALP-affiliated unions have also backed banning trade links with Israel.
Ms Rhiannon said the boycott was part of a global movement. She said: "My own position is that its not an anti-Israel position at all. "It is about a boycott to bring forward policies that will work for Palestinians because at the moment Palestinians just don't have a lot of the human rights we take for granted, they cant move easily around their country, there's not equity in jobs and education, they cant be confident their house isn't going to be blown up."
The NSW Greens were strong contenders for the state seat of Marrickville until its candidate, the local mayor Fiona Byrne, was targeted by a media campaign over her inconsistent position on the boycott to isolate Israel.
The move has drawn the ire of politicians, business leaders and the Jewish community.
The Greens controlled council continues to back sanctions, even though its own business papers have revealed it could cost it $4 million. Ms Byrne issued a statement yesterday saying the sanctions would be implemented in such a way as to not financially disadvantage residents and businesses.
New Premier Barry O'Farrell has written to Marrickville mayor Fiona Byrne threatening to sack the council unless it drops the boycott within 28 days. "We're happy to take whatever action is required to get Marrickville Council back focused on the needs of its ratepayers, not trying to engage in foreign affairs," he told Macquarie Radio today.
He advised Ms Byrne to leave the council and run for federal parliament if she wanted to pursue the boycott.
SOURCE
Solar panel boondoggle
It's an object lesson in how not to run government policy. Solar roof panels on domestic houses deliver relatively little greenhouse gas abatement at a very high cost that is borne disproportionately by the poor.
An economy-wide carbon price delivers a lot of abatement at about one-tenth of the cost and can fund compensation to make sure the heaviest cost falls on the people who can afford to pay.
IPART, the pricing regulator, is warning that the former scheme is eroding the willingness of the public to consider the latter.
Yesterday's report reveals NSW homes are already going to be paying about $100 a year more in annual electricity bills to cover the benefits flowing to people who can afford to put solar panels on their roofs. And there's no compensation to pensioners or low-income earners for that.
The concern is that people are now likely to be less willing to pay $140 to $200 a year more on their annual household bills to cover the cost of the carbon tax, even though low and middle income earners will get compensation for that impost.
How did we get into this back-to-front position? Governments didn't think the policy through.
After spending more than $1 billion on direct rebates for solar photovoltaic cells, continued cost blowouts forced the cancellation of the federal scheme in 2009. It was subsumed into the renewable energy target - a policy actually designed to help large-scale renewables attain a viable market share in the lead-in to a full carbon price.
But the small-scale rooftop incentives swamped the market and rendered the big projects unviable, so the government hived them off into their own scheme - requiring electricity generators to buy all the renewable certificates they generated and giving four extra certificates for every certificate actually earned. The retailers warned from the get-go that the new scheme could also blow out.
On top of this incentive, state governments offered households feed-in tariffs to sell the electricity they generated back into the grid.
Both the federal and former NSW government have already tried to wind back their lucrative incentives, but the message from IPART is that they are not doing it fast enough.
The result is the risk that a bad policy cruels the chances of a potentially efficient one.
SOURCE
His current political campaign is to "protect" people from spending too much of their money on gambling
INDEPENDENT MP Andrew Wilkie says he cannot remember ordering military cadets to honour Adolf Hitler. But he says he is regretful of other inappropriate behaviour when he was at Duntroon Military College almost 30 years ago.
As a senior cadet in 1983 Mr Wilkie allegedly forced his juniors to salute the 50th anniversary of Hitler's rise to power, News Ltd has reported.
"I honestly cannot remember anything about that specific allegation," Mr Wilkie told reporters in Hobart today. "But I have never made a secret of the fact that I was one of many cadets involved in the bastardisation scandal at the Royal Military College Duntroon in 1983. "In fact I was disciplined for misconduct at the time." Mr Wilkie said he was "obviously regretful" of that.
He acknowledged the behaviour was wrong and inappropriate but insisted it wasn't physical or sexual. "I've obviously grown up a lot in the last 30 years."
Mr Wilkie said he was a cadet in his early 20s at the time. "That sort of behaviour at the time was wrong, and I regret I was in any way involved in that sort of behaviour," Mr Wilkie said.
"I am absolutely appalled at the stories that are coming out of the defence force academy these days, I applaud the Defence Minister Stephen Smith for intervening and taking the strongest possibly action to stamp out misconduct at the academy."
Mr Wilkie refused to apologise over the Nazi allegations because he couldn't remember "that particular incident".
"If there's anyone in this country who, to this day, feels aggrieved in any way by anything I've ever said or done to them, then I apologise unreservedly," he said. "But I will not apologise for the allegation in the paper because I honestly have no recollection."
The Tasmanian MP noted he gained security clearance to undertake intelligence work later in life and passed "repeated" character tests during his military career. "So I would hope that no one would have any doubts over my character these days, particularly as a member of parliament.
"This is happening ... against the backdrop of the poker machine industry launching its campaign ... against the government and me personally."
Mr Wilkie said it was as much a cultural problem as an issue with specific events. "What happened to me as a cadet when I was bastardised and then what I did to other cadets was endemic at Duntroon at the time to many cadets involved," he said. "It would probably clean out the senior ranks of the defence force if we were to search out and remove every person who in anyway brushed up against bastardisation."
Mr Wilkie urged the government to conduct a specific review of Duntroon in the wake of the Skype sex scandal. "I have no reason to think that there's a problem at Duntroon these days," he said. "(But) if we are going to have a fresh look at what's going on ... it would be healthy to not just look at the (Australian) Defence Force Academy but to look at Duntroon as well."
ADFA provides university education for officer trainees from all services while Duntroon trains army officers.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard noted the alleged events took place when Mr Wilkie was a "very, very young man".
But she wouldn't comment on the detail of the report. ``I didn't know the Andrew Wilkie of 30 years ago, I'm sure he can speak for himself," Ms Gillard told Austereo. ``Andrew Wilkie is the only person who can tell his life story."
An anonymous barrister has also publicly described the mental, physical and sexual abuse he and others suffered at Duntroon in the early 1990s.
Former cadet Brendan Etches said he was disappointed to be rebuffed by Mr Wilkie after making an appointment to see the Member for Denison on Tuesday. He was at first assured that Mr Wilkie would speak to him but later told the politician refused to discuss his time at Duntroon.
Mr Etches said he has wondered if and when the independent MP would speak out against the harsh treatment that the then Senior Cadet Wilkie and others condoned - and sometimes inflicted - on teenage cadets.
In his book Axis of Deceit, Mr Wilkie admits he was a "larrikin" while at Duntroon and that he set "some sort of record" for incurring punishments for offences such as "giving junior cadets a hard time".
Mr Etches, whose grandfather had fought against Hitler's troops at Tobruk, said he had been shocked at orders to salute the Nazi regime. "He was drilling us before breakfast," Mr Etches said. "I have a memory of him in a dressing gown, watching as the other senior guys were running around giving us a hard time."
SOURCE
Aboriginal sophisticates betray bush sisters
Marcia Langton
LARISSA Behrendt's foul Twitter message about Bess Price's comments on the absence of rights for Aboriginal women in her community on ABC Television's Q&A; program is an exemplar of the wide cultural, moral and increasingly political rift between urban, left-wing, activist Aboriginal women and the bush women who witness the horrors of life in their communities, much of which is arrogantly denied by the former.
Whereas Bess, a grandmother who resides in Yuendumu, is a first-hand witness of terrifying violence against women, lives in one of Australia's poorest communities, and campaigns for the needs of women and children, especially their safety and everyday physical needs, professor and lawyer Larissa Behrendt lives in Sydney in relative luxury as compared with Bess's situation, has no children, has a PhD from Harvard and is the principal litigant in a case against conservative columnist Andrew Bolt, who published several columns accusing the "fair-skinned" Behrendt and others of falsely claiming to be Aboriginal to get the perks.
Australians, whether they support reconciliation or not, must be astonished at the viciousness of the twittering sepia-toned [not black] Sydney activists. Andrew Bolt should be rubbing his hands with glee - Behrendt has delivered on all of his stereotypes, and this time I have to wonder if he is not right after all.
What indigenous or human rights, or for that matter, civil rights, are Behrendt and her Twitter followers defending in this extraordinary exchange? Which Aboriginal woman should I listen to, many must be asking.
On Monday night this week, Bess was the subject of shocking personal abuse by Behrendt in a Twitter message following Bess's appearance on the Q&A; program that focused on the sex scandals in the ADF and the calls for reform of the culture of abuse of women.
Behrendt twittered: "I watched a show where a guy had sex with a horse and I'm sure it was less offensive than Bess Price." This was one of several Twitters circulating among the Aboriginal protestati of Sydney. While none were as offensive as Behrendt's, at least one that consisted of outright lies was far more damaging to her and her husband's reputations.
I have never in my life witnessed such extreme disrespect shown by a younger Aboriginal woman for an older Aboriginal woman, except where the perpetrator was severely intoxicated on drugs or alcohol. Nor have I witnessed, except once or twice, such snide dismissal by a younger Aboriginal woman of an older Aboriginal woman's right to express her views. Those of us who were brought up in the Aboriginal way were taught from a young age to show respect for our elders and not to speak while they are speaking. This is a fundamental and universal law in Aboriginal societies.
What Bess said to incite such abuse was this: "Equal opportunity doesn't exist for our women, and once the military have done their overhaul of their men and policies . . . maybe they could come our way and sort some of our fellas out, because what's happening now women just haven't had a voice." They "want to move forward and be respected and be seen as equals". What happened to the girl whose complaint brought these matters to a head "was not right", Bess said.
Asked by Emma Beard what was the most important thing that could improve the standard of living for Northern Territory Aboriginal people, Bess replied: "Education is the first one on the top of the list . . . from six up to 18, children don't know how to write their names." She responded to another questioner who cited "treaty obligations" that if the UN indigenous rights rapporteur who visited the Northern Territory had been a woman, there would have been more understanding and a better outcome for Aboriginal women.
Asked by Tony Jones if she still supported the intervention, Bess said: "I am for the intervention because I've seen progress, I've seen women who now have voices. They can speak for themselves, and they are standing up for their rights. Children are being fed, and young people more or less know how to manage their lives. That's what's happened since the intervention."
I met Bess Price on the banks of the Katherine River with her husband in 1980. It was a delight to meet a well-educated young Aboriginal woman. Bess and her husband were engaging and optimistic, and we were in agreement on so many things in those heady days when land rights were new and great changes in the administration of Aboriginal affairs were afoot.
More here
Minister unleashes his inner Germaine Greer
By Ted Lapkin, who served as an infantry officer in the Israeli army. He has an important point but I still think officers can be gentlemen
THE sex scandal at the Australian Defence Force Academy has sent the Gillard government into a conniption fit of political correctness.
In a gross overreaction to this sordid episode, the Prime Minister has set in train a contradictory set of initiatives that would be ludicrous if they weren't so tragic.
The Sex Discrimination Commissioner has been directed to investigate the defence force with the intention of rooting out loutishness in the ranks. But Defence Minister Stephen Smith also wants to see women serving in front-line roles where they will encounter close-quarters barbarism of the worst sort imaginable.
The rank incoherence of these policies is obvious. If women require special protections against a bit of coarse sexual barrack-room banter, how can they be expected to deal with the unbridled savagery of infantry combat?
The battlefield is a brutal, physically exacting and unforgiving environment where there's no Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to be found.
Appeals to fair play will do nothing to help an infantrywoman against an AK47-wielding jihadi who seeks to thrust a bayonet into her chest.
There is no place for special dispensations in war. Our enemies couldn't care less whether our armed forces operate according principles of gender equality.
The government has seized on the ADFA scandal as the trigger for a full-fledged assault on what it sees as the army's culture of machismo-laden aggression. Yet the Defence Minister seems oblivious to the reality that martial belligerence is what wins wars.
The military is a killing machine that in the final equation exists to vanquish Australia's foes by shooting people and blowing up things. It's an institution that has no parallel elsewhere in civilised society.
And, as such, the Australian Army operates according to a unique set of rules that are designed to fit the exceptional circumstances it encounters when the bullets fly. Nowhere else can you be ordered to advance against people who are trying their best to kill you, and nowhere else can you be sent to prison if you refuse. Nowhere else do you receive accolades for slaughtering human beings wholesale.
Since time immemorial, groups of young men have been melded into effective fighting units through a chest thumping, testosterone-laden macho warrior culture. Shakespeare perfectly captured this emotional dynamic with in his famous Agincourt "band of brothers" speech from Henry V.
A singular sense of brotherhood is what makes soldiers willing to assault an enemy machinegun when every rational instinct screams at them to run like hell the other way.
The integration of women into combat units will disrupt the psychological small group dynamic that forges rifle companies into effective fighting machines.
Military feminists seek to impose on the war room a set of principles taken directly from the boardroom. The arguments in favour of a gender-neutral Australian military are all couched in the civilian language of equal opportunity.
No one even tries to claim that permitting women to serve as infantry soldiers will enhance the combat efficiency of the ADF. Activists pushing for this revolutionary change in military culture are utterly indifferent to the impact it will have on the army's ability to fulfil its most basic purpose, winning our wars.
And then there's the inevitable issue of sex. The lifestyle of any ground combat unit in the field is rough, rude and raw.
Writer Sebastian Junger accompanied a unit of American paratroopers three years ago through their 15-month deployment to Afghanistan.
In his bestselling book War, Junger described his platoon's outpost as "a hilltop without hot food, running water, communication with the outside world or any kind of entertainment".
Anyone who believes that there'll be no hanky-panky if young men and women are posted in such conditions is naive to the ways of the human heart. And romantic affection, with its instinctive passions, jealousies and favouritisms, will wreak havoc when injected into the tightly knit fraternity that is a rifle platoon.
It's also time to dispel the mythology about the status of women in the Israeli military that has been bandied about in this debate.
In its 1948 War of Independence, the Israeli army quickly scuttled its egalitarian experiment with female fighters. It turned out that male soldiers were so focused on protecting their female colleagues that they neglected their unit's mission objectives.
And today women still do not serve in the front line units of the Israeli army that engage in close combat with the enemy. The single mixed-gender "Caracal" battalion is assigned to gendarmerie duties along the sleepy Sinai border between Israel and Egypt. Women also carry out rear area security duties with the paramilitary border police. But there are no female fighting personnel in Israel's infantry, tank or combat engineer units.
Elevating the theory and principle over tactics and practicality, the Gillard government seeks to transform the Australian military into a softer and more sensitive institution. But close quarters combat is a savage business and a feminised army will not fare well at the sharp end of war.
The ADF must never be used as a laboratory for trendy social experimentation because the stakes are so high. Getting it wrong means dead Australians and battlefield defeat.
It's fine that Smith has discovered his inner Germaine Greer. But in that process he's dragging the Australian Army down the primrose path of political correctness that will ultimately kill people. The wrong people. Our people.
SOURCE
GREENIE ROUNDUP
Three current articles below
Friends and foes flay carbon tax
THERE is now a common view among the Gillard government's friends and foes about the additional costs to industry of a carbon tax.
That is, it could be the straw that breaks the camel's back in relation to future investment, the survival of some of the manufacturing sector and the full recovery of a still fragile, patchwork economy.
Company chiefs and shop-floor workers find they are now on the same side. There is also a common view among employers and employees that the government's process and timetable are flawed, short on detail, politically motivated and not guaranteed of success.
Such sentiments may have been shared by some of those same people during the Rudd government's negotiations of the failed carbon pollution reduction scheme, but there have been dramatic changes to the economy, industry, jobs and the body politic since 2009.
Not least among those is the fact the Gillard government is now a minority one dependent on independents and the Greens to get its agenda passed.
Perhaps the biggest difficulty the government faces is that workers' concern for their jobs, whether based on the real impact of the carbon tax or not, is so deep the previous goodwill on climate change, faith in Labor looking after Australian workers and suspicion of Tony Abbott are evaporating. Labor's working heartland is rebelling because of concern for job security and not because they are climate change deniers or extremists. Chief executives of big companies and welders on the shop floor are seeing eye-to-eye on the threats from a carbon tax and the government appears to be losing the argument badly on compensation for want of detail since Julia Gillard announced the carbon tax on February 24.
These changes and difficulties are not just about more complicated and delicate negotiations with MPs on the cross benches but go to the heart of the challenges faced by the government: a lack of authority, a sense of growing cabinet and leadership tension, emboldened critics, community scepticism towards reassurances and a growing list of sections of industry and the community angry with government policies.
A negotiated government born without electoral momentum is sinking as its friends question its ability to get things done and its foes press home an advantage.
Not least among those foes is the Leader of the Opposition, who has played up industry and business concerns on the effect of the tax on investment and development, harped on increased prices for food, petrol and electricity, and argued that the tax will not cut greenhouse emissions.
What's more, Abbott has not only attacked Gillard's integrity about going back on her promise about a carbon tax and run a highly successful negative campaign, he also has started to split Labor from its formal allies in the Greens and labour movement.
Three weeks ago Climate Change Minister Greg Combet told industry leaders the compensation for business for the carbon tax would not go beyond the compensation earmarked for the CPRS in 2009-10 under Kevin Rudd's prime ministership. He told the coal industry not to expect any compensation for coalminers and exporters beyond 2009.
Industry and unions want it to be the starting point.
Combet was told oil refinery investment in Australia was threatened by a carbon tax, help for the natural gas sector had to be revisited and a range of exporting industries were threatened. Shell and Caltex expressed concerns about the future of oil refinery investment in Australia because a series of taxes and costs were accumulating and the carbon tax represented the fatal straw.
Since then the liquefied natural gas industry has sought an exclusion from the tax, at least a rise in free permits to emit greenhouse gases to 94.5 per cent, because of fundamental changes in the industry and as it ponders investments in the near future of $130 billion. Shell has signalled the closure of its Clyde oil refinery in Sydney with the possible loss of 500 jobs and Ford has announced a downsizing of 240 jobs. To cap it off, Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes has declared he is facing a workers' revolt on the tax and that if one job were to be lost then the union's in-principle support would also be lost.
Howes has been forced into the open by Abbott's dual campaign against Gillard and the tax and against the union leadership for not addressing members' concerns. Since the announcement of the tax Abbott has visited at least 16 workplaces, including a steel works and a cement plant, to campaign against it. At the OneSteel rolling mill at Laverton in Gillard's electorate of Lalor in Melbourne, Abbott observed the growing opposition of workers and drove a wedge between union officials and their members.
"The steel market is highly competitive. They're under a great deal of competitive pressure, particularly from imports, and that's why Julia Gillard's carbon tax is a dagger aimed at the heart of manufacturing in this country . . . it will cost jobs big time," Abbott said. "Most of the workers here are members of the Australian Workers Union and I think if Paul Howes was doing the right thing by his workers he would be talking to the Prime Minister and saying: 'Think again, if we want manufacturing jobs in this country, think again about this bad tax.' "
Don Voelte, chief executive of the biggest Australian-owned LNG company, Woodside Petroleum, argued that while existing projects would not be affected future investment could be directed elsewhere in the world and "carbon leakage" meant China's contribution to global carbon emissions would increase at the cost of Australian LNG exports.
On the face of all this, Combet tried to turn the public discourse back in the government's favour this week by releasing a compensation package for households. It had a guarantee that more than 50 per cent of the revenue raised would be used for permanent compensation to households.
But the package, like all the others, lacked the detail that would enable those fighting for a carbon price to actually have something to use in an argument rather than assurances and moral arguments. As well, the basic concern being felt on the shop floor, worry about keeping your job, wasn't addressed at all by reassurances of compensation for rising costs. When Howes and Voelte agree that workers are worried about the same thing the debate's not favouring the government.
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"Green" senator from a distinguished Communist background unrepentant in her hatred of Israel
Her parents were both lifelong members of the Communist Party of Australia and her own views are Trotskyite. Trotsky was the chief murderer of Russia's Red revolution
INCOMING Greens senator Lee Rhiannon says she will support a controversial boycott of Israel right up until she enters Federal Parliament. She will continue to speak out for the sanctions against Israel even though it clashes with the policies of federal Greens leader Bob Brown.
And Ms Rhiannon insisted the stance, part of the Greens' New South Wales platform, is not anti-Israel. She told Sky News the aim was to "bring forward policies that will work for Palestinians because at the moment Palestinians just don't have a lot of the human rights we take for granted".
"I said that yes, we have that position in NSW and I'll support the NSW position. But it's not something we're taking to the Federal Parliament," she said.
Mr Brown suggested Labor should share some of the flak over Marrickville Council's decision to ban Israeli products.
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd earlier today slammed the boycott as "nuts" but Senator Brown said that it was not just the NSW Greens that had voted for it. "It was four Labor councillors that made that policy possible," he told reporters in Canberra. "Kevin Rudd's Labor party is as every bit responsible for the outcome ... as the Greens were. "So he might address that issue."
The federal coalition has already called on Prime Minister Julia Gillard to distance herself from the Labor councillors who voted for the boycott in December. More than 20 ALP-affiliated unions have also backed banning trade links with Israel.
Ms Rhiannon said the boycott was part of a global movement. She said: "My own position is that its not an anti-Israel position at all. "It is about a boycott to bring forward policies that will work for Palestinians because at the moment Palestinians just don't have a lot of the human rights we take for granted, they cant move easily around their country, there's not equity in jobs and education, they cant be confident their house isn't going to be blown up."
The NSW Greens were strong contenders for the state seat of Marrickville until its candidate, the local mayor Fiona Byrne, was targeted by a media campaign over her inconsistent position on the boycott to isolate Israel.
The move has drawn the ire of politicians, business leaders and the Jewish community.
The Greens controlled council continues to back sanctions, even though its own business papers have revealed it could cost it $4 million. Ms Byrne issued a statement yesterday saying the sanctions would be implemented in such a way as to not financially disadvantage residents and businesses.
New Premier Barry O'Farrell has written to Marrickville mayor Fiona Byrne threatening to sack the council unless it drops the boycott within 28 days. "We're happy to take whatever action is required to get Marrickville Council back focused on the needs of its ratepayers, not trying to engage in foreign affairs," he told Macquarie Radio today.
He advised Ms Byrne to leave the council and run for federal parliament if she wanted to pursue the boycott.
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Solar panel boondoggle
It's an object lesson in how not to run government policy. Solar roof panels on domestic houses deliver relatively little greenhouse gas abatement at a very high cost that is borne disproportionately by the poor.
An economy-wide carbon price delivers a lot of abatement at about one-tenth of the cost and can fund compensation to make sure the heaviest cost falls on the people who can afford to pay.
IPART, the pricing regulator, is warning that the former scheme is eroding the willingness of the public to consider the latter.
Yesterday's report reveals NSW homes are already going to be paying about $100 a year more in annual electricity bills to cover the benefits flowing to people who can afford to put solar panels on their roofs. And there's no compensation to pensioners or low-income earners for that.
The concern is that people are now likely to be less willing to pay $140 to $200 a year more on their annual household bills to cover the cost of the carbon tax, even though low and middle income earners will get compensation for that impost.
How did we get into this back-to-front position? Governments didn't think the policy through.
After spending more than $1 billion on direct rebates for solar photovoltaic cells, continued cost blowouts forced the cancellation of the federal scheme in 2009. It was subsumed into the renewable energy target - a policy actually designed to help large-scale renewables attain a viable market share in the lead-in to a full carbon price.
But the small-scale rooftop incentives swamped the market and rendered the big projects unviable, so the government hived them off into their own scheme - requiring electricity generators to buy all the renewable certificates they generated and giving four extra certificates for every certificate actually earned. The retailers warned from the get-go that the new scheme could also blow out.
On top of this incentive, state governments offered households feed-in tariffs to sell the electricity they generated back into the grid.
Both the federal and former NSW government have already tried to wind back their lucrative incentives, but the message from IPART is that they are not doing it fast enough.
The result is the risk that a bad policy cruels the chances of a potentially efficient one.
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Thursday, April 14, 2011
Pseudo-Aborigine slurs real Aborigine
Behrendt is as pink-skinned as I am. She is nothing like a real Aborigine, even if she has some remote Aboriginal ancestry. She is just a conventional Leftist. She is comfortably ensconced with others of her ilk at the University of Technology, Sydney, far away from the day-to-day problems of real Aborigines. Her many awards and honours suggest that her claims of Aboriginality have served her well, however. It's so comforting to give awards to "Aborigines" who are just like us. It helps to hide the real and sad differences that need to be dealt with constructively
HIGH-profile indigenous lawyer Larissa Behrendt tweeted that sex with a horse was less offensive than an Aboriginal leader who supports for intervention in the Northern Territory.
Professor Behrendt made the comments after watching Bess Price on the ABC's Q&A; program on Monday night. "I watched a show where a guy had sex with a horse and I'm sure it was less offensive than Bess Price."
Ms Price has been vocal about the high levels of violence in central Australian indigenous communities and supported the Northern Territory intervention, angering left-leaning indigenous leaders who consider her a traitor.
Speaking from Darwin, Ms Price told The Australian yesterday she was appalled by the comment. She accused Professor Behrendt, an Australian of the Year finalist, of trying to silence her because of her different views. "I'm going to seek legal advice," she said. "This is worse than what she is accusing Andrew Bolt of."
News Limited columnist Bolt has spent the past fortnight in court fighting accusations that he vilified a group of nine Aborigines, including Professor Behrendt, on the basis of their race.
Professor Behrendt told The Australian yesterday the tweet was taken out of context and had been made as she watched the notoriously crude TV series Deadwood. "The tweet has been taken out of context. I did not mean any offence to Bess Price personally and I am on the record with views contrary to hers on the intervention and she knows that," she said.
Ms Price said the comment showed how out of touch the indigenous academic was with central Australian Aborigines.
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Vilification laws unnecessary and counterproductive
Gary Johns
LARISSA Behrendt, a professor of law and indigenous studies at the University of Technology, Sydney and of Aboriginal heritage, is suing Andrew Bolt under the Racial Discrimination Act for racial hatred.
Following the appearance of Aboriginal woman Bess Price on ABC1's Q&A; on Monday, it is reported in this paper today that Behrendt tweeted, "I watched a show where a guy had sex with a horse and I'm sure it was less offensive than Bess Price."
I assume Behrendt was offended by Price's firm support for the Northern Territory Emergency Response. I guess one Aborigine hating another in public doesn't cut it under the Racial Discrimination Act. Price will have to be satisfied knowing Behrendt is a gross hypocrite.
Still, Price may take a closer look at the response to Behrendt from fellow "academic" Padraic Gibson of UTS. As reported in this newspaper today Gibson tweeted: "ha! Being offensive pays. BessP and her white husband make a $packet$ doing 'cultural awareness' for NTER."
I think Price may find that the old-fashioned law of defamation may be appropriate. Gibson is co-editor of Solidarity, a socialist magazine, an Aboriginal rights campaigner and "researcher" with Jumbunna, a unit of UTS through which Aborigines can "gain special entry to university". I trust the university reviews the roles of Behrendt, Gibson, Jumbunna and any persons in the university with similarly prejudicial views.
Behrendt, Gibson and others may like to reflect on where 20 years of racial hatred, of the white man, has landed Aborigines. They may like to consider that the two most egregious instances of public racial vilification in Australia in the past two decades were the Aboriginal deaths in custody report (1991) and the report on the separation of Aboriginal children and their families (1997).
The deaths in custody inquiry began knowing that black deaths in custody were at a rate similar to white. There was no agitation to investigate white deaths.
Within the first six weeks of the inquiry the research revealed that a black in custody was no likelier to die than a white in custody. Indeed, the death rate for a black male was no greater in custody than in the community. Moreover, not one of 99 cases of black deaths in custody revealed wrongdoing by prison officials. And yet white society was publicly vilified for years during the inquiry. The assumption was that the white man had done in the black man.
Fortunately, but only incidentally, subsequent actions arising from the recommendations of the inquiry lowered white as well as black deaths in custody.
The speculative conclusion of the deaths in custody inquiry was that family separation was the principal cause of black incarceration. Apparently there was no interest in the causes of the incarceration of whites.
Speculation about the causes of black incarceration led to the second inquiry, into the separation of Aboriginal children from their families. It concluded that the commonwealth, that is, the white man, had deliberately set out to destroy Aboriginal culture by taking half-caste children and that this action was tantamount to genocide.
This outrageous public vilification was allowed to run at length until the test case - Lorna Cubillo and Peter Gunner - for the Stolen Generations was soundly defeated.
The separation of Aboriginal children inquiry was set up in 1995 under the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, the same group that now administers the provisions dealing with racial hatred. These provisions are being used to prosecute journalist and broadcaster Bolt before the Federal Court.
The provisions in the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 inserted by the Racial Hatred Act 1995 were strongly opposed by the Coalition on the grounds that it might infringe free speech. I, along with Graeme Campbell and Jim Snow, opposed the bill in the Labor caucus on the basis that it was as likely to incite ill feeling between racial groups as stop it.
The provisions make it unlawful to insult, humiliate, offend or intimidate another person or group in public on the basis of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin if it is reasonably likely in all the circumstances to offend.
Fortunately, there are partial protections for free speech under the act, where "done reasonably and in good faith", someone can make public statements likely to offend in the course of, for example, a fair comment on any event or matter of public interest if the comment is an expression of a genuine belief held by the person making the comment. These are the matters being tested in the Bolt case.
The most malleable part of the provision is to define what is "reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate".
According to the HREOC, the victim's perspective is the measure of whether an act is likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate. For example, if derogatory comments are made against Aborigines, the central question is whether those comments are likely to offend or intimidate an Aboriginal person or group. It is a very subjective test.
Granted, the victim's response to the words or image must be reasonable.
The "reasonable victim" test states that the victim "should not be a person peculiarly susceptible to being roused to enmity, nor one who takes an irrational or extremist view of relations among racial groups". The test allows the standards of the "dominant class" to be challenged by ensuring cultural sensitivity when deciding the types of comments that are considered offensive.
Almost certainly those who are politically active in ethnic or Aboriginal politics, such as Behrendt, are those who would be most sensitive to racial insults. Moreover, HREOC's role is to make people aware of their rights under the act, which may well make them more sensitive to insults.
It seems that HREOC has a conflict. It administers an act, the heart of which is reliance on sensitivity, the job of which may make people more sensitive.
Defamation laws have been available to "victims" for a very long time as a remedy for outrageous slurs. Apparently, the defamation laws were too insensitive.
What lies in people's hearts can be changed, but is it more educative or less educative to prosecute speech? Is racial hatred more or less likely in an overly sensitive electorate?
Following the Bolt case, it may be time to revisit public racial vilification and the role of HREOC.
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Julia Gillard declares war on the idle
A worthy aim. Let's hope there is more to it than talk
JULIA Gillard has declared war on idleness, revealing she will use the May 10 budget to press Australians to "pull their weight" and not give in to welfare dependency and economic exclusion.
The Prime Minister last night vowed to use the prosperity of the mining boom to fund programs to boost workforce participation, arguing that many people on disability and other pensions should be working.
She said taxpayers should not have to fund welfare for people capable of supporting themselves, and that she would offer training opportunities as part of a push to "entrench a new culture of work".
Her uncompromising comments came in a speech to the Sydney Institute in which she also promised to withdraw government spending to reduce pressure on inflation as the private sector lifted its activity after a period on the economic sidelines forced by the global financial crisis.
Since ousting Kevin Rudd from the Labor leadership last June, Ms Gillard has frequently expressed her belief in what she describes as "the dignity of work" and promised to use education and training to deliver equality of opportunity. At the same time, the government has been working on policy to deal with the fact that current work participation rates will be insufficient to support the ageing population.
In her speech last night, Ms Gillard married the themes, declaring that Labor was "the party of work, not welfare" and placing respect for work and a fair go at the centre of the national policy agenda.
While she conceded there would always be some Australians who were unable to work because of disability, Ms Gillard said it was a "social and economic reality" that some people who could work would not. "Relying on welfare to provide opportunity is no longer the right focus for our times," the Prime Minister said.
"In today's economy, inclusion through participation must be our central focus." She said the nation's strong economy provided a perfect opportunity to target people stuck on welfare with reforms based on "high expectations that everyone who can work, should work".
While she gave no details of the reforms, the Prime Minister hinted at measures to help those she described as "hard cases" to prepare themselves to work by dealing with their health issues and providing opportunities for them to balance work with their family responsibilities.
Ms Gillard suggested welfare recipients could be ushered back into the workforce with the right mix of policies. This could involve training or measures "as simple as learning to read and write at a higher level". "It is not right to leave people on welfare and deny them access to opportunity," she said. And every Australian should pull his or her own weight. It is not fair for taxpayers to pay for someone who can support themselves."
The comments are likely to upset the welfare sector, which has recently warned against punitive measures to force welfare recipients to work.
Labor's left wing could also baulk at the reforms, although the opposition has been proposing its own measures to lift workforce participation, including grants to help the unemployed move to areas of high employment.
The Prime Minister said 230,000 Australians had been unemployed for more than two years, while 250,000 families did not have an adult in the workforce for at least a year.
"The party I lead is politically, spiritually, even literally, the party of work - the party of work, not welfare, the party of opportunity, not exclusions, the party of responsibility, not idleness," Ms Gillard said.
"The values I learned in my parents' home - hard work, a fair go through education, respect - find themselves at the centre of Australia's economic debate in the challenge to cut long-term welfare dependency."
Ms Gillard rejected claims that her pledge to return the budget to a surplus by 2012-13 was a political decision and that she could cause less pain for taxpayers if she delayed the plan.
The Prime Minister said that although her promise was political in the sense that she made it during the election campaign, it was also economically prudent for the government to cut spending after more than two years of heavy economic stimulus to offset the effects of the global recession.
"When the private sector was in retreat, the government stepped forward to fill the gap," she said. "Over coming years, as the private sector recovers strongly, it is the right time for the government to step back."
Ms Gillard also allowed herself a note of satisfaction, saying she was sceptical of "exaggerated" commentary about politics. She noted that people had predicted she would be unable to deliver reforms such as her flood levy, health reform package or her National Broadband Network legislation. In each case, she said, she had prevailed with patience and perseverance.
Opposition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey said last night the government's mismanagement and wasteful spending on programs such as the Building the Education Revolution, pink batts and the National Broadband Network "makes a mockery" of the Prime Minister's claim in her speech that Labor was committed to fiscal responsibility.
"The government's budget in May will not be worth the paper it is written on," Mr Hockey said. "It will not include the revenue and expenditure from its new carbon tax."
Former Labor minister Graham Richardson launched a blistering attack on what he said was the Gillard government's use of a politically unheard of "big-target" strategy on a series of issues ranging from carbon tax compensation to cuts to health research funding.
Mr Richardson used his Sky News show Richo to criticise the government for not giving details of the likely impact of the carbon tax and how people would be compensated. Planned measures to limit gambling on poker machines ensured that every pub and club in Australia would become a campaign office for the opposition, he said.
Mr Richardson added that it all got worse this week when it emerged the budget would cut $400 million in health research.
That was mean-spirited, he said. "If they do it, they're crazy."
Ms Gillard's appearance at the Sydney Institute dinner at Luna Park attracted a band of gay marriage protesters, who called on her to "open your heart" to "marriage rights now".
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Childcare reforms 'will shut centres'
This was always obvious
THREE Gillard government ministers have been warned that childcare centres across the nation will collapse unless reforms to increase staff-child ratios are stalled.
The ministers were called on by the Child Care National Association to postpone for two years the reforms that are due to take effect on January 1.
With vacancy rates in centres across the nation at unsustainably high levels, IBISWorld has forecast an industry profit margin of only 0.3 per cent for this year.
Association spokesman Chris Buck said he had relayed his concerns informally to Education Minister Chris Evans and Childcare Minister Kate Ellis. He subsequently had a formal meeting with the staff of Schools Minister Peter Garrett and Ms Ellis to tell them the industry needed immediate assistance.
Mr Buck said the government was in denial about the unsustainability of the system and warned parents were pulling kids out of care and using informal care as costs rose.
The Productivity Commission Report on Government Services for 2010 advised the average utilisation for small childcare businesses to be a low 64.9 per cent, Mr Buck said. "Profitability is woeful. One of the worries I've got is that the banks will be studying that and they will be saying 'childcare centre in Wodonga prove to me that you are viable'," he said. "The government can't stick their head in the sand and say this isn't happening. It's their figures."
Mr Buck said people were finding other options for their childcare, including using relatives, to cut costs. "They are putting them with their grandparents and it's because they are being more frugal," he said.
The new standards will force centres to boost staff-to-child ratios and improve training.
Mr Buck said he had asked the ministers to stall the reforms for two years to ensure they did not cripple the industry. "We need a slowdown on the national quality framework. If you push the costs up, the utilisation will fall," he said.
The IBISWorld report says good news in childcare is "conditional on shrinking margins for operators".
"Government regulation mandating higher staff-to-child ratios and higher levels of staff qualifications are likely to increase wage costs for operators. As wages make up the single largest cost for childcare providers, operators trying to make a profit in the industry will find themselves increasingly pressured," it says.
"The industry as a whole is barely profitable, primarily due to the presence of not-for-profit community-based centres and a lack of economies of scale."
The report warns that profitability is likely to suffer as non-profit operators continue to proliferate, and increases in labour costs resulting from more stringent regulation cannot be fully passed on in the form of higher childcare fees.
The Australian revealed yesterday that workers would seek a 50 per cent pay rise this year. The United Voice union is planning a long-term industrial campaign to dovetail with new regulations.
The union's assistant national secretary, Sue Lines, said childcare workers with a Certificate 3 qualification -- which is equivalent to a six-month TAFE course -- earned the minimum wage of $17.46 an hour.
SOURCE
GREENIE ROUNDUP
Four current articles below
Carbon tax may never happen, says key independent
He has rightly twigged that it "does nothing"
ONE of the independents Julia Gillard will rely on to get her carbon tax across the line has warned it may never become a reality.
New England MP Tony Windsor today said he would not vote for a package of climate change measures “that does nothing”. “There is no carbon tax, there may not be a carbon tax,” Mr Windsor told ABC radio this morning.
Mr Windsor said people in his rural NSW electorate were concerned about the lack of detail around the proposed carbon tax.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet released more details of the government's proposed carbon price yesterday, pledging more than 50 per cent of revenue from the tax would be returned to millions of households and reassuring businesses on the impact of the scheme.
The Prime Minister played down Mr Windsor's comments this morning, describing them as “perfectly consistent with everything he has ever said about pricing carbon”. “He has said consistently, and I very much respect this, that he would wait to the end and judge the full package,” she said.
Ahead of a visit to his electorate by the government's chief climate change adviser Ross Garnaut today, Mr Windsor said he was happy to work with other members of the multi-party climate change committee, but wouldn't guarantee his support for the carbon tax. “The Prime Minister doesn't have the numbers as I understand it,” he said. “When things get into the parliament people have a vote; I have a vote, others do as well. You can never get anything until it gets through a minority parliament,” he said.
“I'm not inclined to vote for something that does nothing if we can get something that does something I'm more than happy to vote for it.”
Ms Gillard said consultations with business, community and environment groups and unions would ensure a balanced package, which the government would present to parliament in the second half of this year.
“What Tony Windsor has said to me and said publicly is that he does believe climate change is real and that we need to tackle it, he does believe that pricing carbon is the best way, an important way of tackling climate change,” she said. “But for an individual legislative package he's going to look at the package and wait to the end and then judge.”
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Working families to pay for the gesture
By Senator Barnaby Joyce
Minister Combet’s announcement that they are going to compensate working families for the cost of carbon tax should confirm one thing; a carbon tax is going to cost working families.
The fundamental issue here is that a carbon tax is not going to change the temperature of the globe or change the climate in any shape or form. It is merely a gesture. A gesture that means that those who are already finding it extremely difficult to get by are going to have that difficulty exacerbated by a pointless tax with a deceitful inference that it will the change global climatic conditions.
What is the point of taking money off people, spinning it around a bureaucracy and giving people back a bit of their own money and expecting be thanked for it? Why don’t you just let people keep their own money and go away?
In the meantime you put up the price of the fundamental mechanism of commerce, power, so what is now our competitive advantage? Obviously we don’t want lower wages so ultimately there will be fewer jobs.
Is Australia going to be reduced to a country that digs up red rocks and black rocks, iron and coal and sends them over to where they don’t have a carbon tax so they can produce the things we used to produce?
Doesn’t the government get it? The people don’t want this tax and surely the have some right in being respected on this decision.
Even on the CFMEU website, the majority of the workers don’t want a carbon tax. I’m sure that this is not a National Party stronghold, so my advice to the Labor party is, listen to your own people otherwise it will end up in tears, like the NSW election.
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Marrickville council to boycott HP, others at $3.7m cost
Independent Marrickville councillor Victor Macri described the boycott as ludicrous. Picture: Jane Dempster Source: The Australian
A MOVE by a Greens-controlled council in Sydney's inner west to boycott goods and services from Israel will cost ratepayers at least $3.7 million and force the council to abandon Holden cars and Hewlett-Packard computers, among many other disruptions.
The stark warning on the cost of the council's decision to support the global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign earlier this year is contained in a paper by the council's manager of services, Gary Moore, which is due for discussion next week and has been obtained by The Australian.
Marrickville, the only council in Australia that has approved an Israel boycott, has been a hotbed of political controversy since its Greens Mayor Fiona Byrne said she would push for a statewide version of the Israel boycott if elected to the NSW lower house at last month's election.
During the election campaign, Ms Byrne made contradictory remarks about the boycott, which was a factor in her failure to wrest the seat of Marrickville from Labor MP and former deputy premier Carmel Tebbutt.
Ms Byrne could have the casting vote next Tuesday on whether to continue with the campaign and slug ratepayers with the added cost, when a motion to repeal the boycott is put forward.
Mr Moore's paper details goods and services the council would have to forgo in order to comply with its directive, such as Hewlett Packard computers, Holden and Volvo cars, telephones and other equipment from Motorola and concrete from Fulton Hogan.
These companies, according to the council's original motion to join the global BDS movement, "support or profit from the Israeli military occupation of Palestine".
The report estimates the cost of replacing certain IT assets at $3.5m, and the annual cost of using a different concrete supplier at $250,000. It does not attempt to estimate the cost of replacing vehicles, and says changing waste-disposal service providers may not even be possible.
Mr Moore's paper admits staff have been unable to fully research ties between companies providing goods to the council and Israel and have largely relied on www.whoprofits.org - an anti-Israel website.
Independent councillor Victor Macri described the boycott plan as ludicrous. "We weren't elected to do this; we were elected to look after the streets and trees and pick up garbage," Mr Macri said.
"People vote federally to direct foreign policy. A boycott of Israel will hurt Marrickville ratepayers far more than it will Israel."
The costs will likely be exacerbated after Randwick council in Sydney's east passed a motion last month that excluded Marrickville from collective purchasing agreements because its boycott would limit other councils' ability to negotiate for the best price.
Mr Moore's report found the boycott measure would lead to "substantial" impacts on council's operations. "Significant change would have to be planned for and managed to enable council operations to be maintained whilst new sets of providers of computer hardware, concrete, waste services, some vehicles and some other construction materials and consumables are obtained and existing contracts are completed/suspended," the report said.
It noted the council might need to spend $5000 to $10,000 in legal fees just to determine whether the original motion on the boycott was lawful under anti-discrimination laws. A council source said a "conservative approach" had been used in determining the cost of implementing a boycott.
"It's fair to say that the report is measured - built around realistically what the council is able to look at replacing," the source said. For example, the costs of breaking existing contracts or finding a replacement water supply to the Kurnell desalination plant, which is operated by Veolia, another company on the global BDS blacklist, are not included.
Mr Macri said if a complete divestment campaign were implemented, the council might as well "shut its doors".
Spread over Marrickville's roughly 40,000 homes, the costs estimated work out at about $100 a household. The council has an annual budget of about $72m.
Mr Macri said contrary to council policy, the BDS motion was not attended by detailed costings when passed in December.
Mr Moore's report described the cheaper option of phasing out goods and services as they expired, rather than divesting them completely, but found such a decision would "still have significant impacts on council's operations".
A council source told The Australian the cheaper option would cost at least $1m. Labor councillor Emanuel Tsardoulias said the costs associated with both options were "outrageous".
Mr Tsardoulias, who initially supported the boycott but later changed his mind, said he and others had had hundreds of complaints since the council's motion began getting attention.
Council is said to have received a petition of 4600 signatures.
Of Marrickville's 12 councillors, four Labor and two independents are expected to support Tuesday's motion to repeal the boycott; one independent is set to side with the five Greens in opposing the motion, although The Australian understands one Green is having second thoughts.
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Commission slams desal plants
More Greenie waste of resources
PROLONGED water restrictions and expensive desalination plants are the least efficient way of providing water security, the government's key economic advisory body has found.
In a scathing draft report, the Productivity Commission yesterday called for an urgent overhaul of the urban water sector, declaring consumers were paying more than necessary for their water as a result of poor government decision-making.
The 600-page report is highly critical of decisions by state governments across the country to overinvest in expensive and inefficient desalination plants, with economic modelling indicating desalination plants in Melbourne and Perth alone could cost consumers between $3.1 billion and $4.2bn more than cheaper water-saving measures over 20 years.
The commission also criticised the federal government for "distorting investment decisions" by offering generous subsidies for the construction of desalination plants. But a spokesman for Parliamentary Secretary for Urban Water Don Farrell last night hit back, saying the federal government contributed to only two of the six major desalination plants in Australia, and this made up "only a portion" of the $1.5bn the government had spent on urban water security.
In a recommendation that will probably draw criticism, the commission also declared state governments and water bodies should be open to returning highly treated recycled wastewater to waterways for drinking.
The report says governments have been too quick to discount recycled wastewater for political, rather than economic, reasons: "Negative community perceptions have become entrenched in the absence of good evidence about the costs and benefits."
The Productivity Commission is the latest in a chorus of voices calling for the urgent reform of Australia's urban water sector, with the National Water Initiative last week declaring new consideration needed to be given to the use of recycled water, as well as the construction of new dams.
The commission wants to open up the market for urban water trading and remove all remaining bans on trading between urban and rural areas that would allow water to be purchased at its highest value. It also recommends that state and territory governments should move away from setting water prices to monitoring how utilities price water and whether they abuse their market power.
The Productivity Commission found water restrictions imposed by state governments were likely to cost the nation about a $1bn in lost production, and governments would be better off charging consumers extra for different tiers of water packages and allow the market to regulate water use.
A spokesman for Senator Farrell said the government welcomed the draft report, including the recommendation that recycled wastewater should be considered as a more effective way to manage water shortages.
Opposition water spokesman Barnaby Joyce said the Productivity Commission was correct to criticise investment in desalination plants, saying they should be any government's "absolutely last-ditch alternative".
SOURCE
Behrendt is as pink-skinned as I am. She is nothing like a real Aborigine, even if she has some remote Aboriginal ancestry. She is just a conventional Leftist. She is comfortably ensconced with others of her ilk at the University of Technology, Sydney, far away from the day-to-day problems of real Aborigines. Her many awards and honours suggest that her claims of Aboriginality have served her well, however. It's so comforting to give awards to "Aborigines" who are just like us. It helps to hide the real and sad differences that need to be dealt with constructively
HIGH-profile indigenous lawyer Larissa Behrendt tweeted that sex with a horse was less offensive than an Aboriginal leader who supports for intervention in the Northern Territory.
Professor Behrendt made the comments after watching Bess Price on the ABC's Q&A; program on Monday night. "I watched a show where a guy had sex with a horse and I'm sure it was less offensive than Bess Price."
Ms Price has been vocal about the high levels of violence in central Australian indigenous communities and supported the Northern Territory intervention, angering left-leaning indigenous leaders who consider her a traitor.
Speaking from Darwin, Ms Price told The Australian yesterday she was appalled by the comment. She accused Professor Behrendt, an Australian of the Year finalist, of trying to silence her because of her different views. "I'm going to seek legal advice," she said. "This is worse than what she is accusing Andrew Bolt of."
News Limited columnist Bolt has spent the past fortnight in court fighting accusations that he vilified a group of nine Aborigines, including Professor Behrendt, on the basis of their race.
Professor Behrendt told The Australian yesterday the tweet was taken out of context and had been made as she watched the notoriously crude TV series Deadwood. "The tweet has been taken out of context. I did not mean any offence to Bess Price personally and I am on the record with views contrary to hers on the intervention and she knows that," she said.
Ms Price said the comment showed how out of touch the indigenous academic was with central Australian Aborigines.
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Vilification laws unnecessary and counterproductive
Gary Johns
LARISSA Behrendt, a professor of law and indigenous studies at the University of Technology, Sydney and of Aboriginal heritage, is suing Andrew Bolt under the Racial Discrimination Act for racial hatred.
Following the appearance of Aboriginal woman Bess Price on ABC1's Q&A; on Monday, it is reported in this paper today that Behrendt tweeted, "I watched a show where a guy had sex with a horse and I'm sure it was less offensive than Bess Price."
I assume Behrendt was offended by Price's firm support for the Northern Territory Emergency Response. I guess one Aborigine hating another in public doesn't cut it under the Racial Discrimination Act. Price will have to be satisfied knowing Behrendt is a gross hypocrite.
Still, Price may take a closer look at the response to Behrendt from fellow "academic" Padraic Gibson of UTS. As reported in this newspaper today Gibson tweeted: "ha! Being offensive pays. BessP and her white husband make a $packet$ doing 'cultural awareness' for NTER."
I think Price may find that the old-fashioned law of defamation may be appropriate. Gibson is co-editor of Solidarity, a socialist magazine, an Aboriginal rights campaigner and "researcher" with Jumbunna, a unit of UTS through which Aborigines can "gain special entry to university". I trust the university reviews the roles of Behrendt, Gibson, Jumbunna and any persons in the university with similarly prejudicial views.
Behrendt, Gibson and others may like to reflect on where 20 years of racial hatred, of the white man, has landed Aborigines. They may like to consider that the two most egregious instances of public racial vilification in Australia in the past two decades were the Aboriginal deaths in custody report (1991) and the report on the separation of Aboriginal children and their families (1997).
The deaths in custody inquiry began knowing that black deaths in custody were at a rate similar to white. There was no agitation to investigate white deaths.
Within the first six weeks of the inquiry the research revealed that a black in custody was no likelier to die than a white in custody. Indeed, the death rate for a black male was no greater in custody than in the community. Moreover, not one of 99 cases of black deaths in custody revealed wrongdoing by prison officials. And yet white society was publicly vilified for years during the inquiry. The assumption was that the white man had done in the black man.
Fortunately, but only incidentally, subsequent actions arising from the recommendations of the inquiry lowered white as well as black deaths in custody.
The speculative conclusion of the deaths in custody inquiry was that family separation was the principal cause of black incarceration. Apparently there was no interest in the causes of the incarceration of whites.
Speculation about the causes of black incarceration led to the second inquiry, into the separation of Aboriginal children from their families. It concluded that the commonwealth, that is, the white man, had deliberately set out to destroy Aboriginal culture by taking half-caste children and that this action was tantamount to genocide.
This outrageous public vilification was allowed to run at length until the test case - Lorna Cubillo and Peter Gunner - for the Stolen Generations was soundly defeated.
The separation of Aboriginal children inquiry was set up in 1995 under the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, the same group that now administers the provisions dealing with racial hatred. These provisions are being used to prosecute journalist and broadcaster Bolt before the Federal Court.
The provisions in the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 inserted by the Racial Hatred Act 1995 were strongly opposed by the Coalition on the grounds that it might infringe free speech. I, along with Graeme Campbell and Jim Snow, opposed the bill in the Labor caucus on the basis that it was as likely to incite ill feeling between racial groups as stop it.
The provisions make it unlawful to insult, humiliate, offend or intimidate another person or group in public on the basis of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin if it is reasonably likely in all the circumstances to offend.
Fortunately, there are partial protections for free speech under the act, where "done reasonably and in good faith", someone can make public statements likely to offend in the course of, for example, a fair comment on any event or matter of public interest if the comment is an expression of a genuine belief held by the person making the comment. These are the matters being tested in the Bolt case.
The most malleable part of the provision is to define what is "reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate".
According to the HREOC, the victim's perspective is the measure of whether an act is likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate. For example, if derogatory comments are made against Aborigines, the central question is whether those comments are likely to offend or intimidate an Aboriginal person or group. It is a very subjective test.
Granted, the victim's response to the words or image must be reasonable.
The "reasonable victim" test states that the victim "should not be a person peculiarly susceptible to being roused to enmity, nor one who takes an irrational or extremist view of relations among racial groups". The test allows the standards of the "dominant class" to be challenged by ensuring cultural sensitivity when deciding the types of comments that are considered offensive.
Almost certainly those who are politically active in ethnic or Aboriginal politics, such as Behrendt, are those who would be most sensitive to racial insults. Moreover, HREOC's role is to make people aware of their rights under the act, which may well make them more sensitive to insults.
It seems that HREOC has a conflict. It administers an act, the heart of which is reliance on sensitivity, the job of which may make people more sensitive.
Defamation laws have been available to "victims" for a very long time as a remedy for outrageous slurs. Apparently, the defamation laws were too insensitive.
What lies in people's hearts can be changed, but is it more educative or less educative to prosecute speech? Is racial hatred more or less likely in an overly sensitive electorate?
Following the Bolt case, it may be time to revisit public racial vilification and the role of HREOC.
SOURCE
Julia Gillard declares war on the idle
A worthy aim. Let's hope there is more to it than talk
JULIA Gillard has declared war on idleness, revealing she will use the May 10 budget to press Australians to "pull their weight" and not give in to welfare dependency and economic exclusion.
The Prime Minister last night vowed to use the prosperity of the mining boom to fund programs to boost workforce participation, arguing that many people on disability and other pensions should be working.
She said taxpayers should not have to fund welfare for people capable of supporting themselves, and that she would offer training opportunities as part of a push to "entrench a new culture of work".
Her uncompromising comments came in a speech to the Sydney Institute in which she also promised to withdraw government spending to reduce pressure on inflation as the private sector lifted its activity after a period on the economic sidelines forced by the global financial crisis.
Since ousting Kevin Rudd from the Labor leadership last June, Ms Gillard has frequently expressed her belief in what she describes as "the dignity of work" and promised to use education and training to deliver equality of opportunity. At the same time, the government has been working on policy to deal with the fact that current work participation rates will be insufficient to support the ageing population.
In her speech last night, Ms Gillard married the themes, declaring that Labor was "the party of work, not welfare" and placing respect for work and a fair go at the centre of the national policy agenda.
While she conceded there would always be some Australians who were unable to work because of disability, Ms Gillard said it was a "social and economic reality" that some people who could work would not. "Relying on welfare to provide opportunity is no longer the right focus for our times," the Prime Minister said.
"In today's economy, inclusion through participation must be our central focus." She said the nation's strong economy provided a perfect opportunity to target people stuck on welfare with reforms based on "high expectations that everyone who can work, should work".
While she gave no details of the reforms, the Prime Minister hinted at measures to help those she described as "hard cases" to prepare themselves to work by dealing with their health issues and providing opportunities for them to balance work with their family responsibilities.
Ms Gillard suggested welfare recipients could be ushered back into the workforce with the right mix of policies. This could involve training or measures "as simple as learning to read and write at a higher level". "It is not right to leave people on welfare and deny them access to opportunity," she said. And every Australian should pull his or her own weight. It is not fair for taxpayers to pay for someone who can support themselves."
The comments are likely to upset the welfare sector, which has recently warned against punitive measures to force welfare recipients to work.
Labor's left wing could also baulk at the reforms, although the opposition has been proposing its own measures to lift workforce participation, including grants to help the unemployed move to areas of high employment.
The Prime Minister said 230,000 Australians had been unemployed for more than two years, while 250,000 families did not have an adult in the workforce for at least a year.
"The party I lead is politically, spiritually, even literally, the party of work - the party of work, not welfare, the party of opportunity, not exclusions, the party of responsibility, not idleness," Ms Gillard said.
"The values I learned in my parents' home - hard work, a fair go through education, respect - find themselves at the centre of Australia's economic debate in the challenge to cut long-term welfare dependency."
Ms Gillard rejected claims that her pledge to return the budget to a surplus by 2012-13 was a political decision and that she could cause less pain for taxpayers if she delayed the plan.
The Prime Minister said that although her promise was political in the sense that she made it during the election campaign, it was also economically prudent for the government to cut spending after more than two years of heavy economic stimulus to offset the effects of the global recession.
"When the private sector was in retreat, the government stepped forward to fill the gap," she said. "Over coming years, as the private sector recovers strongly, it is the right time for the government to step back."
Ms Gillard also allowed herself a note of satisfaction, saying she was sceptical of "exaggerated" commentary about politics. She noted that people had predicted she would be unable to deliver reforms such as her flood levy, health reform package or her National Broadband Network legislation. In each case, she said, she had prevailed with patience and perseverance.
Opposition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey said last night the government's mismanagement and wasteful spending on programs such as the Building the Education Revolution, pink batts and the National Broadband Network "makes a mockery" of the Prime Minister's claim in her speech that Labor was committed to fiscal responsibility.
"The government's budget in May will not be worth the paper it is written on," Mr Hockey said. "It will not include the revenue and expenditure from its new carbon tax."
Former Labor minister Graham Richardson launched a blistering attack on what he said was the Gillard government's use of a politically unheard of "big-target" strategy on a series of issues ranging from carbon tax compensation to cuts to health research funding.
Mr Richardson used his Sky News show Richo to criticise the government for not giving details of the likely impact of the carbon tax and how people would be compensated. Planned measures to limit gambling on poker machines ensured that every pub and club in Australia would become a campaign office for the opposition, he said.
Mr Richardson added that it all got worse this week when it emerged the budget would cut $400 million in health research.
That was mean-spirited, he said. "If they do it, they're crazy."
Ms Gillard's appearance at the Sydney Institute dinner at Luna Park attracted a band of gay marriage protesters, who called on her to "open your heart" to "marriage rights now".
SOURCE
Childcare reforms 'will shut centres'
This was always obvious
THREE Gillard government ministers have been warned that childcare centres across the nation will collapse unless reforms to increase staff-child ratios are stalled.
The ministers were called on by the Child Care National Association to postpone for two years the reforms that are due to take effect on January 1.
With vacancy rates in centres across the nation at unsustainably high levels, IBISWorld has forecast an industry profit margin of only 0.3 per cent for this year.
Association spokesman Chris Buck said he had relayed his concerns informally to Education Minister Chris Evans and Childcare Minister Kate Ellis. He subsequently had a formal meeting with the staff of Schools Minister Peter Garrett and Ms Ellis to tell them the industry needed immediate assistance.
Mr Buck said the government was in denial about the unsustainability of the system and warned parents were pulling kids out of care and using informal care as costs rose.
The Productivity Commission Report on Government Services for 2010 advised the average utilisation for small childcare businesses to be a low 64.9 per cent, Mr Buck said. "Profitability is woeful. One of the worries I've got is that the banks will be studying that and they will be saying 'childcare centre in Wodonga prove to me that you are viable'," he said. "The government can't stick their head in the sand and say this isn't happening. It's their figures."
Mr Buck said people were finding other options for their childcare, including using relatives, to cut costs. "They are putting them with their grandparents and it's because they are being more frugal," he said.
The new standards will force centres to boost staff-to-child ratios and improve training.
Mr Buck said he had asked the ministers to stall the reforms for two years to ensure they did not cripple the industry. "We need a slowdown on the national quality framework. If you push the costs up, the utilisation will fall," he said.
The IBISWorld report says good news in childcare is "conditional on shrinking margins for operators".
"Government regulation mandating higher staff-to-child ratios and higher levels of staff qualifications are likely to increase wage costs for operators. As wages make up the single largest cost for childcare providers, operators trying to make a profit in the industry will find themselves increasingly pressured," it says.
"The industry as a whole is barely profitable, primarily due to the presence of not-for-profit community-based centres and a lack of economies of scale."
The report warns that profitability is likely to suffer as non-profit operators continue to proliferate, and increases in labour costs resulting from more stringent regulation cannot be fully passed on in the form of higher childcare fees.
The Australian revealed yesterday that workers would seek a 50 per cent pay rise this year. The United Voice union is planning a long-term industrial campaign to dovetail with new regulations.
The union's assistant national secretary, Sue Lines, said childcare workers with a Certificate 3 qualification -- which is equivalent to a six-month TAFE course -- earned the minimum wage of $17.46 an hour.
SOURCE
GREENIE ROUNDUP
Four current articles below
Carbon tax may never happen, says key independent
He has rightly twigged that it "does nothing"
ONE of the independents Julia Gillard will rely on to get her carbon tax across the line has warned it may never become a reality.
New England MP Tony Windsor today said he would not vote for a package of climate change measures “that does nothing”. “There is no carbon tax, there may not be a carbon tax,” Mr Windsor told ABC radio this morning.
Mr Windsor said people in his rural NSW electorate were concerned about the lack of detail around the proposed carbon tax.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet released more details of the government's proposed carbon price yesterday, pledging more than 50 per cent of revenue from the tax would be returned to millions of households and reassuring businesses on the impact of the scheme.
The Prime Minister played down Mr Windsor's comments this morning, describing them as “perfectly consistent with everything he has ever said about pricing carbon”. “He has said consistently, and I very much respect this, that he would wait to the end and judge the full package,” she said.
Ahead of a visit to his electorate by the government's chief climate change adviser Ross Garnaut today, Mr Windsor said he was happy to work with other members of the multi-party climate change committee, but wouldn't guarantee his support for the carbon tax. “The Prime Minister doesn't have the numbers as I understand it,” he said. “When things get into the parliament people have a vote; I have a vote, others do as well. You can never get anything until it gets through a minority parliament,” he said.
“I'm not inclined to vote for something that does nothing if we can get something that does something I'm more than happy to vote for it.”
Ms Gillard said consultations with business, community and environment groups and unions would ensure a balanced package, which the government would present to parliament in the second half of this year.
“What Tony Windsor has said to me and said publicly is that he does believe climate change is real and that we need to tackle it, he does believe that pricing carbon is the best way, an important way of tackling climate change,” she said. “But for an individual legislative package he's going to look at the package and wait to the end and then judge.”
SOURCE
Working families to pay for the gesture
By Senator Barnaby Joyce
Minister Combet’s announcement that they are going to compensate working families for the cost of carbon tax should confirm one thing; a carbon tax is going to cost working families.
The fundamental issue here is that a carbon tax is not going to change the temperature of the globe or change the climate in any shape or form. It is merely a gesture. A gesture that means that those who are already finding it extremely difficult to get by are going to have that difficulty exacerbated by a pointless tax with a deceitful inference that it will the change global climatic conditions.
What is the point of taking money off people, spinning it around a bureaucracy and giving people back a bit of their own money and expecting be thanked for it? Why don’t you just let people keep their own money and go away?
In the meantime you put up the price of the fundamental mechanism of commerce, power, so what is now our competitive advantage? Obviously we don’t want lower wages so ultimately there will be fewer jobs.
Is Australia going to be reduced to a country that digs up red rocks and black rocks, iron and coal and sends them over to where they don’t have a carbon tax so they can produce the things we used to produce?
Doesn’t the government get it? The people don’t want this tax and surely the have some right in being respected on this decision.
Even on the CFMEU website, the majority of the workers don’t want a carbon tax. I’m sure that this is not a National Party stronghold, so my advice to the Labor party is, listen to your own people otherwise it will end up in tears, like the NSW election.
SOURCE
Marrickville council to boycott HP, others at $3.7m cost
Independent Marrickville councillor Victor Macri described the boycott as ludicrous. Picture: Jane Dempster Source: The Australian
A MOVE by a Greens-controlled council in Sydney's inner west to boycott goods and services from Israel will cost ratepayers at least $3.7 million and force the council to abandon Holden cars and Hewlett-Packard computers, among many other disruptions.
The stark warning on the cost of the council's decision to support the global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign earlier this year is contained in a paper by the council's manager of services, Gary Moore, which is due for discussion next week and has been obtained by The Australian.
Marrickville, the only council in Australia that has approved an Israel boycott, has been a hotbed of political controversy since its Greens Mayor Fiona Byrne said she would push for a statewide version of the Israel boycott if elected to the NSW lower house at last month's election.
During the election campaign, Ms Byrne made contradictory remarks about the boycott, which was a factor in her failure to wrest the seat of Marrickville from Labor MP and former deputy premier Carmel Tebbutt.
Ms Byrne could have the casting vote next Tuesday on whether to continue with the campaign and slug ratepayers with the added cost, when a motion to repeal the boycott is put forward.
Mr Moore's paper details goods and services the council would have to forgo in order to comply with its directive, such as Hewlett Packard computers, Holden and Volvo cars, telephones and other equipment from Motorola and concrete from Fulton Hogan.
These companies, according to the council's original motion to join the global BDS movement, "support or profit from the Israeli military occupation of Palestine".
The report estimates the cost of replacing certain IT assets at $3.5m, and the annual cost of using a different concrete supplier at $250,000. It does not attempt to estimate the cost of replacing vehicles, and says changing waste-disposal service providers may not even be possible.
Mr Moore's paper admits staff have been unable to fully research ties between companies providing goods to the council and Israel and have largely relied on www.whoprofits.org - an anti-Israel website.
Independent councillor Victor Macri described the boycott plan as ludicrous. "We weren't elected to do this; we were elected to look after the streets and trees and pick up garbage," Mr Macri said.
"People vote federally to direct foreign policy. A boycott of Israel will hurt Marrickville ratepayers far more than it will Israel."
The costs will likely be exacerbated after Randwick council in Sydney's east passed a motion last month that excluded Marrickville from collective purchasing agreements because its boycott would limit other councils' ability to negotiate for the best price.
Mr Moore's report found the boycott measure would lead to "substantial" impacts on council's operations. "Significant change would have to be planned for and managed to enable council operations to be maintained whilst new sets of providers of computer hardware, concrete, waste services, some vehicles and some other construction materials and consumables are obtained and existing contracts are completed/suspended," the report said.
It noted the council might need to spend $5000 to $10,000 in legal fees just to determine whether the original motion on the boycott was lawful under anti-discrimination laws. A council source said a "conservative approach" had been used in determining the cost of implementing a boycott.
"It's fair to say that the report is measured - built around realistically what the council is able to look at replacing," the source said. For example, the costs of breaking existing contracts or finding a replacement water supply to the Kurnell desalination plant, which is operated by Veolia, another company on the global BDS blacklist, are not included.
Mr Macri said if a complete divestment campaign were implemented, the council might as well "shut its doors".
Spread over Marrickville's roughly 40,000 homes, the costs estimated work out at about $100 a household. The council has an annual budget of about $72m.
Mr Macri said contrary to council policy, the BDS motion was not attended by detailed costings when passed in December.
Mr Moore's report described the cheaper option of phasing out goods and services as they expired, rather than divesting them completely, but found such a decision would "still have significant impacts on council's operations".
A council source told The Australian the cheaper option would cost at least $1m. Labor councillor Emanuel Tsardoulias said the costs associated with both options were "outrageous".
Mr Tsardoulias, who initially supported the boycott but later changed his mind, said he and others had had hundreds of complaints since the council's motion began getting attention.
Council is said to have received a petition of 4600 signatures.
Of Marrickville's 12 councillors, four Labor and two independents are expected to support Tuesday's motion to repeal the boycott; one independent is set to side with the five Greens in opposing the motion, although The Australian understands one Green is having second thoughts.
SOURCE
Commission slams desal plants
More Greenie waste of resources
PROLONGED water restrictions and expensive desalination plants are the least efficient way of providing water security, the government's key economic advisory body has found.
In a scathing draft report, the Productivity Commission yesterday called for an urgent overhaul of the urban water sector, declaring consumers were paying more than necessary for their water as a result of poor government decision-making.
The 600-page report is highly critical of decisions by state governments across the country to overinvest in expensive and inefficient desalination plants, with economic modelling indicating desalination plants in Melbourne and Perth alone could cost consumers between $3.1 billion and $4.2bn more than cheaper water-saving measures over 20 years.
The commission also criticised the federal government for "distorting investment decisions" by offering generous subsidies for the construction of desalination plants. But a spokesman for Parliamentary Secretary for Urban Water Don Farrell last night hit back, saying the federal government contributed to only two of the six major desalination plants in Australia, and this made up "only a portion" of the $1.5bn the government had spent on urban water security.
In a recommendation that will probably draw criticism, the commission also declared state governments and water bodies should be open to returning highly treated recycled wastewater to waterways for drinking.
The report says governments have been too quick to discount recycled wastewater for political, rather than economic, reasons: "Negative community perceptions have become entrenched in the absence of good evidence about the costs and benefits."
The Productivity Commission is the latest in a chorus of voices calling for the urgent reform of Australia's urban water sector, with the National Water Initiative last week declaring new consideration needed to be given to the use of recycled water, as well as the construction of new dams.
The commission wants to open up the market for urban water trading and remove all remaining bans on trading between urban and rural areas that would allow water to be purchased at its highest value. It also recommends that state and territory governments should move away from setting water prices to monitoring how utilities price water and whether they abuse their market power.
The Productivity Commission found water restrictions imposed by state governments were likely to cost the nation about a $1bn in lost production, and governments would be better off charging consumers extra for different tiers of water packages and allow the market to regulate water use.
A spokesman for Senator Farrell said the government welcomed the draft report, including the recommendation that recycled wastewater should be considered as a more effective way to manage water shortages.
Opposition water spokesman Barnaby Joyce said the Productivity Commission was correct to criticise investment in desalination plants, saying they should be any government's "absolutely last-ditch alternative".
SOURCE
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