Arrogant Leftist "planner" wants smaller houses "to limit their impact on the environment"



VICTORIA'S Planning Minister has said McMansion-style homes are water wasters suffering from "housing obesity". Justin Madden, an architect who lives in a two-storey heritage-protected home, has said he wants more small homes on new housing estates. He has said big houses found in suburbs such as Caroline Springs and Tarneit often suffer from "housing obesity". "Melbourne's household growth - and by that I mean dwellings - is twice the population growth," Mr Madden has said. "Our increasing affluence has led to bigger houses, and I'm sure you're familiar with the description McMansions, and one of my favourites, 'housing obesity'."

But residents in Caroline Springs, Mr Madden's electorate, have said he is attacking their Australian dreams. Peter Attard, who lives in the suburb with his wife and three children, has said the chance to have a big home is "what makes Australia the best country in the world".

While the state Government delays ordering stage 4 water restrictions, Mr Madden has branded bigger houses water wasters. "When we need to minimise our consumption of things like energy and water, many of us are living in houses that consume more water and more energy than we need," he has said.

But Mr Attard has said home-owners take environmental responsibilities seriously. "I've got a whole grey water system hooked up through my house. It was designed with energy-saving measures," he has said. "The size of our house is none of the minister's business - we've worked hard, we can afford a big place, and we've got a family that fills it!"

Speaking at a planning summit yesterday, Mr Madden has flagged a competition to design smaller, more energy efficient new housing. He has said large designs and extravagant lifestyles were undermining Victoria's environmental requirements for new homes. "We've put in place five-star energy rating into new housing and that's making housing more efficient," Mr Madden said. "(But) to counter that, what people are doing is building bigger housing . . . four bedrooms, a study, the entertainment room, and as well as that they're filling it with electronic equipment."

But Caroline Springs residents Mick and Jasmina Fazlic have said Mr Madden has got it wrong. With daughter Melissa, 12, the couple say all the space in the house is used, and Mr Fazlic runs his business from home. "If you work hard, you make money. You want to enjoy that," he said.

Neville Rodger, a six-year Caroline Springs resident, has agreed size does not govern the efficiency of the house. "We've got 5000-litre water tanks that take in all the water off the roof," Mr Rodger has said. "We're not wasting water at all."

Mr Madden has since softened his stance, assuring residents the state did not dictate house size. "We do not want to tell Victorians how big their houses should be. That is up to them," he has said. Mr Madden, who recently applied to Heritage Victoria to add a family room and two bedrooms to the back of his own home, has said housing obesity is defined by the size of the household relative to the house size. "We want to ensure these houses are built as sustainably as possible, both to limit their impact on the environment, and to keep down the costs of running a household."

The size of an average new detached home in Victoria has risen by 50 per cent in the two decades to 2005, reaching 255 square metres.

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It's the ABC who are the real Bastards

ACCORDING to the ABC, its drama Bastard Boys is not a documentary and it's not a docu-drama. It is a drama. And a very average one at that. It purports to tell the true story of the 1998 waterfront dispute, but it does not. It presents a fictionalised account of the Maritime Union of Australia's struggle to maintain its stranglehold on the docks when confronted with the reality that the historically corrupt trade union's practices were actually crippling shippers and exporters and making Australia an uncompetitive laughing stock on the world stage.

Originally planned to be presented in four one-hour episodes over four weeks, the ABC adjusted its programming to present two two-hour episodes in what looked like an attempt to draw attention away from the Federal Government's 12th Budget. The show rated well, for an ABC program, but ABC management should be asking its staff how such an unbalanced polemic found its way on to its airwaves at such a politically sensitive time.

Writer Sue Smith came to the project with relish. As she told ABC radio's Richard Glover on May 10: "I love wharfies." Glover, attempting a modicum of caution about the possibility that such a declaration might smack of bias, quickly chimed in: "I think (Patrick's boss Chris) Corrigan is probably very proud of what was achieved. He believes there were big efficiencies." Hmm. He probably does believe that, Richard. After all, Smith's beloved wharfies were, as they say in maritime circles, swinging the lead. They were moving Patricks containers at 18 lifts per hour, well short of the international best practice standard, and they were doing it with a nationwide workforce of about 1400.

Forget the rorts, which received a peripheral nod in Smith's fiction. The real driving force behind the dispute was the need for real reforms beyond the fiddling at the margins attempted by the Hawke Labor government, which splashed almost $420 million around the waterfront to win 4000 expensive redundancies in the 1980s.

Smith's farce ignored the history of the MUA and the old WWF in its attempts to present a chunky piece of agitprop that might have embarrassed the most ardent supporters of the dead communist system (even though there was a touching reference to one of the MUA's organisers spending romantic Moscow moments with his girlfriend).

Those interested in the true flavour of the MUA, and not merely the Bastard Boys' anodyne references to its stand on apartheid and other middle-class issues of the '70s and '80s, the late Henry (Jo) Gullett's modest memoir Not as a Duty Only - an Infantryman's War (MUP) could shed some light. Gullett, who fought as an infantry sergeant at Bardia, Libya (and was wounded) in 1941, was commissioned in the field in time for the ill-fated Greek campaign, went on to fight in New Guinea and was awarded the Military Cross for his leadership and disregard of danger. He was one of the few Australian soldiers to take part in the D-Day operations, as second in command of an infantry battalion. He was later made a company commander with The Royal Scots, and served with them until again wounded.

This straight shooter wrote of the looting of military supplies by the wharfies as his unit transhipped to New Guinea, noting: "We came to Cairns and our ships were loaded. The watersiders stole our stores in the lading, not only little things, but items like compasses, sights and arms, on which our capacity to fight depended. "This surprised us because these men were no less Australian than we were. Yet they seemed not to be on our side. Anyhow, we put guards on them and they went out on strike. So we loaded the ships ourselves. Our rate of loading was exactly twice theirs. "All of which confirmed two views which we held strongly already ... that the 2/6th infantry could do anything and that there were some very curious types among the civilian population."

Gullett, who went on to a life in politics before being appointed Australian ambassador to Greece, would not have found favour with the politically correct scriptwriters at the ABC. He would have been too straight-shooting for their lop-sided political agenda, but his views should have informed the Bastard Boys polemic.

The program appeared to be no more than a four-hour advertisement to introduce Greg Combet, the Robespierre of the trade union movement, to a wider audience. Those who weren't aware of Combet's role as ACTU boss would be now - and the ABC has glowingly presented him as a sex symbol.

Sex should not perhaps be mentioned in the NSW Central Coast electorate where he is running, not after the smear campaign Combet's supporters mounted against the unfortunate incumbent, Kelly Hoare. After being portrayed so glowingly as a caring, sharing, finch-loving ideologue by the ABC, it is something of a let-down to discover that Combet is a person prepared to campaign against a woman obviously in need of help, not a kick when she is down.

Nor did the ABC, usually so anxious to present the case for affirmative action note that the MUA was a misogynistic pack of old fogeys, and that the work force trained to replace them comprised young women who mastered the skills in a fraction of the time the unionists demanded. But then, perhaps it is not so surprising. After all, Bastard Boys was not a documentary, nor a docu-drama. It was no more than a wet and slippery dream disguised as entertainment.

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Attack on Freedom of the press in Western Australia

THE State Government has refused to introduce laws to protect journalists' sources unless The West Australian newspaper, sacks editor Paul Armstrong. Attorney-General Jim McGinty said The West Australian was the nation's most inaccurate and dishonest newspaper and until it lifted its standards it did not deserve shield laws. "The board of West Australian Newspapers needs to sack the editor. It is personally driven by a particular individual,'' he said.

Mr McGinty said standards were so bad at The West Australian that if a competitor emerged that could break the paper's monopoly, the Government would consider redirecting its advertising to foster competition. "I think it is in the interests of a healthy democracy that we have competition. The public would then have a choice not to buy a crap newspaper,'' he said. Until standards improved at The West Australian, he said there would be no shield laws in his state to protect journalists' sources. "With the shield go responsibilities. And when you get a newspaper that is bigoted, lies, cheats and deceives, my view is that you don't get the shield,'' MrMcGinty said.

Mr Armstrong said yesterday he "could not give a fat rat's arse'' about what Mr McGinty said about him. "Do I care? Not in the slightest. If he hates us it tells me we are probably doing our job and doing it very well, as I know we are,'' he said. "But I would care if McGinty turned around and said that (the) newspaper and editor are excellent. That would tell me, as it would tell Chris Mitchell (editor-in-chief of The Australian), that we are a long way short of the mark,'' Mr Armstrong said.

He said Mr McGinty's remarks on shield laws amounted to blackmail. "He is saying, 'You will sack the editor and comply with government policy or I will not introduce laws that will defend the ability of the media to do its job','' he said.

The row threatens to undermine one of the key goals of the national Right to Know campaign, through which the media industry is calling for effective shield laws and the removal of restrictions on free speech. The campaign is backed by News Limited (publisher of The Sunday Times and The Australian), Fairfax Media, the ABC, the commercial radio and television industries, SBS, Australian Associated Press and Sky News. These organisations have already signalled that effective shield laws are one of their main goals. But WA's rejection of shield laws adds to concerns that the Federal Government's promised shield law might result in an ineffective legislative mishmash.

Chris Warren, federal secretary of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, has warned that Canberra's planned law needs to be accompanied by equivalent state laws and federal whistleblower protection laws. Without these additions, journalists could still be threatened with prison for refusing to reveal confidential sources, Mr Warren has warned.

Mr McGinty said the combination of "personally vicious reporting and dishonest reporting'' at The West Australian meant he was "not interested in doing anything to help them''. He said newspapers had a critical role in Australian democracy "and I think a case can be made out that The West Australian is betraying that duty at the moment''. "That has not always been the case. It is directly related to the current editor, Paul Armstrong,'' Mr McGinty said. The problems had become so acute that he believed they could only be resolved through Armstrong's dismissal. He said he had taken his concerns about the paper to West Australian Newspapers managing director Ken Steinke and the company's chairman Peter Mansell. Those discussions had been amiable but "I walked out the door and they were up to their old tricks the next day'', Mr McGinty said. "They were not genuine.''

He said the most famous incident involving The West Australian occurred on January 24 and is the subject of a complaint to the Press Council by Mr McGinty in his capacity as Health Minister. The paper had published a front-page photograph of a woman waiting for treatment at a Perth hospital. When MrMcGinty learned that the photograph had been inaccurately described, he contacted Mr Steinke and Mr Mansell. "I rang them and said, 'I know your paper is loose with the truth but this is just beyond the pale. It is just so untrue and prejudicial to public health or the public perception of the hospital system'. "The retaliation was thick and fast: a page one headline the following day condemning me not about ringing them up, but about something else.''

Mr Armstrong sees the incident very differently. He said the paper had acknowledged that it had made a mistake about the woman's age and had corrected it: "But in the context of the story, so what?'' The woman had been "extremely unwell'' with eczema and had spent several days in hospital. "The real story is that this woman could not get a bed in hospital despite the state experiencing the biggest economic boom ever seen,'' he said. "McGinty has peddled this thing around town. The facts don't support him and because his case has fallen over he is now trying to blackmail the company by using his powers as Attorney-General.''

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Bureaucratic hatred of private education

An accreditation body is accused of hounding the colleges it's meant to be monitoring, writes Elisabeth Wynhausen

THESE days Jo Coffey sleeps in a caravan she has borrowed from her son or stays with friends in Newcastle, in regional NSW. Her house is gone and Coffey, the former owner of a vocational training college in the Newcastle suburb of Broadmeadow, says she has lost everything. By January this year, when she declared bankruptcy and closed down her college, Coffey, 59, had spent two years under siege from the Vocational Education and Training Accreditation Board, the agency that accredits vocational training colleges and courses in NSW.

Its critics suggest that instead of merely monitoring their standards, VETAB is hounding these training organisations until some close down. "VETAB dangles its authority over the industry like the sword of Damocles," says a consultant who helps vocational colleges deal with the regulator.

There are legitimate concerns about the burgeoning industry. Most vocational training colleges cater to international students. There are students who abuse the system as a way to get permanent residency, and so-called visa factories that aid and abet them: teaching "cooking" without ovens, for instance, or faking attendance records. This is precisely the sort of abuse VETAB is supposed to stampout.

Critics claim that the regulator goes about its business in a heavy-handed and obstructionist manner. "They make it as difficult as possible for colleges to open up at all, it's easier than closing them down," says Chris Stephens of Phoenix Compliance Management, one of many people to suggest that VETAB's operations are provoking a crisis in the industry in NSW.

According to National Centre for Vocational Education Research figures for 2005, the most recent available, the operating revenues of the vocational education sector were a fraction under $5 billion that year, when there were 1.64 million students enrolled in the publicly funded VET system, 562,100 of them in NSW.

The growing clamour about the operations of the regulator led the VETAB board to commission a review in NSW, which was announced late last year by the then education minister, Carmel Tebbutt. The operations of any regulator create tensions, but its critics emphasise that the essence of their problem with VETAB results from its culture. "I feel they treat us like criminals," says Darryl Gauld, the principal of Macquarie Institute, a Sydney college for international students.

College administrators met most recently at workshops held in Sydney last month as part of the review into VETAB. Many used the occasion to accuse VETAB of paralysing the industry. Gauld says most seemed to feel the regulator was exceeding its rightful role. "At these meetings, TAFE directors responsible for thousands of students expressed grave concerns about VETAB's (use) of power," he says.

Few were willing to talk to the HES on the record. "They're frightened to speak to the media," Gauld says. He says he isn't scared, because he's doing the right thing. Other educators, acutely aware of how long it can take for VETAB to grant approval for courses, are reluctant to speak out. "People wait for eight or nine months for courses to be approved. One person at the workshop spoke of waiting for 11 months," says the chief executive of a string of training colleges catering to international students. "If they take many months to approve a modification to the course, you can't recruit students, you can't print the brochures that have the courses in them. You're just stuck."

Tim Smith is the chief executive of the Australian Council of Private Education and Training, the organisation that represents private education providers. "It's fair to say there's a strong provider concern about VETAB's delays and strange decision-making processes," he says.

At a breakfast meeting with ACPET members last October, NSW MP Brad Hazzard, then state Opposition spokesman on education, vowed that if elected the Coalition would overhaul VETAB. While education is the nation's fourth-largest export earner, Hazzard said, "private training organisations report extraordinary delays in getting their organisations registered and new courses scoped".

VETAB is part of the NSW Department of Education. A departmental spokesman says such criticism of the body is inconsistent with the fact that "the number of VETAB-registered training organisations has risen 7.1 per cent annually since 2000". Industry insiders disagree, suggesting that VETAB regularly fails to meet the standards it imposes on the industry. VETAB auditors demand that colleges meet standards above and beyond those that have been published, Stephens says. "There's a standard that says you have to have a plan for the business. One of my clients was told he had to have a full business plan, a marketing plan and a strategic plan if he wanted to be accredited. "But the standard is very clear: it says you have to have a plan for your business. "And you know how many (employees) he has in the company? Two: himself and a director."

Vocational colleges are regularly forced to spend thousands of dollars in complying with Australian Quality Training Framework standards that may be inconsistently applied. "The problem is that each of the VETAB auditors has their own interpretation of many of the 133 standards," Stephens says. "Things that are acceptable in one situation aren't in another. The power is with the auditor and there is no one else to go to." The departmental spokesman says colleges wishing to challenge VETAB decisions can go to the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal, or approach the Ombudsman or the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Despite official talk of "procedural fairness and natural justice", providers who attended the workshops complained that VETAB auditors seemed intent on lumbering them with the largest possible number of non-compliances. "Here at this college we're trying to do the right thing," Gauld says. "Yet we are constantly challenged. This is a typical instance. Even though I sent VETAB a letter advising them of the appointment of a compliance manager, they claimed not to have been advised. "They make a mistake like that, then they blame you, then it becomes a compliance issue."

Meanwhile, the so-called visa factories running Clayton's courses somehow continue tooperate. "There's a college ready to graduate 40 students for hairdressing: teachers from that college told me they've never set eyes on those students," says the owner of another hairdressing college.

In contrast, Coffey was driven to the wall while trying to play by the rules. She set up her college in 1999, building up the courses in beauty therapy until there were about 80 students. When she was audited in 2003, she had just five non-compliances. With things going well, Coffey took a second mortgage on her home, invested thousands of dollars in the equipment required to teach hairdressing, and tried setting up a second training school in another town in NSW, with a person she knew. There were some problems and Coffey ended the association.

Later a student from the other town complained that Coffey was supposed to help her get a diploma. Coffey received a phone call from a VETAB auditor. Let's call him Flock. She insists he told her, "You are in so much trouble." "He said, 'You know what's going to happen to you ... you're going to have a complete audit."' Coffey's solicitor showed the auditor documents proving that at the time of the supposed promise to the student there was no longer any connection between the two colleges. "My solicitor said to (the auditor), you can now see Jo Coffey Training is clear on this ... and he agreed," she recalls. Even so, the audit lasted for two days, with the auditors going over everything with a fine-tooth comb while making disparaging comments. At one point, she recalls, Flock "walked in and said there's nothing wrong with the hairdressing department, it's incredibly well stocked, but she could have got that stuff in yesterday, just for the audit". "They got me into a state of complete stress. I was shaking like a leaf," Coffey says. Their report said there were 109 non-compliances. Flock phoned her about it; according to Coffey he suggested she get herself a good compliance officer, and recommended a fellow VETAB auditor.

Some might see a conflict of interest. He identified a bunch of supposed problems ,then recommended a colleague as a consultant. The department says: "Conflicts of interest among VETAB auditors are inappropriate." In the event, Coffey hired someone else. The process of fixing the non-compliances took six months and ate up another $16,000, but months after VETAB had been supplied with the evidence, Flock phoned her again. Coffey recalls him saying that the compliance officer she had hired had sent them so much material, they hadn't looked at it. Instead they proposed to audit her once again. This time they found 56 non-compliances.

Between the two audits, Coffey suffered a breakdown. She went on as long as she could, to ensure her students completed their courses, then declared bankruptcy. "I couldn't go on another day," she says. The HES sent a detailed list of questions to the department, asking that these be sent also to Flock.

A departmental spokesman said: "Complaints about the operation of VETAB are taken seriously. VETAB auditors are required to behave consistently and fairly when dealing with RTOs (registered training organisations), and a claim that this has not occurred would be of concern to the board."

Since the HES asked about Coffey's case, the spokesman says, the board has referred the allegations about its auditors to the employee performance and conduct unit, the internal body that investigates the behaviour of departmental employees. Coffey says: "It's a relief to know they're doing something about it, and I'm not alone."

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