Australians tougher than the Brits

Navy men repelled five Iranian boats



THE ADF has confirmed that Australian sailors repelled five Iranian gunboats during an armed four-hour confrontation in the Persian Gulf. A spokesman said the armed stand-off lasted four hours and happened in March 2004.

Earlier today the BBC reported that an Australian Navy crew had aimed its machine guns at an Iranian gunboat in the Persian Gulf which threatened it just weeks before 15 British sailors were captured in a similar incident. According to the report, Iranian forces made a concerted attempt to seize a boarding party from the Royal Australian Navy. The Australians, though, to quote one military source, "were having none of it".

The Australians apparently re-boarded the vessel they had just searched, aimed their machine guns at the approaching Iranians and warned them to back off, using what was said to be "highly colourful language". The Iranians withdrew, and the Australians were lifted off the ship by one of their own helicopters.

The lessons from the earlier attempt do not appear to have been applied in time by British maritime patrols. The 15 Britons were searching a cargo boat in the Gulf when they were captured over a boundary dispute. When Iranian Revolutionary Guards captured the British sailors and Royal Marines in March, it was not exactly their first attempt. The British personnel were eventually released

The circumstances for the Britons in March were slightly different in that they were caught so much by surprise that, had they attempted to repel the Iranians with their limited firepower, they would doubtless have taken very heavy casualties.

But military sources say that what is of concern is that the Royal Navy did not appear to have taken sufficient account of the lessons of the Australian encounter. In an oblique reference to the threat from Iran, Britain's First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, has recently admitted there was a need for greater strategic awareness in the northern Gulf.

RSL state president Doug Formby said if the report was accurate, it reflected the quality of training and dedication of Australian service personnel. "I think that Australians over many years have been recognised throughout the world as being amongst the best trained, best prepared soldiers, sailors and airmen for any (military) commitment, he said. "If this has happened, these fellows have just done whats expected of them and what they were trained to do. "I would like to put it down largely to the training and preparation and professionalism of our service people. If it reflects well on our servicemen, well thats great.

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Union thug representing the Labor party



KEVIN Rudd is under pressure to dump the endorsed ALP candidate for a Tasmanian seat, branded a union thug by the Howard Government. As the ALP's national executive committee agreed yesterday to suspend West Australian union official Joe McDonald from the Labor Party, pending expulsion proceedings, the Opposition Leader faced calls to disendorse Kevin Harkins, the candidate for the seat of Franklin.

Mr Harkins came to the attention of the royal commission into the building and construction industry in 2003. It found he had engaged in "unlawful conduct" as a member of the left-wing Electrical Trades Union. However, he was not charged with any offence. In parliament yesterday, Peter Costello said Mr Harkins's candidacy represented a test for Mr Rudd. "He threatened a builder, by saying, 'If necessary, the union, they would block off the entrance to our site with the truck in the middle of a concrete pour'," the Treasurer said. "I call on the leader of the Labor Party and I call on the whole of the Labor Party to dissociate themselves from this ETU official, Kevin Harkins, to make it clear they'll stand up against thuggery whether it's captured on videotape or not."

Harry Quick, the sitting Labor MP for Franklin, who will retire at the next election, told The Australian last night that the Labor leader should dump his proposed replacement. "All ETU candidates should be disendorsed," he said. "They're birds of a feather. The people in Franklin have been saying to me since he was endorsed that they can't vote for him." Mr Harkins could not be reached for comment.

Victorian ETU leader Dean Mighell was forced to quit the party last month after an audio tape emerged of him using foul language to brag about his tactics with employers.

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Labor leader shows poor understanding of economics

But he DOES speak good Mandarin Chinese!

KEVIN Rudd’s weakness on economic policy has been exposed through a series of gaffes beginning with his notorious interview on ABC radio last week. When he was asked about productivity he continually referred to forecasts, despite repeated prompting about the availability of the more recent quarterly outcomes. It was clear he hadn’t read and couldn’t understand Australia’s national accounts.

After this debacle Rudd sought confidential advice to help him understand the subject. This advice, written by Rudd’s economics advisers, subsequently became public. The secret briefing stated that “it is likely that the (productivity) outcome will be higher than estimated in the budget. Nevertheless, our view is that you should continue to cite the budget estimate”. In other words, Rudd was wrong. He was told he was wrong. But he was told to go on misleading the public anyway.

The secret paper, written by his staff, undermined all the claims Rudd had been making. It advised him that a surge in mining investment will artificially depress productivity until projects are completed and increased production begins to flow; it notes that the drought has been depressing productivity because agricultural output has been dramatically cut; and noted that productivity is likely to accelerate as these effects pass.

We have made large inroads into unemployment, particularly in the past year. As unemployed people join the workforce, particularly long-term and unskilled employees whose productivity is less than the average, they reduce overall productivity. After time and experience, their output lifts. As the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development pointed out, “any slowdown in average measured productivity resulting directly from a change in employment is, to a large extent, a statistical artefact and does not imply that individual productivity has fallen.”

Anyone who understands productivity understands this. But some people are more interested in the statistical artefact, especially if they think they can turn it to political advantage. While this episode has been instructive about the economic inexperience of Rudd, the important thing is to look forward to what we can do to lift productivity.

A flexible industrial relations system promotes productivity growth by making it easier for firms to take on new workers, allowing wages to be set to encourage higher outcomes, and allowing workers to move to higher productivity firms or industries. It also allows firms to more easily restructure their organisations to take advantage of new, more efficient technologies or business practices that improve productivity.

The OECD and the International Monetary Fund both urged industrial relations reform to lift productivity, with the IMF explicitly “urging the implementation of this package of reforms (Work Choices) to widen employment opportunities and raise productivity by enhancing flexibility in work arrangements.” The governor of the Reserve Bank stated in 2005, “The biggest thing in this area (productivity) is industrial relations reform.” If Labor was interested in productivity, why would it want to roll back the biggest contributor - reform of industrial relations?

Labor wants to not just roll back to where we were before Work Choices, but as Paul Keating says, “take them further back than the legislation I put in place in ‘93”. This rollback would take us back more than 14 years.

Normally at this point of the economic cycle Australia would be suffering a wages breakout. But since the introduction of Work Choices in March 2006, nearly 360,000 jobs have been created while inflation has remained under control. To quote former Reserve Bank governor Ian Macfarlane: “Obviously, it makes the job of monetary policy (setting interest rates) easier, the more deregulated the labour market is.” In other words, flexibility keeps pressure off interest rates. Rudd’s industrial relations policy would take us back to the past and put pressure on interest rates.

Rudd’s gaffes over the past week have exposed his poor understanding of the economy. If his policy were implemented, this would throw Australia backwards on jobs, growth and living standards.

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Greenie toilet stupidity comes to Australia

As usual, all it achieves is to inconvenience people

With mounting horror, customers at the Candana Designs fancy bathroom shop in Woollahra read the large sign erected in the toilet section: "To comply with Australian Standards all toilets are required to flush with a maximum of six litres of water. In order to comply with this regulation, manufacturers have reduced the size of the 'throat' inside the toilet pan. In most cases this necessitates using a toilet brush after flushing and flushing a second time." In other words, to flush a toilet properly, you'll need to flush twice and use 12 litres of water - which is more than the amount used by the old nine-litre toilets with wider "throats", which are better at ingesting potential blockages.

Thousands of years of sanitation and a drought have brought us to this point: toilets that don't do what toilets are supposed to do. That famous 19th-century British pioneer of sanitary plumbing, Thomas Crapper, would be rolling in his grave. Thanks to new federal regulations which came into force on January 1, it is now illegal to install a toilet that does not have a six-star water efficiency rating.

According to Marc Reed, managing director of Candana Designs, the feeble flush of the new eco-friendly toilet has made a lot of customers hopping mad. "We've had numerous complaints from people who . are paying $2000 for a toilet . and say it's not flushing. The old toilets used to flush everything away. But with the six-litre, it only takes 80 per cent of the waste away and you have to flush it again - which means you're using more water than you used to." As a result, Reed says, there is now a growing market for second-hand toilets.

While six-litre/three-litre flush toilets have been the norm for new houses for years, to the average consumer, new water-efficient toilets mean a lot more action with the toilet brush and the constant threat of blockages. It's not a matter often referred to in polite company, but the toilet is nonetheless something Australians use, on average, five times a day, accounting for one quarter of household water use. As those who have experienced a new eco toilet know, having to flush several times is not the worst of it. There is also the problem of what is known in the trade as "marking", as the water sits lower down the bowl, leaving exposed vast expanses of vitreous china.

A narrower throat also means more blockages. If you happen to have an over-zealous user of toilet paper in your family, colloquially known as the "scruncher", this is inclined to happen regularly.

Often children will continually flush the toilet in an attempt to hide the evidence of their profligacy. The inevitable result is water that rises and rises and rises as you stare transfixed, feet stuck to the floor as it reaches the rim, and then subsides, or doesn't, in which case your feet are stuck to the floor in more ways than one. You can find yourself channelling Peter Sellers's character Hrundi V. Bakshi from The Party. The water-conscious are fond of saying "if it's yellow, let it mellow", but if it's brown it's supposed to flush down, not erupt all over your bathroom floor.

Australia's foremost toilet expert is Dr Steve Cummings, head of research and development at Australian manufacturer Caroma, inventor of the dual flush toilet. In an interview this week that would make Kenny proud, he explained that Caroma has spent "hundreds of thousands of hours" designing its eco-friendly toilets, test-driving new designs at its Wetherill Park laboratory, where artificial materials are used to monitor the flush.

Unlike many imported brands, Caroma has not sacrificed throat size to increase suction. "We've put a lot of effort into fine-tuning the design of the pan and the cistern," he says. "If you design a toilet properly . if the toilet seat, the water surface area and the user are ergonomically aligned . the target area [should be hit]." He does point out that much "depends on the diet" of the user, which may account for some of the "enormous problems" with blockages that occur in America.

Caroma's sales in the US have doubled in the past year, as water consciousness takes hold, and the old super-sized 20-litre American models are outlawed. Cummings says he has had just a handful of complaints about Caroma's eco-friendly toilets. "The toilet brush has been around since the 19th century," he says, not very sympathetically. "Some people just don't want to clean the toilet." In the US, he warns, "they have plungers".

And there's much more to come. Caroma's Smartflush uses just 4.5 litres/three litres. Its new waterless urinal, the H2Zero Cube, last month won the Australian Design Awards' inaugural sustainability prize. Its secret is a one-way airtight valve that would save 2 million litres of water a year in the average office building. Worried about the smell without water? There is a built-in deodoriser, activated by the heat of the urine. Hmmm.

As the rain pours down on Sydney this week, we are left with these absurd legacies of the drought, from small-throated toilets to dribbling showers to Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull's latest discussion paper about putting recycled sewage into our drinking water. But no new dam for Sydney has emerged for discussion, as the population continues to grow.

Meanwhile, on the South Coast, at Braidwood and Hillview and Nerriga, near where the Welcome Reef Dam would have been built on the Shoalhaven River, rainfall recorded in the past 20 days was 150 millimetres, 181 millimetres and 274 millimetres respectively. That would have been a nice start for a dam, not to mention saving wear and tear on the toilet brushes of the future.

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Another attempt to solve Australia's most intractible problem

Nothing works well but Aborigines were safer and healthier under the old paternalistic system. It seems that a partial return to that is underway



Australia’s Aborigines were stripped of the right of self-rule yesterday after the Government declared the widespread sexual abuse of Aboriginal children to be a national emergency. John Howard, the Prime Minister, banned the sale of alcohol across an area the size of France and imposed restrictions on access to pornography. He also announced tight controls on welfare benefits, which will be cut if children fail to attend school. Aboriginal families will be required to spend at least half their fortnightly welfare on food and essentials.

In a statement to Parliament the Prime Minister said: “We are dealing with children of the tenderest age who have been exposed to the most terrible abuse from the time of their birth, virtually. Any semblance of maintaining the innocence of childhood is a myth in so many of these communities, and we feel very strongly that this kind of action is needed.” In what amounts to the end of a decades-long and largely failed path of self-determination for Aboriginal people, hundreds of extra police will be deployed in northern Australia to enforce the laws, which will apply on land that has been returned to Aboriginal ownership over the past 30 years.

The sudden move was prompted by the findings of an inquiry, released last week, that showed alarming levels of sexual abuse of Aboriginal children. The inquiry, led by a leading QC and an Aboriginal child expert, found that children were being abused in each of the 50 settlements that they visited in northern Australia. There are hundreds of such settlements, many with fewer than 100 people. The inquiry, established by the government of the Northern Territory, found that children were being abused by Aboriginal and nonAboriginal adults. It concluded that “rivers of grog” and a lack of education were great contributors to the levels of abuse.

It also found that very young Aboriginal girls had been taken into Darwin by nonAboriginal men, who traded sex for drugs. Girls aged between 12 and 15 years were being provided with cash and gifts for having sex with white mine-workers. Video and other forms of pornography were used widely by men in Aboriginal communities, and overcrowded housing conditions meant that children were exposed to sexual activity from a very young age, the inquiry reported.

Mr Howard said that he was concerned over what he considered to be the Northern Territory’s inadequate response to the findings, and that was why the Government was using its powers to seize control of the Aboriginal settlements there. He said that every child under the age of 16 would be checked by teams of doctors which would be sent into Aboriginal areas. Remote schools would receive more funding so that they could provide pupils with a meal every day. The settlements will be under federal control for the next five years; able-bodied unemployed will be made to repair houses and clean up communities in return for continued welfare payments.

The decades-long entry-permit system, under which Aboriginal people have controlled access to the 660,000sq km (255,000sq miles) of Aboriginal lands in northern Australia, will be largely scrapped.

The measures were condemned by leaders of Aboriginal communities. The lawyer Michael Mansell, an Aboriginal activist [Actually a white Leftist -- complete with blond hair] , said that the Government’s actions were an “immoral abuse of power” aimed at taking over people’s lives. “Mitch”, a member of a government board helping Aborigines who were taken from their parents under past assimilation laws, said: “I’m absolutely disgusted by this patronising government control. Tying drinking with welfare payments is just disgusting. If they’re going to do that, they’re going to have to do that with every single person in Australia, not just black people.” Mr Howard urged of Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales, where the federal Government does not have the power to override local legislatures, to introduce similar bans on the distribution of alcohol.

Alan Carpenter, Premier of Western Australia, said that his government was addressing the issue of child abuse, and questioned why Mr Howard had declared it a national emergency after 11 years in office. Throughout his premiership Mr Howard has focused on practical measures to tackle Aboriginal disadvantage, often angering critics with his tough-love approach at the expense of symbolism, such as an apology for past injustices. There are about 470,000 Aborigines in the 20 million population of Australia. They are the country’s most impoverished community, with life expectancy more than 17 years lower than the national average.

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