Typical Optus stupidity

As woeful as Telstra is, Optus is worse. It once took me nearly a year to get Optus to admit to a fault and reimburse me -- and that was only after I wrote to the chief executive of their parent company -- which was in London at the time. And when I tried to get some details about their wireless internet service recently, I had to write to their parent company again -- by now in Singapore -- before I got any information out of them. The journalist below only got any information because he had the private number of an Optus executive. I would LOVE to see Optus go broke. Whoever bought up their assets might figure out how to run a REAL phone company. Optus at the moment are living testimony to the fact that a duopoly is not much better than a monopoly.

I am back with Telstra at the moment but only because I have found the one guy there who is able and willing to help with problems. And, boy, is he needed! He is some guy called Sol Trujillo. He doesn't fix you up himself but he passes your letter on to someone who can. Now if only I could get his phone no.!

I note that Telstra has just cut off one of the avenues for complaints about it so arrogance just seems to be the hallmark of Australian phone companies. And, as I pointed out on May 25th, the government "Ombudsman" who is supposed to keep them in line is of very limited help. It's lucky Australians are such an easygoing lot. In any other country, one of the company officials concerned would probably have been shot by now. We do however now have a lot of Muslims living here who may not be so easygoing

For me, not being able to access the internet is like losing an arm. Imagine how I felt on Saturday morning when the wild weather not only knocked me offline but took my home phone with it. Both my home phone and cable internet are provided by Optus - a usually harmonious relationship that last weekend was put to the test.

Now, I'm not for a minute comparing my woes to the devastation across the state. There were people far worse off at the weekend but for me the frustration of trying to get some information out of Optus, to confirm the storm caused the dramas, drove me to the brink of insanity. After dialling the customer number using my mobile (also Optus but thankfully still working) I got a painfully annoying auto-reply recorded message which asked me to explain the nature of my inquiry. I got the dreaded "I'm sorry, I didn't get that" reply and after four attempts (two were ruined because I swore into the phone) I advanced to the next stage. I was finally put in touch with a "customer service representative".

After more time on hold I was connected to a friendly man named Ravi who had a distinct Indian accent, which was at times hard to understand. He suggested I restart my modem - which I'd already tried. Ravi told me he was unaware of any network problems. I asked Ravi where he was and he told me he was in Delhi, India. "What's the weather like?" I asked. "It's very hot," he said. "Do you know about the weather in Sydney?" I said. "No," Ravi answered. "What's it like?" I explained we were seeing some of the worst storms, wind and rain in the past 30 years. Ravi suggested I wait things out.

I then called the office number of a contact at Optus corporate affairs on the off chance she would receive it before the end of the long weekend. To her credit, I got a call back an hour later and it was only then I found out there were several surrounding areas without internet and phone connections and technicians were working on the problem. It's a shame, I told her, I had to talk to a robot and someone in India to try and find out what was going on in my own backyard.

Services were restored nearly 24 hours later. The weather was still hot in India.

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Leftist candidate mocks aspirational Australians

A LABOR candidate has caused an uproar by dismissing thousands of voters as being on the edge of Kath & Kim country. Labor's Barbara Norman has made the unfavourable comparison of Melbourne's leafy eastern suburb of Ashburton. And Ms Norman has effectively given up on the fight for the Liberal-held Melbourne seat of Higgins before the campaign has even started. She made the Kath & Kim comparison this week, claiming that the seat held by Treasurer Peter Costello was diverse but impossible to win. At one end of Higgins was the multicultural, gay suburb of Prahran, and at the core of the seat were the captains of industry in Toorak. "Then at the other end it has Ashburton, out near Chadstone, which is almost Kath & Kim country," Ms Norman told The Canberra Times. "So it's very diverse."

The comment prompted an angry response from some Ashburton residents, who have seen their house prices soar in the latest boom, making it one of the hot suburbs. And Mr Costello immediately shot back. "I stand up for the people of Higgins," he said. "And anyone who makes a statement like that shows they have no understanding of our residents and our area."

Ms Norman, who is a senior manager at RMIT, yesterday defended the comparison with Kath & Kim. Kath and Kim were the main characters in the highly successful ABC TV satire of the same name, which ridiculed families in Melbourne's outer suburbs as ignorant and materialistic. Of the comparison to the program, Ms Norman told the Herald Sun: "That was just a description that I guess it's something that people readily associate with." Ms Norman said she supported her potential constituents, adding that they were "all terrific". Winning the seat, held with a margin of 8.8 per cent, was a tough ask. "I see it as a big challenge," she said.

In yesterday's Canberra Times she said she had no chance. Despite being preselected in a tough seat, Ms Norman has formidable credentials. She is the business and partnerships manager of the Global Cities Institute at RMIT, the Australian Fabian Society's national president, and a life fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia. Higgins has been held by two prime ministers.

Ashburton locals were yesterday outraged by Ms Norman's description of their area as "almost Kath & Kim country". Eliza Spring, 32, said she hadn't seen anyone who looked like Kath or Kim in the area. "It's quite the opposite," she said. "Has she been out here? "She's trying to draw an analogy that we'll all respond to, I guess. Maybe she's just got it wrong. "There's actually a really good sense of community, which is good."

Trent Bussell, 21, from Glen Iris, said the description was "a bit over the top". "Chapel St (South Yarra) is more of a nightlife area and this is more suburban, but you wouldn't say it's Kath & Kim country." Chris Turner, 57, said Ms Norman's label was "a disgrace". "Actually this area has always voted Labor, the south ward. Kath & Kim - how insulting," he said. "I would say she hasn't been here very much. "I do vote Labor, but I'm a little worried if she's the candidate."

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Another delusory whine about "gagging" from a Leftist

CLIVE Hamilton calls himself an author but surely he's a comedian. How else to explain the following? Yesterday, New Matilda ran Hamilton's latest piece in which he said of The Australian: "No news organisation in Australia has done more to silence critics and independent voices." Now, here's the pay-off: this was run on the same day that The Australian published Hamilton's latest research paper. So while Hamilton was complaining that The Australian was silencing critics, The Australian was publishing Hamilton. Late last year, The Australian also published a report produced by the Australia Institute, of which he is executive director, on the subject of corporate pedophilia.

Hamilton complains that The Australian declined to publish extracts from his new book. That's quite right. We didn't think it was up to scratch.

Hamilton's latest paper focuses on the relationship between universities and the fuel industry. He says BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Woodside are providing universities with funding and this should generate "grounds for concern." But why? Hamilton surely isn't suggesting that fuel companies will try to crush academic freedom? Of course he is. His report says academic freedom "could be compromised as commercial interests penetrate decision-making". This is an anti-capitalist, Marxist conspiracy theory and offensive to academics across the nation, whose freedom, rigour and intellectual honesty can't be so easily purchased.

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Rescuing Australia's blacks from the Greens

By Noel Pearson

THE aspirations of indigenous people in remote Australia to re-establish a real economy underpinning the sustainability of their society are at odds with the vision of urban-based conservation organisations such as the Wilderness Society. The confrontation that has emerged between the advocates of land rights in Cape York and those who advocate for so-called wilderness may be the start of a sharpening clash of values.

Traditional land owners and communities in northern Australia are caught in a dilemma: the preservation of the natural and cultural heritage is foremost among their concerns about the future of their land and culture, while they also understand economic development is essential for the future of their people. Without economic development, indigenous people are dying on welfare dependency. The only other solution to a real economy is wholesale migration to urban areas and the abandonment of their culture: to die in a miserable urban underclass. So which is it to be: no development and continuing the downward spiral of social breakdown, or seeking development that can sustain people on their traditional lands?

In the wider society, attitudes towards the environment and development range between two extremes. The extreme of one side argues that environmental and development policy must serve the needs of the human species and nature must yield. Few tears are shed when another species becomes extinct. The extremity of the other side argues that policy must serve the needs of preserving and enhancing ecological diversity and humans must yield. Few tears are shed when thousands die and billions suffer in poverty. It may be that the underlying psychology of extreme Western environmentalism is that mass depopulation from disease and starvation would be an ecological benefit.

The rest of us, positioned somewhere between these two extremes, want something called sustainable development. The achievement of sustainable development depends on working out this conflict between the two camps, which seem interested only in their own side of the argument. Somehow, compromises are fashioned out of this conflict, because if either side had its way, development would either stop completely or it would be completely unrestrained.

But does the vast middle determine the terms of the policy debate, or is the concept of sustainable development just a veneer for what is really a crude struggle between two extreme (whitefella) ideologies? When indigenous groups I know of are confronted by the opportunities and challenges of economic development, and they are faced by a wider society that is generally divided into two opposing camps, they have to come to terms with both sides of the argument. They hear the precaution and prudence of those who advocate for the environment, and this precaution and prudence resonates for them, because it is part of their tradition. But they also can see that the world beyond their own is underpinned by development, and they too need development. So they seek to balance the need for development with the imperatives of environment and culture. They seek sustainability.

The problem facing indigenous people in Cape York is that in recent years land-use policy has been most influenced by the relatively extreme end of the green spectrum. Single-issue environmental organisations, which see conservation in a particular way, are in a unique position to determine policy affecting remote parts of Australia because of the value they provide to political parties in delivering green votes in marginal seats in urban centres. They are able to trade environmental lock-up in remote and regional areas for organised green electoral support. But the capacity to deliver 2 per cent to 3 per cent of the vote in marginal seats hardly represents a basis for a mandate to determine crucial environmental and social sustainability questions.

This week Queensland Premier Peter Beattie tabled the Cape York Peninsula Heritage Bill, which represents our best opportunity to strike a balance between conservation and development for the future of this region. This law has the potential to ease Cape York people’s struggle to reconcile conservation and development. The tabling of this bill represents the culmination of decades of conflict between pastoralist, mining, Aboriginal and conservationist interests. In 1996, at the height of the controversy over native title in pastoral leases, Rick Farley succeeded in bringing together the conflicting parties, who signed the Cape York heads of agreement on land use. The former head of the National Farmers Federation and member of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation was a conservationist (he was a founder of Landcare), a cattleman and a supporter of Aboriginal people. It was he who guided the parties to the view that we needed to find a balanced solution.

Farley succeeded in bringing the parties together because the conservation lobby was led by Greg Sargent, a campaigner from the Wilderness Society who understood that conservation needed to respect the land rights of indigenous people as well as the economic development needs of the pastoralists and people who lived in the region. The third person responsible for bringing these parties together was Goombra Jacko, an elder from the Junjuwarra clan.

Beattie has finally delivered on the hopes of these men. The new law provides for joint management of Cape York’s national parks between the state Government and the traditional owners. The original wild rivers legislation that threatened to frustrate indigenous economic development will be amended to protect native title rights and interests and to provide for mandatory water allocations for indigenous communities in each of the catchments affected by a wild river declaration. Indigenous communities will be able to make applications for vegetation clearing on Aboriginal land for sustainable agriculture, aquaculture and animal husbandry.

This new legislative framework is a step in the right direction. It provides indigenous communities with the key to the door when it comes to finding real jobs and pursuing enterprise. The new legislation needs to allow indigenous communities to take advantage of development opportunities that are supported by science and economics.

Australia, and indeed the world, has entered a phase where the environment looms large on domestic and international agendas. The environment has not been so pressing an electoral issue since the 1990 election won by Bob Hawke.

In crisis conditions it is important for nations to make rational decisions. The recessionary effects of wild decision-making based on electoral impulses is a risk the Australian people face in the lead-up to this year’s poll. The consignment of indigenous people in remote Australia to perpetual welfare dependency on the grounds of environmental lock-up is another risk. The problem with the latter is that the potential indigenous victims of these policies do not have electoral power and their needs are likely to be overrun.

The search for sustainable development will continue as legitimate concerns for the future of the environment grow. I hope Western environmentalism does not turn out to have a fundamentally misanthropic (nature before humans) and genocidal (just keep the indigenes on welfare) ethical foundation.

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NUCLEAR BOOM ON THE WAY?

THE price of uranium - already up 85 per cent since January - could reach $US200 a pound within two years, Australia's biggest securities firm, Macquarie, says. Analysts have revised forecasts for the nuclear fuel upwards following its dramatic run this year, driven by dwindling supplies and limited expansion opportunities. The spot price of uranium rose to $US138 a pound last week. It began the year at $US72 a pound.

Macquarie analysts Max Layton and John Moorhead believe the price will average about $US125 a pound this year, but have tipped a peak of about $US150 a pound by year's end. "We would not be surprised to see prices move up to around $US200 a pound over the next two years," they said, citing supply deficits and growing interest in speculative trading.

The world uranium market is expected to remain in deficit for at least the next two years as secondary supplies of ex-military uranium are depleted and miners race to catch up with demand. In March, Paladin Resources shipped the first uranium from its Langer Heinrich project in Namibia - the world's first new uranium mine in more than a decade.

Canada's Cameco was due to bring on the giant Cigar Lake mine soon but a flood last October will delay production until at least 2010. At the same time, concern about climate change has prompted a rush towards nuclear power, with 30 nuclear reactors under construction and 74 more planned.

Macquarie has forecast a 14.4 per cent rise in reactor requirements, but demand could be much higher with a further 182 reactors proposed, mostly in Asia. Resource Capital Research recently raised its uranium price forecast to $US125 a pound this year, and $US140 a pound next year. The value of Australian uranium explorers was up 23 per cent in the first three months of the year

Macquarie said reports suggested almost 20 per cent of mine supply, or about 8000 tonnes of uranium, was being held off the market by traders - and tipped increased speculative activity could quickly drive prices lower. Mr Layton and Mr Moorhead said traders, speculators and hedge funds could "very quickly become drivers of the down leg to this cycle".

The New York Mercantile Exchange launched a uranium futures market last month, which Macquarie has described as a "potentially bullish wild card". The June contract closed yesterday at $US137 a pound, while the December contract was at $US148.

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