African refugee numbers slashed for Iraqi intake

Hallelujah! The do-gooding Australian Feds created a previously unknown problem in Australia by allowing large numbers of unassimilable African refugees in over recent years, many of whom are Muslims. It now seems that the Feds have finally woken up to some extent. There is of course a great veil of silence over the high rate of crime and welfare dependancy among Africans (Americans will recognize the pattern) but official admissions do sometimes leak out. And Christians from Arab lands are certainly a most endangered and most deserving group with every prospect of assimilating successfully. Lebanese Christians have a long history of prospering in Australia. It is a credit to Australia that it has moved to the forefront in rescuing the Arab Christians

THE Federal Government will dramatically cut its intake of refugees from Africa, while lifting the number of refugees from the Middle East, including large numbers of Christian Iraqis. Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews yesterday announced the Refugee and Humanitarian Intake for 2007-08. It will cut the number of immigrants from Africa by 30 per cent. Only a few years ago Africa accounted for up to 70 per cent of the entire humanitarian program. But integrating African refugees, particularly from war-ravaged Sudan, has been very expensive. It is believed the Government is hoping to help consolidate the African communities and families who are already here.

"The intake from the Africa region reflects an improvement in conditions in some countries and an increase in the number of people returning to their country of origin," Mr Andrews said. The overall number of refugee places will remain stable at 13,000. But the intake from the Middle East and Asia will increase to about 35 per cent each.

Mr Andrews said the increased intake of Iraqis who had fled their country follows an international conference on Iraq convened by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in April. The conference discussed the plight of refugees from Iraq, many Christian.

The most recent Budget saw an additional $209 million over four years allocated to helping refugees settle into Australian life. Mr Andrews said the increased intake from Asia was largely because of resettlement programs for Burmese refugees in Thailand and Bhutanese refugees in Nepal.

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Australia relaxes its immigration rules to persuade skilled young Britons to emigrate

Australia is making sweeping changes to its immigration policy in an attempt to attract skilled British workers to move Down Under. The changes - which will target workers in the medical profession, the IT sector and tradesmen and women - will result in the country's points-based immigration system being adapted to make it easier for fluent English-speaking professionals between the ages of 30 and 35 to gain work visas.

Under Australia's Skilled Migration Programme, points are awarded to potential immigrants according to their age, ability to speak languages, occupation, skills and experience. Immigrants who gain a total of 120 points are automatically fast-tracked through the migration process. Previously, however, British professionals aged 30-35 often struggled to gain work visas, losing out on precious points because to their age. Under the new scheme, five extra points will be automatically awarded to anyone who passes an "optional standardised English-language test", making it simpler for English speakers to achieve a perfect score. The new recruitment drive is reminiscent of the country's "Ten Pound Poms" scheme, when British migrants paid a mere œ10 fare to move to Australia to plug gaps in the economy in the 1950s and 1960s. The programme prompted about one million Britons to up sticks and head for a place of work in the sun.

Then, as now, the problem was an acute shortage of skilled labour. Australia has huge gaps in an economy which continues to grow and the government is looking for more immigrants than ever before. It has already increased targets for this year - 102,500 new residents, from its original target of 97,000.

Chris Cook, spokesman for the Australian Visa Bureau, said: "The implications of these changes are vast. The Australian government realises it is lacking workers in many professions which it desperately needs to fill, so the country is throwing its doors open to huge numbers of skilled and experienced British people and making it easier for them to meet the minimum eligibility requirements."

Professionals who are being sought by the Australian government include doctors, teachers, accountants, plumbers, nurses, carpenters, dentists and IT managers. The country's weekly list of migration occupations in demand currently includes 38 managerial and professional jobs, one associate professional position, 10 posts in computing and 46 positions in trades. Australia's capital, Canberra, is experiencing a record-breaking boom in its construction industry, but local unemployment is the lowest in the country meaning that there is a mass shortage of skilled builders.

Between July 2001 and 2002, the total number of Britons who settled in Australia was 8,749. By last year, of the 150,000 foreigners who were granted permanent visas to live in Australia, 24,800 were British, followed by 15,865 Indian nationals and 14,688 Chinese. Two-thirds of the total were skilled migrants. The majority of migrants last year listed their occupations as accountants, computing professionals and registered nurses. Their average age was 31.

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"Wogs" OK in Australia

We read:

"Australia becoming a country of wogs - and it is OK to say so. The federal Arts Minister, George Brandis, said yesterday that calling someone a "wog" is no longer considered offensive or racist because Australians are better at laughing at themselves. "It is a badge of arrival when a racial group can tell a joke against itself," he said.

But the Liberal MP Teresa Gambaro, the Assistant Minister for Immigration whose parents hail from the southern Italian region of Calabria, said using the word depended on the situation. "I wouldn't like a complete stranger to call me a wog. I think I'd be quite offended then."

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Senator Brandis is probably best known for pointing out how similar Greenie policies are to the policies of Hitler. See also here on that.

Historically, the term "wog" was applied to poor immigrants from Southern Europe but people from Southern Europe are now so prosperous and well assimilated into the general Australian society that they actually run the parliament of Australia's most populous State (NSW). And some Australians of Southern European origin do now cheerfully describe themselves as "wogs".

All of which goes to show that for an ethnic description to be derogatory and offensive, there has to be some adverse reality behind it. If there is in fact nothing inferior or discreditable about the group concerned, words describing that group ("Redneck" is a good U.S. example) will have little power to offend.





Australian Federal Parliamentary report derides 'Global Warming'

There has been quite a media blackout on this so I am pleased to have finally found a lead-in to the report

The Australian Federal Parliament's Standing Committee on Science and Innovation recently completed a report entitled Between a Rock and a Hard Place, on the subject of "Geosequestration of Carbon Dioxide". However, four members of that committee have issued a "Dissenting Report" which devastates the Committee's major premise-that mankind causes global warming.

The dissenting MPs are former CSIRO scientist Dr. Dennis Jensen, Hon Jackie Kelly, Hon Danna Vale and Mr. David Tollner. Their report was compiled with the assistance of a number of leading scientists, including climate scientist Dr. John Christy, former lead author of the IPCC. It is a must read for anyone concerned with the subject.

They state at the very outset that, "We disagree with the report's unequivocal support for the hypothesis that global warming is caused by man-so-called anthropogenic global warming (AGW). We are concerned that the Committee's report strays well outside its terms of reference. In fact, the committee did not take any evidence relating to anthropogenic global warming."

Some of the chief points of their refutation include:

* Global warming is observed on other planets or moons, including Mars, Jupiter, Triton, Pluto, Neptune and others. Did man cause this?

* That the so-called "overwhelming consensus" embodied in the IPCC report has nothing to do with science, nor does such a consensus even exist. It is in fact drawn from its "Summary for Policymakers" which was written by politicians, not by scientists, and its supposed "90% certainty" is backed up by nothing in the report, but is merely a "consensus opinion arrived at by IPCC bureaucrats"; and, in any case, so-called "democratic consensus" is entirely opposed to scientific method. "Consensus", for instance, once held that the earth was at the centre of the universe, and that it was flat.

* That the "Stern Review" upon which the Committee based its majority report, was drafted by a man who "acknowledges that he had zero understanding of the issue less than one year before the Stern Review . It is staggering that someone with essentially no scientific knowledge on greenhouse effect, within less than one year, had acquired the scientific knowledge to state that the 'scientific evidence is now overwhelming'."

"Indeed, if one paragraph clearly illustrates the one sided nature of this report," the dissenters say, "it is paragraph 5.59. Here, we have a captain of industry (Rupert Murdoch), who, by his own admission is not a scientist, quoted regarding his view on anthropogenic global warming and the need to take action", citing Murdoch's claims that "climate change poses clear catastrophic threats."

There is much more, on glaciers, rising sea levels, Australia's rainfall patterns, etc., and the report is extensively footnoted. It may be accessed here

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Ambulance men being used instead of doctors in New South Wales

Another government health system downgrading its services because it cannot provide enough doctors and hospital beds

AMBULANCE officers will be trained to treat non-critical patients and take them to GPs or non-hospital services under a controversial plan. The shake-up of health care roles, kept secret by the NSW Health Department, is aimed at easing the workload of hospital emergency departments. It is part of a growing trend to generalise health care, as seen in the creation of practitioner nurses, community health and hospital-in-home teams.

A draft Ambulance Service of NSW document, obtained by the Herald, said ambulance officers could "safely assess and manage certain conditions in the home without the need to convey patients to hospital for care". Like regular ambulance officers, extended-care paramedics would respond to emergency calls and treat critical patients. However, they would also be required to administer simple drugs such as antibiotics and arrange x-rays and other diagnostic tests as well as make direct patient referrals to GPs and community nurses. "It is becoming increasingly recognised that the emergency department may not necessarily be the most appropriate . destination for the patient to have their health care needs met. However, [it] is often the only current option provided," the draft said.

But emergency experts say the plan is a stop-gap measure in a failing health system, while GPs are concerned the plan may add more pressure to practices.

Extended-care paramedics will be chosen from the ranks of the NSW Ambulance Service and undergo eight weeks of training. Program trials are due to start next month and will involve 12 ambulance officers from western Sydney, where attendance at emergency departments rose more than 9 per cent last year. About 20 per cent of NSW emergency calls attended by ambulances do not result in the patient being taken to hospital, according to the draft proof of the concept document.

Modern ambulance services were facing challenges which included an ageing population, the rise of chronic disease, unpredictable delays at hospital emergency departments and increased demand due to the reduced availability of after-hours GPs, the draft document said. Dr Tony Joseph, chairman of the NSW faculty of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, said the new system could put pressure on paramedics to keep patients at home or refer them to non-acute care instead taking them to hospital. "If you delay someone going to hospital who needs to go, when they do eventually get admitted . they are often sicker, they stay longer in hospital and there will be increased cost to the community," Dr Joseph said. "If we are going to do it right, do it the first time."

Dr Joseph said the program appeared to be another "stop-gap measure for a failing health system". The chief executive of the Nepean Division of General Practice, Michael Edwards, said the plan would "extend an already over-extended workload" for GPs.

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