Australia must not grow the crop that feeds most of the world??

Let's have swamps instead, apparently. Isn't it wonderful to have "experts" on the case? One reason for the much bemoaned low water levels in the Murray river is that large quantities of dam water have already been flushed down the Snowy and out to sea as "environmental" flows

Drought-hit Australia ["drought-hit"? Dam levels across Australia have been rising for the last year or so] must stop growing rice because it is too thirsty and uses 10 times as much water as other crops, an expert warns. Dr Eric Craswell, from the Australian National University, said rice should no longer be planted in the Murray-Darling Basin, and the water be allowed to flow through the river system to help the environment.

"People have said you shouldn't single out particular industries but I think in the case of rice there is an argument," he told AAP. "Instead of growing rice in the very wet years, let that water go down the river to rejuvenate the wetlands."

Dr Craswell - of ANU's Fenner School of Environment and Society - said most Australian rice was exported and questioned why the nation was growing rice for overseas markets when its own water was running so low. He said rice-growing should be left to countries with monsoonal climates like Thailand.

He pointed out that using a litre of water to grow vegetables or grapes produced 10 times as much revenue as using that water to grow rice. There has not been a significant rice crop in five years because of the drought. "The rice mills have been in mothballs for the last year," Dr Craswell said.

However Les Gordon, president of Ricegrowers' Association of Australia, said the commodity should continue to be grown because many countries were running out due to the world food shortage. "If we don't grow rice, you won't see rice on your supermarket shelves," Mr Gordon said.

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Spanking 'causes mental illness'

What rubbish! More likely the lack of it causes psychological problems. But the study noted below allows no causal inferences either way. It says that children who are smacked more are more badly behaved. It does not seem to have entered the addled heads of the do-gooders who wrote the report that maybe the kids who are smacked more are smacked BECAUSE they are badly behaved. Ignoring the obvious is no problem if you have ideological blinkers on

Smacking and yelling at children is causing a rise in mental health problems, with three-year-olds suffering from depression and anxiety. At least one in seven children are affected by a mental illness. Some psychologists are reporting a 60 per cent increase in the number of youngsters displaying anxiety and social issues.

A study from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute has found that harsh discipline and parental stress is increasing the risk of mental health troubles in young children. Stressed parents lashing out at their kids are behind the growing problem. Study author and child psychologist Dr Jordana Bayer said constant smacking and yelling at a child was fuelling abusive behaviour. "We are not talking about a parent who smacks just once," she said. "Remember when parents smack or hit their child, they might learn to do that as well. When parents are stressed, it's more challenging to be relaxed and respond to their children in ways they would like to respond to them."

Researchers have been following more than 700 toddlers, aged between seven months and three years, to reveal the risks of parenting practices. Children subjected to physical punishment are more likely to kick, hit and bite others and become socially withdrawn. Parents who continue to smack their abusive children could be setting them on a path of alcohol and drug abuse, crime, unemployment and suicide.

Dr Kimberley O'Brien, of the Quirky Kids Clinic at Woollahra, Sydney, said stressed parents were placing too much pressure on their children. "We have seen a 60 per cent increase in demand for our child anxiety classes in the past six months," she said.

Mental health has become one of the nation's biggest health issues. Psychologists are seeing toddlers biting their nails, while older children are wetting the bed and pulling out their eyelashes as a result of anxiety. Despite a push by experts to ban smacking, some adults are still using the "traditional" method to discipline children. Childhood Foundation CEO Joe Tucci said hitting youngsters had become outdated.

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Crookedness goes to the top of Victoria's police force

As it did in Queensland in the days of Terry Lewis

Explosive was the word usually used to describe the hearings that led to yesterday's charging of police union boss Paul Mullett and two others. Bombshell after bombshell was dropped through secretly bugged conversations that ignited debate about police corruption and power struggles at the very top of the force. The Office of Police Integrity hearings last November resulted in State Parliament being told of plans to install a puppet chief commissioner. An OPI report named former assistant commissioner Noel Ashby as the puppet and police union boss Paul Mullett as the puppet master. Both men were charged yesterday, along with former police media director Steve Linnell.

The damning OPI report, which was tabled in Parliament in February, was called "Exposing corruption within senior levels of Victoria Police". It claimed Mr Linnell was "Mr Ashby's enthusiastic henchman" in the conspiracy to get Sen-Sgt Mullett's man into the top job. "Mr Mullett believed that if he could use his contacts to install Mr Ashby, he would have a puppet chief commissioner," the OPI report alleged.

It claimed Sen-Sgt Mullett and Mr Ashby had joined forces to oppose Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon and Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland. The report accused Sen-Sgt Mullett and Mr Ashby of being prepared to compromise the murder investigation into the 2003 death of gigolo Shane Chartres-Abbott during the power struggle.

"Both Ms Nixon and Mr Overland were viewed as outsiders," the report claimed. "They are proponents of a reform agenda that challenges the old style of policing to which some within Victoria Police cling. "The common rallying point provided Mr Mullett and Mr Ashby with a common purpose. "Working to destabilise and undermine senior police in Victoria Police command, the end goals of this alliance were to install Mr Ashby as commissioner of police and to provide Mr Mullett with a puppet commissioner. "Motivated to gain personal power, both men fostered the alliance without regard to the impact on either the Victoria Police or the Police Association. "Even the prospect of compromising a murder investigation appears to have had secondary consideration. "Neither Mr Mullett nor Mr Ashby could have achieved their aims without a willing, and, at times, gullible supporting cast."

The report also alleged:

MR LINNELL fed Mr Ashby confidential material to help him to undermine Mr Overland, who they saw as Mr Ashby's rival for the chief commissioner's job.

MR ASHBY tipped off Sen-Sgt Mullett that he and Chartres-Abbott murder suspect Det-Sgt Peter Lalor had probably been bugged during a damaging telephone conversation.

SEN-SGT MULLETT was able to manipulate Mr Ashby at will.

MR ASHBY agreed to a request from Sen-Sgt Mullett to try to intervene to save the job of a factional supporter who was facing discipline charges.

Mr Ashby quit immediately after appearing at the OPI public hearings. Sen-Sgt Mullett revealed in February he was planning to quit his $180,000-a-year position with the union and said his decision was not linked to his suspension from Victoria Police. Mr Ashby and Sen-Sgt Mullett have both repeatedly denied the allegations made against them.

Counsel assisting the OPI, Dr Greg Lyon, SC, claimed during the OPI hearings that Mr Ashby passed information to Sen-Sgt Mullett that led Sen-Sgt Mullett to the conclusion that Det-Sgt Lalor's telephone was being intercepted. Dr Lyon alleged Sen-Sgt Mullett then asked Police Association president Brian Rix to tip off Det-Sgt Lalor. Evidence was produced during the OPI hearing that Det-Sgt Lalor rang former detective David "Docket" Waters, who was also a suspect in the Chartres-Abbott murder, immediately after an urgent meeting with Insp Rix in the Police Association car park. But no evidence was produced as to whether anyone had warned Det-Sgt Lalor or Mr Waters they were murder suspects.

Insp Rix denies doing so and no charges have been laid or recommended against him. Former Federal Court judge and OPI delegate Murray Wilcox, QC, said in the February report to State Parliament there was not enough evidence to prove Sen-Sgt Mullett warned Det-Sgt Lalor he was being investigated over the Chartres-Abbott murder. But Mr Wilcox said the inference could be drawn that the alleged warning was over a serious criminal offence and that was sufficient to consider a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice against Sen-Sgt Mullett.

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An orgy of climate self-satisfaction

A mocking comment from Stephen Matchett

The world is heating up because people are running their airconditioners too high, driving their four-wheel drives too fast and turning on TiVo. As the planet warms up, tide and tempest, flood and fire, plague and - you get the idea - will engulf us. Already global gloomsters are inviting the four horsepersons of the apocalypse to come and punish us for our conspicuous consumption, the way we use coal-fired power stations to run toasters, that sort of thing.

So it's fortunate that when it comes to doing something we have a Prime Minister who tells us what he is going to do, in many languages. And this time he actually remembered to stop talking long enough to act, commissioning economist Ross Garnaut and a bunch of brainy bureaucrats to work out how we can slow global warming.

And what they say is we must cut our carbon emissions in ways that only economists and the experts who blog at self-righteous.com will ever understand. (Before I get an aggrieved email from Climate Change Minister Penny Wong's office I know the Government's response to Garnaut was a green, not a white paper, which means they have put all the politically poisonous bits in it they will later take out; but as nobody appears to have read the document they may as well have called it a puce paper for all the colour scheme signifies.)

Still, even though few have a clue what it all means everybody is delighted that Australia is leading the way in saving the planet. Everybody that is, except aggrieved industrialists and annoyed unionists who think the Government plans to do too much and greens who are convinced it is not doing enough, because only alternative energy isn't evil.

Still, the rest of us seem pretty pleased. After years of people demanding that somebody does something about the weather, somebody is. The problem is that we do not have a snowflake's in the global greenhouse chance of doing anything effective about the world's slide to ecological oblivion. While we use more energy than people whose primary power comes from dried cow dung, there are not very many of us. Australia could cut carbon emissions to zero without moving the global warming weather vane.

But let's not allow a little thing like reality to get in the way of cutting carbon. It's time we were punished for our acts of power profligacy, such as the environmental vandalism of forgetting to turn the outside light off at bedtime. So it's generous of the Government to make us - well, some of us - feel better by slugging us for the cost of carbon. And you know the pain will do us good, because emitters are upset. People who own power stations are demanding carbon credits on the grounds that change is so stressful.

There is outrage in the LNG industry because a carbon tax will make it harder to boast about ever increasing annual profits. Then there are the unions and the inevitable activists in the welfare industry who are demanding compensation for, you guessed it, working families, basically because this is their standard response to every event, from global warming to the price of potatoes.

And because the Government's green-ness does not extend to its electoral instincts, emitters, unions and activists will get the carbon compensation they demand. The chance of anything other than a carbon tax on petrol before the next, or for that matter any, election is as likely as Brendan Nelson abandoning aphorisms for English in his speeches. It's also the reason why the puce, sorry green, paper proposes parliament will decide our annual carbon emissions.

You can imagine the outcome after lobbyists get into the ears of members and senators. We will have industry exemptions and concessions for working families and farmers. And of course government MPs with marginal seats will all want headlines in thelocal papers, of the "MP saves area fromwhatever this carbon thing is all about"variety.

By the time the snouts rise from the carbon trough emissions are likely to have increased: after all, saving the planet is one thing, saving the Government's hide is entirely another.

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