Vin ordinaire comes to Australia and the wowsers are fuming



France has had very cheap rough red like this for centuries without degenerating into a mass of drunks so why is it a problem for Australia? The only difference is that the Australian drop is a lot less ordinaire. Dan Murphy's cleanskins are pretty good

Health advocates want the price of alcohol capped at a minimum with a major liquor chain now selling bottles of wine for just $2 a bottle. Liquor giant Dan Murphy's promotion means its cleanskins are selling for 25 cents per standard drink.

Health campaigners say grog discounting has gone too far and insist a government-imposed price minimum should be considered. The Australian Drug Foundation's alcohol director Geoff Munro said heavy drinkers consumed more as prices fell. "It's not appropriate to treat alcohol as though it belongs in a $2 shop,'' Mr Munro said. "It's now cheaper than water.'' "This indicates that goverments should explore introducing aminimum price for alcohol.''

Wine has a 13 per cent concentration while alcopops - which have been hit with a controversial new tax - have concentrations of between five and nine per cent.

Mr Munro said cheap drinks encourged excess consumption. "Heavy drinkers will drink more as the price comes down,'' he said. "To be selling bottles of wine for less than $2 is going to encourage heavy drinkers, and possibly underage people, to consume more.'' "The price will make wine much more attractive to young people and we need to monitor that situation given that alcopops have increased in price with the tax.''

In Britain, a major supermarket chain had called for a floor price on booze, saying it is the only way to stop competitive discounting among retailers. Scotland is planning a floor price per unit of alcohol, based on concentration, to beat its binge drinking problem.

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NOTE for overseas readers: "Wowser" is a traditional Australian term for temperance campaigners and killjoys of all sorts. Their headquarters used to be the Methodist church but Australia wisely abolished that church a quarter of a century ago. Such people now seem to infest the Salvation Army





Climate scheme would cost plenty



Fuel prices would skyrocket under new plans to tackle climate change. However, poorer families would be cushioned from the full impact. The government's climate change guru, Professor Ross Garnaut has called for transport to be included in an emissions trading scheme, setting the stage for fuel prices to spiral far beyond those caused by the current oil crunch.

The distinguished economist today released a draft report he prepared for the federal and state Governments on climate change and the introductions of emissions trading. Prof Garnaut said low-income families should be compensated for higher fuel and power costs when the scheme was introduced. He also said the Government should make payments to emissions-intensive industries which could lose jobs overseas if they had to cope with higher costs.

Under emissions trading, a cap will be placed on the amount of carbon which can be emitted into the atmosphere. Companies will be able to purchase and trade permits which allow them to emit carbon gases. Prof Garnaut said as many industries should be included in the scheme as possible, including transport. He said the money the Government earned from the scheme should be spent on compensating low-income households and business.

``The direct price effects of the emissions trading scheme will be regressive,'' Prof Garnaut said. ``The effects will fall heavily on low-income households, so the credibility, stability, efficiency and longevity of the scheme require the correction of these regressive effects by other measures.'' Prof Garnaut said the coal industry should be given support to reduce carbon emissions and to develop technology which buried carbon gasses under ground.

He said international cooperation on fighting climate change was essential. ``The weight of scientific evidence tells us that Australians are facing risks of damaging climate change,'' Prof Garnaut said. ``The risk can be substantially reduced by strong and early action by all major economies. ``Without that action, it is probable that Australians, over the 21st century and beyond, will experience disruption in their prosperity and enjoyment of life, and to long-standing patterns in their lives.''

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Greenie laws harming agriculture

Brooke Milini is the third generation of his family to work at the Tully sugar mill and wants his children to have the opportunity to become the next generation. But as a worker and a union shop steward, he is worried about the impact of new laws to fight greenhouse gas emissions on his children's future jobs, his job and the jobs of fellow union members.

On the eve of the release of the Garnaut report on greenhouse gas emissions and as cabinet considers how to include agriculture in an emissions trading scheme, the threat to Mr Milini already exists. The National Farmers Federation warned yesterday that rigid and short-sighted greenhouse gas emissions rules could place agriculture "in serious jeopardy".

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union shop steward agrees with the NFF that an over-emphasis on reforestation to combat greenhouse gases could lead to reduced food production just as the world faces shortages and rising commodity prices.

Tax breaks for forests grown as "carbon sinks" so that greenhouse gas emitters can buy credits to offset emissions are alienating agricultural land and have been blamed for reducing water flows into the Murray-Darling river system. "The forests are expanding because of tax breaks and there's less land now for growing cane," Mr Milini said yesterday. Investors could afford to pay high prices for land to grow forests because of the tax advantages and outbid cane farmers. "Other crops are affected around here, bananas and other food, but it's mainly a threat to cane growing," he said.

In the past 18 months, 12 per cent of the cane paddocks in the Cairns region have been lost to managed-investment forestry schemes. With new laws passed last week encouraging even more forestry investment, the alienation of arable land is a trend sugar millers and farmers fear will end their industry. It is estimated the new laws, proposed by the previous government as evidence of action on greenhouse gas emissions, would lead to 81,500ha being sown as new carbon sink forests by 2011 when the Howard ETS was to come into being. "I have three children and I'd like them to be able to think about getting a job in the mill, which supplies a lot of work for the locals," Mr Milini said. "I'm worried about them and my union members. It's something that's always in the back of your head."

Yesterday, the NFF warned that wider food production here could be threatened as agriculture is included in an ETS under the Kyoto Protocol provisions, which "emphasise reforestation as the primary tool for sequestering carbon". "As the need for food production grows expotentially, we must ensure farming is not hamstrung in the process," NFF president David Crombie said. "It is imperative the international rules dictating Australia's ETS - determining domestic climate change policy and carbon markets to ensure compliance with the international policy regime and a future global carbon market - take full and reasonable account of Australia's needs," hesaid.

Nationals senator Ron Boswell said yesterday the failed Howard government forestry proposals demonstrated the need to get an ETS right.

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Fantasizing woman meets reality

She was probably unattractive and sought an escape from that

Amid a chaotic swirl of people, car horns and dust, the donkey carrying Tanya Louise Smith slowly approached a place a world away - and civilisations apart - from anything she had experienced in the suburban calm of Sydney: the Gaza Strip. Almost three months pregnant and no doubt feeling the effects after her long journey from Yemen, Ms Smith, 20, was about to enter a place where few young Australians had ventured.

The Muslim convert's odyssey from Sydney had taken her to the ancient city of Sana'a, in Yemen, where she met and married a Palestinian from Gaza and immersed herself in Islamic studies along with a small group of similarly devout Australians. But when Gaza-based militants blew up the border wall with Egypt in mid-January, a door into another world was opened to foreigners for the first time in decades. Within hours of the border breach, tens of thousands of people were on the move across Arabia - Palestinians marooned outside the strip for years, would-be jihadis wanting to take up arms against neighbouring Israel, adventurers, MPs from other Arab states, and a lone Australian woman in search of her in-laws.

Ms Smith's husband, Ahmed, had sent her to his birthplace so his parents could support her during her pregnancy. He planned to join them two weeks later, after finishing his studies at the al-Imam University in Sana'a. But the border was sealed within days of being breached. Ahmed was locked out. Ms Smith was locked in.

For the next four months, she remained with her in-laws and their extended family in a modest Gaza district in the northern region of Sajaya. She maintained a puritanical lifestyle as a devout Salafist Muslim, moving from the bathroom to her bedroom behind vanity screens and mixing only with a handful of people outside the family home. "I saw her most days she was here," said her uncle, Abu Darwiche. "But I would not recognise her if I saw her in Australia, because I never once saw her face." Ms Smith's mother-in-law cannot say exactly when it was, but sometime around March their new family member became even more reserved, retreating to her room, from where she would usually emerge only to eat.

On March 1, Israeli forces launched a large offensive into northern Gaza, aiming to put an end to rocket fire into nearby Israeli communities. In three days of fighting, more than 110 Gazans were killed, many of them militants. Sajaya was only a few blocks back from the front line of the conflict, and the sound of battle reverberated through its streets.

In Sydney, the young Australian's mother, Louise Smith, was beside herself. "She called many times and Tanya used to lock herself in her room and talk on her computer," said her father-in-law, Abu Mohammed.

Abu Mohammed's sister Hayat added: "Whenever her mother called her, we would try and comfort her. We know how a mother feels in these sorts of situations. My father would kiss her on the head and he said to her, 'You are my daughter'." The family took the 20-year-old for regular check-ups and say they regularly took peaches and apricots to her room. But by early April, they were seeing even less of her in their living room.

On April 17, Abu Mohammed took a phone call from Tel Aviv. "A lady called saying she was from the Australian embassy," he said. "She spoke Arabic very well and said, 'We respect your traditions and customs; we would just like to make Tanya's stay in Gaza legal. Can you please bring her to the Erez crossing (the only passenger crossing into Israel) and we will sort out her paperwork'. "I took her there myself and kissed her on the forehead as sheleft. I waited there from 11.30am until 7pm. We never saw her again."

After four months in Gaza, Ms Smith was taken by an Australian embassy official to Ben Gurion airport, where she boarded an El Al flight to Sydney, her Arabian odyssey over. "We have tried to call her many times, but her family always says she is tired, or sick," Abu Mohammed said. The family she left behind is still asking why, while her husband, marooned in Yemen, is pining for the wife he barely knew and their unborn child.

"He tells us many times that we have destroyed his life," said Abu Mohammed. "He says we should never have let her go. Now how can he go to Australia and look after his child? "The main thing that is upsetting us is she is pregnant," added Hayat. "If she wasn't, we would say OK, this happens in life. But can you imagine her having a child in Australia by herself? "For a full month we were crying after she left. She wanted to live in the apartment alone. And culturally and Islamicly, we could not let her do that."

She said the family was very loyal to Ms Smith and treated her well. "Another reason we were so proud of her was she was Christian, then became a Muslim," she said. "We said to her: 'Your father has a farm and you are leaving Australia to come here. God will reward you for your sacrifices.' "We asked her: 'Would you like to go back?' She said: 'I really miss Australia, but it is a kafir (unbeliever) land.' "She had no family here and she was deprived of her husband so we wanted very much to make her feel comfortable. It was important that she have a good image of Islam and how Muslims treat people."

In December 2006, Ms Smith, from Winston Hills in Sydney's northwest, posted a note on an Australian newspaper's website explaining why she had converted to Islam. "To share and enjoy the life and love of a relationship that is not managed by fear and abuse, especially not abuse that is cloaked in the name of any religion," she wrote.

"As a Muslim woman I am free from any abuse because of my religion - Islam. It is because of my Islam that I don't live infear of a husband that comes back every night to bash me untilI'm black and blue, and then rape me." The posting went on to blame alcohol - banned in Islam - for most domestic violence. "It is because of Islam that I am empowered as a woman and not sexually exploited by man, I dress for God and not for man," she went on. Islam did not permit women to be used and abused to sell alcohol and bubblegum, she wrote. "That's why I am one of many converts to Islam and that's why Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world amongst women."

Ms Smith defended her religion on the newspaper website. "Islam liberated women 1500 years ago," she wrote. "We have enjoyed the freedoms and rights of keeping our last names as we are not the property of our husbands, we have had the right to vote before the women's liberation movement in the last century, the right to keep our own money, choose who I want to marry, have the right to inheritance, run a business, the right to be protected and maintained by our husbands regardless of how rich I am."

Yesterday, in a suburban street in western Sydney, Ms Smith's father refused to comment, preferring to first contact his daughter to decide on a response. Later, Clyde Smith telephoned to say: "Tanya would like to say that we have no comment to make regarding the alleged story."

It is understood the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra was aware of Ms Smith's situation in Gaza, and that Australian diplomats made representations to Israel and Egypt on her behalf. The matter was resolved within 10 days and the department's file on her closed.

It all began a few years ago. Ms Smith first arrived in Yemen in October 2006, and quickly settled into a community of pious Islamic Australians studying Islam and Arabic in Sana'a. Among the expatriates were Mohammed bin Ayub and Abdullah bin Ayub, the sons of the alleged former leader of Jemaah Islamiah in Australia, Abdul Rahim Ayub. The two men were arrested along with a third Australian, Marek Samulski, as part of a broad anti-terror sweep by Yemeni and British authorities. The trio was held for more than two weeks, but were later released without charge and asked to leave Yemen with their families. Samulski is living in South Africa with his wife, while the Ayubs and their families are believed to have travelled to Dar-es-Salam and then to Lebanon.

Ms Smith's Palestinian in-laws say she converted to Islam four years ago, and she was awarded a certificate of Islam from the Yemeni Government last year.

Regardless of her travails in Gaza, Ms Smith has apparently remained committed to Islam since returning to Australia, and she has consulted a fundamentalist Salafi imam.

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