A HUGE double standard over paedophilia

Only the common herd can be paedophiles, apparently

Spot the difference. One man takes photographs of children aged from two to 12, paddling clothed in a pond at Darling Harbour. The other man takes pictures of a 12-year-old, posed with breasts bared. The first man is Jason Donald Cotter, a homeless bartender who on Monday was ordered to stand trial in Sydney next year for child pornography. The second is Bill Henson, who, far from being charged, was this year defended by the leaders of our arts caste as one of our greatest artists.

Yes, you spotted it. The crucial difference wasn't that Cotter took photographs without the parents' permission. He isn't charged with failing to get consent, but with having a pornographic image of a child. Just to be precise, Inspector Brenton Lee said the only images Cotter had were those of the children at Darling Harbour: "That's the evidence, taking pictures of children in partial undress." That, the police allege, is child porn. But a picture taken of a child stripped and flaunted is not - and it seems the difference is that Henson is an artist. So insisted 54 leaders of the arts industry - all among the 1000 of our "best and brightest" chosen for Kevin Rudd's ideas summit - in a petition they signed in Henson's defence, when police checked his latest exhibition.

Henson was cleared, of course. You see, in our curious world some of those with the greatest power to set an example and make our culture are excused the moral standards set for even a homeless barman.

Consider an even more startling example - the defence of the pedophilia of artist Donald Friend. Documentary maker Kerry Negara has just shot A Loving Friend, a film of the artist's life, and discovered Friend had spent much time in Bali, where he had sex with boys as young as nine. But it wasn't just the pedophilia that disturbed her, or Friend's claims in his diaries that the boys had seduced him. As she said: "I've been speaking to some of our most influential people in the world of art in Australia, who deny that he caused any harm. So basically what they're trying to say is that Donald was a nice pedophile . . ."

True. Here's the National Library's Paul Hetherington, who edited three volumes of Friend's diaries, when asked on the ABC about Friend's pedophilia: "I don't know that we can go today into the complexity of the relationships between Friend and the young men . . ."

Here, from Negara's film, is Barry Pearce, head curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of NSW: "I don't think there's a hard line dividing the black from the white on the subject of pedophilia. There's a penumbra . . . and I think that Donald was definitely on the light side of penumbra . . . I would be shocked if anyone brought that term (pedophile) to Donald."

Here's Lou Klepac, former deputy director at the Art Gallery of Western Australia and a Friend biographer: "I don't consider Donald's sexual interests to be highly immoral . . . Donald's like was to be homosexual and he liked young men." So I'd advise any other homeless sod caught with dodgy pictures, or worse, to now plead: "I'm an artist, your honour." If he's lucky, he'll get off with a grant.

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Wonder wine 'cleans blood vessels'

Just the old resveratrol religion again. When properly tested, resveratrol does NOT do many of the things claimed for it -- such as prolong life

An Australian doctor says he has created the world's healthiest wine, which cleans your blood vessels and reduces the risk of heart attack as you drink it. Each bottle contained up to 100 times the amount of resveratrol - a naturally occurring anti-oxidant found in grapes - than a standard drop, says Sydney's Dr Philip Norrie.

Resveratrol helped to maintain blood flow by keeping arteries free of fatty deposits called atherosclerotic plaque, Dr Norrie said, and a wine infused with high levels of the odourless, tasteless anti-oxidant would act as a "vascular pipe-cleaner''.

"While the positive effects of moderate wine consumption have long been documented, the inclusion of such large quantities of this beneficial anti-oxidant is very good news for wine drinkers,'' says Dr Norrie. "What we've been able to do is boost the amount of resveratrol in wine and you wont even know its there ... you're effectively clearing your arteries while you drink.'' Dr Norrie is producing both a chardonnay and a shiraz with each having 100mg/L of resveratrol per bottle. He said this was as much as is contained in 70 to 100 bottles of standard white wine or 15 to 20 bottles of standard red.

"I stress that these benefits are best realised with moderate drinking,'' Dr Norrie also said in a warning to any connoisseurs planning a wine-based health kick. University of Queensland cardiologist Associate Professor David Colquhoun also stressed the need for "moderate'' consumption as he said the benefits of resveratrol were well known. "Studies have strongly suggested that consumption of wine rich in resveratrol can lessen cardio-vascular disease, heart attack and stroke, he said. [Whisky and beer are pretty good too so could it just be the alcohol?]

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THE BIG GREEN DEBATE CONTINUES

Four current articles below

Rudd throws off the idealist mask to reveal a pragmatist underneath

EVERY now and then you have to be grateful when you discover our political leaders have told a deliberate, calculated lie. Monday was such a day. Kevin Rudd's announcement of a carbon emissions reduction target of 5 per cent by 2020 demonstrated that his pre-election claim that climate change was the great moral issue of our time, and demanding that Australia lead the way, was what Winston Churchill would call a terminological inexactitude: a whopper, a piece of bare-faced duplicity of epic proportions. But thank goodness Rudd and his colleagues deceived us.

And deceive us they did. At the election last year, Rudd said Australian wanted real action on climate change. And Rudd acted, in a real symbolic kind of way. He ratified the Kyoto Protocol. More symbolism when he promised to cut emissions by 60 per cent on 2000 levels by 2050, 41 years away.

While most of the media has failed to take Rudd to task, the truth is that if the Rudd Government genuinely believed climate change to be the greatest moral threat facing humanity, and if it fully accepted the findings of the UN panel that laid down a minimum target cut of 25 per cent to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 to prevent catastrophic climate change, then we now would have bigger cuts. A true believer in those claims could do no less.

To a true believer, policy responses to a temporary global financial crisis could not compete with the sort of policies required to stem permanent, irrevocable damage caused by climate change. But, thank God, Rudd and his ministers are not in fact true believers. Rudd's higher carbon reduction target of 15 per cent is predicated on other key economies committing to target reductions comparable to Australia. In other words, Australia follows, rather than leads. Rudd's caution on targets is unquestionably driven by, dare one use the word, scepticism about the world's ability to reach consensus on tackling climate change. In other words, Rudd sounds more and more like John Howard every day.

The alternative - that Australia lead the climate change parade rather than sitting comfortably in middle of the pack - is the kind of moral narcissism only the Greens and like-minded eco-fundamentalists can afford. Bob Brown, who has the luxury of a public platform without the attendant responsibility, will always take the most extreme position, as he did on the weekend. He claimed that a target of 5 per cent to 15 per cent reductions by 2020 was "effectively running up the white flag on climate change". Without any of the embarrassment deception would cause a real political leader, Brown implied that setting a low target for Australia limiting global greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to 550 parts per million would lead to the loss of the Great Barrier Reef, and the devastation of Kakadu and our alpine snowfields. Similarly, only the politically naive Clive Hamilton could defend mainstream environmental organisations for pushing a moderate position, without flinching with equal embarrassment.

What Brown and his overzealous supporters don't tell us is that whatever target Australia chooses is irrelevant to global greenhouse gas concentrations. Australia's emissions are such a tiny percentage of total global greenhouse gas emissions that we could adopt a target 10, 20 or 100 times more stringent than what Brown advocates but have zero effect on saving the reef, Kakadu or the snowfields if China, India, the US and other big emitters don't join in.

Rudd and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong have no such luxury. They lead a Government and know that putting Australia at the leading edge of climate change targets will put Australia at the bleeding edge of policy mistakes, where real people lose their jobs. Brown's pseudo-religious rhetoric may appeal to some ALP voters but Rudd knows it would be the kiss of death to the Australian economy without securing any corresponding benefit to global carbon levels. Indeed, adopting 25 per cent to 40per cent targets if big emitters such as China don't do the same could do great damage to the Australian economy and the world's greenhouse gas levels.

If Australia adopts draconian targets but China does not, Australia's emission-intensive industries will become uncompetitive with Chinese competitors, shifting production from less dirty Australian industry to dirtier Chinese competitors. It is a double whammy, at a stroke wiping out Australian jobs and damaging the environment.

Rudd and Wong have done the right thing in adopting the minimum targets they could get away with. They did the right thing by not taking ambitious targets to Poznan last week despite the hysterical claims by Greenpeace International that Australia, and the other usual suspects, were not doing enough to set up a framework for a new climate change deal. Governments, weighed down by the responsibility of governing, know and have always known that the rhetoric of climate change as the great moral issue of our time was bunkum.

Climate change is an economic issue and a policy challenge that demands the kind of careful, pragmatic balancing act that the Rudd Government embraces as its touchstone. Rudd, of course, has form when it comes to discovering that what was a great moral issue on the campaign stump has become, in office, a policy issue requiring nuance and responsible pragmatism. In Opposition, Rudd described the day the GST came into effect as "fundamental injustice" day. In office, the Prime Minister has discovered it is a fundamental injustice delivering streams of money he cannot do without. Similarly, campaigning Rudd slyly hinted that he had policies that would lower food and fuel prices. In office, he produced the demonstrably toothless FuelWatch and GroceryChoice. These deceptions pale into insignificance beside the spectacularly dishonest claims about moral leadership on climate change. Yet, paradoxically, all the pieces of cynical manipulation have one thing in common. They are good policy and we should be grateful to have been deceived.

The dishonesty underlying the position of Brown and activists such as Hamilton is of an altogether more sinister kind. They want Australia to adopt targets they know will decimate Australian industry without producing any noticeable benefit for total global greenhouse concentrations. Underlying their policies is an undisclosed secret agenda. Brown and many of his followers don't like industry, think Australians are too materialistic and should be forced back to a simpler but poorer life: a compulsory downshift, if you will, imposed by stealth. The choice between Brown and Rudd may be completely unappealing. However, offered the choice between two political shysters, go for the pragmatic one. The worst combination by far is deception married with moral delusion.

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Industry revolt on green plan as miners sacked

Can ANY government last long as a destroyer of jobs?

Heavy industry is demanding further concessions in the Rudd Government's modest emissions trading scheme, saying it will still cost jobs, stymie investment and exacerbate the effects of the economic downturn.

Environmentalists are outraged at the Prime Minister's commitment to cut carbon emissions by just five per cent. 16/12/2008. Conservationists have panned the scheme for pandering to "dirty" industry, saying it will not help the environment and offers overly generous compensation that transfers $2.24 billion from taxpayers to major polluters in 2010, potentially rising to $12.25billion in 2020.

But industries such as cement, aluminium and coalmining say that although the Government increased compensation and announced modest emission reduction targets in the scheme unveiled on Monday, they would lobby for further concessions, either in draft legislation to be released early next year or through Coalition-supported amendments in the Senate. Cement manufacturers are being offered an initial 90 per cent of their carbon permits for free, but Cement Australia chief executive Chris Leon said the fact that the permits covered only some of his operational processes and declined by 1.3 per cent each year meant the scheme still put a proposed $700 million expansion to his Gladstone plant in jeopardy. "The Government has offered improvements, but I am very concerned this will tip our Gladstone project over the edge. It is now much less likely we will build this investment here and more likely we will invest in Indonesia or Thailand," he said. The Cement Industry Federation has already begun its Senate lobbying, taking Coalition senators to cement plants to explain the industry's economics.

As conservationists staged nationwide protests yesterday against the Government's ETS - which promises a 2020 emissions reduction target of between 5 per cent and 15 per cent depending on the ambition of an international climate change deal - Kevin Rudd insisted it was appropriate for the economic times. "The Australian Government, given the global financial crisis, makes no apologies whatsoever for introducing responsible medium-term targets to bring down our greenhouse gas emissions, capable of being built on in the future more ambitiously," the Prime Minister said. Mr Rudd has also been hitting the phones explaining his scheme to other world leaders, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key.

But Malcolm Turnbull, whose support Mr Rudd is seeking for the Senate passage of his scheme, was immediately confronted with deep splits within his own party. The Opposition Leader and his spokesman, Andrew Robb, have said they have an "open mind" on the scheme and have sought to buy time to formulate a united response by commissioning a study that will not report until February. But in an emailed newsletter sent yesterday, Liberal senator Cory Bernardi said he remained "unconvinced about the need for an ETS given that carbon dioxide is vital for life on earth and the earth hasn't warmed since 1998". Nationals senators have also come out against the scheme.

The Greens have said they will hold a Senate inquiry next year into the "inadequacy" of the Government's proposed targets.

The union movement has split in its response to the ETS. Australian Workers Union head and ACTU vice-president Paul Howes slammed ACTU president Sharan Burrow for calling on the Government to commit to tougher 2020 targets, and urged the Opposition to support the proposal in the Senate. "The ACTU proposition is something I cannot support at this stage. I believe this ETS strikes the right balance between doing what's right for the environment and protecting Australian jobs," Mr Howes said.

Meanwhile, the coal industry, where declining commodity prices have led to two coalmines announcing more than 400 job losses yesterday, said it would continue to lobby to be included in the more generous compensation formula announced by the Government. Methane emissions from different coalmines vary according to geology, and the Government has offered $500 million over five years to help the gassiest mines buy some of their permits and a further $250 million to help mines install abatement technologies. The Australian Coal Association says the industry should qualify for the far more generous assistance offered under the broader compensation scheme.

The aluminium industry - which does qualify for 90 per cent free permits in the initial years - is also lobbying for the Government to lower the annual rate at which it withdraws the free permits. "In its first year of operation, the current proposal is likely to add costs of over $150 million per year to the Australian alumina and aluminium industry," said the president of the Australian Aluminium Council, Steve Hodgson. "This cost will then increase as emissions-intensive assistance is eroded and the price of carbon increases. "We argue the assistance should not be reduced in the absence of a global climate change agreement."

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Big-boy's toy with Greenie spin

Greenpeace are big on this too. They like playing around in boats



The record-breaking, biodiesel-powered Earthrace vessel is visiting Queensland promoting the use of environmentally sound fuels. The unique craft - like something out of Mad Max on water - this year set a new record for a powerboat to circle the globe. Using renewable biodiesel fuel for a net zero carbon footprint, the 24,000 nautical mile voyage took 60 days, 23 hours and 49 minutes, smashing the record by over two weeks. Earthrace skipper Pete Bethune said the vessel's tour aimed to connect with people and encourage debate on environmental issues.

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Blacks warned over 'carbon-baggers'

There are claims that unscrupulous carbon brokers have been approaching Indigenous communities and trying to sign them up to questionable carbon trading deals. The newly created Australian Indigenous Chamber of Commerce has urged Indigenous communities to be wary of entering any agreements.

The Labor party's former national president Warren Mundine now heads the new body, which was set up to advise Indigenous communities on how to navigate the complex issue of emissions trading. He says the scheme has the potential to generate investment and jobs for Indigenous communities which own vast tracts of land across Australia. "They control 20 per cent of the Australian land mass... this is a great opportunity for them to get 20 per cent of the emissions trading," he said. "What we want to do is make sure the Indigenous community have the opportunity to make an informed decision and that informed decision can only be made on the science, on the economics and on the law," he said.

Mr Mundine says he has concerns about the legitimacy of some agreements. "There are what we call a lot of carbon-baggers out there who are trying to take advantage of Indigenous communities and the ignorance in this area," he said. Mr Mundine says the chamber wants to ensure Indigenous interests are protected before the scheme comes into force in 2010. He has urged people to have any agreements examined by the chamber, which he says can help deliver maximum benefits for the long term. "There's opportunities for them to make money out of that in the trading," he said. "There's also the opportunities for regenerating their county ... there's also the opportunities for lands that don't meet that criteria ... that they're able to look at renewable energy such as biofuels, solar energy and wind farming."

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