ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG mocks the unwarranted raid by Kevin Rudd on the money saved up by the previous conservative government




Australia May Ease Immigration Detention, Stop Charging Fees

Potential illegals are going to love this

Australia should limit the time asylum seekers can be held in detention to 90 days before they are considered for visas, hold detainees for a maximum of one year and stop charging them fees to recoup expenses, a parliamentary committee said.

Security and identity checks should be done within 90 days and detainees would only be kept beyond one year if they present an "unacceptable risk to the community," the parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Migration said. The government should stop charging asylum seekers A$125.40 ($80) a day for the cost of their detention and cancel all existing debts, some of which exceed A$100,000, according to the committee's report. "The impacts of prolonged immigration detention and failures in administration have been too high," committee chairman Michael Danby said today in an e-mailed statement. The committee also recommends regular health checks.

Australia in 2001 adopted a hard-line stance on asylum seekers, using the Navy to turn away Indonesian fishing boats as they traveled across the Timor Sea laden with about 2,200 refugees. That came ahead of a national election, when John Howard's Liberal-National coalition won a third term. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Labor Party ousted the coalition in November 2007.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans, who will consider the report, in July said detention centers would only be used as a "last resort" for the "shortest practical time." Evans said a detainee would be reviewed every three months and no children would be kept in centers. Australia was holding 279 people in immigration detention as of Nov. 7, according to today's statement. Charging detainees for costs was found to be "harsh and without a reasonable rationale," deputy committee chairman Danna Vale said in the statement.

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Federal Parliament closes its ears to climate facts

Note what Labor does when Liberal MP Dennis Jensen tries to table evidence in Parliament that directly contradicts the global warming hype:

Dr JENSEN¯ (Tangney) (8:10 PM) -I support the motion put forward-in particular real assessment of the scientific data. The global water cycle atlas based on the IPCC fourth assessment report climate models by Lim and Roderick was published this year, using the same dataset for precipitation models as used by the fourth IPCC report. In the 39 models examined, the Australian average precipitation from 1970 to 1990 varied from-get this-190.6 millimetres to 1,059.1 millimetres per year. The observed annual precipitation for Australia over the 20th century falls in the range of 400 to 500 per year. Hence there were large differences between model simulated precipitation and observations.

Of the 39 model runs examined for the A1B scenario, 24 showed increases in Australian precipitation to the end of the 21st century while 15 showed decreases. The overall average across all model runs was for a small increase in Australian annual precipitation of eight millimetres per year by the end of the 21st century. Within that average, some models predict a drop in annual precipitation of as much as 100 millimetres per year-notably CSIRO-while others predict increases of the same order. Note that CSIRO is one of the most pessimistic models in terms of future rainfall predictions. Guess which model the Garnaut report relied on.

Much discussion of the Murray-Darling Basin relates to inflows. This is fair enough in terms of examining what is important, which is water in the system, but allows blame to be attributed to climate change. This is baloney, as can be seen by the Bureau of Meteorology rainfall charts, where it can clearly be seen that rainfall in the Murray-Darling Basin is normal. The reasons for reduced run-off are more plantations in the top of the catchments; catchment-wide drainage management plans put in place in the 1980s and 1990s to lower water tables and more efficient water use resulting in less leakage.

So much for the science being settled; we now have bad policy based on bad science. At present, green ideology is inhibiting the correct definition of the problem, and the Murray-Darling will continue to suffer as a result. Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek leave to table these documents.

Leave NOT granted.

Jensen's wider point - that the regional models of global warming touted by the CSIRO are useless - have been confirmed by other studies. No doubt that's something else Parliament will refuse to hear.

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Stupid Leftist attack on job-creating businesses

Shades of FDR and the Great Depression!

Kevin Rudd declares war on unemployment but then shoots the labour market in the foot by imposing more rules and penalties on employment-generating businesses. But it's OK. Ruddy reckons handing an extra $15.1 billion to the states for health, education and other stuff will create 133,000 jobs.

Historically, Australia's industrial relations has been based on expedience rather than genuinely evidence-based policy. Evidence tends to be backfill, as suggested by the September 15 decision of the NSW Remuneration Tribunal to give judges a 4.3per cent pay rise. Comparative wage justice - or "relativities" for NSW judges - had to keep up with the 4.3 per cent pay rise awarded to federal judges. But the tribunal also said it took "economic indicators" into account. The economic reference was unfortunate because September 15 was the day the global financial crisis exploded, threatening to plunge the world economy into recession....

Yet the NSW commission was merely obeying instructions from its institutional DNA. And Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard makes no apologies for replicating those same genetic instincts - originating with the 1907 Harvester decision, comparative wage justice, fair wages and so on - in the Government's "Forward with Fairness" industrial relations machinery.

While following through on the devastating political campaign against John Howard's Work Choices, the new system is designed to reinstate the institutional legitimacy of the industrial tribunals, the arcane award structure and the trade unions (which of course finance the Labor Party). The tribunals and the awards will be "modernised" and the unions won't rule the roost like before. And business lobby groups have been brought into the tent so they can't say they haven't been consulted. But there's little acknowledgment of the benefit of maintaining maximum labour market flexibility to help the economy get through the threatened recession and to then facilitate a productivity-led recovery.

The urgent priority should be to minimise the looming increase in unemployment, which is likely to show up in the New Year when the labour-intensive retail industry starts retrenching its mostly low-paid workers. Some retail workers may gladly trade off some employment costs to keep their jobs. And the Government could help by compensating them through the tax-transfer system, such as with a so-called negative income tax. But this policy option is foreign to the present exercise as it focuses on maximising jobs rather than on restoring traditional institutional power over the wage contract.

A week ago, the OECD's twice-yearly Economic Outlook forecast that Australia's unemployment rate would rise from 4.3 per cent to more than 6 per cent. Its sole supply-side recommendation was to "preserve labour-market flexibility". That same day, Gillard was doing the exact opposite as she unveiled the Government's Fair Work Bill. She justified the abolition of statutory individual employment agreements by arguing that they had stripped away working conditions.

Yet Labor could have retained the flexibility of individual employment contracts while requiring them to incorporate minimum conditions. Individual contracts - yes, Australian Workplace Agreements - were developing with few problems for close to a decade before Howard's Work Choices removed the "no-disadvantage test". Their real crime is that they undermine the collectivist framework of the tribunals, the award structure and the unions.

To backfill this, Gillard argued: "Collective bargaining at the enterprise level is good for employees; it's good for employers; it's good for productivity; it's good for the national economy."

The shift to enterprise-based collective bargaining as an alternative to industry-wide bargaining was good for the economy in the 1990s. So was the further flexibility subsequently provided by individual contracts. But the evidence that productivity will be boosted by making it unlawful for businesses to negotiate directly with their individual employees is as thin as the evidence that a buoyant economy now justifies lifting the minimum wage floor.

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Andrew Bolt's comment on the above matters:

Gerard Henderson is astonished that the Rudd Government could draw up new laws in this climate that it admits may make bosses less keen to hire workers:

The section dealing with what (Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Julia) Gillard has described as the implementation of "protections from unfair dismissal for all employees" actually acknowledges the legislation "may reduce the incentive of businesses to employ workers" and may increase the incentive for medium to small businesses to employ "more staff on a contract basis". In other words, according to the Rudd Government's own analysis, the Fair Work Bill may lead to more unemployment and less full-time employment.

What insanity is this? Protecting conditions by killing jobs.

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Islamic College protest in Queensland

PROTESTERS swarmed on the Gold Coast City Council headquarters in Queensland to vent their anger over a planned Muslim school yesterday as rock anthems blared from loudspeakers. Almost 200 residents turned out for the demonstration, draped in Australian flags and shouting pro-Aussie slogans while Australian rock classics such as Land Down Under and Great Southern Land boomed across the parkland.

The Australian International Islamic College, planned for Carrara, has raised the ire of residents who fear it will lead to the local Muslim population withdrawing from the rest of the community.

A rally last week attracted about 400 people, while people turned out yesterday carrying placards bearing slogans such as "no Muslim school, hell no" and "integration, not segregation". Residents' spokesman Tony Doherty said Muslim schools did not encourage multiculturalism. "It's segregation, not integration," he said. 'They're not trying to integrate into the rest of society. "Since we have started protesting against this our churches have been covered in hate-filled graffiti."

He denied it was hypocritical to oppose Muslim and not Christian schools. "Catholics aren't a different culture," he said. "They are the same as us."

Some residents say they are opposed to the school more because of parking issues rather than religious grounds. Mayor Ron Clarke has publicly said he would support the school as long as it satisfies the council's planning criteria. The council will not make any decision on the future of the school until next year. If approved, the school is unlikely to open until at least the middle of next year.

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