ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is critical of the surge of illegal immigrant arrivals under the Labor government's new "soft" policy





Mice attack disabled veteran in government nursing home

What Green/Left government leads to

A BEDRIDDEN war veteran was found on Anzac Day with bloody ears, hands, face and neck after being "severely chewed" by swarming mice at a southwest Queensland nursing home.

Opposition MP Ray Hopper said Queensland Health had been slow to respond to a mice plague at the Dalby Hospital, which includes a nursing home, leading to the attack on the 89-year-old man.

The man's daughter said staff found her father bleeding from bites to his head, neck, ears and hands on Anzac Day, Mr Hopper said. "The top of his ears were severely chewed and he had bites to his head and neck,'' Mr Hopper said. "His hands were covered in blood because he was trying to get the mice off him. "We are talking about a health facility overrun by vermin. It's atrocious.''

Mr Hopper said the man was so distressed that doctors had put him on morphine to calm him down. He said it was normal to see an increase in mice in Dalby and the Darling Downs at the onset of winter, and the problem was handled with chemical sprays. "But the bureaucrats said no sprays this year because it uses agricultural chemicals, and that's not allowed to happen at a health facility,'' he said.

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Leftist public broadcaster trivializes Australia's most honoured occasion

The excerpt below summarizes the author's response to an ABC website. She then goes on to make excuses for it. She was, after all, writing in a Left-leaning newspaper

And at Gallipoli gravity was, if anything, more than usually evident. From the first pre-dawn moments when Anzac soldiers drowned under the weight of their own packs to the hellish eight-month struggle for ascendancy in that jaggedly vertical terrain, gravity ruled.

Yet, to judge by the ABC's otherwise excellent new website, Gallipoli: The First Day, gravity might as well not exist. The site, launched last week, constructs a compelling narrative and shows something of its own Anzac spirit, having been produced in just a few months and for a tiny fraction of the usual gargantuan animation-type budget. Adroitly directed by the ABC's Sam Doust, it mixes flash-maps, fly-overs and digital dioramas with more traditional means such as voiced letters and diaries (by Hugo Weaving) and videoed recollections to give a blow-by-blow from both Allied and Ottoman points of view. You can clamber interactively around the island, scrutinise strategy and character, examine maps, guns and events in detail.

And yet this dreadful story is strangely light-on in the emotion department. This is partly due to Lucy Bell's hushed and girlish narration, as though she's whispering us a bedtime story that mustn't wake the children. (A pomo gesture, this, laying such a lace doily of a voice upon so blokey a tale. Doust explains that female team-members argued for estrogenism, so to speak, and the mere fact that this was from start to finish a testosterone tale seemed an insufficient reason to deny them. But doesn't that say it all, really? Death of the soldier, the bloke and the auteur, with a single democracy-soaked bullet.)

But the main reason it's Anzac Lite is that, while the camera may whiz giddily about, the characters themselves are oddly without motion or mass. Efforts are made - shadows, close-ups, a richly textured soundtrack - to bolster a sense of reality. We hear Lieutenant-Colonel Kemal's famous command, "I don't order you to attack, I order you to die," and British General Ian Hamilton's even more notorious "dig, dig, dig". We hear groans, and curses, and guns.

But there's no blood in this bloodbath, no falling or staggering or pitching headfirst into the trench. And this zero-gravity feel causes a corresponding lack of emotional weight.

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Australia makes "asylum-seeking" very attractive

Asylum-seekers on Christmas Island receive generous payments for doing nothing

A FAMILY of four asylum-seekers living on Christmas Island in community detention receives up to $1000 a fortnight from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC). DIAC spokesman Sandi Logan said 33 asylum-seekers who had undergone health and security checks were living in houses in the community while awaiting outcomes of their visa applications.

A further 40 asylum-seekers, mostly family groups, women, children and those with special needs, are in alternative detention while 193 single men are detained at the Christmas Island Detention Centre. Women and children are not housed in the detention centre itself, and instead live in alternative detention called the construction camp near the Poon Saan neighbourhood on the island.

Mr Logan said adults in community detention were given $100 cash and $360 in store credit, which can be used at one of two local stores, a fortnight to buy food and other items. A family of two adults and two children would receive $300 cash and $766 store credit each fortnight, which is administered by the Red Cross.

Those under the age of 18 who were deemed unaccompanied minors [In other words, young adults pretending to br teenagers] in community detention receive $50 a week and each household consisting of up to five minors, who are looked after by a carer, is given $900 a week for food and supplies.

Mr Logan said those on community detention had to cook and buy their own food. "We can't put them out in community detention and let them starve," he said. Some chose to save their money and buy luxury items including sunglasses and MP3 players, and were entitled to do so, Mr Logan said.

Inside the detention centre, detainees have 20 internet terminals. "There is also a telephone available in each of the (eight) compounds and they are issued with a phone card each week to make phone calls, it could be to their representatives, to friends or to others ...," Mr Logan said. The calls are unrestricted and include international calls.

Mr Logan said the detainees are encouraged to participate in activities and are rewarded for attending English classes and helping out in the detention centre. The reward system has been in place for some time in Australian detention centres, Mr Logan said.

Detainees are free to move around the inside of the detention centre, often playing cricket and soccer on the oval, but have a night-time curfew when they go back to their single rooms.

The centre was built by the Howard government at a cost of $400 million and is located on the remote corner of Christmas Island, an Australian territory 2,600km northwest of Perth. More than 200 people including 38 DIAC staff are on the island to support the centre.

More than 130 asylum-seekers picked up in the interception of four boats since Saturday, including two today, will also be taken to Christmas Island. It is not known when they will arrive on the island.

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A nearly honest man in Australia's Leftist government

Icecap science rattles Craig Emerson but he soon backs down

FEDERAL Small Business Minister Craig Emerson has split from Kevin Rudd and ministerial colleagues by declaring science is undecided on key aspects of the global warming debate. Dr Emerson yesterday became the first minister in the Rudd Government to cast doubt on the assertion that scientific evidence was conclusive for a catastrophic meltdown of the polar icecaps if global warming was not curtailed.

He said he would like to see scientists settle the question of what would happen to sea-level rises and the polar icecaps as a result of climate change. "We have been basing our responses to this issue on the basis of scientific evidence," Dr Emerson told Sky News. "I suppose what's disappointing around the world is that there is so much disagreement around the edges or even on key issues such as what's happening to Antarctica. Now what I'd like to see is the scientists themselves settle on some of these issues."

Dr Emerson added there was little disagreement that the climate was warming. "We can't wait to see whether the sea level rises by half a metre, one metre, two metres or more, and then act," he said. "We need to act now to get ahead of it, and do everything we can to prevent these sorts of dire predictions from becoming a reality."

Dr Emerson was commenting on a report in The Australian yesterday that a rift had emerged between Climate Change Minister Penny Wong and Environment Minister Peter Garrett over the ice-melting debate. Senator Wong was concerned about Mr Garrett's claim that the calving of ice from the Wilkins ice shelf indicated the Antarctic icecap was melting, potentially causing sea levels to rise 6m. Evidence has emerged that while parts of west Antarctica are warming, much of Antarctica is cooling and sea ice around the continent generally is expanding.

The Government has previously insisted the science on global warming is not in dispute. Kevin Rudd declared in 2007 that there were no scientific doubts surrounding the issues of sea levels and ice melting. "Can I just say, the science is in. The icecaps are melting, the oceans are rising," Mr Rudd said. Mr Garrett declared last year that the "science is in" on climate change.

Last night, Dr Emerson denied he believed that the science on global warming was inconclusive. "The science is in that we are experiencing climate change and we need to act to deal with it," Dr Emerson told The Australian. "There are disagreements about projections on how severe the consequences will be but that must not prevent countries from acting now to deal with climate change."

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