Bowen's grand plan to keep the refugees coming

The Left will destroy Australia any way they can

IMMIGRATION Minister Chris Bowen says Australia should increase its refugee intake by 50 per cent. Mr Bowen will propose at the Labor Party's national conference this weekend to increase Australia's resettlement of refugees from 13,750 to 20,000.

"I have had the view for some time that we could and should take more refugees," Mr Bowen told ABC Radio today. "It's an aspiration ... there's no timeline that I'm putting on it." "I just think it's very important that the Labor platform, which is after all a statement of broad objectives, has that objective in it for the first time."

Mr Bowen said Australia's refugees intake was the highest per person of any country in the world. "But that doesn't mean I don't think we can do more still," he said.

He said his proposal would make it clear that Labor's view was to take more refugees. "We want to give more people a life in Australia but we need to tackle the dangerous boats coming to Australia," Mr Bowen said. "Then we can have that conversation with the people of Australia to increase our refugee intake further."

Mr Bowen said the offshore processing of refugees had to be one of several measures to reduce the number of people jumping onto boats heading to Australia.

"Just increasing your refugee intake is not a deterrent to getting on a boat to come to Australia, but if it is part of a broader mix, which included offshore processing, that would be important," he said.

Labor abandoned a plan to put its bill to allow offshore processing of asylum seekers in Malaysia to a vote in October after it could not guarantee its passage through parliament.

The minister's proposal comes after Australian authorities intercepted a boat carrying more than 100 asylum seekers east of Christmas Island yesterday.

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Queensland Parliament passes same-sex civil unions bill

I would have thought that sticking your dick up some other bloke's behind was an uncivil union

QUEENSLAND MPs have voted in favour of legalising same-sex civil unions during an historic night in Parliament. After almost four hours of debate Andrew Fraser's private member's bill was passed by a vote of 47 to 40

The bill, introduced by Deputy Premier Andrew Fraser, enables same-sex couples to register their union with the Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

The bill will grant same-sex couples the right to enter in to legally recognised civil unions. It prompted a strong reaction from gay rights, religious and family groups.

Labor MPs were allowed a conscience vote, but the Liberal National Party indicated it would vote en bloc against the bill.

Speaking in Parliament, Mr Fraser said it was 21 years to the day that Labor decriminalised homosexual activities in Queensland. And now he said, Labor could make history again to progress the rights of homosexuals.

"This bill merely but not meekly seeks to formally recognise relationships which have existed in Queensland for centuries," he told Parliament.

"It provides them with the opportunity to celebrate their commitment and their love for one another in a ceremony in front of friends and family, perhaps this is its most important feature."

Opposition legal affairs spokesman Jarrod Bleijie said Mr Fraser only introduced the bill to shore up the left vote and was rushing it through parliament before the election, due early next year.

He said the bill was only introduced on October 25 and there has not been enough time for community consultation.

"He (Mr Fraser) did it to stich up a Green preference deal," Mr Bleijie told Parliament. "This bill is nothing more than a stunt."

Mr Bleijie said more than 54 per cent of the final number of submissions to a legislative committee that examined the bill were received 17 days after the cut-off date. "That goes to the heart of the lack of consultation," he said. "We do not believe the people of Queensland have had the appropriate opportunities to raise their concerns."

He also said the bill was not a priority for Queenslanders, who are more concerned about cost of living pressures. "Civil partnerships is not on a priority list in the minds of Queenslanders," he said....

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ABC’s refugee, climate crutches getting wobbly

ON the two dominant political and cultural issues in this nation over the past decade, the ABC's extensive reporting has now been revealed as jaundiced and counter-productive.

Developments in the public debate have exposed the national broadcaster's misleading alarmism on global warming and handwringing over border protection. Its hyperbole on these issues has polarised public sentiment, made sensible political discussion more difficult, and created a backlash.

The very organisations it has relied upon for its ideological and factual ballast, the Labor Party on border protection; and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have made dramatic corrections to adopt more rational, mainstream positions.

To search for climate change references in the ABC archives is to drown in a rising tide of fear and loathing. To say the public broadcaster has campaigned on climate is now uncontroversial; even its outgoing chairman Maurice Newman spoke about the extent of its "groupthink".

A careful study would keep a PhD candidate busy for a year or two but it is easy to sample some of the environment stories. You'll recognise the remorseless tone: "to avert a climate catastrophe, emissions must peak before 2020"; "the study blames climate change for the state of the reef"; "the planet has experienced the hottest start to a year on record"; "Australia's water-supply problems are only going to get worse"; "as temperatures rise, not only is the landscape copping the heat, but people are feeling the stress."

Thankfully, there is always some positive news: "Australia's top clothes designers have gone green, staging an environmentally friendly fashion show"; "farmers could be $3 billion richer if they tackle global warming"; "religious denominations joining hands, campaigning for action on climate change".

If it were just as easy to find rational debate and counter arguments on the ABC this would be fine. But in its coverage, to question extreme claims has been to be scoffed at, while an omnipresent Tim Flannery has been lauded as an honest broker.

When the ABC broadcast Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth there was plenty of attendant publicity, sympathetic coverage and acclaim. But when it broadcast another side of the debate, The Great Global Warming Swindle, the ABC issued a disclaimer and followed it with an interview and panel discussion, largely debunking the program.

Yet it was An Inconvenient Truth that was found by a British court to contain inconvenient errors, such as false claims about islands being evacuated and exaggerations about rising sea levels.

This year, there has been a reckoning of sorts for those who have been pushing the emotional and misleading lines.

With the IPCC exposed for failing to verify exaggerated claims such as the predictions of melting Himalayan glaciers, and Climategate email leaks revealing a culture of scientists cherry-picking and campaigning for their "cause" of global warming, what was once the orthodox view is now on the back foot.

This month's IPCC summary report on extreme weather events marks a dramatic recalibration of the way the science is presented. It highlights uncertainty in the modelling and predictions and cautions that decades of observations will be required to separate natural variability in weather and climate from that induced by our emissions.

The implications of this are quite simple for politicians and the media. It is time to drop the grandstanding.

As has always been clear, there is a variety of rational views on climate science and policy responses. We should expect a public broadcaster to foster an open-minded, informed and objective debate.

Given its silence on the latest Climategate leaks and its lack of curiosity about the environmental impact of Australia's carbon tax, this seems unlikely.

On border protection, the story is similar. The ABC has adopted a so-called compassionate position for more than a decade. Through emotional coverage on flagship current affairs programs like Lateline and The 7.30 Report, to its talk hosts on radio, and even its television drama and religious programming, its positioning has been clear.

It has strongly promoted those advocating an open-borders policy, opposing offshore processing and questioning mandatory detention. For much of the past decade the ABC has been able to portray this as a mainstream view because it has been supported, in the main, by the Labor Party.

The strong policies of the Howard government were denounced as hard-hearted and even racist, even though they stopped the flow of boats, emptied detention centres, and led to some centres being decommissioned.

When the Rudd government softened border protection laws and dismantled the Pacific Solution, there is now no argument that it triggered the re-emergence of the people-smuggling business. With upwards of 4000 people in detention, centres constructed in every state and more boats arriving, the government is switching to community detention because it can't cope with the flow.

Labor argued for two years that there was no connection between its actions and the new influx. It said asylum-seekers were thrust on Australia by global push factors, and that there was no such thing as a pull factor.

The ABC never seriously challenged this fallacious argument: "Prime minister Kevin Rudd says Australia is seeing the effects of a global spike in people smuggling"; "Government policy is the last thing on the minds of asylum-seekers when they are fleeing persecution."

But the Labor Party has abandoned this position. The horror of 50 people killed on the shores of Christmas Island forced the government to admit that the disincentive of offshore processing is necessary. Subsequent efforts to reinstate offshore processing through the East Timor and Malaysian solutions are a belated and welcome acceptance of error.

Now even senior members of the government privately express frustration at what they see as the relentless campaign by the ABC against their efforts.

Mugged by reality, the government is stuck combating the emotional media posturing it once fostered: "Human rights groups are calling on Prime Minister Julia Gillard to consider Australia's international obligations"; "Australia has appeared before a UN panel in Geneva accused of human rights violations"; "An independent UN expert says Australia's Christmas Island detention centre should be closed." Welcome to your ABC.

As with climate change, what has been needed over the past decade has been a reasoned debate, rather than special pleading, over asylum-seekers.

With annual public funding of more than a billion dollars, it is incumbent upon our ABC to tackle significant national policy debates with an appropriate sense of objectivity and detachment and to play its part in encouraging sober, evidence-based discussion and analysis.

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Gillard Government rejects traffic light food labelling

HEALTH groups have reacted angrily after the Federal Government rejected traffic light food labelling.

The Gillard government reported back on 61 recommendations in an independent review of the nation's food labelling laws. Generic health warning labels on alcohol were also rejected, but it will be mandatory within two years to caution pregnant women against its dangers.

Fast food chains will have to declare kilojoule content on their menu boards, and the standard of health claims on foods will improve.

The Government said there wasn't enough evidence that traffic light labelling would be effective. The system uses traffic light colours - green, orange or red - to indicate whether the levels of fat, sugar and salt in a product are low, medium or high.

But Obesity Policy Coalition senior policy adviser Jane Martin accused the Government of bowing to food industry pressure and ignoring evidence that traffic light labelling helped people make healthy choices. "There is evidence it changes consumer behaviour in a real world situation," she said. "Traffic light labelling has been found to be the most effective scheme in helping people understand the nutritional content of food."

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