Extra hour of TV a day can kill, say medical shamans

Lord love us! More epidemiological "wisdom". They found, unsuprisingly, that people in poor health watched slightly more TV but in their wisdom from on high they interpreted it the other way around! It must be wonderful to have God-given insight that dispenses with the need for evidence! I personally watch TV about once a year but have no time for fraudulent scares. Scares that simply lead to needlessly upset children are particularly obnoxious

VIDEO killed the radio star, according to the famous Buggles song, but new research suggests television is killing the rest of us too. An additional hour in front of the box each day increases the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by 18 per cent, according to Australian research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Each extra hour increases by 11 per cent the overall likelihood of dying from all causes, including cancer.

"The human body was designed to move, not sit for extended periods of time," the study's lead author, David Dunstan, said. "But technological, social and economic changes mean that people don't move their muscles as much as they used to. "For many people, on a daily basis they simply shift from one chair to another."

Prof Dunstan, from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, said sitting for long periods was bad for blood sugar and fats - even if you were healthy. The link between television viewing and increased mortality held true regardless of other risk factors such as smoking, poor diet, high cholesterol and obesity.

The average Australian watched three hours of television every day. The researchers monitored the viewing habits of 8800 adults over six years before publishing the alarming results. They found someone who watched four hours of TV each day had an 80 per cent higher risk of death from heart disease compared to someone who watched less than two hours.

They were 46 per cent more likely to die from all causes. Prof Dunstan said the findings suggested any prolonged sedentary behaviour, such as sitting at a desk or computer for work, could be risky. The answer? "Move more, more often." "In addition to doing regular exercise, avoid sitting for prolonged periods," he said. "Too much sitting is bad for health."

SOURCE





In Australia too, the media hate fundamentalist Christians

Lots of private religious schools get government subsidies. It is the Australian system -- going back to the days of Bob Menzies. But just one small set of private schools is singled out for criticism below -- the Brethren schools. And Rudd hates the Brethren because they supported his opposition. All the major churches supported Rudd



THE Rudd Government is handing more than $70 million to schools run by the Exclusive Brethren, a religious sect Kevin Rudd described as an "extremist cult" that breaks up families. The sect's schools have secured more than $8.4m under the Government's school building stimulus package and they will share in $62m in recurrent taxpayer funding.

Documents show a Brethren-run school at Swan Hill in northern Victoria was granted $1.2m for a library and $800,000 for a hall when its most recent annual report shows it had just 16 pupils and already had a library. [Many such bureaucratic bungles have happened with government schools too] Grants data released by the commonwealth shows that Brethren schools in every state received funding under the $12.4 billion schools stimulus package, The Australian reports.

Despite the Brethren's past disdain for computers, figures show its schools have received more than 300 under the commonwealth computers-in-school initiative.

Brethren schools have also secured grants under the Schools Pride program. All up, the 2400 children in Brethren schools will each receive the equivalent of $26,127 in recurrent funding and $11,200 in stimulus funding.

Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said these sums were outrageous and the funding system had to be urgently replaced. "How can the Government justify handing tens of millions of dollars to an organisation it believes is a cult while public schools which educate the vast majority of our children are struggling for funds?" Mr Gavrielatos said. "The Government has said it will review schools funding this year. That review needs to be begin as a matter of urgency to allow for a proper public debate on where school funding should be directed and for what purpose."

The Brethren is a fundamentalist Christian sect that lives by the doctrine of separation from mainstream society. Brethren schools must teach the normal curriculum, although reports say some novels are banned and chapters on sex and reproduction are excised from science textbooks. Brethren members are taught to shun broader society. They do not use TV, radios and do not watch movies or eat in restaurants. They do not vote, are opposed to unions and other forms of association, except their own church. [There have always been Protestants with similar views -- e.g. Scotland's "Wee Frees" and the historic Puritans of Britain and America. And some famous Catholic monastic orders were doing it even before the Protestants came along. It is a perfectly defensible version of Christianity, even if it is not fashionable these days. Check John 15:19; James 4:4; John 18:36, for instance]

The Brethren has been accused by former members, and the Prime Minister in his 2007 comments, of denying those who leave access to their children, a claim the organisation denies.

Doug Burgess, the head of the Brethren's Victorian schools, said its schools were growing rapidly and the funding reflected that. He defended the sect's right to school funding, saying the children would otherwise be enrolled in state schools at full taxpayers' expense.

SOURCE




GREENIE ROUNDUP

Four current articles below

Whales not worth risking Japanese relations for, says Abbott

If Australia continues its antagonism to Japan and support for terrorists, Japan could cut off all imports of Australian farm products in response -- which would cause great woe in Australia -- possibly enough woe to unseat Rudd. There have been great battles to get access to the Japanese primary-products market so a Japanese cutoff of that would be an obvious response to continued hostility from Australia's Green/Left government

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has declared Australia's relationship with Japan is too important to risk over whaling. Mr Abbott yesterday said it was not Coalition policy to take Japan to the International Court to stop its annual whale hunt in the Southern Ocean, according to a report in the Courier-Mail.

"We don't like whaling. We would like the Japanese to stop," he told Macquarie Radio yesterday. "On the other hand, we don't want to needlessly antagonise our most important trading partner, a fellow democracy, an ally."

Relations with Japan have reportedly been strained in the wake of last week's dramatic clash between whalers and protesters. The Government yesterday said there had been robust discussions between the two countries but the issue had not harmed the relationship with Tokyo

The Opposition also has accused the Rudd Government of failing to follow through on numerous pre-election promises to end whaling in the Southern Ocean. Acting Environment Minister Penny Wong said if the Government could not resolve the matter diplomatically, it would take legal action.

SOURCE. There is a good commentary on the terrorist mentality and tactics involved here

Record heat -- just like a century ago

A very bad fit to the Warmist narrative

Melbourne has notched its equal hottest-ever night, with a sweltering minimum matching the city's other warmest evening, recorded more than 100 years ago. The overnight temperature did not drop below 30.6 degrees, and this dip was only reached at 8.49am, the Bureau of Meteorology said this morning.

This was warm enough to equal Melbourne's highest recorded daily minimum temperature, set on February 1, 1902, Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Terry Ryan said. ‘‘The overnight minimum temperature was 30.6 and that was recorded at 8.49am,’’ Mr Ryan said. ‘‘The previous record for the warmest night was also 30.6 degrees recorded on February 1, 1902, and we equalled that this morning," he said.

Mr Ryan said at 8am, the overnight heat was so intense it seemed the 1902 mark would be smashed. ‘‘It was going up to 34 degrees at 8am but then a weak cool change moved through the city and temperatures started falling again,’’ he said. The change threatened to cost the record, but 30.6 was as cool as it got.

Duty forecaster Stuart Coombs said a cool change this morning made a lasting impact to temperatures. ‘‘It appears we’ve dodged a bit of a bullet ... that cool air was deep enough to stop the temperature from rising further,’’ he said. By 12.45pm, the temperature had dropped to 30 degrees celsius, with isolated showers and cooler weather predicted for the evening.

SOURCE

Conservative leader defends Aboriginal rights against Green/Left laws

OPPOSITION leader Tony Abbott has come out swinging in his campaign against the Bligh government's controversial Wild Rivers legislation, labelling Bligh's regime as "outrageous" and the Rudd government "cowardly" for not stepping in.

In Cairns this morning, Mr Abbott formally announced his intention to introduce a Private Member’s Bill to override the Wild Rivers legislation on Cape York, after his move was revealed by The Australian today.

Mr Abbott, flanked by Cape York traditional owners, said the Wild Rivers legislation - which declared the Archer, Lockhart and Stewart river systems on Cape York as wild rivers - was an "attack on the rights of Aboriginal people". "(It will) suffocate at birth all proposals for economic development on Cape York," Mr Abbott said.

He said he will introduce the Private Member’s Bill when parliament resumes in February, but without the support of the Rudd government, it would die. Mr Abbott said he would be appealing to Mr Rudd and Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin to step in and let the bill live.

SOURCE. More commentary on the Leftist hypocrisy involved here

Ecology and compulsion: The Divine Right of Environmentalists

The problem facing the Commonwealth government in Peter Spencer’s case is that on the one hand it’s embarrassing to have him dying of starvation up a pole because they denied him justice after forcibly taking billions of dollars worth of property in violation of the Constitution; and embarrassing to be caught out ignoring him, and lying to the population that it was all the States’ fault. But on the other hand, the Commonwealth has stolen too much property to be able to pay for it; and is too greedy to give it back. It is no defence of this injustice to say that other environmental and planning laws also restrict people’s private property use-rights. That only begs the question whether they also represent unjust acquisitions.

It does not answer to assert that government acts in the national interest. That is precisely what is in issue. If it’s in the national interest for the government to take people’s property without their consent in breach of the law by threatening them with force, then presumably armed robbery and extortion might be in the national interest too.

It is no answer to say that the laws are to protect native vegetation. Native vegetation is not an ecological category: it is an historical and aesthetic category. It means species that were here before 1788, that is all. The issue is not native vegetation itself: it is whether some people should be able to indulge their fancy of having a ‘pre-1788’ botanical museum imposed on other people’s property, paid for by the subject property-holders, or by the productive portion of the population under compulsion.

No doubt many environmentalists are genuinely well-intentioned, and shocked to be considered abusive and unjust, and will say that was not their intention. However the abusiveness and injustice of these laws does not come from the laws’ intent, but from their effect.

Nor is it any answer to say that the native vegetation acts were done to protect biodiversity. The mere fact that biodiversity is a value does not automatically justify the violation of property rights. It may be said that biodiversity is the necessary basis of life on earth, and therefore the need to conserve it is a precondition to any discussion of subsequent human utility. However it is hyperbole to suggest that we’re all going to die unless the environmentalists can steal other people’s land, which is what the argument amounts to.

Even assuming that ecological viability itself were in issue, it is still entirely unjustified and unjustifiable to jump to a conclusion that government is able to centrally plan the ecology and the economy, by bureaucratic command-and-control. This destructive belief, or rather delusion, has no basis in reason. Those wishing to run that argument must first refute Ludwig von Mises’ arguments which definitively prove that public ownership of the means of production is not only impossible in practice, but is not even possible in theory.

As to ecological sustainability, this attractive-sounding catch-phrase is meaningless. Ecology is the distribution and abundance of species. Species are made up of their individual members. The distribution and abundance of these are permanently and constantly changing forever, every second of every day, always have been, always will be. The ideal of sustainability is a dream of stasis; a utopian fantasy of paradise in which the economic problems of natural scarcity have been solved forever by the omnipotence, omniscience and benevolence of big government.

And if ecological sustainability is not meaningless, then how could or would a power to achieve it ever be limited, even only conceptually? Since all human action affects the environment, a power to manage the environment must necessarily be able to control any and every human action, and therefore it must be an unlimited power. In other words, the well-intentioned advocates of such a system are incapable of saying how they could prevent, or even identify, abuses of arbitrary power, as Spencer’s case is proving. It is completely incompatible with constitutional government.

It is said that the native vegetation laws were desirable because of the problem of land clearing. But just because something is desirable does not mean we are justified in using force to obtain satisfaction of our desire. The desire for money does not, of itself, justify robbery; the desire for sex does not, of itself, justify rape; and the desire to use land to grow native vegetation does not, of itself, justify confiscating other people’s property.

Either biodiversity is a higher social value than food or other produce, or it’s not. If it’s not, then there is no justification for using force to pay for it. But if it is, then there is no need for compulsion to pay for it. If society - people in general - really do attach a higher value to biodiversity as the environmentalists assert, then those same people are perfectly capable of representing their own values and protecting biodiversity directly by buying the land on which to grow native vegetation. Many people do it voluntarily. But so far as the rest don’t do it voluntarily, this proves that it is not a higher social value as the environmentalists claim.

Therefore environmentalists have not got to square one in establishing a justification for the native vegetation laws. If they genuinely believe the issue is ecology, this shows their confusion. For the issue is not ecology – it is power.

In truth, all that the advocates of the native vegetation laws have established is that they should have to buy the land that they would like to use to grow native vegetation; an idea they receive with shock and indignation. Yet why not? There are many who agree, the cost of contributions would be divided between millions of people, and in the end would amount to a monthly payment by each to finance it. But they don’t want to do that. Why not? Because they know that in order to do it, they would have to sacrifice other values they consider more important – like consuming internet bandwidth.

Why would they have to sacrifice such other values if they were to buy the land? To pay the price of the land. And what gives rise to the price of land? It comes from the values of all those in the market who buy and sell, or abstain from buying or selling the land and what it can produce.

In other words, the reason the environmentalists don’t want to have to pay for the land is because of the height of the price of land, and the reason the price of farm land is what it is, and the reason farmers were clearing land, is because six billion people, through the price mechanism, are telling farmers that they want that land used to produce food.

How disgraceful, and how disgusting, that rich Australians are forcibly shutting down food production on a massive scale at a time when millions of the poorest people are facing food shortages. The ecologists have morphed into social Darwinians, advocating the stronger using force and threats to arbitrarily violate and steal from the weaker. They think it goes without saying that they should not suffer the shortage they are imposing on others.

Of course the ordinary peasants must pay if they want land to be used to satisfy their want for food, but the intellectuals shouldn’t have to pay if they want land to be used to satisfy their own less urgent want for ‘biodiversity’, for which they refuse to pay voluntarily. So Peter Spencer, and thousands of Aussie farmers, have been expropriated of their livelihoods, in breach of the Constitution, to stop their land from producing food, causing people in the poorest countries to sacrifice their lives so Australia’s spoilt environmentalists will not have to sacrifice the slightest luxury!

All of a sudden all their protestations about equality and social justice go out the window, and we are back to the age of feudal privilege, and a pampered and self-absorbed elite of parasites feeding on the productive class, with a political philosophy dangerously close to divine right of kings.

SOURCE

Japan loses patience with Australia's support for ecoterrorists

JAPAN has risked an open breach with the Rudd government by hitting back hard at Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard's handling of last week's whaling confrontation in the Southern Ocean. Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials have accused Ms Gillard of aggravating the whaling controversy between Tokyo and Canberra, and called for Australian action to prevent further illegal activities by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

The officials warned a senior Australian diplomat on Friday that Ms Gillard's statements immediately before and after the collision between Sea Shepherd's speedboat and a Japanese whaling ship were inflaming public opinion in Japan and making diplomatic resolution of the underlying dispute harder to realise.

This is the toughest public stance a Japanese government has taken towards Australia on Antarctic whaling -- or any other issue -- in recent times and is also highly unusual in singling out for criticism a senior member of a friendly government.

The move betrays Japanese frustration with the Australians' political management of the issue, including Kevin Rudd's repeated threats of international legal action against so-called scientific whaling, while not obviously helping to curb hazardous protest activities, including Sea Shepherd's efforts to disable whaling ships.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs senior officials told acting Japan ambassador Allan McKinnon it was "not appropriate" for Ms Gillard to urge Japanese whalers and the activists in equal terms to show restraint, "notwithstanding the Sea Shepherd itself was conducting the unlawful rampage".

Sea Shepherd accuses the Shonan Maru 2 crew of deliberately running over Ady Gil during a day of confrontation in which the activists' speedboat ran across the Japanese factory ship's bow and allegedly tried to entangle its propellers.

Ms Gillard yesterday stood by her call for calm on both sides and for Japanese and Sea Shepherd skippers to ensure crews' safety as their first duty. "These are extremely dangerous conditions and it is likely Australia would be called upon to deploy a search and rescue mission if things were to go horribly wrong," Ms Gillard said. "It is not therefore inappropriate for Australia to call for calm from both sides in these circumstances."

Japanese officials questioned the jurisdiction of Australia's Maritime Safety Authority to investigate last week's collision. Without access to the crew of Shonan Maru 2, any finding by an Australian inquiry into the collision is likely to be meaningless.

The Japanese have agreed to co-operate with a New Zealand investigation (Ady Gil was New Zealand-registered) and they are expected to vigorously contest a piracy complaint lodged in a Dutch court by Sea Shepherd on Friday...

Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, in answer to questions from The Australian, have called for the Australian Federal Police to investigate Sea Shepherd's actions the next time its vessels put into an Australian port. Japanese officials were already annoyed that the Steve Irwin, which uses Australian ports for its annual Southern Ocean campaigns, was allowed to put into Hobart without question late last month after initiating the first clashes of the season.

They told Mr McKinnon that Ms Gillard's call for the Institute of Cetacean Research to suspend charter flights monitoring the Sea Shepherd vessels that have been harrying the whaling fleet since mid-December "has already unnecessarily provoked the Japanese public opinion". "This has invited the Japanese public (to) call for a strong protest and it might impair both governments' will to lead the whaling issue to a resolution through diplomatic efforts," said a Foreign Ministry spokesman.

Japan aims to slaughter nearly 1000 minke whales this summer for "scientific research", as well as 20 rare fin whales and 50 humpbacks. It has urged Canberra to distinguish between official Australian opposition to Antarctic whaling and illegal acts in international waters that put at risk Japanese crewmen and ships....

Ms Gillard yesterday maintained that the Australian government was "pursuing its anti-whaling position through the appropriate diplomatic and legal channels very strongly". "The government also respects the right of those who also oppose whaling to protest, and to do so peacefully," she said. [The ecoterrorists are "peaceful"???]

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop said yesterday the government's handling of whaling was damaging Australia's relationship with Japan. She said Mr Rudd should either fulfil his pre-election promise to pursue international legal sanctions against Japan or withdraw the threat.

More HERE





Chaotic schools mean that some kids have to turn to the courts for protection

KIDS as young as 10 are turning to the courts to protect them from fellow students, with 613 taking out apprehended violence orders against other children last year. But these figures are only the tip of the iceberg, according to the Daily Telegraph, with thousands more being protected by bail conditions ordering juvenile offenders to stay away from their victims while their cases are pursued through the Children's Court. Even the education department took out AVOs against two students in 2008 to protect teachers and other classmates.

Teachers complain that the increasing number of court orders is making the school system almost unworkable as they try to minimise the contact between the disputing parties, placing them in different classes, having allocated areas in the playground or staggering their lessons and lunch breaks.

Psychologists also attacked the trend and said adults are failing children by letting the situation deteriorate to such a point the courts have to become involved.

According to latest figures from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research there were 3062 children across New South Wales protected by personal AVOs, 20 per cent of them from other children. Personal AVOs are court orders to protect individuals from others in society, as opposed to domestic AVOs which offer protection from family members.

The surge of AVOs taken out against bullies is coming from the state's west. One country school teacher said that dealing with AVOs when the students attended the same school was "almost farcical". "They come in and this kid's got an AVO against this one, this one and this one and another's got AVOs against these kids," he said. "But in a small town like this there is only really one high school they can go to and legally they still have to attend school."

Wagga Wagga's Senior Constable Steven Johnson said some students were taking out AVOs against fellow classmates in a sort of arms race or "one upmanship". Armed with an AVO, he said they wielded it as a threat when they came into further conflict with their rival.

University of NSW National Children's and Youth Law Centre director James McDougall said: "It's adults failing children." He said it meant bullies would be excluded from mixing with other children and never learn how to change their behaviour. [i.e. much less effective than a good thrashing]

SOURCE





Culturally adrift without classical moorings

A return to Latin and ancient Greek would make for a real education revolution, writes Dan Ryan

MY grandfather, who spent most of his life on a sheep station in western Queensland, could quote tracts of Virgil and Homer from memory. My mother topped Latin in year 10 in her school in Brisbane in the 1960s, but things were on the slide; her prize was a copy of the Iliad not in Greek but in English, and in an abridged form, with all the poetry stripped away.

By the time I went to school there was apparently no need to teach the classics any more. They were dead languages and, besides, there was not enough time in the school day to fit them in between classes in home economics, woodwork, typing and the like. How sure are we that the effective elimination of the classics from our education system has been without consequence?

Educators once believed in the classical education very strongly. Little more than a generation ago you could not get into Oxford or Cambridge without demonstrating competency in Latin, and practically every Western historical figure and writer until the 1950s was taught the classics from an early age. The line of thinking that we don't need to learn Latin and Greek because they are too hard, irrelevant, not useful or not the languages of the future would have been regarded as the argument of philistines.

The rationale was not always stated explicitly; it was simply understood. A classical education was needed first of all to impart content -- to maintain basic Western cultural literacy. Your understanding of the West would be necessarily incomplete and superficial without a good acquaintance of the Aeneid, the works of Ovid and Aeschylus, the speeches of Pericles and Cicero, and the Homeric epics. The second reason, as classicist Tracy Lee Simmons emphasises in his excellent book Climbing Parnassus, was that learning these hard ancient languages had a point in itself -- it required students to focus on the precise meaning of words, making them less patient with sloppy language and thinking. For Westerners, only the languages of Latin and Greek can perform this role.

The high-minded hope was that the combination of the content and the process would make us better able to govern ourselves, both individually and as a society. To know a liberty fit for men, notanimals. What does it say that we are now fixated about becoming Asia-literate, but that there is no concern about the obvious decline in Western cultural literacy levels?

I am not saying that one should not learn Asian languages or have a deep interest in the cultures of Asia. I speak and read Mandarin and have been learning since university days. I ended up marrying a Brit who speaks Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu. Whether spending $11 billion on compulsory mass Asian language education training from year 3 onwards would result in a net economic gain or otherwise make sense is something others can duke out. From what I've seen so far of the plans, colour me highly sceptical.

What I do strongly believe is that one's understanding of the East will, in the long run, be hindered unless you have a proper understanding of the West. Lawrence of Arabia would have thought the lack of Latin and Greek a terrible obstacle to the understanding of Arabic. William Jones, the famed Sanskrit scholar, would have thought likewise with regard to understanding the languages and cultures of the subcontinent. The same holds true for the languages of East Asia. Australia's pre-eminent Sinologist, Pierre Ryckmans, was educated in Europe. I bet my bottom dollar he was taught Latin during his formative years. It shows in his writing style and liberal mind.

Without a decent acquaintance with the Western classical heritage we are dooming ourselves to a glib relativism born of ignorance, to being forever trapped in the parochialism of the present, to being a nation adrift without a cultural anchor.

What is needed is not a new state education plan. The renewal is unlikely to come via our sclerotic state-directed command-and-control education system that governs both fee-paying and non-fee-paying schools. Carthago delenda est.

If there is a renewal, I suspect it will be through less mainstream institutions like Sydney's Campion College, through teachers with a deep love of Western culture, and through some of the classically educating home schooling families I have been honoured to know.

It will come when we realise that it has been a terrible dereliction of duty not to pass on "the best that has been thought and said" to the next generation and we are not going to let it continue. Now that truly would be an education revolution.

SOURCE







Dickensian lessons on homelessness

We should learn from the Victorians rather than mock them, writes David Burchell

WE weave history out of the thread of our collective vanities and self-delusions. And yet our attempts to lord it over our ancestors, to present ourselves as their superiors and emancipators, usually say more about us than them. Thus it is that the television series Mad Men can reduce the pre-Woodstock 1960s to an endless gallery of repressions about to be unbound, of hypocrisies about to be uncloaked, of blindness and prejudice about to be exposed to the all-seeing eye of futurity.

Yet at the end of every episode we are bound to have an uncomfortable tingling sense that we enjoy the very hypocrisies we pretend to deplore, and luxuriate in the social conventions from which we pretend to have emancipated ourselves. The things we enjoy mocking about the past are often the very things we are concerned to deny about ourselves.

This, of course, is why the Victorians are so necessary to us: so necessary, in fact, that we have had to reinvent them. Who, after all, could be better qualified than us to titter over what we like to describe as Victorian sexual prudery and hypocrisy: we who want to expose and condemn every single politician (and politician's spouse) who ever had an affair, at the very same moment that we wolf down every anecdote of their affairs, almost as if we had indulged in them ourselves? And who could be better qualified than us to burlesque the Victorians' supposed moralism about the poor: we who so skilfully combine a pretended easygoing egalitarianism with a clinical contempt for the manners and mores of everybody lower down the sociocultural ladder than ourselves?

We know the Victorians invented the modern idea of the social conscience. And yet, as a means of dispelling that uncomfortable thought, we tell ourselves they invented it only to deploy it in all the wrong ways and to all the wrong ends. The Victorians, we tell ourselves, moralised the poor, blamed them for their poverty and divided them into deserving and undeserving classes. We, on the other hand, have rectified these errors by the simple expedient of inverting them.

Rather than attributing poverty to personal agency, we deny all possibility of agency whatever, either in poverty or in people's efforts to extricate themselves from it. Then we assign all social ills to steely, impersonal forces, which we label as underlying causes, objective factors or entrenched factors of disadvantage. Except that, since the iron hand of necessity in the end offers no hope whatever, we still find our consciences pricked by the same woebegone images that Dickens used to touch the hearts of his readers some 150 years ago. Just like the Victorians, it seems, we are affected by the down-and-out, the pitiable, the wretched of the earth, Les Miserables.

At present, our emotional attentions are being exercised on what we've come to call the problem of homelessness. The ostensible source of this attention -- though the number of people who've read it through may well be small -- is the federal white paper on homelessness by Tony Nicholson of Melbourne's Brotherhood of St Laurence. And yet, were we to wander past the prefatory obeisances of Nicholson's report, we would discover that homelessness is a rhetorical and political issue rather than a social one. It is the aggregate effect of a series of distinct forms of personal trauma and dysfunction woven into a composite figure designed to arouse our pity. We need the homeless in the same way the Victorians needed Little Dorrit or Oliver Twist.

Though Nicholson makes the point plainly enough, not very many commentators have yet registered the fact that very few of those defined as homeless are sleeping rough. Rather, they subsist for shorter or longer periods across an archipelago of insecure housing forms, either because of their inability to hold down a job or apply for benefits efficiently, or else because of a well-founded fear of violence from their former life-partners. Only a tiny percentage of this broad population (about one in 25) will ever sleep on a metropolitan park bench in sight of a conscientious observer. Most of them are circulating, unobserved, on the fringes of remote indigenous communities; or else they cycle around various forms of crisis accommodation in the outer suburbs, avoiding their psychotic menfolk and trying to get their lives back together again.

Nor does the creation of this problem of homelessness require inventing brilliant new analyses or crafting radical policy initiatives, as the problems that lead to housing insecurity have been studied for decades. We know, for instance, that many remote indigenous communities are in acute distress and that their menfolk are especially so. We know that much serious mental illness is untreated and that its sufferers often choose to self-medicate by combining it with multiple forms of substance abuse. We know -- in the unfashionably Victorian language of the Australian Institute of Family Studies -- that the development of a sociable temperament is an essential element of personal and familial wellbeing.

We know, likewise, that civilised functioning requires fragile resources of psychic peace, which are maintained only with difficulty in situations of acute financial or relationship stress. We know that a significant minority of men have a violent element in their personalities which they are unable or unwilling to control, and which is most likely to exhibit itself as they feel more socially marginalised and useless. We know poorer communities are much more violent than richer ones and that the most dangerous places in which to live are generally also the most dangerous places to be a married woman and a mother. And in knowing all these things, we also know already, more or less, why so many people are defined as homeless and what will best aid them in extracting themselves from this circumstance.

But here's the trick. Every single one of these social policy diagnoses points us back down the road from which we believed we had travelled. They all depend on questions of conduct, of demeanour, of wellbeing, of self-respect. They all invoke matters of personal agency and responsibility; even, as it might once have been said, of ethos. And how dismally, shockingly, Victorian is that?

SOURCE

DNA records kept for some of Queensland's child criminals

Sounds a good idea to me: "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime". If you stop doing crimes you have nothing to fear. DNA might even clear you immediately if you come under suspicion for something you didn't do.

There is some addled talk below about rehabilitation. But rehabilitation is mostly a pipe dream. Lots of people talk about it and propose dreamy ideas about how to do it but nobody has much success at it. Most crime is committed by people who already have a criminal record. They don't rehabilitate.

But rehabilitation is in any case irrelevant to the DNA controversy below. Rehabilitation -- or not -- comes AFTER you catch the criminal. The DNA is used only in catching them. How they are treated once caught is a matter for the courts. Their DNA has nothing to so with it

POLICE have taken DNA samples from almost 1300 children earmarked as the next generation of criminals. Figures obtained by The Sunday Mail under Right to Information legislation have revealed that in less than five years, police have collected DNA from 1275 children aged between 10 and 16. The genetic blueprint may be used to catch them if they reoffend - a likelihood for more than half of juveniles, according to research.

Under state legislation, a DNA sample can be taken by police officers via a court order if a magistrate is satisfied there is reasonable suspicion of an offence.

Police figures show the most common crime committed by juveniles is property crime, including theft and vandalism. Last financial year, the Queensland Police Service caught 33,644 juvenile offenders. Police say DNA has become a vital crime-fighting tool and helps speed up clean-up rates.

But civil libertarians have accused the police and State Government of giving up on Queensland's youth and focusing more on convictions than on rehabilitation. Civil Liberties Australia chief executive Bill Rowlings said it was an infringement of civil rights because, while the law ensured a child's criminal record was not carried through into adulthood, it would not stop their DNA remaining in criminal databases indefinitely. "Some of these children might be guilty of stealing a Mars Bar and for that the Queensland police are prepared to put them on a national criminal register, possibly for life," he said.

The average daily number of juveniles in custody in Australia is 800.

Youth Affairs Network Queensland director Siyavash Doostkhah said he was against taking DNA from children and called on the Government to fund more rehabilitation and youth mentoring programs. "It never brings any safety to the community," Mr Doostkhah said. "If we get more tough, if we collect more DNA and have more cameras out there . . . it doesn't stop crime, it just brings convictions."

A Department of Communities spokesman said there were currently about 139 young people in detention in Queensland and insisted it was a priority to focus on rehabilitation for young offenders. "Research has shown rehabilitation is more successful than detention," he said.

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I guess this is "inclusiveness": Australian kids to sing New Zealand national anthem!

I am not sure when inclusiveness became a good thing. I recollect no debate about it and I have been following politics for 50 years. It used to be exclusiveness that was honoured. But asking school students to sing the national anthem of another country on Australia's most solemn day of commemoration is certainly rather odd. Australians, however, generally have positive attitudes toward New Zealanders (though the converse is notably different) so I expect the idea will be accepted to some extent

QUEENSLAND state school students will for the first time be encouraged to sing the New Zealand national anthem to commemorate Anzac Day. Premier Anna Bligh will write to principals asking them to play God Defend New Zealand, along with the Australian national anthem, at school ceremonies. Her request, as chairwoman of the Anzac Day Commemoration Committee, could be controversial considering the rivalry between the Tasman neighbours, particularly in sport.

Queensland continues to be a magnet for Kiwis, with 11,700 settling here in the past year. More than 150,000 live in the Sunshine State, about 40 per cent of all New Zealanders in Australia. Trade between the countries is worth about $2.8 billion.

Ms Bligh said it was time to mark NZ's contribution to Australia by playing God Defend New Zealand. "This would be a fitting tribute and suitable recognition of the members of the New Zealand armed forces who have served alongside the men and women of our Australian armed forces during wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations," Ms Bligh said. "I encourage you to give favourable consideration to this request when planning the 2010 Anzac Day ceremony."

The Premier said schools could obtain free copies of the Kiwi anthem on CD or the sheet music. It would be up to individual schools whether they got the children to sing the song or just listen to God Defend New Zealand.

The New Zealand consulate office in Brisbane said it was unlikely that schools in NZ would reciprocate [THAT'S for sure!], but a spokesman said Ms Bligh's direction to state schools was a "wonderful gesture".

Anzac Day – April 25 – falls on a Sunday this year, so the public holiday will be held the following day.

Queensland Principals Association chairman Norm Hart said it was "an interesting idea". He said Ms Bligh had called on schools to improve numeracy and literacy, with a target of being one of the top three states in the country, and the focus was on that rather that extracurricular activities. "If she is saying our students have to learn the lyrics and sing it, then I am less impressed," Mr Hart said.

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Rogue sharks to be killed -- but only if they are small

This is Greenie craziness. ALL sharks found near swimmers should be shot immediately. There is a whole ocean for them to live in. The little strip of it near land should be off-limits to them

Rogue sharks that attack beachgoers this summer will be hunted down, shot in the head and sawed apart until their spines are severed. [Seeing they don't have spines, that could be tricky]

The Sunday Times can today reveal the graphic methods put in place by the WA Government's Shark Hazard Committee for dealing with man-eaters. In a candid interview, WA Department of Fisheries strategic compliance manager and shark committee member Tina Thorne said a rogue shark that attacked a swimmer would be slaughtered if it continued to pose a significant threat to beachgoers and if it could be positively identified as the offending shark. But the kill order would only be given in "extreme circumstances" as a last resort where there was an immediate danger to the public.

Ms Thorne said fisheries officers would first use a baited drumline and put "attractant" in the water to try to hook the shark. Then the creature would be hauled aboard a boat where officers would "have to use a large firearm to dispatch the animal". "That is not an easy task, as sharks have very small brains," she said. Once shot through the head, fisheries personnel would take a final step to ensure the creature was dead by "severing the spinal cord and bleeding it out". "Even if you hook it, you can't just fly over in a chopper and shoot it because of refraction (of the bullets) in the water," Ms Thorne said.

While the shoot-to-kill methods had been put down in policy by the Shark Hazard Committee, Ms Thorne stressed great whites - the species responsible for most fatal attacks - were protected and a special exemption from the law was required by Fisheries Minister Norman Moore to kill one. "It's not something we would take lightly," Ms Thorne said, after a spate of shark sightings and beach closures across Perth this week.

Trying to catch a large shark was extremely dangerous, she said, and in most cases the creatures disappeared into the depths after an attack. Ms Thorne said in three of the past four fatal attacks in WA the shark responsible was never spotted. Only after the fatal attack in 2008 on 51-year-old Port Kennedy man Brian Guest did the shark linger. In that case, there was no immediate danger to other beachgoers, so authorities tried to tag the animal.

The statements about killing sharks angered the family of Mr Guest. A friend of the family told The Sunday Times Mr Guest's widow Charmaine and son Daniel stuck by their comments that sharks belonged in the marine environment and should not be harmed.

Ms Thorne agreed, saying "they live in the ocean and we don't". Six people have been killed by sharks in WA in the past 20 years.

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Asylum seeker situation 'an absolute mess'

Like Obama, Rudd lied his way into power

The Federal Opposition is calling on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to act immediately on illegal immigration, as another boat of asylum seekers are processed at Christmas Island. A Customs boat intercepted a boat with 27 people and three crew members off the West Australia coast on Friday afternoon.

The Opposition's immigration spokesman Scott Morrison says in the last six weeks, there has been an average of 100 people a week arriving in Australia illegally.

He says before the last election the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd pledged to be tough on border security. "Before the election Mr Rudd actually said that he would turn back seaworthy boats and he took every opportunity to echo Mr Howard on the issue of illegal boatload arrivals into Australia," he said. "Now in government we've had 75 boats arrive on his watch. We see failed policies, weak decisions and an absolute mess."

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ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is aggrieved that Kevvy won't save either the whales or Peter Spencer




The loss of a poetry education in Australian schools

Knowing great poems can be a lifelong source of pleasure, satisfaction and wisdom but that knowledge is being withheld from many young people today

It is a welcome if rare event to see poetry on prime time television. The ABC's Bush Slam is an attempt to put poetry front and centre in the national consciousness. If we believe that 19th-century bush poets such as Henry Lawson and A.B. (Banjo) Paterson were representative of a golden age of wordsmiths, then Bush Slam at least gives word nerds an opportunity to enter our living rooms. And don't we need it? ...

Unlike Britain, Australia has no national poetry day. We no longer have a national search, sponsored by the ABC, for the most popular Australian poem. The website was archived in 1999.

The pity is that schools are generally not teaching much poetry. Don't hold your breath that poetry will undergo a renaissance in the new national English curriculum. Besides NSW being prepared to teach canonical works, including poetry, this is more the exception than the rule.

It is no accident that 18-year-old student Laurie Wallis topped the NSW Higher School Certificate extension 2 English course with a suite of Japanese-inspired poetry, Water Sounds. Such work would not have been possible in any other state. Here's why.

Responding to the draft of the English national curriculum, the West Australian government has not made any defence of the place of poetry, and in fact has asked for a broader definition of literature to include "spoken, non-verbal, visual and aural texts".

Meanwhile, the Tasmanian government has argued that any study of literature needs to embody "the critique of the attitudes and values underpinning the text" -- this sounds like the codling grub of critical literacy in the Apple Isle. Tasmania is marked by a core of poor school literacy results and the lowest adult literacy figures in the country.

The question is whether there needs to be a mandatory requirement in the national English curriculum regarding poetry teaching. The new chairman of the Australia Council's Literature Board, Dennis Haskell, thinks there is room for this. In September last year, Haskell saw the black hole of Australian literature in the nation's schools, saying it's about "getting it taught at all, the canon or otherwise"...

What must change is that Australian children need to be introduced to the rich heritage of the nation's verse. The ideological angst that the mere mention of the word "canon" creates for some teachers needs to be seen for what it is. Such a position actually prevents children from knowing their literature. They are denied discovering the voices of Thwaites, John Shaw Nielson, Judith Wright, A.D. Hope, Les Murray and others.

The blunt reality is that today, in the majority of classrooms across the country, few children could name two Australian poets, and few teachers could either. I know this to be so. Having taught in Australian schools, I have been shocked at how little poetry is taught, never mind the awareness of Australian verse.

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Hunger strike is a desperate response to a Greenie-motivated injustice

On Tuesday I visited Peter Spencer, 10 metres up a wind monitoring mast on his property in the high country south of Canberra. Spencer lives there these days, inside a tent on a small platform. State laws restricting the clearing of native vegetation have helped make his land unviable. Some years ago he was unable to meet his mortgage repayments and his sister and brother-in-law took over the debt from the bank. Spencer has been unable to repay them, and soon the sheriff will be arriving to arrange for a forced sale of the property. There are important political issues here, but it is also a family tragedy, and a personal one.

Spencer has talked a lot in recent weeks about climate change and carbon sinks, but the root of his problem with government lies in the native vegetation laws that have prevented him from clearing - and farming - much of his land. In 2004 the Productivity Commission produced a report on the impact of the laws. It recorded how many farmers had lost income, their property had been devalued, and they had received very little or no compensation, and said the worst affected "often suffered serious personal stress in the face of the resultant marginal viability, or even loss, of their property".

The effect on Spencer has been greater than on most, because of his unique personal circumstances. He's now 61, but in his younger days worked in the hotel and tourism industry in Papua New Guinea. Apparently he was successful there, and ended up owning some hotels. He sometimes stopped fights between tribesmen and at one point had his nose pierced so he could wear a bone through it on festive occasions. (You can still see light though the hole if you catch him in profile.) ABC television made a documentary on him in the 1980s.

Spencer's long-term dream was to return to NSW and become a farmer in the high country, where his mother's people had lived for generations. From 1980 he began buying adjacent blocks of land as they came up for sale at Shannons Flat, just south of the Australian Capital Territory. It took him about 15 years to put together a holding that was big enough, and to build a house. He finally had a farm of 5600 hectares, of which 60 per cent was cleared. It was his intention to keep the other 40 per cent uncleared, and to log its alpine ash and mountain gum in a sustainable manner.

During this period he was still working in Papua New Guinea, so he did little farming, and vegetation grew on much of the cleared land at Shannons Flat. In the mid-'90s he was hired by the office of the PNG prime minister, and wrote a paper on corruption and law and order that didn't make him many friends. He says one night some men knocked on the door of his home, dragged him outside and tried to shoot him with a homemade gun. It misfired and Spencer escaped in the dark. Shortly after, he hopped on a plane and hasn't been back. He settled at Shannons Flat, with the intention of spending the rest of his life as a farmer.

A pressing task was to clear the saplings that had grown over much of the previously cleared land on his property, but with the clearing bans he discovered his farm had been turned into a vast nature reserve. He ran sheep on the small proportion that was still cleared, but was unable to make a living. Land clearing was not his only problem. His farm was not good grazing country on the whole, and like many farmers he was affected by the drought and by low wool prices. Opinions differ as to how important these various factors were to his financial failure. Some of his family believe he was undercapitalised and not a good farmer. A rural counsellor who tried to help him says much of the blame lies with the land-clearing regulations.

Spencer could have walked off his farm, but he was too attached to it to do this. He protested for years about what had been done to him. This included complaints to politicians, unsuccessful efforts to motivate the NSW Farmers Association, and many court cases, where he often represented himself. A passionate and intelligent man, although without much formal education, he spent a lot of his time learning about the law. After a while his third wife, Anna, left the farm and took their young sons to Europe to live with her parents.

Meanwhile his sister and brother-in-law were looking to recover the debt he owed them. They felt he was turning to political argument and legal action when he should have been more concerned about repaying them. Maybe government had hurt him, but that was life: it was time to sell up and move on.

Spencer's legal actions failed. One of them involved a government offer, made many years after the land clearing restrictions came in, to buy the farm. The price was based on the property's present value, but Spencer argued it ought to be the value had the land clearing bans not been in place.

In 2008 Justice Stephen Rothman in the Supreme Court rejected this claim, but expressed some sympathy for Spencer's situation. He noted: "The State Vegetation Acts had a crippling effect … on the business of Mr Spencer … it is an extremely disheartening and sad occasion that a person, whose life and resources have been placed into rural property for the purposes of conducting a grazing and farming business, has been required to resort to this action." He further observed: "While all members of society must accept that there will be restrictions on their activities for the 'greater good of society', when those restrictions prevent or prohibit a business activity that was hitherto legitimate, because of the area in which it is operating, and assistance is offered which does not fully compensate for the restrictions imposed, society is asking Mr Spencer, and people in his position, to pay for its benefit … it is a most unfortunate aspect of the operation of the scheme that a person in Mr Spencer's position is effectively denied proper compensation for the restrictions imposed upon him by a scheme implemented for the public good." However, he concluded, "that is a matter for government [not the courts]".

Peter Spencer is a complicated and volatile character. Most of us would regard going on a hunger strike as extreme, and he has shown a propensity for self-harm in the past. There was an occasion about 1970 when he went up a hill in Canberra and shot himself, as part of an effort to get attention during a dispute with his first wife.

Some of those who deal with him have described him as obsessive, and this is certainly my limited experience. I stayed in touch with him after writing a column on land clearing five years ago, and on one occasion when I wasn't displaying enough sympathy he hung up and didn't speak to me for a year. He can be a thoughtful and articulate human being who draws on a considerable experience of life, but he is also a righteous man given to monologues and high emotion.

Spencer's siblings are upset about what has happened, and believe politics has clouded what is essentially a family dispute over a loan. This is understandable, yet there is a genuine political issue here. The land clearing bans have played a big role in what has happened to him.

Spencer has now been without food for 48 days. He spends the time listening to animals and reading the Bible. On Thursday night he said he was losing strength and would give no more interviews.

How should politicians respond to the action he has taken? They should not change laws because of a hunger strike. But it might give them pause to reflect on those laws. Others are already doing this: in the past week there has been a lot of media coverage here and some overseas, and much discussion on the internet. In a poll on Today Tonight, 14,000 people (98 per cent of those who voted) wanted Kevin Rudd to meet with Peter Spencer.

This level of response is a reminder of the moral ambiguity of a hunger strike. On the one hand it allows people to question the mental health of the person engaged in the strike. On the other, it can attract attention to an important injustice: if Spencer hadn't embarked on this action, no one today would be talking about land clearing. His action has been effective precisely because it is unusual, and unusual things tend to be done by unusual people.

Mr Rudd has been much praised for making public apologies to Aboriginal people and to those who suffered as children in state care. These apologies are welcome, but in a historical sense they are (as I'm sure he would agree) regrettably late. With farmers and land clearing, we could say sorry while there's still time to do something about the suffering that's been caused.

But if anyone's going to say sorry, it ought to be the Premier of NSW. After all, it was the State Government that brought in the native vegetation laws.

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Victorian government still looking useless in the face of bushfires

The thermometer read 41C on New Year's Eve as the Ferguson family pulled into a wild and windy Casterton. All around us, the rolling Western District hills were covered in dust fuelled by a baking summer northerly that brought back unpleasant memories of Black Saturday. And the official fire warning on the town's dated billboard? Low. In fact lower than low. Someone in the state's far west had assumed responsibility for pointing the arrow as far from reality as possible.

Further down the road, there was no mobile reception (thanks again, Optus) and the radio crackled so loudly even the local ABC updates were barely audible. We were, in every sense, on our own.

The experience tends to support the view of Emergency Services Commissioner Bruce Esplin, who made it very clear this week that no Victorian should rely on technology alone for bushfire warnings. "It's really important that people keep in touch with their environment and step outside and feel the temperature, smell for smoke," he said.

It's sound advice, but not necessarily what John Brumby's backbench would want to have heard. They woke on Wednesday to this paper's front-page story of another bungled warning, this time leaving fearful residents in and around Benalla with a 12-day-old message on the Victorian Bushfire Information line. Acting Premier Rob Hulls was furious (rightly) and the Opposition (rightly) went to town on a fundamental error, apparently caused by training deficiencies, even though the CFA's training is generally exhaustive and exhausting.

The system that failed this week dated back to before Black Saturday and the problem has been fixed. But in terms of public perception, it was a howler. Deficiencies in the information line were among the first things mentioned in the Bushfire Royal Commission's interim report, along with the performance of the websites. (On December 16, during an unsettling hot day, the CFA's website server crashed. That problem has apparently been dealt with as well).

The commission noted that often on Black Saturday "the information available through these sources was incomplete or out of date". And yet shortly before Black Saturday's first anniversary, Victorians have been delivered some rather underwhelming news on both systems.

What does this tell us? The measured analysis is that Victoria will be vastly better prepared to fight any disaster in 2010, but the effort is, manifestly, a work in progress.

In their first report, the royal commissioners noted the challenges of righting the wrongs of Black Saturday in time for this year's fire season, but still urged the State Government to do what it could.

The Government has worked overtime to implement a new phone emergency alert system, it will have implemented the new fire danger rating system, radically expanded the number of emergency broadcasters, overhauled planning, showered cash, brought in new water-bombing aircraft and started what will be the biggest shake-up of the CFA in its history. One warning system was rebuilt in just seven weeks. All the while the Government was embarking on the rebuilding phase after the horrific results of Black Saturday.

John Brumby's premiership will be defined by his handling of the disaster and so far the opinion polls suggest the community is behind him. But those who read the political winds for a living will know that there is no finish line and that both perception and reality will drive the electorate's judgment.

Wednesday's Herald Sun splash will have been nothing less than what the British describe as a "marmalade dropper". That is, a story or issue that leads the reader to drop their toast at the breakfast table. Senior insiders make the valid point that there will inevitably be glitches, but at the same time the Government is operating in an environment where the community will give it little latitude.

Built into this dynamic is the fact that the Government really has only as much time as the next major fire. If there is another disaster this year and there are deficiencies in the fire-fighting effort, then it will be all but game over for the Brumby Government. Victorians will not forgive another disaster. This is particularly the case if the warnings are again deficient.

The royal commission will be crucial in assessing how far the Government has gone and whether it has done enough. On March 31, the commissioners are due to deliver another report, this time assessing in detail how far and fast the Government has gone in implementing the interim recommendations. Brumby has his critics, but he has opened up his Government to scrutiny.

The next debate that needs to be had is how much Victorians are prepared to spend on firefighting. The time for a fire tax to dramatically increase CFA resources was probably February 8, 2009. The Government has allocated $700 million to firefighting, but when you consider the effort put in to reduce the road toll, it is a small price to pay to save lives.

Behind the scenes there are indications that the process of reform has only just begun. It seems likely that the CFA will head further down the path towards greater professionalism, with a heavier emphasis on paid staff rather than volunteers. Volunteers will always be the backbone of the authority, but the obvious conclusion to be drawn is that the better resourced the CFA is, the better equipped it will be to fight fires.

One option that has been raised is merging the Metropolitan Fire Brigade with the CFA, although the MFB is a markedly different beast with different equipment and objectives.

Perhaps the biggest challenge will be in changing the CFA's culture. The volunteers are the north, south, east and west of the CFA. But how do you enforce private sector accountability on an authority that exists in large part because of the efforts of free labour? Maybe it's time more of them were paid for their efforts. This, of course, wouldn't guarantee a perfect service, but it would benefit the firefighters at the same time as providing de facto promotions.

One of the many lessons from Black Saturday - and the most recent bungling - is that reforming firefighting in Victoria is a long-term project. In the short-term, however, Victorians have a right to expect that basic warnings will be delivered in a timely and accurate fashion. That didn't happen this week. It didn't happen last month. It didn't happen on Black Saturday.

The time for excuses has passed.

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Australian dollar buoyed by favourable interest rates

A WEAKER gold price took a little shine off the Australian dollar yesterday but the currency held near the 25-year high hit this week against the British pound.

The performance of the two currencies illustrates their nations' disparate economic fortunes. The pound is depressed by severe recession, zero interest rates, threats of a government debt downgrade and uncertainty over the timing and outcome of an election. "Question marks about the credit rating, alongside the ongoing political debate, are playing into the presumption that sterling is going to struggle to maintain gains," said Jeremy Stretch, a senior currency strategist at Rabobank International in London. He said there was "very little reason" to expect the pound would make gains after Britain's central bank this week left rates unchanged.

The Aussie dollar is buoyed by favourable relative interest rates, a better commodity price outlook and improving investor risk appetite. The British pound was at the peak of its powers versus the Aussie dollar in late 2001, when one pound equalled $2.99.

On Thursday, as stronger than expected Australian retail sales data raised the chances of an imminent official rate rise, the Aussie dollar touched 57.655 British pence, the most since March 1985. It was at 57.4p in trading late yesterday. The Aussie dollar's surge brings pain for local exporters by eroding dollar-denominated export earnings but it can also help by lowering their input costs. It also puts a squeeze on pensions Australians draw on from Britain.

Jonathan Cavenagh, a currency strategist at Westpac Banking Corp, said: "If we can make a clear break above 58p, people have got to start thinking about the 60-level as a realistic possibility."

The Aussie on Thursday rose against all 16 major currencies, hitting a two-year high against the euro after the Australian Bureau of Statistics said retail sales climbed 1.4 per cent from October, much higher than economists had expected. The dollar has been the second best-performing currency against the euro in the past three months among the 16 most-traded currencies. Demand for the euro has waned on speculation that Greece's fiscal problems may also engulf Spain, Ireland and other nations that share the common currency.

Demand for Australia's dollar was also boosted on Thursday after minutes of a US Federal Reserve meeting released on Wednesday showed policy-makers debated extending stimulus measures in the US, meaning no rate rises were on the horizon. Whereas most traders expect Australia's Reserve Bank will increase the official cash rate when it meets on February 2, which could set up another surge in the Aussie dollar against the US greenback.

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Protesters invite confrontation: whalers

I didn't comment on this incident here yesterday because I couldn't see what it had to do with Australia but I see below that the incident took place in Antarctic waters claimed by Australia so that is the thread that the Greenies are clinging to. I will therefore repeat below what I said yesterday on GREENIE WATCH and follow it by some fresh comments:

This is the sort of crap that Israel has to put up with. Aggression provokes a strike-back and then the attacked party is blamed for striking back -- with the reliable collusion of a Green/Left media, of course. The whole episode was a blatant setup. The vessel rammed was a highly maneuverable diesel-powered (biodiesel, of course) trimaran that could easily have skated out of the way of the monohulled Japanese ship. They were only rammed because they wanted to be rammed. They want to be seen as the victims rather than the aggressors that they really are. It's just another Greenie PR stunt.

Another two comments: 1). The eco-terrorists were trying to blind the Japanese crew by shining a laser at them according to this video. The video also shows how the Greenie speedboat ran rings around the Japanese ship and could have evaded the Japanese ship if its crew had wanted to do so. 2). This is NOT a conservation issue. The whale species concerned are not remotely "endangered". Some Southern hemisphere statistics here and here. Minke whales: total population 761000, Japan catch 1000=0.13%; rare fin whales: total 85200, catch 20=0.023%; humpbacks: total 42000, catch 50=0.11%, rate of increase 7.9-13.9%. So the whole episode is pure exhibitionism from attention-seekers that has in fact nothing to do with the environment. The preceding figures are of course estimates. Japan in fact claims much smaller catches than the estimates used above.

Latest news update below

A spokesman for Japan's whaling fleet has accused the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd of recklessly causing a collision in the Southern Ocean two days ago. The Sea Shepherd's high-tech speedboat Ady Gil sank this morning after it was sliced in two by the Japanese whaling vessel Shonan Maru 2 on Wednesday. Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson told ABC News Breakfast the Ady Gil went down shortly before 3:30am AEDT while it was being towed to a French research base.

Both the Japanese whalers and the Sea Shepherd crew blame each other for the clash. But Glenn Inwood from Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research says Mr Watson has a dangerous attitude. "Paul Watson has said before that he's willing to give any Japanese vessel what he calls a steel enema by ramming his ship into the stern of any Japanese vessel," Mr Inwood told the Nine Network. "He also proudly displays the number of vessels he's sunk on the side of the [boat] Steve Irwin. "You can understand why the Japanese have put security vessels down there. "To say Japan has broken maritime laws can't be justified in this instance when you're under constant harassment and constant attack from these ships."

Mr Inwood says Japan's whaling program is internationally recognised as legal. "The International Whaling Commission (IWC) have sanctioned it. The New Zealand government recognises its legality, and many members of the IWC do as well," he said. "Sea Shepherd is trying to prevent Japan from conducting what is a legal operation under the rules of the IWC."

Mr Watson says an insurance payout on the Ady Gil is unlikely because the incident was a deliberate act. "It's a $1.5 million loss for our organisation," he said. "I think the Japanese deliberately took that vessel out; they saw it as a threat and they were under orders to take it out. "It would be an act of war so there wouldn't be any insurance on it."

Mr Watson says two Japanese harpoon ships were nearby but did not offer any help after the incident. "They were responsible, they destroyed the vessel ... I think they should have offered some sort of assistance but they refused to acknowledge any distress signal," he said....

Meanwhile, Greens leader Bob Brown has sent a $2 million bill for the Ady Gil to the Japanese government. Senator Brown says the bill should have come from the Australian Government. "The Japanese fleet is entirely responsible for the destruction of the Ady Gil," he said. "It was an illegal operation; it's part of the wider illegal operation of whaling in Australian Antarctic waters and it was in Australian Antarctic waters and the Japanese government should pay up."

Yesterday, Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard asked the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) to investigate the incident and said the findings would be made public. She says the Government reserves the right to take international legal action if diplomacy with Japanese officials fails, and has warned that evidence has already been collected to launch such action. New Zealand is also investigating the incident because the Ady Gil was registered there.

More HERE






Victoria police outraged by Indian KKK cartoon



Victoria police are best known for corruption and political correctness rather than efficiency so I think they deserve some derision. Their turning a blind eye to black crime against Indians was undoubtedly a large factor in the death of the Indian student

Victoria's Police Association has reacted angrily to a cartoon in an Indian newspaper depicting one of the state's officers as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The Delhi Mail Today newspaper published the cartoon in response to the murder of Indian student Nitin Garg in Melbourne last weekend. The cartoon shows a person in a Ku Klux Klan hood wearing a Victoria Police badge, with a caption that reads: "We Are Yet To Ascertain The Nature Of The Crime." The Indian media has suggested the attack may have been racially motivated, but Melbourne police say there's no evidence of that.

Police Association secretary Greg Davies says it is highly offensive to suggest police are not properly investigating the murder. "To say that our detectives are going slow on this, or for some reason trying to protect somebody, is incredibly offensive and wrong," he said. "It's based on nothing but obviously a slow news day in Delhi. "The identity of the offender from the homicide in Footscray isn't even known at this stage, so we don't even know what nationality the offender is. "To say it's a race-based crime is not only premature, but stupid." [certainly premature but not stupid]

The Police Minister, Bob Cameron, has added his voice to the condemnation of the cartoon. "This is just terrible," Mr Cameron said. "Victoria Police is a very tolerant organisation [very tolerant of black crime in fact] and Victoria is a very tolerant state and to suggest that Victoria Police is racist is just plain wrong and it's offensive to the good police we have here in Victoria. "It just doesn't help anyone at all to have people from the sidelines throwing bricks," he said. "We've got a good police force and we should let our police force go about their policing business in a sensible and a calm way."

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Corrupt health bureaucrats finally carpeted

TWO unidentified Queensland Health staff face disciplinary action following a financial probe into the Royal Children's Hospital. Two staff subject to the long-running investigation have been served with show-cause notices asking them to explain why action should not be taken against them. Queensland Health director-general Mick Reid would not reveal their identities, insisting both public servants had to be shown natural justice and be allowed to respond within 14 days.

The move comes after The Courier-Mail revealed that a Queensland Health ethical standards probe was investigating allegations including:

• RCH boss Doug Brown and former finance manager Alan Fletcher, now the chief financial officer for the Queensland Children's Hospital, processed an $8000 no-interest loan of taxpayer funds to a senior colleague for overseas travel.

• Mr Brown approved $6500 worth of luxury beauty treatments for 65 nurses as part of an alleged payoff following a dispute sparked when new staff scored free parking.

• Junior staff paid for wedding and baby gifts such as cookware for colleagues out of hospital funds.

Mr Reid said he was now acting on recommendations relating to "a number of matters" after the CMC completed a review of the Queensland Health ethical standards probe. "I have issued show-cause notices to two Queensland Health staff that were subject to the investigation," Mr Reid said in a statement. "As is standard procedure and in accordance with natural justice, the officers have been given 14 days to respond." It is not known whether Mr Brown and Mr Fletcher are the subjects of this action.

The moves came as Health Minister Paul Lucas criticised his department's handling of the affair, saying the two-year investigation had taken too long. "It has taken longer than I thought it should have," Mr Lucas said.

The Opposition has called for a broader inquiry into all public hospitals, with leader John-Paul Langbroek saying the allegations raised serious questions.

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NSW rejects same sex adoptions

Prudence wins out. Homosexual couples are notoriously unstable and there are high rates of partner-bashing among them

Same-sex couples won't be allowed to adopt in NSW "at this stage", despite a parliamentary inquiry supporting the move as being in the best interests of children. The majority of a six-person upper house committee that examined same-sex adoption recommended in July last year that amendments be made to definitions of "couple" and "de facto relationship" in the Adoption Act 2000. At the time, the committee chair, Labor's Christine Robertson, said the committee found reforming the laws to allow same-sex couples to adopt would "ensure the best interests of children" were met by NSW's adoption laws.

Community Services Minister Linda Burney on Wednesday issued a statement saying the state government believed there was "some merit" in the committee's findings. "However, members were unable to reach a consensus, reflecting divisions on this issue in the wider community. "As a result of these concerns, the government is not satisfied there is broad enough community support to justify new state legislation at this stage."

Ms Burney said further consultation would take place as the Community and Disability Services Council discussed a national approach. "The government's primary concern will always be what is in the best interests of children," Ms Burney said. "The committee was given examples of successful parenting and fostering by gay and lesbian couples and in these case studies, adoption provided permanence, stability and security which are so important for children.

"However, I am also aware that there are very deeply held, divergent views on this issue and that is why a decision on this matter will not be taken at this stage."

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ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is scornful about Kevvy writing a children's book





Indian student numbers plummet

As the African "refugees" whom Australia has kindly taken in show their gratitude by half-destroying a major Australian industry. The coverup is tight but all indications are that most attacks on Indian students are the work of African gangs. Letting tens of thousands of Africans into Australia may be seen as virtuous but it cannot be seen as wise. African populations everywhere have egregiously high rates of crime, usually crimes of violence

THE number of Indians applying for visas to study in Australia has fallen by almost half, heightening fears for the nation's $17 billion international education industry. The news come as India seethes over the recent murder of an Indian national, Nitin Garg, in Melbourne.

The Immigration Department figures, for the period from July to October 31 last year, show a 46 per cent drop in student visa applications from India compared with the same period in 2008. The decline follows a year in which reports of attacks on Indians and unscrupulous practices by some colleges and migration agents have battered Australia's reputation as a study destination.

The figures also show overall offshore student visa applications have dropped by 26 per cent. Applications from Nepal plummeted 85 per cent, from 5696 to 845, and those from Korea, Brazil and the United States each fell by about 20 per cent. However, applications from China increased slightly, by 0.2 per cent, and those from Vietnam rose 19 per cent.

The chief executive of Universities Australia, Glenn Withers, said the number of Indians applying to study at universities had dropped by about 20 per cent on the previous year. He said a reduction in Indian students would be likely to have a greater impact on vocational colleges, where a greater proportion of Indians enrolled. But Dr Withers said there were anecdotal reports that negative publicity had caused some middle-class Indian parents to turn to universities in countries such as Britain and Canada.

He said part of the problem was that Indians had started studying in Australia in large numbers only recently, so there were few alumni to counter bad press with stories of their own experiences.

Dr Withers said he was more concerned that interest from China may be softening, possibly because of warnings published by the Chinese Government about the quality of some colleges.

Andrew Smith, the chief executive of the Australian Council for Private Education and Training, which represents private colleges, said he was expecting a ''significant'' decline in enrolments this year from several countries, including India and China. He said reputational damage, the strength of the dollar and a tightening of the visa application process had all contributed to the drop, which could threaten the viability of colleges and lead to job losses.

Research commissioned by the council predicted a 5 per cent drop in international enrolments could lead to 6000 job losses.

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Australia's private schools become less affordable

Even though there are lot of them. The reason is higher demand -- once again the old law of supply and demand dictates price. And why the higher demand? Because many government schools have got so bad -- mainly due to negligible discipline -- that parents are driven to the private sector in desperation

TOP private schools have become less affordable over the past decade, despite taxpayer subsidies and claims from John Howard when he introduced the current funding system that fee increases would taper off. The yearly fees in the top schools of about $11,500 in 1999 were about 28 per cent of the average yearly wage, whereas this year's fees of about $23,500 at these schools are about 36 per cent of the average salary.

The decline in affordability comes despite private schools securing billions in taxpayers' money under the Socioeconomic Status funding model that has been extended until 2012 by the federal Labor government. When it unveiled the SES model in 1999, the Howard government boasted it was about giving parents of all incomes a "choice" in schooling. "In some cases, it will mean that fees won't go up at the same rate that would otherwise be the case," the then prime minister said at the time.

However, looking at the typical fees payable for the upper echelon of schools, this is clearly not the case. To use the Kings School in Sydney as an example, a parent in 1999 would pay $11,595, or 28.4 per cent of the average wage of $40,820. This year, that parent would be paying $23,442, or 36 per cent of the average wage of $64,896.

The Rudd government decision to extend the SES funding model until 2012 gave non-government schools an estimated $28 billion. It was made despite protests from public education unions.

The Australian yesterday reported that private schools were putting up their fees for this year by an average of 6 per cent.

The reaction to the hikes has been muted so far, with parents groups and the Independent Education Union noting that the education component of the consumer price index had risen by 5.6 per cent in the past year. IEU federal secretary Chris Watt said teachers' wages were rising at about 4.5 per cent a year and it was possible that schools were facing reduced fee payments and donations from alumni amid the global financial crisis. "If the increase was of the order of 10 per cent, we would say it's outrageous, but it's not that much more than the base wage increase plus extra costs," he said.

Tony Abbott yesterday defended the public subsidisation of elite private schools and said they had the right to increase fees. "In the end, these are private institutions and it's up to them to decide what their fees should be," the Opposition Leader said.

Mr Abbott also defended the SES funding model. "Every Australian child is entitled to government assistance towards his or her education," he said. "Whether people choose to utilise that assistance by going to a public school or whether they choose to go to a private school and receive a reduced level of support, but nevertheless a substantial level of support, that's up to the parents of the child."

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Government produces housing shortages and the consequent high housing prices

By Harry Triguboff, founder and managing director of the Meriton Group

I READ with interest The Australian's editorial ("Giving them shelter is but the first step to a solution", January 4) on the growing crisis of homelessness in Australia and could not agree more with your conclusion that this is not a problem that can be solved by simply pouring in money or building more homes. And yet, as you correctly observe, there is clearly a shortage of affordable and appropriate housing.

While the private sector is no panacea to the ongoing problems of homelessness, there is no question that if we were allowed to get on and build it would have a terrific and immediate impact on the numbers of homes available for Australians to own and rent and would help ease the situation for those who are presently squeezed out of housing, particularly in the large capital cities. Yet local government continues to do its best to ensure we cannot build the housing stock for which there is clear demand.

The simple fact is that we must produce more dwellings. Not only for the homeless and not only for young people. And not only for our growing population (up to 35 million by 2050, we are told). We must produce more dwellings and greater incomes so that our best young people will not continue to leave the country. And we must produce more dwellings to encourage the best type of migrant to come here.

From my perspective as one who has tried to provide affordable and appropriate housing for the better part of half a century, I have to say things have never been harder. Last year we managed to build about 1000 apartments in Sydney and southeast Queensland, which is about the same number as we built 25 years ago in Sydney alone. We would have built five times as many if we could have got approvals, but the approval process across Australia is now completely broken. In order to produce enough dwellings, and for them to be affordable and appropriate, three things must happen:

First, more dwellings must be built in established areas where resources are already in place to support populations. This will require rezonings. In Sydney, in particular, we cannot afford, economically or environmentally, to continue to build houses further and further out on the fringe.

Second, once appropriate zonings are in place, councils should stop being the consent authority and much more development should be "as of right". The development process has become too politicised. Councillors are convinced that if they approve developments they will lose votes. Of course we have too many councils and our culture is anti-development. The big picture sees that people would rather leave the country than attempt to have sufficient land zoned for apartments.

And once land is rezoned, it should be left to the market to dictate what is appropriate housing, because the market can respond much more quickly to changes in people's desire for a particular type of housing, and their ability to afford it, than any form of regulation. Housing size is a classic case. We read that our houses are too big (I actually don't think that they are once apartments are taken into the mix because apartments are certainly getting smaller) and it is clear that codes set many years ago are irrelevant by the time approvals are granted.

What is the point of approving apartments or houses in areas where nobody wants to buy them, or at sizes where nobody can afford them, and banks will not lend to purchasers to buy them? Nobody dictates to Holden how many Commodores and how many Barinas it should produce, and nor should anyone tell private developers too much about unit mix and apartment sizes. If we get it wrong, nobody will buy our stock and we will get the message much quicker than from any well-meaning councillor or town planner.

Finally, the Reserve Bank must come to the party and drop interest rates. Talking about what will happen to buyers when interest rates go up is nonsense. Our interest rates are already 3 per cent higher than in other parts of the developed world, so it would be lunacy for the RBA to raise interest rates higher. We should not be afraid of inflation or prices rising too much. Our population is getting poorer not richer. And we would be poorer still if it were not for the stream of cheap imports coming out of Asia. If the RBA drops rates, and the banks only add a small margin (which I think is what they do) then housing prices will inevitably go up. This is a good thing for everyone. The people will become wealthier. We won't have to depend on foreigners to fund our residential development. The problem in Australia is not inflation but lack of housing. By raising interest rates we will have fewer houses, not more. In America and Britain the problem was that there was an oversupply. We have had undersupply for many years.

Longer term, Australians must make more money. Our wages must keep on rising well above inflation; we must have higher full-time employment. We must get young people to start working when they are younger. Schools must prepare them for work with a renewed focus on vocational training and not merely on those who get 90 per cent results and go to university. Older people must be found employment. Perhaps the government should subsidise their wages. But all these measures take time. Only the RBA can have an immediate impact.

Historically, Australians made money on property values going up. Now we have decided that the super funds, which have a great deal of money, should invest in shares rather than in property. Of course shares go up sometimes, but the weakness of our share market is that it depends too much on what happens abroad. Whereas we can control our real estate, we cannot control to the same extent the share markets. Some money should stay in shares but most of it should be in property. If the government could find a way to channel the nation's superannuation into the development of residential property we would see a great number of homes built, and a safe investment for Australian retirees.

None of the above is rocket science: human beings have managed to produce affordable and appropriate housing in societies across the world and across time; only in Australia in the 21st century have we decided for some reason that it is all too hard.

Until we get the courage to change things we will continue to make life unnecessarily difficult for many Australians.

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Secretive defence bureaucrats outed

The woman responsible should be fired. It does however raise an interesting question about what she was trying to hide

A FURIOUS Defence Minister has been forced to countermand potentially unconstitutional orders from bureaucrats banning staff from involvement in parliamentary committees without his clearance. John Faulkner said yesterday action would be taken to improve the Defence Department's understanding of parliamentary procedures. Senator Faulkner won an unmatched reputation as a champion of open government and accountability with his work on Senate committees, including the inquiry into the children overboard affair.

He was embarrassed last month when Defence assistant secretary Karen Creet issued an internal department memo, or DEFGRAM, briefing staff "of the correct procedures to be followed in their dealings with parliamentary committees". "The minister must approve all Defence involvement in, or support to, parliamentary committees," she stated. "Under no circumstances should material be provided to parliamentary committees or inquiries without clearance from the minister."

The DEFGRAM was leapt on by opposition defence spokesman David Johnson, who warned that it ignored "the inquiry powers granted to the commonwealth houses under section 49 of the constitution". He described its contents as "a potential improper interference with the free exercise by a committee of its authority".

Russell Trood, the chairman of the committee investigating the handling of allegations of sexual misconduct against three sailors from HMAS Success, expressed concerns about the impact of the memo on the inquiry.

Clerk of the Senate Rosemary Laing offered a scathing assessment of the DEFGRAM in response to a request from Senator Johnston for advice on its contents. "At best, the directive is a misrepresentation of the government guidelines for official witnesses before parliamentary committees," she wrote. "At worst, it represents a potential improper interference with the free exercise by a committee of its authority, and therefore a possible contempt."

Senator Faulkner told The Australian yesterday he had ordered the withdrawal of the instructions "as soon as it came to my attention".

Senator Trood said the committee would discuss the matter when parliament resumes.

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