Australian Politics
ZEG
In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is derisive of the claim that there should be quotas to ensure that more women become company directors
A true horror story for any scholar
University libraries are throwing out old books wholesale. This is quite simply a danger to knowledge. Soon we are only going to be allowed to know what our "betters" allow us to know. Hang on to your books! I know that I have some old books which I am going to ask my son to keep after I am gone
THE University of NSW is throwing away thousands of books and scholarly journals as part of a policy that critics say is turning its library into a Starbucks.
Academics say complete journal collections, valuable books and newspapers dating to the 19th century are being thrown out to clear space for cafe-style lounges.
The Herald has obtained an internal document listing thousands of titles due to be pulled from shelves. The 138-page "weeding" list includes encyclopaedias, dictionaries, books in foreign languages and texts on psychology, politics and morality.
The policy, which until recently required librarians to remove 50,000 volumes each year, does not allow the last Australian copy of any book to be discarded. But it has opened an ideological row about the function of modern libraries as more research material becomes accessible online.
Already, thousands of books have been dumped in skips in the library basement and staff in various disciplines say they have not been given the opportunity to salvage them.
"This is a scandal. It's outrageous on a whole number of different levels," said Peter Slezak, an associate professor in the school of history and philosophy. "Anyone that has anything to do with books is distressed at this. They are extremely good books."
The cleanout has so upset some that library staff have rescued books destined for the bin. One former library assistant said he had taken more than 200 books. "If the book's not borrowed in the last couple of years, they throw it out," he said. "Most libraries see their function as an archive but these guys see it almost like a video store. After you've had the book five years, why keep it?"
Most shocking, he said, was the disposal of a collection of newspapers from the 1850s and 1860s. "They're getting rid of books to make space for students to sit around, have lunch and plug their laptops in. Bizarrely, they've turned the library into a kind of a Starbucks," Professor Slezak said.
A university spokeswoman said that since August library policy no longer set a target for the number of books to cull. Superseded textbooks were hard to give away, some titles were moved into storage and libraries worldwide faced the same dilemma, she said.
"The library has an ongoing program to remove print journals where online archival access is provided. Our academic community prefers to use the online versions and they use them very heavily," she said.
Dr John Golder, a visiting research fellow in theatre, feared the digitisation of libraries would prevent students stumbling across new information. "A serendipitous discovery is impossible when the book isn't there," he said.
A professor in the school of history and philosophy, David Miller, understood libraries could not preserve everything but thought consultation could be improved. "There's something profoundly wrong, and symbolically wrong, about a university destroying books," he said. "Universities are in the business of passing on knowledge and books - no matter how the use of books is shrinking - still remain a very important symbol of knowledge."
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Some letters on the issue below
There were many distressing stories in the newspapers this morning, but none so immediately depressing as the story on what my university is doing to our books ("Books get the shove as university students prefer to do research online", March 8).
It is 50 years almost to the day that Ray Bradbury published his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, an allegory about book-burning and the suppression of ideas. He meant it as a warning and I don't suppose he really expected it to become fact. He would be galled and appalled to learn that it has.
That this is happening in a "place of learning" makes it doubly significant.
The UNSW library is such a depressing place these days - there are entire floors where it is hard to find a book at all. The explanations offered by UNSW that people don't want these books and that nothing for which there is no electronic copy is junked are nonsense.
I recently went searching for a 19th-century Government Gazette (for which there was no electronic version) only to be told by a distressed librarian that they had been found in a skip in the basement, along with many other irreplaceable items. At their own expense, the librarians rescued these and sent them to a library where they would be appreciated - Dili in East Timor.
What is happening to the UNSW library is just one aspect of a dumbing down of the university in the name of competition - to change it from a collegiate place of learning to (in the Vice-Chancellor's words) an "education destination".
You don't get a very good education at a university without books.
Dr Geoff Lambert Prince of Wales clinical school, University of NSW, Sydney
UNSW's book "cull" is extremely short-sighted. Research does not follow a straight line; it thrives on the kind of serendipitous discoveries that databases make impossible. When I was at university (in this century), the books I stumbled across in the library amounted to a second education. At the very least those of us who love books would have appreciated a chance to salvage what we could.
Alan Miller Hornsby [My experience was similar -- JR]
There are two aspects to UNSW's policies that if more widely adopted will have an effect on libraries and their patrons. Libraries have always operated within a spirit of co-operation and this manifests itself in the inter-library loan. This means that when a patron wishes to borrow a book not held in a library but held by another library the patron's library can borrow that book from a library which holds it.
A spoiler within this practice has arrived in the form of e-books which have licensing restrictions. The New York Times reported in March that a large US publisher owned by Rupert Murdoch will sell e-books to libraries that can be borrowed a maximum of 26 times for each title purchased. The library holding that e-book can no longer lend it out after 26 times. Does this mean the library will have to keep purchasing copies of the same title?
Many libraries also are transferring subscriptions from the hard copy of scholarly journals to online versions. The licensing of these online subscriptions restricts distribution of copies of articles within those scholarly journals to third parties, i.e. other libraries via inter-library loan. Furthermore, if a library discontinues a subscription of an online scholarly journal it no longer has any holdings of that journal.
When you purchase a printed copy of a book or scholarly journal it is yours to keep forever. Librarians need to think long and hard about the implications of discarding the hard copy.
Wendy Cousins Balgownie
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The 48-hour delay that flooded Brisbane
Lethargic bureaucrats failed to act promptly, in true bureaucratic style
ENTRIES in the "flood event log" for the devastating Brisbane River flood reveal that the senior engineers in charge knew by 7.10pm on Sunday, January 9, that high releases of water from Wivenhoe Dam would be needed "in view of heavy rain over the last three hours".
The entries also show that senior engineers proposed more than doubling the releases, from 1400 cubic metres a second (cumecs) to between 3000 and 3500 cumecs that Sunday night to give the dam more storage capacity to manage the flood and intensifying rainfall.
But it took until Tuesday, January 11, when the dam was almost full for SEQWater, which employs the engineers who operate Wivenhoe Dam, to start releasing more than 3000 cumecs.
By Tuesday evening, with the dam at risk, the releases were dramatically ratcheted up to 7500 cumecs - flooding thousands of Brisbane homes and leaving a damage bill of billions of dollars.
Revelations in the official log entries by key personnel of SEQWater during the disaster raise serious questions about whether engineers maintained a status quo of low releases after being told by the Brisbane City Council late on Sunday that higher releases would flood hundreds of low-lying homes.
Evidence in the flood event log points to the council's input influencing the release strategy on Sunday, January 9, when there was time to manage the flood. This will be seized on by insurers and flooded residents amid calls for the log to be closely scrutinised by a public inquiry.
Independent engineers and other experts examining the saga believe they can demonstrate to the royal commission-style inquiry that most of the flooding in Brisbane was caused by poor management early on and then massive sudden releases from the dam on Tuesday, January 11.
Senior independent engineer Michael O'Brien, who is compiling a submission for the inquiry headed by Supreme Court judge Cate Holmes, told The Australian last night: "It is clear from reading the flood event log that the flood operations centre knew as early as 7.15pm on Sunday, January 9, that much larger releases from Wivenhoe, of about 3000 cumecs, were required from as early as midnight and that this was important enough to notify the director of dam safety. But releases at this rate did not occur until 10am Tuesday, which by then was just too late. Even though the flood event log shows continuous discussions about the need for substantially increased release rates from this time, the discharge rates were increased too slowly."
The log entries reinforce the concerns of senior independent engineers and investigations by The Australian that much of the river flooding that destroyed thousands of homes occurred due to SEQWater's strategy to hold on to too much water in the dam.
Examination yesterday of the log entries and situation reports show that for most of January 10 the releases were kept between 1400 cumecs and 2000 cumecs - more than 30 per cent below the figure proposed by engineers the previous evening. By 6am the following morning, the dam was almost full, while the releases were still just 2750 cumecs. At 6pm that day, with SEQWater and Premier Anna Bligh gravely concerned that the dam was nearing its safe maximum capacity, the releases were increased to about 7500 cumecs and this resulted in most of the flooding.
Revelations in the log entries are not reflected in the main body of a newly released 1180-page report by SEQWater, which concludes the agency performed well in following the operating manual and the dam mitigated a worse flood. But the flood event log shows that at 7.15pm on January 9, an officer in the Flood Operations Centre "called SEQWater CEO Peter Borrows advising him that high rainfall is expected overnight and releases from Wivenhoe causing damaging flooding are likely to be necessary". A 7.15pm entry shows dam personnel called the director of dam safety to advise they were "now looking at much larger flows and will have to ramp up releases to around 3000 cubic metres per second by as early as midnight, which is likely to have flooding impacts on low-lying areas of Brisbane". Another entry five minutes later shows that "Engineer 2 called (Brisbane City Council) advising him of potential for high releases sooner than previously expected".
The entries show that after hearing from council that "3500 cumecs is the damaging flow level for Brisbane urban areas", the engineers in charge decided to keep releases from the dam at less than half the proposed rate, or just 1400 cumecs.
An entry in the earlier hours of January 10 documents an engineer's call to the dam operations manager "to discuss (council's) view on damaging flow. Engineer 3 confirmed that if flows were kept below 3500 the fuse plug would be triggered".
This 12.55am entry shows that at a relatively early stage, engineers knew a potentially disastrous outcome, a collapse of the auxiliary spillway or fuse-plug, could occur due to massive rainfall run-off unless releases immediately increased past 3500 cumecs.
Within 40 hours of this prediction, the rainfall and run-off had filled the dam to a level approaching the fuse-plug, resulting in the operators on the afternoon of January 11 ordering the release at 7500 cumecs.
SEQWater has a statutory requirement to operate Wivenhoe Dam independently and in accordance with an operating manual. The official report justifies SEQWater's decision to not release more water sooner by pointing to Bureau of Meteorology forecasts, which underestimated rainfall intensity.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Meteorology referred questions to the floods inquiry, ignoring assertions from SEQWater that the forecaster was responsible for inadequate rainfall warnings in the lead-up to the January floods.
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Queensland teachers still chasing the class-size snark
CLASS sizes would be reduced to just 20 students in Prep to Year 3 under a proposal put forward by teachers to help lift literacy and numeracy standards.
The Queensland Teachers Union has warned the Bligh Government it needs to commit to smaller class sizes if it is serious about lifting student outcomes.
But the proposal conflicts with a controversial paper last year which warned reducing class sizes does little to improve the quality of education for children.
The QTU has made the latest proposal to claw back class sizes in their paper Securing Queensland's Future: A Resourcing Agenda for State Schools. The paper, which outlines a 10-year resourcing plan for state schools, suggests Prep to Year 3 class size maximums be "progressively" reduced to 20 students over five years as one of a series of "suggested initiatives". Education Queensland (EQ) currently sets a maximum class size target of 25 pupils for Prep to Year 3 , although up to 30 have been reported in Prep classrooms since 2009.
Last year, more than 10,000 Prep to Year 3 students were taught in overcrowded state school classrooms. "If the Government is really serious about improving literacy and numeracy outcomes, it should commit to a program of class size reduction, particularly in Years P-3", the QTU paper states. "Qualified teachers working with smaller classes in the early years of schooling are an effective way to achieve better student outcomes."
It says intensive student support programs and ongoing teacher professional development would also be needed for the class size reductions to work.
The paper comes less than six months after a Grattan Institute report warning reducing class sizes did little to improve the quality of education. Grattan Institute school education program director Dr Ben Jensen argued money was better spent on improving teacher effectiveness.
But QTU president Steve Ryan said state schools which had reduced class sizes using National Partnership funding had shown the initiative worked.
EQ director-general Julie Grantham said the QTU which has submitted its paper to the Government, had not raised the issue in any of their stakeholder meetings. She said class sizes were structured to meet targets agreed to by the QTU.
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Government hospital on Thursday Island critically run-down and putting patients at risk
A PATIENT was forced to "ring a bell like Santa Claus" in a critically run-down far-north Queensland hospital, where emergency call systems had been broken for six months. Wayne Guivarra also told how all Thursday Island Hospital patients lay in "hot and sweaty" rooms because airconditioners had failed, while leaky roofs dripped water on to electrical equipment.
The hospital's dire state of disrepair was yesterday revealed as Opposition Leader John-Paul Langbroek tabled in State Parliament a report by director of nursing Terry Culleton, written in January.
It showed patient safety had been "severely compromised" since December, when leaking and bowed ceilings forced the closure of the region's only operating theatre and birthing facility with specialist capabilities for some emergency Caesareans.
The nurse call system was "totally beyond repair", with staff unable to call for help in emergencies and patients told to ring hand bells for assistance or use bedside telephones, some of which did not work.
The report also listed problems with buildings, including areas not properly electrically earthed, severely corroded structural steel and roofs, overcrowded work areas, rotting flooring and mildewed walls.
Queensland Nurses Union secretary Gay Hawksworth said the hospital was so run-down some patients had to be flown 850km to Cairns for treatment ordinarily given on the island. She said the 36-bed hospital, located "literally metres" from the sea, deteriorated far more quickly than city facilities and desperately needed an individualised maintenance schedule. "Once the deterioration occurs, you've then got the tyranny of distance, of getting material and then the right people up there," she said.
Mr Guivarra, a councillor from neighbouring Badu Island, stayed at the hospital two weeks ago, but said problems had gone unchecked for years. "We're doing nothing to save our people. It's just making the job harder for the medical professionals," he said.
A new hospital should be built at the larger Horn Island, because sick Torres Strait Islanders were flown there before being ferried to Thursday Island, he said.
New Health Minister Geoff Wilson has sent two senior Queensland Health staffers to investigate the matter. Yesterday, he said the operating theatre reopened on February 21 after "urgent works".
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Friday, March 11, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
ZEG
In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is delighted that Pauline Hanson has returned to Australian politics.
Australia a true friend, Gillard tells Congress
An excellent speech on the whole. The anti-American Left will be fuming
JULIA Gillard received a four-minute standing ovation after making a historic address to a joint meeting of the US Congress in Washington.
During the half-hour address she hardened Australia's military commitment in Afghanistan, telling the Congress Australia remembered America's help in World War II and would always stand by it as "a true friend Down Under".
Conceding that the transition to local control in Afghanistan will take "some years", Ms Gillard threw herself fully behind President Barack Obama's Afghanistan strategy, saying the two nations were inextricably linked by shared values and common aims.
Ms Gillard also challenged the US to use its capacity for reinvention to join Australia in pressing for new rounds of trade liberalisation and economic reform.
Describing herself as a "true mate", Ms Gillard urged the US to "be worthy to your own best traditions," calling on the nation to turn its creativity to addressing climate change.
And she called for US leadership in the Asia-Pacific to balance the rise of China and India and ensure all nations in the region could enjoy the benefits of prosperity and growth.
Ms Gillard's comments came in an address to a joint sitting of Congress to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the ANZUS treaty - a military alliance which binds Australia, New Zealand and the US.
Among Australian prime ministers, only Bob Hawke and John Howard have been accorded the same honor, while Robert Menzies addressed the House of Representatives in 1955.
Ms Gillard used her speech to make clear that Americans should expect firm and ongoing support from Australia.
"In both our countries, real mates talk straight," she said. "We mean what we say. You have an ally in Australia. An ally for war and peace. An ally for hardship and prosperity. An ally for the 60 years past. And Australia is an ally for all the years to come."
Ms Gillard said Australia had not forgotten that the US helped defeat the Japanese in World War II. She said the US should expect that Australia would not swerve in its support for the Afghanistan war. "I have told Australia's parliament in Canberra ... what I told General (David) Petraeus in Kabul ... what I told President Obama in the Oval Office this week," she said. "Australia will stand firm with our ally the United States. Our friends understand this. Our enemies understand this too."
Referring to her recent visits to the war zone, she said she was convinced the Afghanistan coalition had the right strategy.
However, as she outlined her solidarity on the war, she threw out challenges to the gathered US politicians on the economy and climate change.
Calling for US support for the economic reform process through the G-20, she also appealed for the reignition of the stalled Doha Round of international trade negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation.
On climate change, she called for continuing collaboration, insisting that the world must find a way to decouple economic growth from growth in carbon emissions.
Turning to security, Ms Gillard noted that political power was shifting towards China and India, and urged the Americans to call on the same courage that saw them provide leadership during the Cold War and to apply it to the emerging new world order.
She also praised former US President Ronald Reagan, describing him as a great figure of American optimism who had displayed the same values she believed would see the US continue to prosper and provide global leadership.
"I firmly believe you are the same people who amazed me when I was a small girl by landing on the Moon," she said. "On that great day, I believed Americans could do anything. I believe that still. You can do anything today."
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Ambulances still 'ramping' for hours outside Princess Alexandra Hospital
AMBULANCES continue to "ramp" for hours outside the Princess Alexandra Hospital despite a major expansion of its emergency department opening late last year.
State Government figures show the number of ambulances turning up at the hospital has increased by almost 25 per cent since the November opening, to about 450 per week. Walk-in presentations have also significantly increased, from an average of 124 per day to 146 last week.
Dean Smith, who will undergo surgery tomorrow for a benign brain tumour, said he had spent six hours on Monday last week waiting with paramedics before getting into the emergency department. "It's ridiculous what goes on," said Mr Smith, 47.
John Webb, an organiser with United Voice, the union that represents paramedics, said he had seen a dozen ambulances, with patients aboard, waiting outside the hospital. "It happens on a regular basis. I've seen it. It's still happening," he said.
The hospital's $134 million expansion has more than doubled the number of acute treatment bays in the emergency department from 20 to 45.
In the 12 months to the end of last October, emergency was under so much pressure it was forced to redirect ambulances to other facilities for varying amounts of time on 213 days of the year a situation known as being "on bypass".
On Thursday last week, the Princess Alexandra, Logan, Mater Adults and QEII hospitals were all on bypass at the same time, increasing pressure on other Brisbane facilities.
Opposition health spokesman Mark McArdle said the situation put lives at risk. "It means paramedics driving around and around trying to find an emergency department that is either open or they have to wait potentially hours to get into one," he said. "Treatment delayed is a risk factor in any recovery. Delay in treatment can cost a patient their life." Mr McArdle said that while paramedics were ramped outside hospital EDs, other patients needing an ambulance may have to wait too long.
Mr Webb said he was hopeful new Health Minister Geoff Wilson would address the ongoing problem. "A positive is that the new minister wants to meet with us," he said. "Hopefully, we've got a new era."
Queensland Health's Metro South District CEO David Theile said the Princess Alexandra Hospital treated more trauma patients than any other facility in the state's southeast. "We are working closely with emergency clinicians and other hospitals to improve ED treatment times and reduce ambulance waiting times," he said.
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Pharmacies selling 'quack' health products, CHOICE investigation reveals
AUSTRALIAN pharmacists have been called out for including "quack" healthcare products on their shelves. A CHOICE review of items commonly sold through pharmacies has uncovered a range of products that have purported health benefits but "no credible evidence that they work".
These included ear candles, herbal weight loss remedies and plastic bracelets with a hologram sticker which claim to improve balance, muscle strength while alleviating jet lag and motion sickness.
"Antisnor" rings - a metal ring worn on the little finger - were also for sale despite the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) taking action against its manufacturer to halt its claims it could actually prevent snoring.
"There is an onus on pharmacies to sell products that work and for pharmacists to stand by the safety and effectiveness of products in their store," said CHOICE spokeswoman Ingrid Just. "Pharmacists hold a four year specialist degree in chemistry, and consumers rely on their expert advice."
CHOICE also raised concern about homeopathy remedies appearing in pharmacies, stating the question of whether they had any real effect on the body had been "long debated (and) systematic reviews of clinical trials say no".
Ms Just said many pharmacies had expanded their offerings and they now resembled "full blown retail enterprises" selling "all manner of things from from toilet paper and confectionary to cosmetics and sunscreens".
This was not an issue, she said, where items for sale did not have a therapeutic of health claim attached to them. "But when it comes to health products, they should stick to selling ones that are safe, effective and supported by scientific and clinical evidence," Ms Just said.
The CHOICE probe also asked pharmacists about the efficacy of certain products and some offered "insightful, medically sound advice when asked." Others were "indifferent or who gave advice on quack products with no scientific or medical basis".
Ms Just said the problem was consumers could find themselves out of pocket, and with no relief for the problem they are seeking help for. "When products don't work the consumer may not only have wasted their money, they may have also delayed the opportunity to seek more appropriate treatment," she said.
CHOICE said people should, when considering a new or novel health product, ask their pharmacists if there was any evidence supporting its use.
The Pharmacy Guild of Australia agrees. "Pharmacists take their professional responsibilities very seriously," a guild spokesman told AAP. "The guild agrees with CHOICE's recommendation that the best course of action is to speak to the pharmacist about any new or novel product you're considering, and ask for further information."
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What the Australian Federal government is not telling about its proposed carbon tax
The government is making numerous claims to justify imposing a tax on carbon in the face of Julia Gillard's solemn promise prior to the last election that,"There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead".
Each one of the government's claims in support of its carbon tax will require detailed scrutiny. In fact, what the government doesn't tell the public is already proving to be as revealing as what it does say.
One of the key reasons the Prime Minister uses in support of her decision to impose a carbon tax is that Australia will be left behind the rest of the world in pricing carbon, claiming, "there are more than 30 countries with emissions trading schemes and 10 American states with emissions trading schemes".
The latter reference is to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, involving a form of cap and trade scheme in 10 north-eastern and mid-Atlantic states in the US.
However, what the Prime Minister fails to reveal is that this initiative is in the throes of unravelling.
In the past few weeks, New Hampshire has taken steps to leave the scheme. One of the reasons it did so was because its state government had recently raided the money raised by this cap-and-trade fund, using it to help plug a black hole in the New Hampshire budget.
In retaliation, opposition politicians were able to gather the numbers to legislate for New Hampshire's exit from the scheme.
Similar raids on revenue from the cap-and-trade schemes to help fund general spending have occurred in at least two other states, including New York and New Jersey. Cross-party support is reportedly building to withdraw New Jersey from the scheme.
If that occurs, commentators suggest the viability of the whole scheme is doubtful. It would be at risk of total collapse.
Given the experience in the US, Treasurer Wayne Swan should be required to give a guarantee that he will not use Labor's proposed carbon tax to fund his budget black hole.
It is also worth noting that the much-heralded Chicago Climate Exchange, partly owned by Al Gore and Goldman Sachs, which was supposedly helping shape a $US10 trillion market in carbon credits, collapsed in November last year. Its last trades in credits costed carbon at 10 cents a tonne.
The Prime Minister also reminds us that the European Union has an emissions trading scheme and that Australia would do well to follow the example set by the EU.
What she fails to add is that the European police agency, Europol, announced on December 28, 2010, that it had discovered a €5 billion ($A6.7 billion) fraud within the EU's trading system. More than 100 people were arrested in connection with it.
There are other claims worth investigating. The Prime Minister is insistent that, as Australia is one of the largest emitters of carbon on a per capita basis, we must impose a tax carbon - even if larger contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions do not take significant steps to reduce emissions.
According to a Reuters report of November 14, 2010, which used data from the US Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre, the top per capita emitters of fossil fuel carbon dioxide (in tonnes) in 2007 were: Qatar 51.3, Kuwait 34.0, United Arab Emirates 30.9, Bahrain 29.5, Trinidad and Tobago 27.7, Luxembourg 24.2, Brunei 19.5, United States 19.0, Australia 17.7 and Saudi Arabia 16.9.
In the context of a global picture, the level of emissions per capita is less important than total emissions.
Again Reuters has reported, based on data from the German renewable energy institute IWR, that the top national emitters of carbon dioxide (in millions of tonnes) in 2009 were: China 7426.4; US 5951.0; Russia 1534.4; India 1529.1; Japan 1225.2; Germany 796.6; South Korea 664.2; Canada 605.9; Saudi Arabia 544.4; Iran 544.4.
On this list, Australia comes in 16th, with 374 million tonnes - or 1.28 per cent of global emissions.
Taking the EU as a whole, we can conclude that 67 per cent of all emissions come from the top five emitters, namely China, the US, EU, India and Russia.
The Copenhagen climate change conference and its aftermath demonstrated that there is unlikely to be any co-ordinated effort by the big five emitters any time soon.
Imposing a tax on carbon in Australia to address our 1.28 per cent share of global emissions has the potential to cause enormous damage to our economy and our standard of living, while making little to no difference to global emissions.
Little wonder that recent polls reveal considerable opposition to yet another tax from this Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister should not impose a carbon tax without putting it to a vote of the Australian people at the next election.
In the meantime, just watch her lips.
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A ROUNDUP OF GOVERNMENT COMPUTER BUNGLES
Computers and bureaucrats just don't mix. When are governments going to accept that software "upgrades" rarely work? "Legacy" software generally worked because it was a lot simpler. Expecting much more complex software to work is usually a step too far.
Bill Gates spends years getting new software to work. As soon as he releases a new version of Windows, he starts work on the next one. Even so, it took 8 years to get from Windows XP to Windows 7, with an abortive Windows Vista in between. Lesser effort than that is doomed.
Three current reports below
Over a year to get payroll software working properly
Queensland Health staff still missing pay a year later
One year after Queensland Health's disastrous payroll system went live, workers are still being underpaid and some are going empty-handed. But new Health Minister Geoff Wilson yesterday said the system was stabilising and "good progress" had clipped the number of affected people to 274 from a staff of 78,000.
The new SAP system, implemented last March, is now believed to be outperforming its predecessor although a true comparison cannot be made because the old system did not collect performance data.
Mr Wilson warned that the complex new system, which covers more than 15 awards and industrial agreements, would never be perfect. "In any big payroll system there will be, fortnight by fortnight, some corrections that need to be made," he said. "What we need to do is make sure that number is not a number that is a product of any flaw or deficiency in the system."
Inconsistencies could continue for another 18 months but Mr Wilson promised to meet fortnightly with unions to "hear directly" about any problems. The first meeting is scheduled for this afternoon.
A project to fix system defects will probably finish in the coming months but a second scheme to simplify rosters could take more than a year to implement.
It is designed to relieve the clerical burden on frontline managers and will include localised pay hubs staffed with people who understand the highly individualised work arrangements of each health district.
Some underpayments had been blamed on last-minute roster changes or rosters not being passed to payroll on time, including 31 workers who were unpaid during the most recent pay cycle because of form-processing issues.
Another 243 people were underpaid in January and had to take emergency hardship payments until the errors were rectified.
Mr Wilson labelled the debacle a "terrible ordeal" for workers and said "no stone would be left unturned" to improve the system.
Shadow health spokesman Mark McArdle called for the release of all Government briefing notes prepared about payroll issues to determine who was responsible for the system's failure.
"This has caused enormous pain and misery to many Queenslanders and culpability has never been established," he said.
Mr McArdle also questioned how the system's repair bill could top $210 million, more than three times the system's original cost.
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Firearm registry in meltdown
FIREARM dealers are ready to fire a class action at the State Government over income lost because of the failure of a new online permit application system.
Many of the state's 150 dealers are facing ruin because of ongoing problems with a $6 million computer system introduced last November to "streamline" processing.
The Queensland Police Service implemented the Weapons Licensing Management System, saying it would save $7.5 million over five years in staff efficiencies.
However, the QPS has had to bring in 20 additional employees to help process thousands of outstanding permit-to-acquire applications from already-licensed shooters.
Weapons Licensing has revealed the current backlog is 4400 applications 400 more than when The Courier-Mail first reported the issue on February 7.
Dealers say their income has dropped by up to 80 per cent, as only a trickle of approvals are coming through, preventing them from being paid by customers.
"This has seen staff lay-offs and some dealers going to the wall. There is no doubt many won't be here in a few months if the situation continues," Firearm Dealers Association of Queensland president Robert Nioa said.
Mr Nioa, also the national president, said Queensland was the only state with this problem and in other states the process took one day to complete.
"Dealers can't sell their firearms and they have also lost out on being able to sell accessories. The estimated damage to the industry is well into the millions and climbing," he said.
Mr Nioa said there was "a big call" for a class action to recover lost profits and compensate businesses set to close.
He said this would be on the agenda at a special meeting in Brisbane on March 21 to be attended by dealers from throughout Queensland.
Some of the larger dealers now have 900 customers waiting for permits and up to $1 million tied up.
The QPS said the problems had been largely caused by the need to "temporarily suspend data processing for a period of time" during the system change.
"The QPS is unable to provide a definitive deadline, as the time taken to process applications for PTA is dependant on a number of factors, including the number of new PTA applications received each week, the complexity of the applications and the completeness of the supporting information," a spokeswoman said.
Shooters Union of Queensland president Graham Park said shooters were angry because they could not get approvals.
Mr Park said shooters had been told at a meeting with police that the situation might not be resolved for at least four months.
"Like the Queensland Health payroll bungle, the computer system introduced to handle firearm permits has turned into an omelette," he said.
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NSW hospital software loathed by staff for its errors
HOSPITALS around the country are struggling to cope, with patients forced to wait for hours in corridors and a $115 million spent on a computer system that assigns treatments to the wrong patient.
In New South Wales, a review of the FirstNet computer system found it is crippled by design flaws and is compromising patient care.
FirstNet allows treatment details and test results to be assigned inadvertently to the wrong patient, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Difficulties retrieving patient records could delay treatment, and the system - on which $115 million has been spent - automatically cancelled pathology and radiology requests if the person was transferred from the emergency department without checking whether these were still needed, the review found.
The system is so compromised it should be scrapped, a specialist doctors' group said.
Sally McCarthy, president of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, said the review by Professor Jon Patrick confirmed that the system, loathed by doctors and nurses, is unsuitable for its purpose. The potential for records to be linked to the wrong patient raised a serious risk they would be given incorrect treatment, she said.
A NSW Health spokesman said in a statement the department agreed with Professor Patrick that "the ability to have two patient records open on a screen is a patient safety issue and this will be addressed through a software upgrade".
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In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is delighted that Pauline Hanson has returned to Australian politics.
Australia a true friend, Gillard tells Congress
An excellent speech on the whole. The anti-American Left will be fuming
JULIA Gillard received a four-minute standing ovation after making a historic address to a joint meeting of the US Congress in Washington.
During the half-hour address she hardened Australia's military commitment in Afghanistan, telling the Congress Australia remembered America's help in World War II and would always stand by it as "a true friend Down Under".
Conceding that the transition to local control in Afghanistan will take "some years", Ms Gillard threw herself fully behind President Barack Obama's Afghanistan strategy, saying the two nations were inextricably linked by shared values and common aims.
Ms Gillard also challenged the US to use its capacity for reinvention to join Australia in pressing for new rounds of trade liberalisation and economic reform.
Describing herself as a "true mate", Ms Gillard urged the US to "be worthy to your own best traditions," calling on the nation to turn its creativity to addressing climate change.
And she called for US leadership in the Asia-Pacific to balance the rise of China and India and ensure all nations in the region could enjoy the benefits of prosperity and growth.
Ms Gillard's comments came in an address to a joint sitting of Congress to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the ANZUS treaty - a military alliance which binds Australia, New Zealand and the US.
Among Australian prime ministers, only Bob Hawke and John Howard have been accorded the same honor, while Robert Menzies addressed the House of Representatives in 1955.
Ms Gillard used her speech to make clear that Americans should expect firm and ongoing support from Australia.
"In both our countries, real mates talk straight," she said. "We mean what we say. You have an ally in Australia. An ally for war and peace. An ally for hardship and prosperity. An ally for the 60 years past. And Australia is an ally for all the years to come."
Ms Gillard said Australia had not forgotten that the US helped defeat the Japanese in World War II. She said the US should expect that Australia would not swerve in its support for the Afghanistan war. "I have told Australia's parliament in Canberra ... what I told General (David) Petraeus in Kabul ... what I told President Obama in the Oval Office this week," she said. "Australia will stand firm with our ally the United States. Our friends understand this. Our enemies understand this too."
Referring to her recent visits to the war zone, she said she was convinced the Afghanistan coalition had the right strategy.
However, as she outlined her solidarity on the war, she threw out challenges to the gathered US politicians on the economy and climate change.
Calling for US support for the economic reform process through the G-20, she also appealed for the reignition of the stalled Doha Round of international trade negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation.
On climate change, she called for continuing collaboration, insisting that the world must find a way to decouple economic growth from growth in carbon emissions.
Turning to security, Ms Gillard noted that political power was shifting towards China and India, and urged the Americans to call on the same courage that saw them provide leadership during the Cold War and to apply it to the emerging new world order.
She also praised former US President Ronald Reagan, describing him as a great figure of American optimism who had displayed the same values she believed would see the US continue to prosper and provide global leadership.
"I firmly believe you are the same people who amazed me when I was a small girl by landing on the Moon," she said. "On that great day, I believed Americans could do anything. I believe that still. You can do anything today."
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Ambulances still 'ramping' for hours outside Princess Alexandra Hospital
AMBULANCES continue to "ramp" for hours outside the Princess Alexandra Hospital despite a major expansion of its emergency department opening late last year.
State Government figures show the number of ambulances turning up at the hospital has increased by almost 25 per cent since the November opening, to about 450 per week. Walk-in presentations have also significantly increased, from an average of 124 per day to 146 last week.
Dean Smith, who will undergo surgery tomorrow for a benign brain tumour, said he had spent six hours on Monday last week waiting with paramedics before getting into the emergency department. "It's ridiculous what goes on," said Mr Smith, 47.
John Webb, an organiser with United Voice, the union that represents paramedics, said he had seen a dozen ambulances, with patients aboard, waiting outside the hospital. "It happens on a regular basis. I've seen it. It's still happening," he said.
The hospital's $134 million expansion has more than doubled the number of acute treatment bays in the emergency department from 20 to 45.
In the 12 months to the end of last October, emergency was under so much pressure it was forced to redirect ambulances to other facilities for varying amounts of time on 213 days of the year a situation known as being "on bypass".
On Thursday last week, the Princess Alexandra, Logan, Mater Adults and QEII hospitals were all on bypass at the same time, increasing pressure on other Brisbane facilities.
Opposition health spokesman Mark McArdle said the situation put lives at risk. "It means paramedics driving around and around trying to find an emergency department that is either open or they have to wait potentially hours to get into one," he said. "Treatment delayed is a risk factor in any recovery. Delay in treatment can cost a patient their life." Mr McArdle said that while paramedics were ramped outside hospital EDs, other patients needing an ambulance may have to wait too long.
Mr Webb said he was hopeful new Health Minister Geoff Wilson would address the ongoing problem. "A positive is that the new minister wants to meet with us," he said. "Hopefully, we've got a new era."
Queensland Health's Metro South District CEO David Theile said the Princess Alexandra Hospital treated more trauma patients than any other facility in the state's southeast. "We are working closely with emergency clinicians and other hospitals to improve ED treatment times and reduce ambulance waiting times," he said.
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Pharmacies selling 'quack' health products, CHOICE investigation reveals
AUSTRALIAN pharmacists have been called out for including "quack" healthcare products on their shelves. A CHOICE review of items commonly sold through pharmacies has uncovered a range of products that have purported health benefits but "no credible evidence that they work".
These included ear candles, herbal weight loss remedies and plastic bracelets with a hologram sticker which claim to improve balance, muscle strength while alleviating jet lag and motion sickness.
"Antisnor" rings - a metal ring worn on the little finger - were also for sale despite the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) taking action against its manufacturer to halt its claims it could actually prevent snoring.
"There is an onus on pharmacies to sell products that work and for pharmacists to stand by the safety and effectiveness of products in their store," said CHOICE spokeswoman Ingrid Just. "Pharmacists hold a four year specialist degree in chemistry, and consumers rely on their expert advice."
CHOICE also raised concern about homeopathy remedies appearing in pharmacies, stating the question of whether they had any real effect on the body had been "long debated (and) systematic reviews of clinical trials say no".
Ms Just said many pharmacies had expanded their offerings and they now resembled "full blown retail enterprises" selling "all manner of things from from toilet paper and confectionary to cosmetics and sunscreens".
This was not an issue, she said, where items for sale did not have a therapeutic of health claim attached to them. "But when it comes to health products, they should stick to selling ones that are safe, effective and supported by scientific and clinical evidence," Ms Just said.
The CHOICE probe also asked pharmacists about the efficacy of certain products and some offered "insightful, medically sound advice when asked." Others were "indifferent or who gave advice on quack products with no scientific or medical basis".
Ms Just said the problem was consumers could find themselves out of pocket, and with no relief for the problem they are seeking help for. "When products don't work the consumer may not only have wasted their money, they may have also delayed the opportunity to seek more appropriate treatment," she said.
CHOICE said people should, when considering a new or novel health product, ask their pharmacists if there was any evidence supporting its use.
The Pharmacy Guild of Australia agrees. "Pharmacists take their professional responsibilities very seriously," a guild spokesman told AAP. "The guild agrees with CHOICE's recommendation that the best course of action is to speak to the pharmacist about any new or novel product you're considering, and ask for further information."
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What the Australian Federal government is not telling about its proposed carbon tax
The government is making numerous claims to justify imposing a tax on carbon in the face of Julia Gillard's solemn promise prior to the last election that,"There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead".
Each one of the government's claims in support of its carbon tax will require detailed scrutiny. In fact, what the government doesn't tell the public is already proving to be as revealing as what it does say.
One of the key reasons the Prime Minister uses in support of her decision to impose a carbon tax is that Australia will be left behind the rest of the world in pricing carbon, claiming, "there are more than 30 countries with emissions trading schemes and 10 American states with emissions trading schemes".
The latter reference is to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, involving a form of cap and trade scheme in 10 north-eastern and mid-Atlantic states in the US.
However, what the Prime Minister fails to reveal is that this initiative is in the throes of unravelling.
In the past few weeks, New Hampshire has taken steps to leave the scheme. One of the reasons it did so was because its state government had recently raided the money raised by this cap-and-trade fund, using it to help plug a black hole in the New Hampshire budget.
In retaliation, opposition politicians were able to gather the numbers to legislate for New Hampshire's exit from the scheme.
Similar raids on revenue from the cap-and-trade schemes to help fund general spending have occurred in at least two other states, including New York and New Jersey. Cross-party support is reportedly building to withdraw New Jersey from the scheme.
If that occurs, commentators suggest the viability of the whole scheme is doubtful. It would be at risk of total collapse.
Given the experience in the US, Treasurer Wayne Swan should be required to give a guarantee that he will not use Labor's proposed carbon tax to fund his budget black hole.
It is also worth noting that the much-heralded Chicago Climate Exchange, partly owned by Al Gore and Goldman Sachs, which was supposedly helping shape a $US10 trillion market in carbon credits, collapsed in November last year. Its last trades in credits costed carbon at 10 cents a tonne.
The Prime Minister also reminds us that the European Union has an emissions trading scheme and that Australia would do well to follow the example set by the EU.
What she fails to add is that the European police agency, Europol, announced on December 28, 2010, that it had discovered a €5 billion ($A6.7 billion) fraud within the EU's trading system. More than 100 people were arrested in connection with it.
There are other claims worth investigating. The Prime Minister is insistent that, as Australia is one of the largest emitters of carbon on a per capita basis, we must impose a tax carbon - even if larger contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions do not take significant steps to reduce emissions.
According to a Reuters report of November 14, 2010, which used data from the US Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre, the top per capita emitters of fossil fuel carbon dioxide (in tonnes) in 2007 were: Qatar 51.3, Kuwait 34.0, United Arab Emirates 30.9, Bahrain 29.5, Trinidad and Tobago 27.7, Luxembourg 24.2, Brunei 19.5, United States 19.0, Australia 17.7 and Saudi Arabia 16.9.
In the context of a global picture, the level of emissions per capita is less important than total emissions.
Again Reuters has reported, based on data from the German renewable energy institute IWR, that the top national emitters of carbon dioxide (in millions of tonnes) in 2009 were: China 7426.4; US 5951.0; Russia 1534.4; India 1529.1; Japan 1225.2; Germany 796.6; South Korea 664.2; Canada 605.9; Saudi Arabia 544.4; Iran 544.4.
On this list, Australia comes in 16th, with 374 million tonnes - or 1.28 per cent of global emissions.
Taking the EU as a whole, we can conclude that 67 per cent of all emissions come from the top five emitters, namely China, the US, EU, India and Russia.
The Copenhagen climate change conference and its aftermath demonstrated that there is unlikely to be any co-ordinated effort by the big five emitters any time soon.
Imposing a tax on carbon in Australia to address our 1.28 per cent share of global emissions has the potential to cause enormous damage to our economy and our standard of living, while making little to no difference to global emissions.
Little wonder that recent polls reveal considerable opposition to yet another tax from this Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister should not impose a carbon tax without putting it to a vote of the Australian people at the next election.
In the meantime, just watch her lips.
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A ROUNDUP OF GOVERNMENT COMPUTER BUNGLES
Computers and bureaucrats just don't mix. When are governments going to accept that software "upgrades" rarely work? "Legacy" software generally worked because it was a lot simpler. Expecting much more complex software to work is usually a step too far.
Bill Gates spends years getting new software to work. As soon as he releases a new version of Windows, he starts work on the next one. Even so, it took 8 years to get from Windows XP to Windows 7, with an abortive Windows Vista in between. Lesser effort than that is doomed.
Three current reports below
Over a year to get payroll software working properly
Queensland Health staff still missing pay a year later
One year after Queensland Health's disastrous payroll system went live, workers are still being underpaid and some are going empty-handed. But new Health Minister Geoff Wilson yesterday said the system was stabilising and "good progress" had clipped the number of affected people to 274 from a staff of 78,000.
The new SAP system, implemented last March, is now believed to be outperforming its predecessor although a true comparison cannot be made because the old system did not collect performance data.
Mr Wilson warned that the complex new system, which covers more than 15 awards and industrial agreements, would never be perfect. "In any big payroll system there will be, fortnight by fortnight, some corrections that need to be made," he said. "What we need to do is make sure that number is not a number that is a product of any flaw or deficiency in the system."
Inconsistencies could continue for another 18 months but Mr Wilson promised to meet fortnightly with unions to "hear directly" about any problems. The first meeting is scheduled for this afternoon.
A project to fix system defects will probably finish in the coming months but a second scheme to simplify rosters could take more than a year to implement.
It is designed to relieve the clerical burden on frontline managers and will include localised pay hubs staffed with people who understand the highly individualised work arrangements of each health district.
Some underpayments had been blamed on last-minute roster changes or rosters not being passed to payroll on time, including 31 workers who were unpaid during the most recent pay cycle because of form-processing issues.
Another 243 people were underpaid in January and had to take emergency hardship payments until the errors were rectified.
Mr Wilson labelled the debacle a "terrible ordeal" for workers and said "no stone would be left unturned" to improve the system.
Shadow health spokesman Mark McArdle called for the release of all Government briefing notes prepared about payroll issues to determine who was responsible for the system's failure.
"This has caused enormous pain and misery to many Queenslanders and culpability has never been established," he said.
Mr McArdle also questioned how the system's repair bill could top $210 million, more than three times the system's original cost.
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Firearm registry in meltdown
FIREARM dealers are ready to fire a class action at the State Government over income lost because of the failure of a new online permit application system.
Many of the state's 150 dealers are facing ruin because of ongoing problems with a $6 million computer system introduced last November to "streamline" processing.
The Queensland Police Service implemented the Weapons Licensing Management System, saying it would save $7.5 million over five years in staff efficiencies.
However, the QPS has had to bring in 20 additional employees to help process thousands of outstanding permit-to-acquire applications from already-licensed shooters.
Weapons Licensing has revealed the current backlog is 4400 applications 400 more than when The Courier-Mail first reported the issue on February 7.
Dealers say their income has dropped by up to 80 per cent, as only a trickle of approvals are coming through, preventing them from being paid by customers.
"This has seen staff lay-offs and some dealers going to the wall. There is no doubt many won't be here in a few months if the situation continues," Firearm Dealers Association of Queensland president Robert Nioa said.
Mr Nioa, also the national president, said Queensland was the only state with this problem and in other states the process took one day to complete.
"Dealers can't sell their firearms and they have also lost out on being able to sell accessories. The estimated damage to the industry is well into the millions and climbing," he said.
Mr Nioa said there was "a big call" for a class action to recover lost profits and compensate businesses set to close.
He said this would be on the agenda at a special meeting in Brisbane on March 21 to be attended by dealers from throughout Queensland.
Some of the larger dealers now have 900 customers waiting for permits and up to $1 million tied up.
The QPS said the problems had been largely caused by the need to "temporarily suspend data processing for a period of time" during the system change.
"The QPS is unable to provide a definitive deadline, as the time taken to process applications for PTA is dependant on a number of factors, including the number of new PTA applications received each week, the complexity of the applications and the completeness of the supporting information," a spokeswoman said.
Shooters Union of Queensland president Graham Park said shooters were angry because they could not get approvals.
Mr Park said shooters had been told at a meeting with police that the situation might not be resolved for at least four months.
"Like the Queensland Health payroll bungle, the computer system introduced to handle firearm permits has turned into an omelette," he said.
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NSW hospital software loathed by staff for its errors
HOSPITALS around the country are struggling to cope, with patients forced to wait for hours in corridors and a $115 million spent on a computer system that assigns treatments to the wrong patient.
In New South Wales, a review of the FirstNet computer system found it is crippled by design flaws and is compromising patient care.
FirstNet allows treatment details and test results to be assigned inadvertently to the wrong patient, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Difficulties retrieving patient records could delay treatment, and the system - on which $115 million has been spent - automatically cancelled pathology and radiology requests if the person was transferred from the emergency department without checking whether these were still needed, the review found.
The system is so compromised it should be scrapped, a specialist doctors' group said.
Sally McCarthy, president of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, said the review by Professor Jon Patrick confirmed that the system, loathed by doctors and nurses, is unsuitable for its purpose. The potential for records to be linked to the wrong patient raised a serious risk they would be given incorrect treatment, she said.
A NSW Health spokesman said in a statement the department agreed with Professor Patrick that "the ability to have two patient records open on a screen is a patient safety issue and this will be addressed through a software upgrade".
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Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Immigration critic Pauline Hanson returning to Australian politics
Ms Hanson is making a comeback to politics, standing for a NSW upper house seat in the March 26 election.
NSW Premier Kristina Keneally greeted the news by saying state Labor would direct no preferences to Ms Hanson, accusing her of harbouring racist views. "We absolutely condemn the sorts of racist and discriminatory policies which come from Ms Hanson and parties like One Nation," Ms Keneally said. The NSW Liberal Party has also said it would offer no preferences to Ms Hanson.
But Ms Hanson has told told Fairfax Radio Network: "I'm not racist. No one can ever comment or make a comment on any racist statement I have ever said," she said today. "I have ... as an Australian ... a right to question immigration and multiculturalism, which I don't believe is helping our country.
"I believe in people coming here, assimilating, becoming Australians and be proud of this country and abide by the laws of the land. "I don't think there's anything wrong with that."
Ms Hanson said the major political parties feared her. "Why? Because they know I've always spoken out, I expose them for what they are," she said. "They want to hold on to their power and the positions. "It is in the people's interest of NSW to ensure that I am on the floor of NSW."
Ms Hanson is to stand for an upper house seat with a group of 16 independents but conceded it would be a "battle" to get elected.
Ms Hanson said she had been thinking about making a political comeback since last year, with voters urging her to stand. Parliamentary accountability and law and order reforms would be high on her agenda.
"Something I'd like to consider and put to the government is the separation of powers of the police force to the Parliament," she said. "I don't think the police force should be controlled by a minister of police. "They could look at separating them. So they [police] can get on and do their job."
She also said she was "completely against" Prime Minister Julia Gillard's planned carbon tax.
On the subject of Ms Keneally, Ms Hanson said, "I think she's a very nice lady but she doesn't know what she's talking about."
David Oldfield, a founder of the One Nation Party in 1996 with Ms Hanson, challenged anyone listening to his radio program on 2UE this morning to come up with any statement of hers in the past that was racist. He strongly criticised Ms Keneally's accusations that Ms Hanson's policies were racist and discriminatory, saying the Premier's comments were the opposite of freedom of speech.
His listeners agreed, welcoming her back into politics. "Congratulations to Pauline Hanson. I think our government needs a good shake-up. She's truthful ... I think give her a go, because this country is such a mess," one listener said. Another listener said Ms Hanson was just repeating what others were saying to "stop bringing these immigrants into Australia".
One caller raised Ms Hanson's refusal to sell her Queensland home to a Muslim buyer last year "because I don't believe that they are compatible with our way of life, our culture" as an example of racism, but Mr Oldfield dismissed his comments, saying: "What's racist about that?"
"If Pauline Hanson, doesn't like Muslims, she has a right not to like Muslims," he said, comparing it to whether Ms Hanson liked or did not like rainy days. "Technically speaking, Muslims are not a race," he added. Mr Oldfield said he, like the Oxford Dictionary, defined racism as one race viewing itself as superior than another race, citing the Nazis' belief in supremacy over the Jews.
Ms Hanson has spoken out strongly against multiculturalism and immigration in the past. In her maiden speech to Federal Parliament in 1996, she called for multiculturalism to be abolished and said Australia was "in danger of being swamped by Asians".
"I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that of multiculturalism abolished. I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians. Between 1984 and 1995, 40 per cent of all migrants coming into this country were of Asian origin. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate."
In 2006, she said she was concerned about immigrants from South Africa with diseases. "We're bringing in people from South Africa at the moment. There's a huge amount coming into Australia, who have diseases; they've got AIDS," she said. [There is indeed a high incidence of AIDS in South Africa and some other African nations]
"They are of no benefit to this country whatsoever; they'll never be able to work. And what my main concern is, is the diseases that they're bringing in and yet no one is saying or doing anything about it."
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Greenie snake oil
Most Greenie claims are snake oil so the story below should not be too surprising
JAMIE PARKER, the man expected to become the Greens' first lower-house MP in NSW, was in charge of marketing at a natural therapies company that was repeatedly shamed by authorities for ''misleading advertising'' and ''exploiting consumers''. Mr Parker, who polls suggest will unseat Education Minister Verity Firth in Balmain, marketed products including FatBlaster, FatMagnet, Horny Goat Weed and Cholestaguard under the brand name Naturopathica.
An ad for FatBlaster, a weight loss treatment, included the line: ''Quick! Call Green Peace [sic] - there's a beached whale.''
Cat Media, the company behind Naturopathica, was the subject of 41 complaints upheld by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) between 2000 and 2006.
According to the pecuniary interests register at Leichhardt Council, where Mr Parker is mayor, he was marketing manager of Cat Media during that period.
A review of TGA decisions shows scathing comments, including this about the cholesterol treatment Cholestaguard: ''Advertisements which were unbalanced and exploited the lack of knowledge of consumers, and could bring about fear of distress among consumers''.
A FatBlaster ad was criticised for ''misleading consumers into thinking that the product had been used successfully by well-known celebrities (just like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Posh Spice)''. The company was also found to have used staff members to write supposedly independent reviews of products. Cat Media claimed falsely, according to the TGA, that its HangOver STOP could ''stop a hang over''.
Mr Parker denied that he was responsible for any of the breaches. ''It wasn't my role to be putting together advertising and copywriting, I was positioning the stuff in pharmacies,'' Mr Parker told The Sun-Herald. ''There were many directors. I had a small team of people doing things like graphic design. Yes, I've worked in the private sector, I'm not a union hack.''
Mr Parker left Cat Media in 2006.
A Labor Party source said: ''This is a tough contest for Labor, greatly helped by the fact that our opponent appears to be a snake oil salesman.''
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Must not say that homosexual exhibitionism is disgusting
NETWORK Ten newsreader Ron Wilson made an on-air apology this morning after using the word "disgusting" during an interview about Sydney’s Mardi Gras parade. The comment arose during an unscripted interview with Mardi Gras co-chair Peter Urmson.
Wilson insists that his comments came in his role as a journalist playing devil’s advocate and did not reflect his own views.
Despite stating that he's in favour of the law being changed to allow marriage between same sex couples, the journalist said during yesterday's interview:
“On the night there some of the spectacles you’re seeing I’m, assuming would even make you cringe. It becomes an exploitation almost of a sexual image rather than trying to explore the diversity of lifestyle.”
After Urmson responded that the community was colourful, but not disgusting, Wilson said: “With respect, there’s a difference between colourful and disgusting in some cases.” He then added that some people “really do seem to cross the line”.
Ten issued a statement saying: “Ten Morning News featured eight minutes of overwhelmingly positive coverage of Mardi Gras. Ron Wilson congratulated organisers on the success of the 2011 event.
"One small section of the interview raised a question about behaviour by some participants. The phrasing might not have been ideal, and TEN apologises if any viewers took offence.
"However, it is not unreasonable for alternative views to be put to organisers and the interview talent agreed that while he didn’t hold the view, some sections of society may.”
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Clumsy fakery of school test results
THE "gobsmacking" NAPLAN score of one disadvantaged Melbourne primary school, detailed on the My School website, has raised fresh questions about whether schools are manipulating the literacy and numeracy tests to gain an unfair advantage.
Education consultant and NAPLAN expert Philip Holmes-Smith said of the result achieved by Dallas Primary School in Broadmeadows that he had "never seen anything like it". "In statistics I never say it's impossible because there is probably a 0.0004 per cent chance it would happen," Mr Holmes-Smith said.
A growing number of principals and academics believe that schools face so much pressure to perform well in NAPLAN (National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy) that manipulation will result.
In the United States city of Atlanta, 109 educators faced scrutiny or sanctions after an investigation found test-related cheating at 58 public schools. Funding decisions there are made on test results. Similar problems have been found elsewhere in the US and in Britain.
The federal government, under its National Partnership Agreement on Literacy and Numeracy, will begin allocating large reward payments to schools based on their improvements in NAPLAN.
In the 2010 test last May, only 74 per cent of Dallas Primary students sat the test; 20 per cent were "withdrawn" and 7 per cent "absent". The national average attendance was 96 per cent.
Former education department bureaucrat John Nelson said the Dallas results were "gobsmacking". Despite a large migrant population and low socio-economic status, year 3 students were reading, spelling and understanding grammar and punctuation at significantly higher levels than the national average for year 5 students. In grammar and punctuation, the school's year 3 students outstripped its year 5 students, by a score of 596 to 522.
The students' improvement from year 3 in 2008 to year 5 in 2010 was enormous, putting year 5 students at near year 8 levels.
Dallas principal Valerie Karaitiana has in the past attributed her school's success to its specialist programs, but would not respond to questions on Friday. Northern region director Wayne Craig has, in private forums, used Dallas as an example to other principals of what can be achieved, but he refused on Friday to defend its performance. A departmental investigation of the school has found nothing wrong.
Other Victorian principals are suspicious. Doug Conway, principal of the western suburban Kings Park Primary School, believes the "lowest-performing kids were told to stay at home". "If you did that at my school, the low SES, high non-English-speaking background children, we'd get a colossal spike," he said. "I think the pressure on schools has led some schools to have lower participation rates than they should have." Terry Condon, Roxburgh Rise Primary principal, called Dallas "one of the most miraculous schools in the state".
Schools Minister Martin Dixon said he was concerned about Victoria's low participation rate in the NAPLAN tests, but was not aware of problems with any individual school.
Mr Holmes-Smith, a consultant at School Research Evaluation and Measurement Services, pointed out that Dallas's score for writing was much lower than for spelling and grammar. "Writing is the most authentic assessment because the children actually have to write something," he said. The other tests are multiple choice.
Mr Nelson, who quit his Education Department job because he thought a departmental investigation into Dallas was "a whitewash", asked: "What did they do that took a kid in Broadmeadows from the bottom 10th or 20th percentile and put them in the top percentile? Whatever they did needs to be copied by everybody, so why hasn't it? Why didn't they celebrate their methods?"
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Queensland's great water ripoff
And it's similar in other States
WHAT we've got here, as the jail warden famously said to Paul Newman in the film Cool Hand Luke, is failure to communicate. The message, it seems, is just not getting through. Perhaps we're just too stupid to understand it but Allconnex Water chief executive Kim Wood is doing his best to educate us.
He announced last week that Queenslanders had been getting their water too cheaply for too long. They should, he intimated, stop whining about ever-increasing water bills because before too long, they'd really have something to whinge about because they were going to get well and truly shafted by companies like his.
Actually, he eschewed the vernacular and said we should get ready to pay much more, which amounts to the same. "Most of us think the water falls from the sky and is free," he said.
I confess to being one of those who still believes, naive simpleton that I am, that, while not completely gratis, water should be one of our more affordable commodities, central as it is to the maintenance of life. This makes me one of those people who frustrate people such as Wood, who believes that it should be collected and sold for as high a price as can be screwed out of ratepayers.
If you find it difficult to pay spiralling water bills, sent to you from one of the companies that, thanks to the State Government, now control water in the state, then it really is too bad. You've had it too good for too long and if you don't like it, then go stand outside with a bucket next time it rains.
As an example of executive arrogance, Wood's stance is one of the better ones, his attitude up there with "let them eat cake" - the difference being that while there is no evidence Marie Antoinette ever urged the starving masses to have a nice slice of sponge, Wood's stance is a matter of record.
He is, of course, better placed than most to pay his water bill, pulling down a handy $464,000 a year in total or a tad under $1800 a day for a five-day week.
Despite Wood's exhortations to cop it sweet, I still have trouble understanding how the State Government's "reform" of water supply has seen bills rise by $300 a year. These are increases which, thanks to Wood, we know will continue and compound further in the short, let alone the medium, term with the best bet being a further rise of 22 per cent in the pipeline, so to speak, next year.
It will surprise no one to hear that having created massive water distribution bureaucracies, with Wood spending $4 million fitting out his offices and planning to lift his staff by a further 100 to 900, the State Government has announced the ensuing price gouging is not its fault.
Adopting her stern look, Premier Anna Bligh has said that it's all the fault of those dreadful regional councils. Are these the ones which were forced to amalgamate by the State Government and then forced to take control of the new water utilities?
Yes, they are the same ones and Bligh has said she'll give them all a jolly good spanking if she finds out that they, through the utilities they now own, have been charging too much for water.
The councils blame the Government for foisting the hugely expensive system upon them, while Wood defends his stance by saying that this year he expects to make a profit of about $70 million selling the stuff that, as he says, most of us mistakenly think falls from the sky and is free.
He has, therefore, justified his considerable salary. Were he able to extract $100 million in 2012 - and given the fact that he'll probably raise charges by about a fifth this seems likely - then he may well be in line for a salary increase based on the improved financial performance of the company he runs.
That rattle you can hear isn't rain on the roof but another State Government-sponsored gravy train leaving the station. On board are all the managers and consultants, some mates of mates, some professional desk-dwellers, who have done very nicely out of bureaucracies such as the Water Commission and can now mine the rich salary seams of the water utilities. Standing on the station platform are the ratepayers, watching as the water mandarins wave and smile from their first-class seats.
Peering through the window of the carriages, they can see a game in progress. It involves a ball emblazoned with the word BLAME and it is being tossed from the State Government to the councils and on to the water retailers who pass it the councils who then flick it back to the Government.
What is certain is that a lot of money is now being made from water and that no one appears to have responsibility for the havoc that is being visited upon household budgets.
The one group not benefiting from this bonanza, of course, are the people who are funding it: the ratepayers.
Wood's attitude may be unfortunate and he may wish that he had not said last week that it was "regrettable" that it had rained as this had a negative impact on Allconnex's revenue, but he didn't create the system.
That was all the handiwork of our elected leaders, the same ones who are now playing handball. It may well be that the electorate will tire of trying to work out who is at fault, blame both the councillors and the state parliamentarians, and seek vengeance on both at the ballot box.
SOURCE
Ms Hanson is making a comeback to politics, standing for a NSW upper house seat in the March 26 election.
NSW Premier Kristina Keneally greeted the news by saying state Labor would direct no preferences to Ms Hanson, accusing her of harbouring racist views. "We absolutely condemn the sorts of racist and discriminatory policies which come from Ms Hanson and parties like One Nation," Ms Keneally said. The NSW Liberal Party has also said it would offer no preferences to Ms Hanson.
But Ms Hanson has told told Fairfax Radio Network: "I'm not racist. No one can ever comment or make a comment on any racist statement I have ever said," she said today. "I have ... as an Australian ... a right to question immigration and multiculturalism, which I don't believe is helping our country.
"I believe in people coming here, assimilating, becoming Australians and be proud of this country and abide by the laws of the land. "I don't think there's anything wrong with that."
Ms Hanson said the major political parties feared her. "Why? Because they know I've always spoken out, I expose them for what they are," she said. "They want to hold on to their power and the positions. "It is in the people's interest of NSW to ensure that I am on the floor of NSW."
Ms Hanson is to stand for an upper house seat with a group of 16 independents but conceded it would be a "battle" to get elected.
Ms Hanson said she had been thinking about making a political comeback since last year, with voters urging her to stand. Parliamentary accountability and law and order reforms would be high on her agenda.
"Something I'd like to consider and put to the government is the separation of powers of the police force to the Parliament," she said. "I don't think the police force should be controlled by a minister of police. "They could look at separating them. So they [police] can get on and do their job."
She also said she was "completely against" Prime Minister Julia Gillard's planned carbon tax.
On the subject of Ms Keneally, Ms Hanson said, "I think she's a very nice lady but she doesn't know what she's talking about."
David Oldfield, a founder of the One Nation Party in 1996 with Ms Hanson, challenged anyone listening to his radio program on 2UE this morning to come up with any statement of hers in the past that was racist. He strongly criticised Ms Keneally's accusations that Ms Hanson's policies were racist and discriminatory, saying the Premier's comments were the opposite of freedom of speech.
His listeners agreed, welcoming her back into politics. "Congratulations to Pauline Hanson. I think our government needs a good shake-up. She's truthful ... I think give her a go, because this country is such a mess," one listener said. Another listener said Ms Hanson was just repeating what others were saying to "stop bringing these immigrants into Australia".
One caller raised Ms Hanson's refusal to sell her Queensland home to a Muslim buyer last year "because I don't believe that they are compatible with our way of life, our culture" as an example of racism, but Mr Oldfield dismissed his comments, saying: "What's racist about that?"
"If Pauline Hanson, doesn't like Muslims, she has a right not to like Muslims," he said, comparing it to whether Ms Hanson liked or did not like rainy days. "Technically speaking, Muslims are not a race," he added. Mr Oldfield said he, like the Oxford Dictionary, defined racism as one race viewing itself as superior than another race, citing the Nazis' belief in supremacy over the Jews.
Ms Hanson has spoken out strongly against multiculturalism and immigration in the past. In her maiden speech to Federal Parliament in 1996, she called for multiculturalism to be abolished and said Australia was "in danger of being swamped by Asians".
"I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that of multiculturalism abolished. I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians. Between 1984 and 1995, 40 per cent of all migrants coming into this country were of Asian origin. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate."
In 2006, she said she was concerned about immigrants from South Africa with diseases. "We're bringing in people from South Africa at the moment. There's a huge amount coming into Australia, who have diseases; they've got AIDS," she said. [There is indeed a high incidence of AIDS in South Africa and some other African nations]
"They are of no benefit to this country whatsoever; they'll never be able to work. And what my main concern is, is the diseases that they're bringing in and yet no one is saying or doing anything about it."
SOURCE
Greenie snake oil
Most Greenie claims are snake oil so the story below should not be too surprising
JAMIE PARKER, the man expected to become the Greens' first lower-house MP in NSW, was in charge of marketing at a natural therapies company that was repeatedly shamed by authorities for ''misleading advertising'' and ''exploiting consumers''. Mr Parker, who polls suggest will unseat Education Minister Verity Firth in Balmain, marketed products including FatBlaster, FatMagnet, Horny Goat Weed and Cholestaguard under the brand name Naturopathica.
An ad for FatBlaster, a weight loss treatment, included the line: ''Quick! Call Green Peace [sic] - there's a beached whale.''
Cat Media, the company behind Naturopathica, was the subject of 41 complaints upheld by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) between 2000 and 2006.
According to the pecuniary interests register at Leichhardt Council, where Mr Parker is mayor, he was marketing manager of Cat Media during that period.
A review of TGA decisions shows scathing comments, including this about the cholesterol treatment Cholestaguard: ''Advertisements which were unbalanced and exploited the lack of knowledge of consumers, and could bring about fear of distress among consumers''.
A FatBlaster ad was criticised for ''misleading consumers into thinking that the product had been used successfully by well-known celebrities (just like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Posh Spice)''. The company was also found to have used staff members to write supposedly independent reviews of products. Cat Media claimed falsely, according to the TGA, that its HangOver STOP could ''stop a hang over''.
Mr Parker denied that he was responsible for any of the breaches. ''It wasn't my role to be putting together advertising and copywriting, I was positioning the stuff in pharmacies,'' Mr Parker told The Sun-Herald. ''There were many directors. I had a small team of people doing things like graphic design. Yes, I've worked in the private sector, I'm not a union hack.''
Mr Parker left Cat Media in 2006.
A Labor Party source said: ''This is a tough contest for Labor, greatly helped by the fact that our opponent appears to be a snake oil salesman.''
SOURCE
Must not say that homosexual exhibitionism is disgusting
NETWORK Ten newsreader Ron Wilson made an on-air apology this morning after using the word "disgusting" during an interview about Sydney’s Mardi Gras parade. The comment arose during an unscripted interview with Mardi Gras co-chair Peter Urmson.
Wilson insists that his comments came in his role as a journalist playing devil’s advocate and did not reflect his own views.
Despite stating that he's in favour of the law being changed to allow marriage between same sex couples, the journalist said during yesterday's interview:
“On the night there some of the spectacles you’re seeing I’m, assuming would even make you cringe. It becomes an exploitation almost of a sexual image rather than trying to explore the diversity of lifestyle.”
After Urmson responded that the community was colourful, but not disgusting, Wilson said: “With respect, there’s a difference between colourful and disgusting in some cases.” He then added that some people “really do seem to cross the line”.
Ten issued a statement saying: “Ten Morning News featured eight minutes of overwhelmingly positive coverage of Mardi Gras. Ron Wilson congratulated organisers on the success of the 2011 event.
"One small section of the interview raised a question about behaviour by some participants. The phrasing might not have been ideal, and TEN apologises if any viewers took offence.
"However, it is not unreasonable for alternative views to be put to organisers and the interview talent agreed that while he didn’t hold the view, some sections of society may.”
SOURCE
Clumsy fakery of school test results
THE "gobsmacking" NAPLAN score of one disadvantaged Melbourne primary school, detailed on the My School website, has raised fresh questions about whether schools are manipulating the literacy and numeracy tests to gain an unfair advantage.
Education consultant and NAPLAN expert Philip Holmes-Smith said of the result achieved by Dallas Primary School in Broadmeadows that he had "never seen anything like it". "In statistics I never say it's impossible because there is probably a 0.0004 per cent chance it would happen," Mr Holmes-Smith said.
A growing number of principals and academics believe that schools face so much pressure to perform well in NAPLAN (National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy) that manipulation will result.
In the United States city of Atlanta, 109 educators faced scrutiny or sanctions after an investigation found test-related cheating at 58 public schools. Funding decisions there are made on test results. Similar problems have been found elsewhere in the US and in Britain.
The federal government, under its National Partnership Agreement on Literacy and Numeracy, will begin allocating large reward payments to schools based on their improvements in NAPLAN.
In the 2010 test last May, only 74 per cent of Dallas Primary students sat the test; 20 per cent were "withdrawn" and 7 per cent "absent". The national average attendance was 96 per cent.
Former education department bureaucrat John Nelson said the Dallas results were "gobsmacking". Despite a large migrant population and low socio-economic status, year 3 students were reading, spelling and understanding grammar and punctuation at significantly higher levels than the national average for year 5 students. In grammar and punctuation, the school's year 3 students outstripped its year 5 students, by a score of 596 to 522.
The students' improvement from year 3 in 2008 to year 5 in 2010 was enormous, putting year 5 students at near year 8 levels.
Dallas principal Valerie Karaitiana has in the past attributed her school's success to its specialist programs, but would not respond to questions on Friday. Northern region director Wayne Craig has, in private forums, used Dallas as an example to other principals of what can be achieved, but he refused on Friday to defend its performance. A departmental investigation of the school has found nothing wrong.
Other Victorian principals are suspicious. Doug Conway, principal of the western suburban Kings Park Primary School, believes the "lowest-performing kids were told to stay at home". "If you did that at my school, the low SES, high non-English-speaking background children, we'd get a colossal spike," he said. "I think the pressure on schools has led some schools to have lower participation rates than they should have." Terry Condon, Roxburgh Rise Primary principal, called Dallas "one of the most miraculous schools in the state".
Schools Minister Martin Dixon said he was concerned about Victoria's low participation rate in the NAPLAN tests, but was not aware of problems with any individual school.
Mr Holmes-Smith, a consultant at School Research Evaluation and Measurement Services, pointed out that Dallas's score for writing was much lower than for spelling and grammar. "Writing is the most authentic assessment because the children actually have to write something," he said. The other tests are multiple choice.
Mr Nelson, who quit his Education Department job because he thought a departmental investigation into Dallas was "a whitewash", asked: "What did they do that took a kid in Broadmeadows from the bottom 10th or 20th percentile and put them in the top percentile? Whatever they did needs to be copied by everybody, so why hasn't it? Why didn't they celebrate their methods?"
SOURCE
Queensland's great water ripoff
And it's similar in other States
WHAT we've got here, as the jail warden famously said to Paul Newman in the film Cool Hand Luke, is failure to communicate. The message, it seems, is just not getting through. Perhaps we're just too stupid to understand it but Allconnex Water chief executive Kim Wood is doing his best to educate us.
He announced last week that Queenslanders had been getting their water too cheaply for too long. They should, he intimated, stop whining about ever-increasing water bills because before too long, they'd really have something to whinge about because they were going to get well and truly shafted by companies like his.
Actually, he eschewed the vernacular and said we should get ready to pay much more, which amounts to the same. "Most of us think the water falls from the sky and is free," he said.
I confess to being one of those who still believes, naive simpleton that I am, that, while not completely gratis, water should be one of our more affordable commodities, central as it is to the maintenance of life. This makes me one of those people who frustrate people such as Wood, who believes that it should be collected and sold for as high a price as can be screwed out of ratepayers.
If you find it difficult to pay spiralling water bills, sent to you from one of the companies that, thanks to the State Government, now control water in the state, then it really is too bad. You've had it too good for too long and if you don't like it, then go stand outside with a bucket next time it rains.
As an example of executive arrogance, Wood's stance is one of the better ones, his attitude up there with "let them eat cake" - the difference being that while there is no evidence Marie Antoinette ever urged the starving masses to have a nice slice of sponge, Wood's stance is a matter of record.
He is, of course, better placed than most to pay his water bill, pulling down a handy $464,000 a year in total or a tad under $1800 a day for a five-day week.
Despite Wood's exhortations to cop it sweet, I still have trouble understanding how the State Government's "reform" of water supply has seen bills rise by $300 a year. These are increases which, thanks to Wood, we know will continue and compound further in the short, let alone the medium, term with the best bet being a further rise of 22 per cent in the pipeline, so to speak, next year.
It will surprise no one to hear that having created massive water distribution bureaucracies, with Wood spending $4 million fitting out his offices and planning to lift his staff by a further 100 to 900, the State Government has announced the ensuing price gouging is not its fault.
Adopting her stern look, Premier Anna Bligh has said that it's all the fault of those dreadful regional councils. Are these the ones which were forced to amalgamate by the State Government and then forced to take control of the new water utilities?
Yes, they are the same ones and Bligh has said she'll give them all a jolly good spanking if she finds out that they, through the utilities they now own, have been charging too much for water.
The councils blame the Government for foisting the hugely expensive system upon them, while Wood defends his stance by saying that this year he expects to make a profit of about $70 million selling the stuff that, as he says, most of us mistakenly think falls from the sky and is free.
He has, therefore, justified his considerable salary. Were he able to extract $100 million in 2012 - and given the fact that he'll probably raise charges by about a fifth this seems likely - then he may well be in line for a salary increase based on the improved financial performance of the company he runs.
That rattle you can hear isn't rain on the roof but another State Government-sponsored gravy train leaving the station. On board are all the managers and consultants, some mates of mates, some professional desk-dwellers, who have done very nicely out of bureaucracies such as the Water Commission and can now mine the rich salary seams of the water utilities. Standing on the station platform are the ratepayers, watching as the water mandarins wave and smile from their first-class seats.
Peering through the window of the carriages, they can see a game in progress. It involves a ball emblazoned with the word BLAME and it is being tossed from the State Government to the councils and on to the water retailers who pass it the councils who then flick it back to the Government.
What is certain is that a lot of money is now being made from water and that no one appears to have responsibility for the havoc that is being visited upon household budgets.
The one group not benefiting from this bonanza, of course, are the people who are funding it: the ratepayers.
Wood's attitude may be unfortunate and he may wish that he had not said last week that it was "regrettable" that it had rained as this had a negative impact on Allconnex's revenue, but he didn't create the system.
That was all the handiwork of our elected leaders, the same ones who are now playing handball. It may well be that the electorate will tire of trying to work out who is at fault, blame both the councillors and the state parliamentarians, and seek vengeance on both at the ballot box.
SOURCE
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
How the Left hate the Brethren
What the report below omits to say is that the Federal government has part-funded church schools since the days of Bob Menzies. Church schools of all denominations ALWAYS get private as well as government funding. So many parents send their kids to private schools in Australia that they represent a significant voting bloc that no government can ignore -- as Mark Latham found out to his cost. So the report below is not news at all.
The furore is just another Leftist attack on a very conservative group. Although it is doubtful that anybody takes much notice of them, the leaders of the mainstream churches almost always come out in support of the Labor party at election time. The Brethren are a rare group that actually funds advertisements supporting the conservatives. And hell hath no fury like a Leftist scorned
A RELIGIOUS school run by the secretive Exclusive Brethren religion was granted more than $9 million in government funding despite getting $15 million from "other private sources", the MySchool 2.0 website reveals.
The government handout was based on it being rated one of the most disadvantaged schools in the nation, equivalent to an impoverished Aboriginal mission school. Yet despite its government classification as a "category 12" school, with private funding it is able to spend more than $20,000 a year on each student. The average for a state school is about $10,000 per student.
It runs MET (Meadowbank Education Trust) School, based at Oatlands near West Ryde, but is, in fact, 18 schools spread throughout the state as far as Albury and Condobolin.
"This is a complete, total abuse of the funding system," NSW Greens MP John Kaye said. "It's very hard to argue that these schools are impoverished when they're getting $15 million from private sources."
Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said the school's arrangements highlighted the flaws in the federal funding system. "Like all private schools, this school is funded regardless of its income or wealth," Mr Gavrielatos said. "As a result it has almost double the average income per student of a public school."
The school, which had no input over its rating, failed to return calls over the funding issue yesterday.
SOURCE
Poll backlash: Julia Gillard and Labor punished for carbon tax
Julia is as stupid and self-destructive as Kevvy
LABOR leaders today warned Government MPs they were in for a long, difficult fight on climate change policy, but that they could win. With Prime Minister Julia Gillard in Washington, senior ministers were mobilised to reassure MPs, and voters, that crushing opinion poll figures did not mean the battle over a carbon price was over.
"It is a debate we can win," said Acting Prime Minister Wayne Swan. "We have got to get the facts out there, and we've got to communicate with people about the fact that its the big polluters that will be paying here, the revenue raised from the big polluters will go to households and industry."
But there will be increasing jitters among Labor backbenchers after Newspoll reported today that the Government's primary vote had fallen to a record low of 30 per cent, and the dissatisfaction rating with Ms Gillard was now just over 50 per cent for the first time.
Sports Minister Mark Arbib said the Government was attempting the biggest economic reform of the past 20 to 30 years. "It's always, when you take on tough reforms like this, you're always going to cop it in the polls," he said on MTR radio in Melbourne. "I think the one thing that our party is doing, is we are just focussed on getting the job done. This is the right thing to do. It's something we believe in."
The Government also attempted to turn the focus on Opposition Leader Tony Abbott by branding him a "wrecker" who was fighting the carbon price scheme for pure political reasons.
Greens leader Bob Brown today will join in by attacking Mr Abbott for using a speech overnight in Adelaide to call proposed compensation for low income earners a "slush" fund.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet today said the collapse in Labor's opinion poll figures showed Mr Abbott was good at fearmongering and rejected his claim that a carbon price would make it hard to drive a car or turn on the air-conditioning. "That is garbage, honestly," Mr Combet told ABC Radio. "This guy really is nothing but a mobile scare campaign."
Opposition frontbencher George Brandis returned to the issue of Ms Gillard's "broken promise". He said she was in office because she promised before the 2010 federal election not to introduce a carbon tax. "We think this is a very bad idea and most Australians agree with us," he told Sky News.
SOURCE
Australians crippled by tax burden
So Julia wants to add a new tax -- in the usual destructive Leftist way
THE number of Australians failing to lodge a tax return has blown out to about 4 million and small businesses have racked up a crippling $9.4 billion in Tax Office debts. In a grim picture revealing many families are doing it tough, about 700,000 taxpayers entered into special repayment plans with the Tax Office in 2009-10 - an increase of 32 per in four years.
And while big business posts record profits, the Tax Office expects 260,000 small business owners - many of them struggling corner-store operators - to default on these repayment deals. This represents an increase of 100,000 in just two years, reinforcing concerns of a "two-speed economy".
A Daily Telegraph investigation shows that small business, the so-called engine room of the economy, is saddled with a growing tax burden and many are struggling to meet their tax obligations on time.
The complexity of Australia's self-assessment tax system is also baffling. Many taxpayers are simply not lodging tax returns, triggering an unofficial "cash economy" that could run into tens of billions of dollars.
As many as one in four taxpayers could be failing to file a return, according to the Tax Office's own statistics. Documents show 4.3 million individual taxpayers have "not yet lodged" a tax return for 2008-09 - a staggering 26 per cent increase on 3.4 million in the previous year.
The Tax Office snapshot was taken in October 2010 and experts say that tens of billions of dollars could be "leaking" from government revenues because of the dramatic hike in non-lodgment.
About 13 million individual taxpayers lodge an annual return with the Tax Office. "Even if half of the taxpayers with outstanding returns each owed just a few thousand dollars ... the tax that could be leaking from government revenues could add up to tens of billions of dollars," said Yasser El-Ansary, tax counsel with the Institute of Chartered Accountants.
While the big banks and giant mining companies are enjoying record trading conditions, many of Australia's 2.3 million small and medium sized enterprises are facing much tougher times.
Reinforcing concerns of a "two speed economy", about 450,000 "micro" enterprises are expected to enter into special "payment arrangements" with the Tax Office in 2009-10.
SOURCE
Australian country towns that want better access to river water are racist?
Meredith does of course have a long record as a far-Leftist ratbag. She is the real bigot, of course, with her superior attitude towards country people
COUNTRY councils were slammed as "racist and awful" by a Sydney City councillor last night. The spray from councillor Meredith Burgmann came when the Local Government and Shires Association wanted support for its election policy platform that contains a list of demands, many regional-based, on the State Government after the March 26 election.
The demands included $20 million for weed management, slashing health boards in the state's west, and refusing to stop taking water from the Murray-Darling system.
Ms Burgmann refused to vote for the document because she disagreed with major policy points and also said that Sydney councillors did not know rural issues. "I am happy to support the themes, but ... I don't trust these local governments out in the west," she said. "They have been racist and awful for years and years."
Ms Burgmann went on to say that she disagreed with quarantining town water supplies from the application of sustainable water diversion limits. "I don't agree with that, I reckon country towns should be taught how to limit the water they are using rather take more out of the Murray-Darling river system, which is a vital river system," she said....
The document also calls for councils to lift rates, restrict alcohol sales and run their elections locally.
Councillor Marcelle Hoff said refusing to support the rural councils' election platform points was "insulting" to them. "It smacks of a superior attitude if we say that's no good, we'll only support your themes," she said.
SOURCE
Experts say dam mismanagement added to Queensland flood damage
The flood could have been entirely avoided with even the most basic foresight. Even the flood compartment was not kept available, let alone precautionary releases of water from lower down in the dam
EXPERTS hired by insurance companies have blamed Wivenhoe Dam for contributing to the devastating floods in Brisbane and Ipswich. A report written for the Insurance Australia Group, which owns NRMA and CGU, details how releases from Wivenhoe, combined with intense rainfall, flooded hundreds of homes and businesses.
The expert opinion, written by engineering giant WorleyParsons, potentially exposes the State Government to legal action for negligence.
However, the report fails to ascertain how much of the January 13 flood could be attributed to Wivenhoe because Government-owned dam operator SEQWater has refused to detail its water releases in the days prior. The secrecy surrounding the releases has left in limbo victims such as David Stark, who is attempting to write submissions to the flood inquiry.
Mr Stark, whose insurance claim has been rejected by NRMA based on the report, suspects the rapid inundation of his Fairfield home was partly caused by huge volumes of water released by dam operators, in concert with the massive rainfall in other catchments. "Obviously Wivenhoe contributed, but how much I am not able to be ascertain," he said.
The report by WorleyParsons, which is also a member of the insurance industry's "panel of independent experts" assessing the flood's cause, said its results were based on the information available. "The elevated levels that were observed in the lower Brisbane River were primarily a response to the intense rainfall that occurred in the upper catchment areas to the west, including heavy rainfall in the headwaters of the Lockyer and Bremer rivers, combined with releases from Wivenhoe Dam," it said.
The report said Ipswich properties near the lower reaches of the Bremer River would have been affected from "backwater flooding from the Brisbane River".
The report detailed how the Brisbane city gauge peaked at 4.5m at 2am on January 13, 30 hours after Wivenhoe operators reportedly released water at a rate of 9000 cubic metres per second to prevent the dam overtopping. Water discharged from Wivenhoe usually takes about 36 hours to reach this gauge.
Mr Stark said he planned to claim $200,000 in damages because it was obvious the operators should have lowered the dam levels in anticipation of the wet season.
SOURCE
What the report below omits to say is that the Federal government has part-funded church schools since the days of Bob Menzies. Church schools of all denominations ALWAYS get private as well as government funding. So many parents send their kids to private schools in Australia that they represent a significant voting bloc that no government can ignore -- as Mark Latham found out to his cost. So the report below is not news at all.
The furore is just another Leftist attack on a very conservative group. Although it is doubtful that anybody takes much notice of them, the leaders of the mainstream churches almost always come out in support of the Labor party at election time. The Brethren are a rare group that actually funds advertisements supporting the conservatives. And hell hath no fury like a Leftist scorned
A RELIGIOUS school run by the secretive Exclusive Brethren religion was granted more than $9 million in government funding despite getting $15 million from "other private sources", the MySchool 2.0 website reveals.
The government handout was based on it being rated one of the most disadvantaged schools in the nation, equivalent to an impoverished Aboriginal mission school. Yet despite its government classification as a "category 12" school, with private funding it is able to spend more than $20,000 a year on each student. The average for a state school is about $10,000 per student.
It runs MET (Meadowbank Education Trust) School, based at Oatlands near West Ryde, but is, in fact, 18 schools spread throughout the state as far as Albury and Condobolin.
"This is a complete, total abuse of the funding system," NSW Greens MP John Kaye said. "It's very hard to argue that these schools are impoverished when they're getting $15 million from private sources."
Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said the school's arrangements highlighted the flaws in the federal funding system. "Like all private schools, this school is funded regardless of its income or wealth," Mr Gavrielatos said. "As a result it has almost double the average income per student of a public school."
The school, which had no input over its rating, failed to return calls over the funding issue yesterday.
SOURCE
Poll backlash: Julia Gillard and Labor punished for carbon tax
Julia is as stupid and self-destructive as Kevvy
LABOR leaders today warned Government MPs they were in for a long, difficult fight on climate change policy, but that they could win. With Prime Minister Julia Gillard in Washington, senior ministers were mobilised to reassure MPs, and voters, that crushing opinion poll figures did not mean the battle over a carbon price was over.
"It is a debate we can win," said Acting Prime Minister Wayne Swan. "We have got to get the facts out there, and we've got to communicate with people about the fact that its the big polluters that will be paying here, the revenue raised from the big polluters will go to households and industry."
But there will be increasing jitters among Labor backbenchers after Newspoll reported today that the Government's primary vote had fallen to a record low of 30 per cent, and the dissatisfaction rating with Ms Gillard was now just over 50 per cent for the first time.
Sports Minister Mark Arbib said the Government was attempting the biggest economic reform of the past 20 to 30 years. "It's always, when you take on tough reforms like this, you're always going to cop it in the polls," he said on MTR radio in Melbourne. "I think the one thing that our party is doing, is we are just focussed on getting the job done. This is the right thing to do. It's something we believe in."
The Government also attempted to turn the focus on Opposition Leader Tony Abbott by branding him a "wrecker" who was fighting the carbon price scheme for pure political reasons.
Greens leader Bob Brown today will join in by attacking Mr Abbott for using a speech overnight in Adelaide to call proposed compensation for low income earners a "slush" fund.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet today said the collapse in Labor's opinion poll figures showed Mr Abbott was good at fearmongering and rejected his claim that a carbon price would make it hard to drive a car or turn on the air-conditioning. "That is garbage, honestly," Mr Combet told ABC Radio. "This guy really is nothing but a mobile scare campaign."
Opposition frontbencher George Brandis returned to the issue of Ms Gillard's "broken promise". He said she was in office because she promised before the 2010 federal election not to introduce a carbon tax. "We think this is a very bad idea and most Australians agree with us," he told Sky News.
SOURCE
Australians crippled by tax burden
So Julia wants to add a new tax -- in the usual destructive Leftist way
THE number of Australians failing to lodge a tax return has blown out to about 4 million and small businesses have racked up a crippling $9.4 billion in Tax Office debts. In a grim picture revealing many families are doing it tough, about 700,000 taxpayers entered into special repayment plans with the Tax Office in 2009-10 - an increase of 32 per in four years.
And while big business posts record profits, the Tax Office expects 260,000 small business owners - many of them struggling corner-store operators - to default on these repayment deals. This represents an increase of 100,000 in just two years, reinforcing concerns of a "two-speed economy".
A Daily Telegraph investigation shows that small business, the so-called engine room of the economy, is saddled with a growing tax burden and many are struggling to meet their tax obligations on time.
The complexity of Australia's self-assessment tax system is also baffling. Many taxpayers are simply not lodging tax returns, triggering an unofficial "cash economy" that could run into tens of billions of dollars.
As many as one in four taxpayers could be failing to file a return, according to the Tax Office's own statistics. Documents show 4.3 million individual taxpayers have "not yet lodged" a tax return for 2008-09 - a staggering 26 per cent increase on 3.4 million in the previous year.
The Tax Office snapshot was taken in October 2010 and experts say that tens of billions of dollars could be "leaking" from government revenues because of the dramatic hike in non-lodgment.
About 13 million individual taxpayers lodge an annual return with the Tax Office. "Even if half of the taxpayers with outstanding returns each owed just a few thousand dollars ... the tax that could be leaking from government revenues could add up to tens of billions of dollars," said Yasser El-Ansary, tax counsel with the Institute of Chartered Accountants.
While the big banks and giant mining companies are enjoying record trading conditions, many of Australia's 2.3 million small and medium sized enterprises are facing much tougher times.
Reinforcing concerns of a "two speed economy", about 450,000 "micro" enterprises are expected to enter into special "payment arrangements" with the Tax Office in 2009-10.
SOURCE
Australian country towns that want better access to river water are racist?
Meredith does of course have a long record as a far-Leftist ratbag. She is the real bigot, of course, with her superior attitude towards country people
COUNTRY councils were slammed as "racist and awful" by a Sydney City councillor last night. The spray from councillor Meredith Burgmann came when the Local Government and Shires Association wanted support for its election policy platform that contains a list of demands, many regional-based, on the State Government after the March 26 election.
The demands included $20 million for weed management, slashing health boards in the state's west, and refusing to stop taking water from the Murray-Darling system.
Ms Burgmann refused to vote for the document because she disagreed with major policy points and also said that Sydney councillors did not know rural issues. "I am happy to support the themes, but ... I don't trust these local governments out in the west," she said. "They have been racist and awful for years and years."
Ms Burgmann went on to say that she disagreed with quarantining town water supplies from the application of sustainable water diversion limits. "I don't agree with that, I reckon country towns should be taught how to limit the water they are using rather take more out of the Murray-Darling river system, which is a vital river system," she said....
The document also calls for councils to lift rates, restrict alcohol sales and run their elections locally.
Councillor Marcelle Hoff said refusing to support the rural councils' election platform points was "insulting" to them. "It smacks of a superior attitude if we say that's no good, we'll only support your themes," she said.
SOURCE
Experts say dam mismanagement added to Queensland flood damage
The flood could have been entirely avoided with even the most basic foresight. Even the flood compartment was not kept available, let alone precautionary releases of water from lower down in the dam
EXPERTS hired by insurance companies have blamed Wivenhoe Dam for contributing to the devastating floods in Brisbane and Ipswich. A report written for the Insurance Australia Group, which owns NRMA and CGU, details how releases from Wivenhoe, combined with intense rainfall, flooded hundreds of homes and businesses.
The expert opinion, written by engineering giant WorleyParsons, potentially exposes the State Government to legal action for negligence.
However, the report fails to ascertain how much of the January 13 flood could be attributed to Wivenhoe because Government-owned dam operator SEQWater has refused to detail its water releases in the days prior. The secrecy surrounding the releases has left in limbo victims such as David Stark, who is attempting to write submissions to the flood inquiry.
Mr Stark, whose insurance claim has been rejected by NRMA based on the report, suspects the rapid inundation of his Fairfield home was partly caused by huge volumes of water released by dam operators, in concert with the massive rainfall in other catchments. "Obviously Wivenhoe contributed, but how much I am not able to be ascertain," he said.
The report by WorleyParsons, which is also a member of the insurance industry's "panel of independent experts" assessing the flood's cause, said its results were based on the information available. "The elevated levels that were observed in the lower Brisbane River were primarily a response to the intense rainfall that occurred in the upper catchment areas to the west, including heavy rainfall in the headwaters of the Lockyer and Bremer rivers, combined with releases from Wivenhoe Dam," it said.
The report said Ipswich properties near the lower reaches of the Bremer River would have been affected from "backwater flooding from the Brisbane River".
The report detailed how the Brisbane city gauge peaked at 4.5m at 2am on January 13, 30 hours after Wivenhoe operators reportedly released water at a rate of 9000 cubic metres per second to prevent the dam overtopping. Water discharged from Wivenhoe usually takes about 36 hours to reach this gauge.
Mr Stark said he planned to claim $200,000 in damages because it was obvious the operators should have lowered the dam levels in anticipation of the wet season.
SOURCE
Monday, March 07, 2011
How times have changed: Gillard open to more US forces
The Australian Left used to be implacably hostile to the presence of U.S. military facilities in Australia. So what we read below from a Prime Minister from the Left faction of a Leftist party is rather a surprise -- not that any historically aware person expects consistency from Leftists
JULIA Gillard says she is "all ears" about the possibility of the US placing more military forces on Australian soil if it believes this is necessary in the light of the growing might of China and India.
The Prime Minister has told The Australian she will use her meeting with US President Barack Obama in Washington this week to discuss his nation's ongoing force posture review and how Australia could co-operate with any changes in the deployment of its military resources.
She made the comment in an interview with The Australian before leaving for her week-long visit, during which she will visit the White House and key US administration officials and will also address congress.
"We are looking to further co-operation on the contemporary defence challenges of our age," said Ms Gillard, who arrived in Washington yesterday for briefings from local Australian officials, including ambassador Kim Beazley. "We've got discussions to have about the contemporary engagement of America in our region, including its defence engagement as it goes through its defence posture review."
The discussions would also cover the US's diplomatic engagement, particularly with China and India.
The Prime Minister said she could not pre-empt what the US might want to do with the distribution of its military forces throughout the Asia-Pacific area. "But clearly we can be engaged and discussing what is possible in terms of collaboration with their defence force," she said.
Describing the relationship between Australia and the US as the equivalent of "great mates", Ms Gillard said she would also discuss with Mr Obama the conduct of the war in Afghanistan as well as security concerns and regional concerns such as security on the Korean peninsula. Ms Gillard's official program will begin late tonight, Australian time, when she visits the Lincoln Memorial and is due to announce a $3 million Australian contribution to the US's official Vietnam memorial.
The Australian-funded component will feature details of the 521 Australian Vietnam War casualties as well as displays and temporary exhibitions on Anzac Day, Long Tan Day and other significant Australian milestones.
She will then visit Mr Obama at the White House ahead of meetings with US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and various other officials. On Wednesday, Australian time, she will continue talks with officials, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She will then wind up the Washington leg of her trip with an address to congress.
SOURCE
Leftist hypocrite says people should respect their leaders
I am sure Hitler and Stalin felt the same. And this government is even less legitimate than Hitler's. Hitler's government was a coalition of nationalist parties. The present Australian governing coalition is an unholy alliance of Leftists, Greens and turncoat conservatives.
Furthermore it takes two to tango and respect has to be earned. If Leftists want respect from conservatives they should halt their abuse of conservatives. See here for some examples of the hate and abuse that the Left have recently hurled at conservatives.
The author of the excerpt below is Phillip Coorey, a reliably Leftist writer for a reliably leftist rag
When the boatload of asylum seekers smashed into rocks off Christmas Island just before Christmas, certain radio shock jocks went into a lather.
Julie Bishop was acting opposition leader and found herself being interviewed by Andrew Bolt and Steve Price on Melbourne's MTR.
Bolt, the conservative columnist who expends a great amount of energy lecturing members of the Canberra press gallery on how to do their jobs, has a particular distaste for Labor's asylum seeker policy. As is the norm for such "interviews", he tended to make statements and seek agreement.
"Look, Julie," he said, "this is a tragedy that is a direct consequence of the government policies that led to a resumption of the boat people trade. They were warned, the opposition warned them. I think today, now that the rescue operation is over, today is the time we start to hold people accountable. Would you agree?"
Bishop tried to play a straight bat. "After any tragedy it is natural and appropriate for people to ask how did it happen, could it have been prevented," she said. "There will be many questions, no doubt there will be an official investigation, there will be formal inquiries . . . a coroner's inquest, as there have been in the past. The Western Australian . . . "
Bolt interjected: "Julie, it seems to me you're reluctant, you've been intimidated out of talking about the contributing factors to this tragedy. Is it not true that these people were lured to their deaths?"
On it went until an increasingly agitated Bolt, according to Bishop, simply hung up on her.
Previously, Bolt and Price had hung up on independent Rob Oakeshott because he wouldn't give a straight answer on whom he was likely to support to form minority government. When Tony Windsor went public last week with concerns about the increasingly dangerous tone of public discourse, Bolt promoted his Wednesday morning radio show with the item: "Tony Windsor's attempt to play the victim to shut down a debate. We recall how this man who wants to 'take on' talkback hosts hung up on me the last time he tried."
The boys at MTR are far from the only culprits contributing to increasing disrespect for the nation's leaders. Gary Hardgrave, a shock jock who became a minister under the Howard government before losing his Brisbane seat and returning to radio, hung up on Greens leader Bob Brown 10 days ago.
Brown tweeted afterwards: "What a spineless uninformed jock Gary Hardgrave is, who when losing the argument cut off the i'view! Voters of Moreton knew a thing or two!"
In their defence, radio jocks are not journalists per se and therefore are not strictly bound to address politicians publicly by their titles or Mr, Ms or Mrs. But is there any cause to be rude, regardless of the temperature of the debate or personal views?
3AW's Neil Mitchell interviewed Julia Gillard just days after she announced the flood levy and the shock jocks were proclaiming the end of the world. The interview began with an accusation more than a question: "Prime Minister, with your government's history of mismanagement, like the insulation program, school rebuilding, who are you going to put in charge of the spending of this money you're going to take from us?"
Mitchell's line of inquiry was perfectly legitimate, but was the tone of the question?
More HERE
IMMIGRATION ROUNDUP
Three current articles below
Keeping the illegals waiting
THE average time spent processing refugee claims has blown out to 165 days - nearly twice the government's 90-day target for appeals by asylum seekers. And the average time spent in detention for all unauthorised arrivals - including those whose claims have been rejected - stands at 213 days.
Information provided to The Australian Online by the Immigration Department confirms the numbers of boat arrivals are straining the detention network, causing blow-outs to processing times and longer stays for asylum seekers in detention.
In just over two years, 3438 visas have been granted to boat people with the majority coming from Afghanistan. Since 2008, only 190 asylum seekers had been removed from Australia including 15 who were removed involuntarily. At the end of last week there were still 6194 asylum seekers in detention 2526 on Christmas Island and 3668 in mainland facilities.
The department said the longest time in detention for a current detainee was almost three years. The person was doing a second stint in detention after being turned back once before. There are currently five boat people who have been in detention for two years or more.
The government announced last week it would open up a new $10 million detention facility 35 km southeast of Darwin because the current detention network was under pressure.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said the new 1500-bed facility was necessary to prevent overcrowding in existing facilities.
SOURCE
A hidden agenda
Australia is a nation of migrants and has had an unceasing flow of them from the beginning. It has a higher proportion of its population foreign-born than any other nation except Israel. It was one of the few nations to take Jews fleeing from Hitler.
So it is mildly surprising to see an article in a major Sri Lankan newspaper headed "Secrets of Australian immigration history" -- an article that denounces Australian immigration policy in round terms.
It is particularly surprising when one considers that there are these days large numbers of Sri Lankan nationals risking life and limb in order to get to Australia as illegal immigrants. The illegals obviously think Australia is a pretty good place.
So what is going on? Simple: The Sri Lankan government and many Sinhalese are embarrassed by the flight of many of their Tamil citizens and want to put them off fleeing to Australia! As Tamils have a history of implacability and turning to terrorism to get what they want, I rather hope that the propaganda succeeds
Some excerpts below. They present a very warped view of Australia, albeit with some element of truth:
The Australian government’s white Australia policy which was eventually abandoned by the government in the 70s was very similar to Adolf Hitler’s ideology of racial purity. The only difference being the Australian Government did not round up Jews and send them to gas chambers, but strongly believed in a white superior race and wanted to maintain this status quo and had taken some extraordinary steps to enforce this.
Present times
Australian migration is open to all nationalities nowadays, provided there is a skill to offer to Australia or in some cases humanitarian grounds and there are laws to prevent discrimination based on the individual’s ethnic origins in Australia.
But majority of Australians still look at non white nationalities as a threat to the Australian way of life and often treat them as second-class citizens. In a recent times, the Sydney suburb of Cronulla witnessed race riots. Quite unfortunately most of perpetrators of Cronulla riots were white Anglo young Australians and they rioted against migrants of any ethnicity under theme of “we were born here you were flown here”.
At the time the Prime Minister of the day failed to condemn the riots and saw the situation as young people expressing their misguided view in a democratic country. New South Wales Police contained the riots with great difficulty which were caused by migrants using a beach in Cronulla usually inhabited by white Australian young males.
Mandatory detention
The current Australian policy is mandatory detention of any person seeking asylum in Australia. Thousands of displaced refugees are currently detainees. Some of them were stationed at an offshore detention centre called Christmas Island and a recent investigation by Australian Government Ombudsman had found these detainees to be held under very poor conditions.
In some instances, women and children were detained for long periods while immigration officials look into their asylum request. Quite unfortunately refugees from a number of countries including Sri Lankans are facing these difficult circumstances in Australia. Australia is the only country in the developed world which has a mandatory detention policy for refugees and asylum seekers. In conclusion modern Australia has allowed immigration to non white nationalities with great reluctance.
Unfortunately due to inability to fill the country with white Anglo Saxon British subjects, the Government was forced to allow the immigration to non white ethnicities. If this was not done Australia as a nation would have faced difficult economic circumstances and would likely have been classified as a Third World country. Australia had taken the decision to remain as an economically wealthy but moving away from white Australia policy with great reluctance and resistance.
More HERE
Australians fleeing the overcrowded and traffic-strangled big cities
Overcrowding that is largely the result of high immigration levels
AUSTRALIA is undergoing a historic shift in population movements, with the once pervasive flow of people to the city giving way to a regional retreat that will require governments to fund more infrastructure and services outside state capitals.
Far greater than any sea change or tree change effect, the new trend, identified in a study commissioned by the Gillard government, will challenge the notion that Australians are overwhelmingly big-city dwellers.
A draft report of the $110,000 study, conducted by Graeme Hugo and Kevin Harris from the University of Adelaide, has been obtained by The Australian under Freedom of Information laws. It was commissioned by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and will not only guide future settlement policies, but also the work of Population Minister Tony Burke as he tries to better control and direct population growth and movements.
While the congregation of people in capital cities continued to 1981, the researchers found that "since then there has been stability in the proportion of Australians living in the capitals".
"The recent evidence is clear that the perception of a 'drift' to capital cities from their hinterlands is no longer the case, and that the prevailing flow from capital cities to hinterlands has significant implications," they write.
Coastal areas and near-city regions, in particular, are recording significant growth, with families (who seek a better lifestyle and improved services) and baby boomers (who lose their work ties to the city upon retirement) leading the charge. Sydney's reputation as a gateway city for immigrants is also slipping, with more newcomers favouring Melbourne, and others encouraged to start off in the regions.
Adam and Farrah Lance certainly wondered "what the hell" they were doing as they worked gruelling hours in their respective top-tier financial firms in Sydney's CBD and fought congestion to and from their Bronte Beach home.
Four years ago, they moved to Merewether, just south of Newcastle, buying a house 200m from the beach -- two hours away from their family in Sydney, but with more space and a better lifestyle. "It's great for raising children here, there's space at the beach, lots of parks to play in and there's just not the same stress," Ms Lance said yesterday, with children Savannah, 2, and four-year-old Jasper. "Especially for Adam it's much better, he's so much more relaxed up here."
The couple have found jobs in Newcastle. Ms Lance is working two days a week in public relations while Mr Lance, who had been commuting to Sydney, has found full-time work only a 10-minute drive from their home. "There is not really peak-hour traffic here," Ms Lance said. "Also, your money goes further up here; the house prices are definitely cheaper."
The researchers' draft report casts capital cities in a dim light and states that Sydney, in particular, has an environment which is not conducive to attracting or retaining people.
Australia's pre-eminent metropolis is losing so many residents - offset only by international migrants - that the researchers believe it must have "social and economic" problems.
SOURCE
GREENIE ROUNDUP
Four current articles below
Greens lead us along costly path
A DANGEROUS new dynamic has entered Australian economic management, Green voodoo economics. It threatens to not only make a weak Government even more ineffectual, but to do real lasting damage to our economy and its future.
The Greens appear to truly believe economics works in such a way that they can have their cake and eat it too. They want to tax the nasty carbon polluters without impacting on consumers. If only it was truly that simple.
Bob Brown tells us he "wants the polluters to pay". What he fails to realise is that we have seen the polluters and they are us.
Every time we drive a car, we are, in his words, polluting. Unless we have very expensive green power, every time we turn on the TV or dishwasher or any other electric appliance, we are polluting. Every time we turn the lights on in an office or use the lift or buy something that has been transported by a truck, we are polluting.
If we want to tax carbon then someone has to pay, and it will not be some anonymous nasty big business, it will be the consumer. It will be us.
As a scientist I believe that climate change is both real and caused by our carbon emissions. It is obvious that something has to be done to seriously limit emissions on a global scale. As an economist, I can see major damage being done to our economy if we go about this in a naive and ham-fisted way.
The clear policy influence that the Greens are now exerting, together with the extreme policy caution of the new Government, provides little hope of any sensible outcome. Rather a carbon tax in the absence of any permitting system to actually limit emissions will almost certainly result in higher prices with little if anything by way of emissions reductions to show for it.
All a carbon tax is likely to do is make the Greens feel good and do lasting damage to the economy.
Be in no doubt that this will be a job-destroying, wealth-destroying tax, but the real issue here is that massive changes in our economy are being decided on the basis of short-term political convenience and ridiculous idealistic and ideological notions of how economics works.
In reality, we now have the least economically competent government since the disastrous Whitlam years of 1972-75. Just like then, we have a Prime Minister who appears disinterested in economic realities and an incredibly powerful bloc from the Left who, while well-meaning, have no idea of the real consequences of the road they are hell-bent on taking us down.
SOURCE
Unions getting aggressive about job losses under a carbon tax
THE union movement is demanding Julia Gillard develop a comprehensive industry plan to sustain jobs and refocus production under her proposed carbon price.
ACTU president Ged Kearney told The Australian Online that a detailed plan, similar to the Button Plan of the 1980s, was the price of union support for Labor's climate change response.
The demand follows that of mining giant Rio Tinto, which wants more generous compensation and industry protection than Kevin Rudd's 2009 scheme.
Ms Kearney said tackling climate change would involve the biggest structural change to the economy in a generation.
“Just as the opening of the Australian economy in the 1980s was accompanied by far-reaching industry policy, whatever carbon pricing mechanism is eventually adopted must integrate an industry policy focus to drive the growth in clean economy jobs and services so that outcomes can be maximised,” she said.
“Industry policy during the transition to a low-pollution economy must include assistance to emissions intensive-trade exposed industries, incentives to source locally to generate jobs and demand, investment in clean energy jobs and industries, and skills development and retraining to tool the workforce for the low-carbon economy.”
A spokesman for Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said some of the money raised by the carbon tax would go towards industry adjustment, but it was too early to say how that would occur.
If the government is to agree to the unions' demands, it will have to act swiftly. An interim carbon tax is due to be introduced by July next year.
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national secretary Dave Oliver said a far-reaching industry policy should be a key plank in the carbon pricing strategy. He said he was “disappointed and perplexed” that, on the eve of climate plan being announced, the government had axed its green cars plan.
He said Ms Gillard had likened her climate plan to the great reforms of the Hawke and Keating governments - including the floating of the dollar and the lowering of tariff walls - but those reforms were accompanied by the Button Plan. “We need a 21st century plan for an innovative future in green energy, efficient technology and clean production.”
The 1984 Button Plan, named after then federal industry minister John Button, involved the overhaul of the nation's car industry to make it more efficient, allowing tarriffs to be gradually lowered.
SOURCE
Big business getting restless about the carbon tax too
MINING giant Rio Tinto has put Julia Gillard on notice that business will demand her carbon pricing plan offer more generous compensation and industry protection than Kevin Rudd's 2009 scheme because of the international community's failure to reach a global deal on carbon prices.
In his first major entry into the climate change debate since the Prime Minister last month unveiled plans to price carbon from July 1 next year, Rio's Australian managing director, David Peever, says the changed global outlook means the government should acknowledge that Mr Rudd's carbon pollution reduction scheme "is not an appropriate starting point for discussions in 2011".
In an article published today in The Australian, Mr Peever calls for "real world" modelling of industry transition being forced by the carbon price.
He warns that a carbon price will "inevitably be disastrous" in a downturn for businesses unable to pass on the extra costs to their customers. And, in a thinly veiled shot at the Greens, he describes as "bizarre" the logic surrounding the debate about maintaining Australia's international competitiveness.
Mr Peever - a member of the federal government's business roundtable on climate change and one of three mining industry leaders who led the campaign against Labor's resource super-profits tax - says that for three decades economic reform has focused on increasing Australia's productivity and competitiveness.
"Remarkably, however, when it comes to the issue of carbon, trade-exposed Australian firms that insist on maintaining a level playing field with the international competitors are liable to be dismissed as self-interested rent-seekers," he writes.
Rio's export operations would have faced an additional $3 billion cost over 10 years from the final design of the CPRS, which offered almost $50bn in compensation to industry and mining in its first decade. "But according to the bizarre logic of some at the time, the scheme amounted to a windfall for corporate Australia and was slated as a prime example of reprehensible rent-seeking," Mr Peever writes.
According to figures provided by Rio to the Climate Change Department, the company's annual carbon tax bill would be about $154 million if the tax was set at $20 a tonne for every tonne of carbon pollution.
Mr Peever dismisses as "more rhetoric than fact" suggestions that Australia lags the rest of the world in emissions reduction action and warns "care also needs to be taken to avoid overstating Australia's influence in the global debate".
Australian industry, particularly the steelmaking sector, is becoming increasingly vocal about the potential impact of Ms Gillard's carbon pricing plan, which imposes a tax from July 1 next year before morphing into an emissions trading scheme in three to five years.
Yesterday, oil and gas giant Woodside Petroleum called for the company's trade-exposed exports to be exempt from any price on carbon, given the absence of an international agreement on pricing greenhouse gas emissions. "Woodside's position on exemption for its trade-exposed exports recognises the important role liquefied natural gas plays in helping lower global greenhouse gas emissions," the company said.
Woodside, which could be forced to pay about $168m if the price of carbon was set at $20 a tonne, said the government's framework needed to acknowledge that LNG was regarded internationally as a cleaner transition fuel towards an alternative energy future.
Mr Peever says any impost on Australian exports in the new carbon pricing regime "must be based on rigorous, fact-based analysis of the carbon costs being borne by similar industries in Australia's competitor countries". And unlike the 2009 CPRS proposal, where emissions-intensive industries exposed to foreign competitors had come under pressure to justify any shielding from the proposed carbon price until their competitors faced a comparable impost, "this time the onus of proof should be reversed".
The government yesterday moved to counter Tony Abbott's campaign against its carbon plan, with Wayne Swan declaring the carbon tax would apply only to a small number of companies and that householders would be compensated for any price rises.
"It is not the case that the government is going to take the carbon price out of your pay packet . . . It is paid by a small number of large polluters and that revenue is then used to assist industry and households," the Treasurer said.
The government is understood to be looking at the tax system - through Centrelink or through the family tax benefits system - to provide assistance to households.But Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb said there would be no environmental gain from the carbon package because industries would move offshore. He also dismissed former leader Malcolm Turnbull's support for an ETS.
Mr Robb conceded that "while there may be one or two others who support an ETS . . . Malcolm and the rest of the frontbench and party will support the position we've got because the position we've got, we feel, is in the interests of Australia".
The government seized on his defence of the opposition's direct-action policy as "market based" because it would accept the lowest bids to fund abatement measures. "Australia's economy moved away from picking winners and towards market mechanisms decades ago - it is time Andrew Robb and the Liberal Party got with the program," Mr Swan said.
Rio Tinto's entry into the debate underlines the political dilemma faced by Ms Gillard and Mr Combet as they prepare to begin negotiations with the Greens on the detail of her carbon package.
SOURCE
State governments getting at Gillard over solar subsidy
JULIA Gillard is under pressure from the states to roll back generous subsidies for rooftop solar schemes amid predictions that escalating costs from the federal renewable energy scheme will add as much as $90 to yearly household power bills.
The jump in electricity prices is also expected to drive water bills up by raising the costs of treating and transporting water and to run energy-guzzling desalination plants.
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has urged the Prime Minister to reconsider the subsidy for rooftop solar schemes, worth $6200 in most cities, to relieve the burden on household budgets from rising power prices.
The West Australian government says the subsidies "may require review" given the costs.
NSW Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell says he will consider the matter at a solar summit he has pledged if he wins office as widely forecast on March 26.
Tasmanian Premier Lara Giddings says her government is concerned about the costs to households relating to the design of the federal renewables scheme in Tasmania as well as the solar policies of other states.
The situation could further complicate attempts by Ms Gillard to compensate families for the costs of her plan to put a price on carbon pollution from the middle of next year.
The Queensland pricing regulator has proposed a $26 rise to the average quarterly power bill of $440 from July 1. Half of this is related to changes to the federal renewable energy target system, which requires energy retailers to buy high-cost power pumped back into the grid by households with rooftop solar schemes and from bigger wind farms.
Energy retailers are required to buy increasing numbers of renewable energy certificates under the government's RET scheme, which aims to have 20 per cent of the nation's power generated by renewable sources by 2020.
AGL Energy, Origin Energy and EnergyAustralia say the proposed price rises do not go far enough and are demanding an even bigger price rise in the regulator's final decision, due in late May.
Origin cites concern that the costs associated with the changes to federal Labor's RET have not been fully recognised by the pricing regulator, while AGL says the situation could cause energy retailers to suffer a "significant loss".
The renewables scheme is one of federal Labor's key climate change policies but it has been adjusted several times. The scheme was split into two parts from January 1 - one for small-scale generators such as rooftop solar panels and the other for commercial systems such as wind farms. But the costs of the small-scale scheme grew as householders took the government up on incentives for installing solar panels.
The federal government announced in December that it would scale back the subsidies for households and the Keneally government in NSW has cut its solar feed-in tariff.
But Origin says this has been offset by falling costs to buy solar panels and a strong solar industry. On top of this, Origin says that the cost of large-scale renewable energy certificates has already risen about 25 per cent this year - from $29.50 in December to about $35.
In January the renewable energy regulator increased the number of certificates power retailers had to buy to deal with a glut caused by a flood of solar panel installations.
Tasmania's Aurora Energy had expected annual bills to increase by $60 from July 1 to cover the costs of the renewable energy scheme but now expected the increased cost to it would be another $30 per customer - bringing the total rise related to the RET for 2011-12 to $90, spokesman Richard Wilson said. That move would have to be passed by the independent Tasmanian Economic Regulator.
In NSW, prices were already set to rise on July 1, but EnergyAustralia has applied to the pricing regulator for a further $56-a-year increase related to the cost of the changes to the RET. The pricing regulator's final decision is due after the NSW election.
The situation has prompted the states to call for further cuts to the federal solar credits multiplier, which gives householders a subsidy of about $6200 now but will be scaled back to $5000 from July 1. The multiplier will be phased out by July 1, 2014.
A spokesman for Queensland's Energy and Water Utilities Minister Stephen Robertson said the state was calling on the commonwealth to reconsider the multiplier attached to the small-scale scheme. He said the government supported the RET but wanted it implemented in an equitable way.
Ms Bligh wrote to Ms Gillard after the regulator's draft decision in December; Mr Robertson has highlighted the letter in recent submissions to the regulator.
Western Australia's Energy Minister Peter Collier backed the push for a review. "The state government supports actions to encourage the installation of small-scale renewable energy systems but . . . the current subsidies may require review in light of recent changes to system costs," he said.
A spokeswoman for Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu said commonwealth energy policy since Labor took office in 2007 had led to uncertainty "throughout the entire electricity industry, not just renewables". "This is creating real pressure on electricity prices and hurting Victorian families," she said.
Mr O'Farrell said the Coalition's energy policy in NSW would include a solar summit "which will consider these issues". "I'm concerned about anything which puts upward pressure on electricity prices because families across NSW are already struggling to make ends meet after Labor's 60 per cent increase in power bills over the last five years," he said.
In Tasmania, Ms Giddings said her government was "a strong supporter of policies that directly assist in the development of renewable energy, however we are concerned about the costs to Tasmanian consumers as a result of the design of the RET scheme and solar policies of other states".
The states are under increasing pressure over utilities inflation. They are spending $9 billion of taxpayer funds on desalination plants, with yearly water bills in Sydney to rise by $103 between 2008 to 2012 just to bankroll the Kurnell plant.
Water bills in Perth are rising by an average of $164 a year and those in Melbourne expected to at least double over the next five years. It emerged this week that even if no water is purchased from the owners of Victoria's desalination plant, Aquasure, householders will still have to pay $19.37bn in service payments over three decades.
Labor governments have also signed contracts guaranteeing desalination plants in Sydney and Adelaide will run at or near full capacity for their first two years of operation.
"Water utilities use quite a bit of energy to transport and treat water," said Water Services Association of Australia executive director Ross Young. "With electricity prices predicted to increase, there's no doubt that the operating expenses of a water utility are also going to increase. That has to be passed on."
SOURCE
The Australian Left used to be implacably hostile to the presence of U.S. military facilities in Australia. So what we read below from a Prime Minister from the Left faction of a Leftist party is rather a surprise -- not that any historically aware person expects consistency from Leftists
JULIA Gillard says she is "all ears" about the possibility of the US placing more military forces on Australian soil if it believes this is necessary in the light of the growing might of China and India.
The Prime Minister has told The Australian she will use her meeting with US President Barack Obama in Washington this week to discuss his nation's ongoing force posture review and how Australia could co-operate with any changes in the deployment of its military resources.
She made the comment in an interview with The Australian before leaving for her week-long visit, during which she will visit the White House and key US administration officials and will also address congress.
"We are looking to further co-operation on the contemporary defence challenges of our age," said Ms Gillard, who arrived in Washington yesterday for briefings from local Australian officials, including ambassador Kim Beazley. "We've got discussions to have about the contemporary engagement of America in our region, including its defence engagement as it goes through its defence posture review."
The discussions would also cover the US's diplomatic engagement, particularly with China and India.
The Prime Minister said she could not pre-empt what the US might want to do with the distribution of its military forces throughout the Asia-Pacific area. "But clearly we can be engaged and discussing what is possible in terms of collaboration with their defence force," she said.
Describing the relationship between Australia and the US as the equivalent of "great mates", Ms Gillard said she would also discuss with Mr Obama the conduct of the war in Afghanistan as well as security concerns and regional concerns such as security on the Korean peninsula. Ms Gillard's official program will begin late tonight, Australian time, when she visits the Lincoln Memorial and is due to announce a $3 million Australian contribution to the US's official Vietnam memorial.
The Australian-funded component will feature details of the 521 Australian Vietnam War casualties as well as displays and temporary exhibitions on Anzac Day, Long Tan Day and other significant Australian milestones.
She will then visit Mr Obama at the White House ahead of meetings with US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and various other officials. On Wednesday, Australian time, she will continue talks with officials, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She will then wind up the Washington leg of her trip with an address to congress.
SOURCE
Leftist hypocrite says people should respect their leaders
I am sure Hitler and Stalin felt the same. And this government is even less legitimate than Hitler's. Hitler's government was a coalition of nationalist parties. The present Australian governing coalition is an unholy alliance of Leftists, Greens and turncoat conservatives.
Furthermore it takes two to tango and respect has to be earned. If Leftists want respect from conservatives they should halt their abuse of conservatives. See here for some examples of the hate and abuse that the Left have recently hurled at conservatives.
The author of the excerpt below is Phillip Coorey, a reliably Leftist writer for a reliably leftist rag
When the boatload of asylum seekers smashed into rocks off Christmas Island just before Christmas, certain radio shock jocks went into a lather.
Julie Bishop was acting opposition leader and found herself being interviewed by Andrew Bolt and Steve Price on Melbourne's MTR.
Bolt, the conservative columnist who expends a great amount of energy lecturing members of the Canberra press gallery on how to do their jobs, has a particular distaste for Labor's asylum seeker policy. As is the norm for such "interviews", he tended to make statements and seek agreement.
"Look, Julie," he said, "this is a tragedy that is a direct consequence of the government policies that led to a resumption of the boat people trade. They were warned, the opposition warned them. I think today, now that the rescue operation is over, today is the time we start to hold people accountable. Would you agree?"
Bishop tried to play a straight bat. "After any tragedy it is natural and appropriate for people to ask how did it happen, could it have been prevented," she said. "There will be many questions, no doubt there will be an official investigation, there will be formal inquiries . . . a coroner's inquest, as there have been in the past. The Western Australian . . . "
Bolt interjected: "Julie, it seems to me you're reluctant, you've been intimidated out of talking about the contributing factors to this tragedy. Is it not true that these people were lured to their deaths?"
On it went until an increasingly agitated Bolt, according to Bishop, simply hung up on her.
Previously, Bolt and Price had hung up on independent Rob Oakeshott because he wouldn't give a straight answer on whom he was likely to support to form minority government. When Tony Windsor went public last week with concerns about the increasingly dangerous tone of public discourse, Bolt promoted his Wednesday morning radio show with the item: "Tony Windsor's attempt to play the victim to shut down a debate. We recall how this man who wants to 'take on' talkback hosts hung up on me the last time he tried."
The boys at MTR are far from the only culprits contributing to increasing disrespect for the nation's leaders. Gary Hardgrave, a shock jock who became a minister under the Howard government before losing his Brisbane seat and returning to radio, hung up on Greens leader Bob Brown 10 days ago.
Brown tweeted afterwards: "What a spineless uninformed jock Gary Hardgrave is, who when losing the argument cut off the i'view! Voters of Moreton knew a thing or two!"
In their defence, radio jocks are not journalists per se and therefore are not strictly bound to address politicians publicly by their titles or Mr, Ms or Mrs. But is there any cause to be rude, regardless of the temperature of the debate or personal views?
3AW's Neil Mitchell interviewed Julia Gillard just days after she announced the flood levy and the shock jocks were proclaiming the end of the world. The interview began with an accusation more than a question: "Prime Minister, with your government's history of mismanagement, like the insulation program, school rebuilding, who are you going to put in charge of the spending of this money you're going to take from us?"
Mitchell's line of inquiry was perfectly legitimate, but was the tone of the question?
More HERE
IMMIGRATION ROUNDUP
Three current articles below
Keeping the illegals waiting
THE average time spent processing refugee claims has blown out to 165 days - nearly twice the government's 90-day target for appeals by asylum seekers. And the average time spent in detention for all unauthorised arrivals - including those whose claims have been rejected - stands at 213 days.
Information provided to The Australian Online by the Immigration Department confirms the numbers of boat arrivals are straining the detention network, causing blow-outs to processing times and longer stays for asylum seekers in detention.
In just over two years, 3438 visas have been granted to boat people with the majority coming from Afghanistan. Since 2008, only 190 asylum seekers had been removed from Australia including 15 who were removed involuntarily. At the end of last week there were still 6194 asylum seekers in detention 2526 on Christmas Island and 3668 in mainland facilities.
The department said the longest time in detention for a current detainee was almost three years. The person was doing a second stint in detention after being turned back once before. There are currently five boat people who have been in detention for two years or more.
The government announced last week it would open up a new $10 million detention facility 35 km southeast of Darwin because the current detention network was under pressure.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said the new 1500-bed facility was necessary to prevent overcrowding in existing facilities.
SOURCE
A hidden agenda
Australia is a nation of migrants and has had an unceasing flow of them from the beginning. It has a higher proportion of its population foreign-born than any other nation except Israel. It was one of the few nations to take Jews fleeing from Hitler.
So it is mildly surprising to see an article in a major Sri Lankan newspaper headed "Secrets of Australian immigration history" -- an article that denounces Australian immigration policy in round terms.
It is particularly surprising when one considers that there are these days large numbers of Sri Lankan nationals risking life and limb in order to get to Australia as illegal immigrants. The illegals obviously think Australia is a pretty good place.
So what is going on? Simple: The Sri Lankan government and many Sinhalese are embarrassed by the flight of many of their Tamil citizens and want to put them off fleeing to Australia! As Tamils have a history of implacability and turning to terrorism to get what they want, I rather hope that the propaganda succeeds
Some excerpts below. They present a very warped view of Australia, albeit with some element of truth:
The Australian government’s white Australia policy which was eventually abandoned by the government in the 70s was very similar to Adolf Hitler’s ideology of racial purity. The only difference being the Australian Government did not round up Jews and send them to gas chambers, but strongly believed in a white superior race and wanted to maintain this status quo and had taken some extraordinary steps to enforce this.
Present times
Australian migration is open to all nationalities nowadays, provided there is a skill to offer to Australia or in some cases humanitarian grounds and there are laws to prevent discrimination based on the individual’s ethnic origins in Australia.
But majority of Australians still look at non white nationalities as a threat to the Australian way of life and often treat them as second-class citizens. In a recent times, the Sydney suburb of Cronulla witnessed race riots. Quite unfortunately most of perpetrators of Cronulla riots were white Anglo young Australians and they rioted against migrants of any ethnicity under theme of “we were born here you were flown here”.
At the time the Prime Minister of the day failed to condemn the riots and saw the situation as young people expressing their misguided view in a democratic country. New South Wales Police contained the riots with great difficulty which were caused by migrants using a beach in Cronulla usually inhabited by white Australian young males.
Mandatory detention
The current Australian policy is mandatory detention of any person seeking asylum in Australia. Thousands of displaced refugees are currently detainees. Some of them were stationed at an offshore detention centre called Christmas Island and a recent investigation by Australian Government Ombudsman had found these detainees to be held under very poor conditions.
In some instances, women and children were detained for long periods while immigration officials look into their asylum request. Quite unfortunately refugees from a number of countries including Sri Lankans are facing these difficult circumstances in Australia. Australia is the only country in the developed world which has a mandatory detention policy for refugees and asylum seekers. In conclusion modern Australia has allowed immigration to non white nationalities with great reluctance.
Unfortunately due to inability to fill the country with white Anglo Saxon British subjects, the Government was forced to allow the immigration to non white ethnicities. If this was not done Australia as a nation would have faced difficult economic circumstances and would likely have been classified as a Third World country. Australia had taken the decision to remain as an economically wealthy but moving away from white Australia policy with great reluctance and resistance.
More HERE
Australians fleeing the overcrowded and traffic-strangled big cities
Overcrowding that is largely the result of high immigration levels
AUSTRALIA is undergoing a historic shift in population movements, with the once pervasive flow of people to the city giving way to a regional retreat that will require governments to fund more infrastructure and services outside state capitals.
Far greater than any sea change or tree change effect, the new trend, identified in a study commissioned by the Gillard government, will challenge the notion that Australians are overwhelmingly big-city dwellers.
A draft report of the $110,000 study, conducted by Graeme Hugo and Kevin Harris from the University of Adelaide, has been obtained by The Australian under Freedom of Information laws. It was commissioned by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and will not only guide future settlement policies, but also the work of Population Minister Tony Burke as he tries to better control and direct population growth and movements.
While the congregation of people in capital cities continued to 1981, the researchers found that "since then there has been stability in the proportion of Australians living in the capitals".
"The recent evidence is clear that the perception of a 'drift' to capital cities from their hinterlands is no longer the case, and that the prevailing flow from capital cities to hinterlands has significant implications," they write.
Coastal areas and near-city regions, in particular, are recording significant growth, with families (who seek a better lifestyle and improved services) and baby boomers (who lose their work ties to the city upon retirement) leading the charge. Sydney's reputation as a gateway city for immigrants is also slipping, with more newcomers favouring Melbourne, and others encouraged to start off in the regions.
Adam and Farrah Lance certainly wondered "what the hell" they were doing as they worked gruelling hours in their respective top-tier financial firms in Sydney's CBD and fought congestion to and from their Bronte Beach home.
Four years ago, they moved to Merewether, just south of Newcastle, buying a house 200m from the beach -- two hours away from their family in Sydney, but with more space and a better lifestyle. "It's great for raising children here, there's space at the beach, lots of parks to play in and there's just not the same stress," Ms Lance said yesterday, with children Savannah, 2, and four-year-old Jasper. "Especially for Adam it's much better, he's so much more relaxed up here."
The couple have found jobs in Newcastle. Ms Lance is working two days a week in public relations while Mr Lance, who had been commuting to Sydney, has found full-time work only a 10-minute drive from their home. "There is not really peak-hour traffic here," Ms Lance said. "Also, your money goes further up here; the house prices are definitely cheaper."
The researchers' draft report casts capital cities in a dim light and states that Sydney, in particular, has an environment which is not conducive to attracting or retaining people.
Australia's pre-eminent metropolis is losing so many residents - offset only by international migrants - that the researchers believe it must have "social and economic" problems.
SOURCE
GREENIE ROUNDUP
Four current articles below
Greens lead us along costly path
A DANGEROUS new dynamic has entered Australian economic management, Green voodoo economics. It threatens to not only make a weak Government even more ineffectual, but to do real lasting damage to our economy and its future.
The Greens appear to truly believe economics works in such a way that they can have their cake and eat it too. They want to tax the nasty carbon polluters without impacting on consumers. If only it was truly that simple.
Bob Brown tells us he "wants the polluters to pay". What he fails to realise is that we have seen the polluters and they are us.
Every time we drive a car, we are, in his words, polluting. Unless we have very expensive green power, every time we turn on the TV or dishwasher or any other electric appliance, we are polluting. Every time we turn the lights on in an office or use the lift or buy something that has been transported by a truck, we are polluting.
If we want to tax carbon then someone has to pay, and it will not be some anonymous nasty big business, it will be the consumer. It will be us.
As a scientist I believe that climate change is both real and caused by our carbon emissions. It is obvious that something has to be done to seriously limit emissions on a global scale. As an economist, I can see major damage being done to our economy if we go about this in a naive and ham-fisted way.
The clear policy influence that the Greens are now exerting, together with the extreme policy caution of the new Government, provides little hope of any sensible outcome. Rather a carbon tax in the absence of any permitting system to actually limit emissions will almost certainly result in higher prices with little if anything by way of emissions reductions to show for it.
All a carbon tax is likely to do is make the Greens feel good and do lasting damage to the economy.
Be in no doubt that this will be a job-destroying, wealth-destroying tax, but the real issue here is that massive changes in our economy are being decided on the basis of short-term political convenience and ridiculous idealistic and ideological notions of how economics works.
In reality, we now have the least economically competent government since the disastrous Whitlam years of 1972-75. Just like then, we have a Prime Minister who appears disinterested in economic realities and an incredibly powerful bloc from the Left who, while well-meaning, have no idea of the real consequences of the road they are hell-bent on taking us down.
SOURCE
Unions getting aggressive about job losses under a carbon tax
THE union movement is demanding Julia Gillard develop a comprehensive industry plan to sustain jobs and refocus production under her proposed carbon price.
ACTU president Ged Kearney told The Australian Online that a detailed plan, similar to the Button Plan of the 1980s, was the price of union support for Labor's climate change response.
The demand follows that of mining giant Rio Tinto, which wants more generous compensation and industry protection than Kevin Rudd's 2009 scheme.
Ms Kearney said tackling climate change would involve the biggest structural change to the economy in a generation.
“Just as the opening of the Australian economy in the 1980s was accompanied by far-reaching industry policy, whatever carbon pricing mechanism is eventually adopted must integrate an industry policy focus to drive the growth in clean economy jobs and services so that outcomes can be maximised,” she said.
“Industry policy during the transition to a low-pollution economy must include assistance to emissions intensive-trade exposed industries, incentives to source locally to generate jobs and demand, investment in clean energy jobs and industries, and skills development and retraining to tool the workforce for the low-carbon economy.”
A spokesman for Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said some of the money raised by the carbon tax would go towards industry adjustment, but it was too early to say how that would occur.
If the government is to agree to the unions' demands, it will have to act swiftly. An interim carbon tax is due to be introduced by July next year.
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national secretary Dave Oliver said a far-reaching industry policy should be a key plank in the carbon pricing strategy. He said he was “disappointed and perplexed” that, on the eve of climate plan being announced, the government had axed its green cars plan.
He said Ms Gillard had likened her climate plan to the great reforms of the Hawke and Keating governments - including the floating of the dollar and the lowering of tariff walls - but those reforms were accompanied by the Button Plan. “We need a 21st century plan for an innovative future in green energy, efficient technology and clean production.”
The 1984 Button Plan, named after then federal industry minister John Button, involved the overhaul of the nation's car industry to make it more efficient, allowing tarriffs to be gradually lowered.
SOURCE
Big business getting restless about the carbon tax too
MINING giant Rio Tinto has put Julia Gillard on notice that business will demand her carbon pricing plan offer more generous compensation and industry protection than Kevin Rudd's 2009 scheme because of the international community's failure to reach a global deal on carbon prices.
In his first major entry into the climate change debate since the Prime Minister last month unveiled plans to price carbon from July 1 next year, Rio's Australian managing director, David Peever, says the changed global outlook means the government should acknowledge that Mr Rudd's carbon pollution reduction scheme "is not an appropriate starting point for discussions in 2011".
In an article published today in The Australian, Mr Peever calls for "real world" modelling of industry transition being forced by the carbon price.
He warns that a carbon price will "inevitably be disastrous" in a downturn for businesses unable to pass on the extra costs to their customers. And, in a thinly veiled shot at the Greens, he describes as "bizarre" the logic surrounding the debate about maintaining Australia's international competitiveness.
Mr Peever - a member of the federal government's business roundtable on climate change and one of three mining industry leaders who led the campaign against Labor's resource super-profits tax - says that for three decades economic reform has focused on increasing Australia's productivity and competitiveness.
"Remarkably, however, when it comes to the issue of carbon, trade-exposed Australian firms that insist on maintaining a level playing field with the international competitors are liable to be dismissed as self-interested rent-seekers," he writes.
Rio's export operations would have faced an additional $3 billion cost over 10 years from the final design of the CPRS, which offered almost $50bn in compensation to industry and mining in its first decade. "But according to the bizarre logic of some at the time, the scheme amounted to a windfall for corporate Australia and was slated as a prime example of reprehensible rent-seeking," Mr Peever writes.
According to figures provided by Rio to the Climate Change Department, the company's annual carbon tax bill would be about $154 million if the tax was set at $20 a tonne for every tonne of carbon pollution.
Mr Peever dismisses as "more rhetoric than fact" suggestions that Australia lags the rest of the world in emissions reduction action and warns "care also needs to be taken to avoid overstating Australia's influence in the global debate".
Australian industry, particularly the steelmaking sector, is becoming increasingly vocal about the potential impact of Ms Gillard's carbon pricing plan, which imposes a tax from July 1 next year before morphing into an emissions trading scheme in three to five years.
Yesterday, oil and gas giant Woodside Petroleum called for the company's trade-exposed exports to be exempt from any price on carbon, given the absence of an international agreement on pricing greenhouse gas emissions. "Woodside's position on exemption for its trade-exposed exports recognises the important role liquefied natural gas plays in helping lower global greenhouse gas emissions," the company said.
Woodside, which could be forced to pay about $168m if the price of carbon was set at $20 a tonne, said the government's framework needed to acknowledge that LNG was regarded internationally as a cleaner transition fuel towards an alternative energy future.
Mr Peever says any impost on Australian exports in the new carbon pricing regime "must be based on rigorous, fact-based analysis of the carbon costs being borne by similar industries in Australia's competitor countries". And unlike the 2009 CPRS proposal, where emissions-intensive industries exposed to foreign competitors had come under pressure to justify any shielding from the proposed carbon price until their competitors faced a comparable impost, "this time the onus of proof should be reversed".
The government yesterday moved to counter Tony Abbott's campaign against its carbon plan, with Wayne Swan declaring the carbon tax would apply only to a small number of companies and that householders would be compensated for any price rises.
"It is not the case that the government is going to take the carbon price out of your pay packet . . . It is paid by a small number of large polluters and that revenue is then used to assist industry and households," the Treasurer said.
The government is understood to be looking at the tax system - through Centrelink or through the family tax benefits system - to provide assistance to households.But Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb said there would be no environmental gain from the carbon package because industries would move offshore. He also dismissed former leader Malcolm Turnbull's support for an ETS.
Mr Robb conceded that "while there may be one or two others who support an ETS . . . Malcolm and the rest of the frontbench and party will support the position we've got because the position we've got, we feel, is in the interests of Australia".
The government seized on his defence of the opposition's direct-action policy as "market based" because it would accept the lowest bids to fund abatement measures. "Australia's economy moved away from picking winners and towards market mechanisms decades ago - it is time Andrew Robb and the Liberal Party got with the program," Mr Swan said.
Rio Tinto's entry into the debate underlines the political dilemma faced by Ms Gillard and Mr Combet as they prepare to begin negotiations with the Greens on the detail of her carbon package.
SOURCE
State governments getting at Gillard over solar subsidy
JULIA Gillard is under pressure from the states to roll back generous subsidies for rooftop solar schemes amid predictions that escalating costs from the federal renewable energy scheme will add as much as $90 to yearly household power bills.
The jump in electricity prices is also expected to drive water bills up by raising the costs of treating and transporting water and to run energy-guzzling desalination plants.
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has urged the Prime Minister to reconsider the subsidy for rooftop solar schemes, worth $6200 in most cities, to relieve the burden on household budgets from rising power prices.
The West Australian government says the subsidies "may require review" given the costs.
NSW Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell says he will consider the matter at a solar summit he has pledged if he wins office as widely forecast on March 26.
Tasmanian Premier Lara Giddings says her government is concerned about the costs to households relating to the design of the federal renewables scheme in Tasmania as well as the solar policies of other states.
The situation could further complicate attempts by Ms Gillard to compensate families for the costs of her plan to put a price on carbon pollution from the middle of next year.
The Queensland pricing regulator has proposed a $26 rise to the average quarterly power bill of $440 from July 1. Half of this is related to changes to the federal renewable energy target system, which requires energy retailers to buy high-cost power pumped back into the grid by households with rooftop solar schemes and from bigger wind farms.
Energy retailers are required to buy increasing numbers of renewable energy certificates under the government's RET scheme, which aims to have 20 per cent of the nation's power generated by renewable sources by 2020.
AGL Energy, Origin Energy and EnergyAustralia say the proposed price rises do not go far enough and are demanding an even bigger price rise in the regulator's final decision, due in late May.
Origin cites concern that the costs associated with the changes to federal Labor's RET have not been fully recognised by the pricing regulator, while AGL says the situation could cause energy retailers to suffer a "significant loss".
The renewables scheme is one of federal Labor's key climate change policies but it has been adjusted several times. The scheme was split into two parts from January 1 - one for small-scale generators such as rooftop solar panels and the other for commercial systems such as wind farms. But the costs of the small-scale scheme grew as householders took the government up on incentives for installing solar panels.
The federal government announced in December that it would scale back the subsidies for households and the Keneally government in NSW has cut its solar feed-in tariff.
But Origin says this has been offset by falling costs to buy solar panels and a strong solar industry. On top of this, Origin says that the cost of large-scale renewable energy certificates has already risen about 25 per cent this year - from $29.50 in December to about $35.
In January the renewable energy regulator increased the number of certificates power retailers had to buy to deal with a glut caused by a flood of solar panel installations.
Tasmania's Aurora Energy had expected annual bills to increase by $60 from July 1 to cover the costs of the renewable energy scheme but now expected the increased cost to it would be another $30 per customer - bringing the total rise related to the RET for 2011-12 to $90, spokesman Richard Wilson said. That move would have to be passed by the independent Tasmanian Economic Regulator.
In NSW, prices were already set to rise on July 1, but EnergyAustralia has applied to the pricing regulator for a further $56-a-year increase related to the cost of the changes to the RET. The pricing regulator's final decision is due after the NSW election.
The situation has prompted the states to call for further cuts to the federal solar credits multiplier, which gives householders a subsidy of about $6200 now but will be scaled back to $5000 from July 1. The multiplier will be phased out by July 1, 2014.
A spokesman for Queensland's Energy and Water Utilities Minister Stephen Robertson said the state was calling on the commonwealth to reconsider the multiplier attached to the small-scale scheme. He said the government supported the RET but wanted it implemented in an equitable way.
Ms Bligh wrote to Ms Gillard after the regulator's draft decision in December; Mr Robertson has highlighted the letter in recent submissions to the regulator.
Western Australia's Energy Minister Peter Collier backed the push for a review. "The state government supports actions to encourage the installation of small-scale renewable energy systems but . . . the current subsidies may require review in light of recent changes to system costs," he said.
A spokeswoman for Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu said commonwealth energy policy since Labor took office in 2007 had led to uncertainty "throughout the entire electricity industry, not just renewables". "This is creating real pressure on electricity prices and hurting Victorian families," she said.
Mr O'Farrell said the Coalition's energy policy in NSW would include a solar summit "which will consider these issues". "I'm concerned about anything which puts upward pressure on electricity prices because families across NSW are already struggling to make ends meet after Labor's 60 per cent increase in power bills over the last five years," he said.
In Tasmania, Ms Giddings said her government was "a strong supporter of policies that directly assist in the development of renewable energy, however we are concerned about the costs to Tasmanian consumers as a result of the design of the RET scheme and solar policies of other states".
The states are under increasing pressure over utilities inflation. They are spending $9 billion of taxpayer funds on desalination plants, with yearly water bills in Sydney to rise by $103 between 2008 to 2012 just to bankroll the Kurnell plant.
Water bills in Perth are rising by an average of $164 a year and those in Melbourne expected to at least double over the next five years. It emerged this week that even if no water is purchased from the owners of Victoria's desalination plant, Aquasure, householders will still have to pay $19.37bn in service payments over three decades.
Labor governments have also signed contracts guaranteeing desalination plants in Sydney and Adelaide will run at or near full capacity for their first two years of operation.
"Water utilities use quite a bit of energy to transport and treat water," said Water Services Association of Australia executive director Ross Young. "With electricity prices predicted to increase, there's no doubt that the operating expenses of a water utility are also going to increase. That has to be passed on."
SOURCE
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
