Australian Politics
Government seizes babies
I would fervently hope that such a grave step as this is always well justified but there are plenty of cases in Australia and Britain where the justification has been poor so I believe that there should always be a hearing before a judge in open court immediately after such action is taken so that all sides of the matter can be heard and independently adjudicated. As it is, what happens seems more like a kangaroo court than anything else. And the report immediately below this suggests gross irresponsibility or stupidity on the part of the government officials concerned
Child protection workers in Western Australia last year removed 54 babies from their mothers before the infants were a month old. The infants were removed after concerns about the mothers' ability to care for a child were raised during pregnancy.
The Australian reported yesterday that the babies of some first-time parents, with no history of child neglect, had been taken directly from the maternity ward on the grounds that the parents might pose some future risk to their children. In one case, a welfare worker told a state ward, on the day she announced her pregnancy, that her baby would be taken into care.
The director-general of the WA Department of Child Protection, Terry Murphy, said workers would never "resile from taking a baby into care at birth when it is necessary for the protection of the child". The department removed 84 babies aged under a month in 2007, and the "almost 40 per cent decrease (in the number of babies taken, between 2007 and 2008) reflects the Department of Child Protection's strong focus in the past year on the early engagement and support of mothers", Mr Murphy said. He said the department worked with King Edward Memorial Hospital and Princess Margaret Children's Hospital to "bring parties together during the pregnancy to determine whether safety for the child can be achieved".
Child protection workers and hospital staff, plus drug and alcohol workers and mental health staff, talk to the mother and other family members early in the pregnancy.
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Children in foster care of prostitute
What has happened in this particular case would seem to be in part the fault of government racism: The policy that black babies must not be given to white carers. They would rather that the kids be badly treated than abandon racial segregation. The standard mantra of child welfare agencies is that "We put the interests of the child first". What crap! They put their Leftist ideology first
Child protection authorities in Western Australia were warned last May that a foster carer of four children was working as a prostitute, gambling heavily and using her taxpayer-supplied vehicle to drive to work at a suburban brothel. But nine months later, the Department for Child Protection has not removed the four children, who still live in the woman's house with a male lodger, who sleeps in a queen-size bed in the living room. The woman's brother, who has convictions for serious criminal offences, also stayed at her house until a departmental officer told the woman he had to leave, The Weekend Australian has confirmed.
The case has emerged as a glaring example of flaws in Western Australia's Aboriginal child placement principle, which gives priority to placing indigenous children in state care with family or people from within the child's indigenous community. The policy has been adopted in all states and territories, but the Barnett Liberal Government has vowed to review the policy.
Last December, an Aboriginal corporation in NSW was stripped of federal and state funding after foster children in its care were deemed to be at serious risk. A review of the Redfern-based Aboriginal Children's Service found that many children were living in overcrowded homes across NSW, with foster parents neither registered nor trained.
The four Aboriginal children in Perth -- three girls aged nine, 11 and 13 and a boy of 2 1/2 -- cannot be identified because they are state wards. They were removed by DCP from their mother in October 2006, after a long series of domestic disputes involving the children's father. The department placed the children in the care of their maternal grandmother, but after a few months she could not cope. She drove the children to their natural mother's house and left them alone in the backyard while the mother was at work. A second placement was formalised early last year with the children's paternal ex-step-grandmother. The department provided her with a $34,000 eight-seater van to transport the children, plus her own two youngest sons. It also promised an upgrade to a five-bedroom state rental house, but the woman, six children and a male lodger still live in her three-bedroom house in an outer Perth suburb.
The Weekend Australian has obtained an affidavit, signed on Tuesday, by a family friend who said she became concerned about the children's welfare after the foster carer admitted to her that she was still working as a prostitute, despite receiving around $700 per week in foster care allowance. The friend, a former youth worker who is training to be a prison officer, said she told the children's case worker last May that the carer was regularly working in a brothel and leaving the children with other people. She was also concerned welfare payments for the four children were being used for gambling. Departmental officers visited the carer's house a week later.
Yesterday, DCP director-general Terry Murphy confirmed that a complaint last May was investigated. "It was found (the carer) had worked as a cleaner in a brothel before the children came into her care. She has not worked in that capacity since caring for the children." [In other words, the chump believes what he has been told by his officials -- and they wouldn't have a clue] He said a vehicle had been provided by the department, and it was in the process of screening the woman's male paying boarder. He dismissed the allegations, saying: "This appears to be a successful example of placing Aboriginal children with an Aboriginal relative carer."
The DCP relies heavily on relatives to act as foster, or kinship, carers of indigenous children taken into care. Of 1250 kinship carers in Western Australia caring for relatives' children, about 460 or 37 per cent are indigenous households. The state Government's review into indigenous child placement is due to report at the end of next month.
Mr Murphy said last week that the policy raised concerns as it encouraged workers to place Aboriginal children with immediate or extended family "even when that family itself may be struggling". He said case workers too often misunderstood the principles and attempted to place Aboriginal children with their immediate or extended family "when in fact the children would be better placed elsewhere".
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Dangerous nervous Nellies
What the writer below says is perfectly correct but she omits to name the chief guilty parties: Grant-seeking university researchers who put out an unending stream of health scares that in the end promote skepticism about all mainstream medical advice. When everything you like is bad for you and everything unpleasant is good for you, nobody but obsessionals is going to take any notice of it. Medical journal editors need to take the lead and follow the conclusions of all epidemiological articles with a prominent warning saying: "WARNING: The conclusions of this article are speculative". Wakefield was, after all, a mainstream medical researcher. I personally would burn him at the stake for all the harm he has done in pursuit of his own selfish gain but then I would pulp a lot of medical journals too.
Living in a suburb with lots of white, middle-class, educated mothers may be putting your child's health at risk. In such salubrious surroundings can be found dangerous concentrations of vaccine-resisters. These are women who spend too many hours on wacky internet health sites and become convinced immunisation is a giant conspiracy. The educated mother who thinks she knows better than the overwhelming majority of the world's scientists and doctors partly explains why some of Sydney's richest suburbs have the state's lowest child immunisation rates.
It is hardly surprising that North Coast NSW, home to alternative life-stylers and the "natural" wellness set, should rate lowly on coverage. But it was astounding - at first - to see that Sydney's eastern, south-eastern and northern suburbs rate near, or at, the bottom of a list compiled by the Division of General Practice, based on Medicare figures for child immunisation rates. In the November 2008 quarter, Sydney's eastern suburbs - including the city, Vaucluse, Double Bay, Rose Bay and Kings Cross - were ranked last among the state's 34 divisions of general practice and last among 118 divisions nationally. Just above that lot was the Northern Rivers, then north Sydney, south-east Sydney and the Blue Mountains. A similar story emerged from data published in 2005 by the National Centre for Immunisation Research when Mosman had about the same child immunisation rate as Bellingen.
It is possible doctors in these establishment suburbs are too old to be computer-literate or too lazy to record immunisation data as they are meant to do, with consequent under-estimates of the coverage in their areas. Also, parts of the eastern suburbs, such as Kings Cross, have their share of poor and transient families. But as Ray Seidler, medical director of the Eastern Sydney Division of General Practice, told me, these areas are home to "an older demographic of mothers who are conscientious objectors".
Around the world, resistance to vaccination is strongest among the affluent and educated, leading Arthur Allen, author of the book Vaccine, a history of immunisation, to observe that "living in a place with a high percentage of PhDs is a risk factor for whooping cough".
Vaccine-resisters have a range of motivations. Some believe immunisation is unnatural. Others resent the nanny state telling them how to raise their children. Some distrust the medical establishment. But the movement got a big boost in the late 1990s from a bogus health scare that linked autism with a preservative, thimerosal, in the measles/mumps/rubella jab. At least 16 epidemiological studies have disproved the link. And the British doctor responsible for the scare, Andrew Wakefield, stands accused of having doctored the results of his study, according to an investigation by The Times published earlier this month. Wakefield's theory was based on 12 cases, and now even that evidence is questionable.
But for the vaccine-resisters, facts can't be allowed to get in the way of feeling. The sceptics have a lot going for them. For the last two decades medical consumers have rightly learned to question authority; the doctor is no longer god; and consumer choice has extended to patient treatment. Aided by the internet, anyone can bone up on their diseases and ask intelligent questions. And so they should - just as independent scientists should be properly funded to monitor a vaccination's side effects.
But these dummy mummies don't differentiate between fact and hocus-pocus; between a bona fide scientific study and pseudo science. Just as some people still think fluoride is dangerous, others cling to their anti-vaccine stand as a matter of faith, regardless of the evidence. They don't distinguish between the expert view of, say, the pediatrician Paul Offit, author of Autism's False Prophets, and co-inventor of a vaccine against rotavirus, a diarrheal disease that kills tens of thousands in poor countries; and the view of former Playmate of the Year and anti-vaccine campaigner Jenny McCarthy, who has an autistic son, and brings her partner, the actor Jim Carrey, on her rallies. Offit has had death threats; McCarthy has been on Oprah.
What is indisputable is that vaccines have saved countless lives. Smallpox has been eradicated, polio almost defeated, and diphtheria confined to pockets of poor countries. Children are mostly spared debilitating illnesses such as measles and mumps.
But 8000 children in NSW got whooping cough last year, starting with an outbreak on the North Coast, a big increase on previous years. Many were babies exposed to the virus in the months before they could be vaccinated. Babies cough and cough, go blue or red, some stop breathing and need oxygen. Tetanus is just a rusty nail away, and cases of measles are still recorded in Australia.
Ultimately it's selfish not to vaccinate your child. It's relying on everyone else to do so in order to maintain "herd" immunity, which means at least 90 per cent of the community needs to be vaccinated to protect the most vulnerable from disease. It's bad enough that ill-educated, chaotic, itinerant families fail to get their children immunised because they forget, don't know, or don't get round to it. But when smart parents deliberately desist, it's wicked. So intent on not being duped by the "medical establishment", they allow themselves to be duped instead by the likes of Jim Carrey, Jennifer McCarthy, and garbage science.
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Rudd's failed pretence at being an intellectual
His only expertise is in Mandarin Chinese -- and it shows
By Michael Duffy
Being a successful prime minister is tough. Not only do you have to put in the hard work of running the joint, you need to write the self-justifying book afterwards, to counter the onslaught on your reputation from the ungrateful knaves and fools who replace you. This is the position in which John Howard now finds himself. His speech at the Menzies Research Centre on Thursday was the first salvo in a battle whose main advance will be the book he is writing.
It was, of course, done in response to Kevin Rudd's assault on capitalism, which has been bubbling for a few years but burst out recently in a baroque essay in The Monthly magazine. Anyone who's tried to read this will have been struck not just by its hubris and confusion, but by its hypocrisy. The Rudd family is the wealthiest to have occupied the Lodge, thanks to the success with which the Prime Minister's wife embraced the very values he is now denigrating. People notice these things. They're going to start asking what, if anything, Kevin Rudd really stands for.
One of his motives in the essay seems clear. He wants to create a story in which the Coalition badly damages the economy through excessive market freedom, and Labor saves it with government intervention. There's nothing wrong with telling stories: Howard used to do it all the time with references to the high interest rates that Australia suffered under Paul Keating.
Mind you, now that Howard is engaged in writing history rather than the grubby business of political survival, he'd probably rather forget this. On Thursday night he said: "I have always given the previous Labor government credit for implementing changes to our financial system and also tariff reform." Well, only if you were listening carefully. He did acknowledge it from time to time, but the great rhetorical battering ram he swung for many years was the image of Labor's unique incompetence where interest rates were concerned.
That image was false but effective, thanks to the repetition with which it was swung, and possibly it's this example that has emboldened Rudd to embark on his crusade against free markets. The problem is that, with all his references to Hayek and Keynes, he's talking to a much smaller and better educated audience than Howard was with his rubbish about interest rates. And that audience can tell that Rudd's arguments are embarrassingly incoherent.
It's no exaggeration to say The Monthly essay would not have received a pass mark in most undergraduate courses. Its fundamental problem is that the PM's portrayal of recent history, in particular the claim that markets were pretty much unfettered, is largely imaginary. It is completely imaginary when it comes to Australia, which under the Howard government experienced unprecedented levels of regulation and government spending.
Not the least strange thing about all this is that Rudd himself has often acknowledged the strength of the economy he inherited from Howard. And despite what Rudd would have us believe, it was comprehensively regulated. Take the banks, which sit at the heart of current events. Howard correctly noted on Thursday that his government "resisted pressure to relax the so-called four pillars policy whereby the four major trading banks were not allowed to merge with each other. Ironically, the argument used by many in the financial sector, wanting this policy changed, was that a change was needed to strengthen the relative position of Australian banks against banks in other parts of the world.
"Yet as everyone now knows, because our banks were stronger, better supervised and better managed than others, their relative position compared to other banks has improved significantly as a consequence of the financial events of recent months. There are only 15 banks in the world which now have a AAA credit rating. The four major Australian banks are among them. Given the size of our economy this is a remarkable tribute to Australia and her banking system. The four did not need to become two in order to survive in a hostile world."
What lies at the heart of Rudd's ramblings? One can't be sure, but The Monthly essay suggests he's mistaken the market truth that what goes up must come down with the Apocalypse. This is a serious case of category confusion. It's difficult to know whether it would be worse if he believes this or is just pretending. Is it panic or pretence?
Writing in The Australian Financial Review yesterday, Mark Latham called Rudd a practitioner of "zigzag economics" who tailors his rhetoric according to his audience. Referring to a speech in which Rudd previewed the ideas in The Monthly essay, Latham wrote: "It is rare for an Australian prime minister to talk this way about capitalism. Rudd's speech was perhaps the strongest attack on the ideals and purpose of private enterprise by a national leader since Ben Chifley's attempt to nationalise the banks in 1947."
If Kevin Rudd does believe what he's been saying, and it influences his policies even more, the future looks gloomy. We face the melancholy prospect that Australia's most recent three governments will come to resemble in their effects on the economy the pattern of rise and fall seen in some wealthy families. The first generation (Hawke-Keating) establishes the fortune. The second (Howard) consolidates it. And the third pisses it up against the wall.
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Saturday, February 21, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
ZEG
In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG says that the stimulus bill is all debt and no stimulus
Black kids still being "stolen" (rescued from neglect)
I suppose the Leftist propagandists would prefer the kids to die
State welfare workers have begun removing the fifth generation of Aboriginal children from their parents, meaning some indigenous families have an 80-year history with child protection services. There are few signs the cycle will be broken, as more Aboriginal children are being separated from their parents than at any time in Australian history.
The Australian spoke yesterday to an Aboriginal woman whose daughter became the family's fifth generation to be raised by the state, when she was taken from her home in June 2007 and placed with white foster parents on the NSW central coast. Her mother was a state ward; so too were her grandparents, her great-grandmother and her great-great-grandmother. The NSW Department of Community Services removed the girl after an older sister, aged 14, tried to hang herself.
The girls' mother told The Australian: "After the Stolen Generation report, they said it would never happen again but it's happening. You don't want to tell child welfare that you need help, because they will come and take your children. "My daughter was seven years old when they came for her. My husband fell down on his knees on the lawn. She was screaming. The last memory I have is of her hand against the glass, (and her) saying, 'Please let me stay'."
The mother, who was born in 1967, was left on a railway line when she was three days old. She was sent to live with white foster parents until she ran away at the age of 12. When caught, she went to a Brisbane institution known as Wilson, where she stayed until she was 18. Her mother was raised at the Parramatta Girls' Home in Sydney in the 1950s. Her father was born in 1940 on the Woorabinda mission, which was established inland of Rockhampton, in central Queensland, in 1927. At the age of eight, he was taken by Children's Services, Queensland (now the Department of Child Safety) to live at the Nudgee orphanage in Brisbane's north. His mother was also a state ward, taken into servitude on Palm Island at 15. His grandmother was raised at Woorabinda, under the care of the Aboriginal Commissioner.
The Australian revealed last year there were between six and 10 times as many Aboriginal children in state care today than at the height of the Stolen Generations era. The most recent data, from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, shows 9074 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care. The rate of Aboriginal children in care is 41.3 per 1000 indigenous children nationwide, while in NSW the rate is 66.3 per 1000. The national figure is nine times the rate for other children.
Most of the Aboriginal children in care have been removed from their parents because of neglect. There is no data on the number of indigenous children removed from parents who were state wards, or the offspring of state wards, but a report by the Australian Institute of Family Studies in 2006 said Aboriginal parents separated from their natural families were more likely to abuse alcohol, and have mental health problems, which could lead to the removal of children. [i.e. Parents with dysfunctional traits tend to pass on those traits to their children via normal genetic inheritance]
The mother whose daughter was removed last June asked: "How can DOCS continue to take children away from their families when the grounds for doing so are not made clear? We don't do drugs, drink or beat our children. We just asked for help."
SOURCE
"Temporary" visas 'may cost local-born their jobs'
Australia's record intake of temporary skilled migrants during the economic downturn could boost the number of Australian-born unemployed, as research suggests it is being used as a "back door" to permanent entry by low-wage workers. The claim comes from Monash University population expert Bob Birrell, who said more of Australia's permanent skilled migrants were being sourced from the 457 visa program, which was drawing on workers from low-wage countries in increasing numbers.
"People at the lower end of the spectrum are becoming permanent residents," Professor Birrell said. "They're vulnerable to exploitation because the employer knows they're not going to quibble with what he's offering them because they're desperate to get the permanent resident nomination."
As the global recession worsens, Professor Birrell said it was time for the Rudd Government to rethink its record high migration intake. He said the tough economic climate would give employers added incentives to employ or retain cheap overseas labour in the place of local workers. Professor Birrell, a long-time critic of a high migration quota, said the research, which was co-authored by Ernest Healy and 457 visa expert Bob Kinnaird, was in response to Immigration Minister Chris Evans's decision in December to give priority to migrants with a job or with critically needed skills. That decision was seen as an alternative to cutting the migrant quota, an option flagged by Kevin Rudd last year in response to the worsening economic conditions.
Last May, Senator Evans announced an increase in the permanent migration program of 37,500. The increase brought the total number of skilled migrants to 133,500, plus 56,500 family reunion places and 13,500 humanitarian visas. Overall, Australia is taking more than 200,000 new migrants a year. In 2007-08, about 58,050 migrants came in under the 457 program, a figure that excludes their family members.
Professor Birrell said, in that year, about 90 per cent of the 17,760 permanent migrants who were sponsored by an employer onshore were former 457 visa holders. Holders of 457 visas are subject to less stringent language requirements and there is no labour market testing, meaning employers do not have to demonstrate that the position cannot be filled locally. A minimum salary level of $43,440 applies for most 457 visa workers.
In a trend that has alarmed unions, who fear the 457 program is being exploited by business to undercut wages, the program is increasingly sourcing workers from the developing world. In 2007-08, 8250 Indian workers came in under the program, compared with 2880 in 2004-05. Over the same period, the number of Filipino workers jumped from 600 to 5120, and the number of Chinese workers rose from 930 to 3360.
A spokesman for Senator Evans said yesterday the 457 program had sharply declined amid worsening financial conditions. "Figures show that application rates for subclass 457 visas in January 2009 are now 30per cent lower than in September 2008, when the economic downturn struck," the spokesman said. Furthermore, plans to introduce market rates for 457 workers would effectively make them a more expensive option, the spokesman said. A cut in next year's migration program was also likely, he added.
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Now some killjoys even want to ban glowsticks
Even the Brits have not gone this far, I gather. First it was fireworks, then sparklers and now glowsticks. What about banning twisty globes too? They contain that fearsome mercury pollutant. Somebody needs to tell these attention-seekers that EVERYTHING can be dangerous. Even drinking too much water can kill you. Do we want official regulations to prevent excess water drinking?
Campbelltown Council is in danger of becoming the "fun police" if glow sticks are banned from all future council events, Mayor Russell Matheson said. Councillors are considering a proposal to ban the sale of glow sticks at council-organised events following an incident at December's Christmas Carols at Campbelltown Arts Centre. Cr Mollie Thomas, who proposed the ban, said a child needed to be taken to hospital when liquid from a broken glow stick came into contact with the child's eyes. The council confirmed St John Ambulance staff needed to treat "some attendees" at the carols after glow stick liquid came in contact with their skin. There were no details on the ages of the children.
The proposed glow stick ban follows the council ceasing its Christmas lights competition in 2005 and banning Home Ice Cream vans from the area in 2007. Both decisions followed concern over public liability issues.
Cr Matheson said the council needed to determine if the glow sticks sold at the event were faulty before a blanket ban of the item was considered. "Hopefully it's just a one-off incident, but we've gone to Consumer Affairs to see if it's a safe product," he said. "Also it's a bit hard to police. "We don't want to become the glow stick police. "We don't want to over-react to things. If it's a safe product it should be allowed to be used."
But Cr Thomas said the council had to ensure there were no problems with glow sticks in the future. "The recommendation is council should not have them at council events right across the board," she said. "Because just one child is one too many (if they are hurt). A lot of parents don't realise the dangers, I know we didn't."
The council's business services director Michael Sewell confirmed there were a small number of incidents at the carols event. "There were reported cases of liquid from the glow sticks coming into contact with the skin of some of the attendees, who were then attended to by St John's staff on site," he said. Mr Sewell will contact Sunrise Rotary, who sold the glow sticks, in regard to the product being referred to Consumer Affairs.
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Australian "Letter of the Year" for 2008
This is an actual letter sent to the then DFAT Minster, The Hon Alexander Downer and the then Immigration, The Hon Minister Amanda Vanstone. Please excuse the language contained within, but I suspect the author was somewhat upset? I'll let you decide!
Dear Mr. Minister,
I'm in the process of renewing my passport, and still cannot believe this. How is it that K-Mart has my address and telephone number, and knows that I bought a Television Set and Golf Clubs from them back in 1997, and yet, the Federal Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date.
For Christ sakes, do you guys do this by hand? My birth date you have in my Medicare information, and it is on all the income tax forms I've filed for the past 40 years. It is on my driver's licence, on the last eight passports I've ever had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out before being allowed off the planes over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that I've filled out every 5 years since 1966.
Also..would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother's name is Audrey, my Father's name is Jack, and I'd be absolutely f*cking astounded if that ever changed between now and when I drop dead!!!... SH*T!
I apologize, Mr. Minister. But I'm really pissed off this morning. Between you an' me, I've had enough of all this bullshit! You send the application to my house, then you ask me for my f*cking address!! What the hell is going on with your mob? Have you got a gang of mindless Neanderthal assholes workin' there ??
And another thing, look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I can't even grow a beard for God's sakes. I just want to go to New Zealand and see my new granddaughter. (Yes, my son interbred with a Kiwi girl). And would someone please tell me, why would you give a sh*t whether I plan on visiting a farm in the next 15 days? If I ever got the urge to do something weird to a sheep or a horse, believe you me, I'd sure as hell not want to tell anyone!
Well, I have to go now, 'cause I have to go to the other end of the city, and get another f*cking copy of my birth certificate, and to part with another $80 for the privilege of accessing MY OWN INFORMATION!
Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot, to assist in the issuance of a new passport on the same day?? Nooooo... that'd be too f*cking easy and makes far too much sense. You would much prefer to have us running all over the place like chickens with our f*cking heads cut off, and then having to find some high society wanker to confirm that it's really me in the goddamn photo! You know the photo..the one where we're not allowed to smile?! ...you f*cking morons
Signed - An Irate Australian Citizen.
P.S Remember what I said above about the picture, and getting someone in high-society to confirm that it's me? Well, my family has been in this country since before 1850! In 1856, one of my forefathers took up arms with Peter Lalor. (You do remember the Eureka Stockade!!) I have also served in both the CMF and regular Army something over 30 years (I went to Vietnam in 1967), and still have high security clearances. I'm also a personal friend of the president of the RSL.. and Lt General Peter Cosgrove sends me a Christmas card each year.
However, your rules require that I have to get someone 'important' to verify who I am; You know.. someone like my doctor; WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN F*CKING PAKISTAN!!!......a country where they either assassinate or hang their ex-Prime Ministers, and are suspended from the Commonwealth for not having the 'right sort of government.'
You are all F*cking idiots
SOURCE
In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG says that the stimulus bill is all debt and no stimulus
Black kids still being "stolen" (rescued from neglect)
I suppose the Leftist propagandists would prefer the kids to die
State welfare workers have begun removing the fifth generation of Aboriginal children from their parents, meaning some indigenous families have an 80-year history with child protection services. There are few signs the cycle will be broken, as more Aboriginal children are being separated from their parents than at any time in Australian history.
The Australian spoke yesterday to an Aboriginal woman whose daughter became the family's fifth generation to be raised by the state, when she was taken from her home in June 2007 and placed with white foster parents on the NSW central coast. Her mother was a state ward; so too were her grandparents, her great-grandmother and her great-great-grandmother. The NSW Department of Community Services removed the girl after an older sister, aged 14, tried to hang herself.
The girls' mother told The Australian: "After the Stolen Generation report, they said it would never happen again but it's happening. You don't want to tell child welfare that you need help, because they will come and take your children. "My daughter was seven years old when they came for her. My husband fell down on his knees on the lawn. She was screaming. The last memory I have is of her hand against the glass, (and her) saying, 'Please let me stay'."
The mother, who was born in 1967, was left on a railway line when she was three days old. She was sent to live with white foster parents until she ran away at the age of 12. When caught, she went to a Brisbane institution known as Wilson, where she stayed until she was 18. Her mother was raised at the Parramatta Girls' Home in Sydney in the 1950s. Her father was born in 1940 on the Woorabinda mission, which was established inland of Rockhampton, in central Queensland, in 1927. At the age of eight, he was taken by Children's Services, Queensland (now the Department of Child Safety) to live at the Nudgee orphanage in Brisbane's north. His mother was also a state ward, taken into servitude on Palm Island at 15. His grandmother was raised at Woorabinda, under the care of the Aboriginal Commissioner.
The Australian revealed last year there were between six and 10 times as many Aboriginal children in state care today than at the height of the Stolen Generations era. The most recent data, from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, shows 9074 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care. The rate of Aboriginal children in care is 41.3 per 1000 indigenous children nationwide, while in NSW the rate is 66.3 per 1000. The national figure is nine times the rate for other children.
Most of the Aboriginal children in care have been removed from their parents because of neglect. There is no data on the number of indigenous children removed from parents who were state wards, or the offspring of state wards, but a report by the Australian Institute of Family Studies in 2006 said Aboriginal parents separated from their natural families were more likely to abuse alcohol, and have mental health problems, which could lead to the removal of children. [i.e. Parents with dysfunctional traits tend to pass on those traits to their children via normal genetic inheritance]
The mother whose daughter was removed last June asked: "How can DOCS continue to take children away from their families when the grounds for doing so are not made clear? We don't do drugs, drink or beat our children. We just asked for help."
SOURCE
"Temporary" visas 'may cost local-born their jobs'
Australia's record intake of temporary skilled migrants during the economic downturn could boost the number of Australian-born unemployed, as research suggests it is being used as a "back door" to permanent entry by low-wage workers. The claim comes from Monash University population expert Bob Birrell, who said more of Australia's permanent skilled migrants were being sourced from the 457 visa program, which was drawing on workers from low-wage countries in increasing numbers.
"People at the lower end of the spectrum are becoming permanent residents," Professor Birrell said. "They're vulnerable to exploitation because the employer knows they're not going to quibble with what he's offering them because they're desperate to get the permanent resident nomination."
As the global recession worsens, Professor Birrell said it was time for the Rudd Government to rethink its record high migration intake. He said the tough economic climate would give employers added incentives to employ or retain cheap overseas labour in the place of local workers. Professor Birrell, a long-time critic of a high migration quota, said the research, which was co-authored by Ernest Healy and 457 visa expert Bob Kinnaird, was in response to Immigration Minister Chris Evans's decision in December to give priority to migrants with a job or with critically needed skills. That decision was seen as an alternative to cutting the migrant quota, an option flagged by Kevin Rudd last year in response to the worsening economic conditions.
Last May, Senator Evans announced an increase in the permanent migration program of 37,500. The increase brought the total number of skilled migrants to 133,500, plus 56,500 family reunion places and 13,500 humanitarian visas. Overall, Australia is taking more than 200,000 new migrants a year. In 2007-08, about 58,050 migrants came in under the 457 program, a figure that excludes their family members.
Professor Birrell said, in that year, about 90 per cent of the 17,760 permanent migrants who were sponsored by an employer onshore were former 457 visa holders. Holders of 457 visas are subject to less stringent language requirements and there is no labour market testing, meaning employers do not have to demonstrate that the position cannot be filled locally. A minimum salary level of $43,440 applies for most 457 visa workers.
In a trend that has alarmed unions, who fear the 457 program is being exploited by business to undercut wages, the program is increasingly sourcing workers from the developing world. In 2007-08, 8250 Indian workers came in under the program, compared with 2880 in 2004-05. Over the same period, the number of Filipino workers jumped from 600 to 5120, and the number of Chinese workers rose from 930 to 3360.
A spokesman for Senator Evans said yesterday the 457 program had sharply declined amid worsening financial conditions. "Figures show that application rates for subclass 457 visas in January 2009 are now 30per cent lower than in September 2008, when the economic downturn struck," the spokesman said. Furthermore, plans to introduce market rates for 457 workers would effectively make them a more expensive option, the spokesman said. A cut in next year's migration program was also likely, he added.
SOURCE
Now some killjoys even want to ban glowsticks
Even the Brits have not gone this far, I gather. First it was fireworks, then sparklers and now glowsticks. What about banning twisty globes too? They contain that fearsome mercury pollutant. Somebody needs to tell these attention-seekers that EVERYTHING can be dangerous. Even drinking too much water can kill you. Do we want official regulations to prevent excess water drinking?
Campbelltown Council is in danger of becoming the "fun police" if glow sticks are banned from all future council events, Mayor Russell Matheson said. Councillors are considering a proposal to ban the sale of glow sticks at council-organised events following an incident at December's Christmas Carols at Campbelltown Arts Centre. Cr Mollie Thomas, who proposed the ban, said a child needed to be taken to hospital when liquid from a broken glow stick came into contact with the child's eyes. The council confirmed St John Ambulance staff needed to treat "some attendees" at the carols after glow stick liquid came in contact with their skin. There were no details on the ages of the children.
The proposed glow stick ban follows the council ceasing its Christmas lights competition in 2005 and banning Home Ice Cream vans from the area in 2007. Both decisions followed concern over public liability issues.
Cr Matheson said the council needed to determine if the glow sticks sold at the event were faulty before a blanket ban of the item was considered. "Hopefully it's just a one-off incident, but we've gone to Consumer Affairs to see if it's a safe product," he said. "Also it's a bit hard to police. "We don't want to become the glow stick police. "We don't want to over-react to things. If it's a safe product it should be allowed to be used."
But Cr Thomas said the council had to ensure there were no problems with glow sticks in the future. "The recommendation is council should not have them at council events right across the board," she said. "Because just one child is one too many (if they are hurt). A lot of parents don't realise the dangers, I know we didn't."
The council's business services director Michael Sewell confirmed there were a small number of incidents at the carols event. "There were reported cases of liquid from the glow sticks coming into contact with the skin of some of the attendees, who were then attended to by St John's staff on site," he said. Mr Sewell will contact Sunrise Rotary, who sold the glow sticks, in regard to the product being referred to Consumer Affairs.
SOURCE
Australian "Letter of the Year" for 2008
This is an actual letter sent to the then DFAT Minster, The Hon Alexander Downer and the then Immigration, The Hon Minister Amanda Vanstone. Please excuse the language contained within, but I suspect the author was somewhat upset? I'll let you decide!
Dear Mr. Minister,
I'm in the process of renewing my passport, and still cannot believe this. How is it that K-Mart has my address and telephone number, and knows that I bought a Television Set and Golf Clubs from them back in 1997, and yet, the Federal Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date.
For Christ sakes, do you guys do this by hand? My birth date you have in my Medicare information, and it is on all the income tax forms I've filed for the past 40 years. It is on my driver's licence, on the last eight passports I've ever had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out before being allowed off the planes over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that I've filled out every 5 years since 1966.
Also..would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother's name is Audrey, my Father's name is Jack, and I'd be absolutely f*cking astounded if that ever changed between now and when I drop dead!!!... SH*T!
I apologize, Mr. Minister. But I'm really pissed off this morning. Between you an' me, I've had enough of all this bullshit! You send the application to my house, then you ask me for my f*cking address!! What the hell is going on with your mob? Have you got a gang of mindless Neanderthal assholes workin' there ??
And another thing, look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I can't even grow a beard for God's sakes. I just want to go to New Zealand and see my new granddaughter. (Yes, my son interbred with a Kiwi girl). And would someone please tell me, why would you give a sh*t whether I plan on visiting a farm in the next 15 days? If I ever got the urge to do something weird to a sheep or a horse, believe you me, I'd sure as hell not want to tell anyone!
Well, I have to go now, 'cause I have to go to the other end of the city, and get another f*cking copy of my birth certificate, and to part with another $80 for the privilege of accessing MY OWN INFORMATION!
Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot, to assist in the issuance of a new passport on the same day?? Nooooo... that'd be too f*cking easy and makes far too much sense. You would much prefer to have us running all over the place like chickens with our f*cking heads cut off, and then having to find some high society wanker to confirm that it's really me in the goddamn photo! You know the photo..the one where we're not allowed to smile?! ...you f*cking morons
Signed - An Irate Australian Citizen.
P.S Remember what I said above about the picture, and getting someone in high-society to confirm that it's me? Well, my family has been in this country since before 1850! In 1856, one of my forefathers took up arms with Peter Lalor. (You do remember the Eureka Stockade!!) I have also served in both the CMF and regular Army something over 30 years (I went to Vietnam in 1967), and still have high security clearances. I'm also a personal friend of the president of the RSL.. and Lt General Peter Cosgrove sends me a Christmas card each year.
However, your rules require that I have to get someone 'important' to verify who I am; You know.. someone like my doctor; WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN F*CKING PAKISTAN!!!......a country where they either assassinate or hang their ex-Prime Ministers, and are suspended from the Commonwealth for not having the 'right sort of government.'
You are all F*cking idiots
SOURCE
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Indians under attack in Melbourne
Strange that the police say nothing about the attackers? Not really. Past reports indicate that the attackers are mainly Africans. And we mustn't under any circumstances let anybody know how dangerous Africans can be, must we?
Indian students will be taught not to speak loudly in their native tongue or display signs of wealth such as iPods when travelling on trains at night, as part of a strategy to crack down on violent robberies. Robberies in Melbourne's western suburbs jumped by 27 per cent last financial year. Police estimated almost a third of victims were of Indian appearance. A special police group has been formed to combat the robberies amid fears that some are racially motivated and that Indian international students are soft targets because they carry iPods and laptops on trains late at night.
The Federation of Indian Students of Australia says Melbourne, which has about 33,000 Indian international students, may no longer be seen as a safe destination.
Inspector Scott Mahony, of Brimbank police, said it was crucial to stop Indian students becoming victims and address their mistrust of police. "They need to make sure they walk through a well-lit route, even if it might be longer, and they are not openly displaying signs of wealth with iPods and phones, and not talking loudly in their native language," Inspector Mahony said. " We do believe there are some where the victim is targeted because of Indian appearance."
Dayajot Singh, who helped organise a protest last year over attacks on Indians, said Indian students should be taught crime prevention as part of their university induction course. "They should be taught that if you go on public transport in this country, people don't talk loudly, they talk in a low voice. If you talk loudly it could be taken as violent behaviour. It's different cultural behaviour - speaking loudly to each other is not taken offence to in India." He said an important message was not to carry valuables on trains at night.
Federation of Indian Students of Australia president Raman Vaid said most students carried valuables. "It's not being told to other communities or other students, 'Don't speak loudly in your native tongue, don't carry laptops'," he said. Mr Vaid said racist attacks gave Indian students a bad impression and could encourage them to study in other states or countries.
The Police Indian Western Reference Group was formed after 100 Indian men marched on Sunshine police station in December to protest against what they said was a poor response to the attacks. Mr Singh said police had since met representatives of the Indian community and police behaviour had improved.
Police were frustrated that the crime prevention message did not appear to be getting through. "We need to re-examine what we are doing to find out why it's not working," Inspector Mahony said.
Ricky Ahluwalia told The Age he was knocked unconscious and robbed last year while walking to his Albion home from the station at night. "There is a lot of racism. My friends, they have always had the same problems. It only happens with Indians, no Asians, no other people." Other attacks on Indians include the stabbing of taxi driver Jalvinder Singh last year and the bashing of former Australian Medical Association president Mukesh Haikerwal.
Victoria University academic Dr Zhongjun Cao was bashed to death in Footscray last year. He was not Indian, but the court heard two gang members suggested they go out "curry bashing". Four members later bashed and robbed a second man, Binesh Mosaheb, a Mauritian, believing he was Indian.
Last month, communications and peer support teams, made up of police and Indian community representatives, were set up. Inspector Mahony said the peer support team would provide support to Indian victims of crime and explain cultural differences. "Some people simply had no concept of the meaning of bail and how we can arrest an offender on a robbery charge and they can be back on the street the next day," he said. "The perception was that offenders get away with crime."
Indian students had raised concerns police had not responded immediately to victims' calls or notified them when arrests were made. "There is a perception we don't care, and we have to do a lot of work around changing that perception," he said. Robberies in the western suburbs, including Brimbank, Hobsons Bay, Maribyrnong, Melton and Wyndham, jumped from 417 in 2006-07 to 530 in 2007-2008.
SOURCE
Greenies lying about their responsibility for the big fires
One of the biggest furphies in the supercharged debate in the wake of Victoria's bushfires is the claim by green groups that they are great supporters of hazard reduction burning. Also known as prescribed burning, this scientific regime creates a mosaic of lightly burned land at regular intervals of five to seven years, thus reducing surface fuel loads by varying amounts within the mosaic. This reduction of fuel loads is expensive, but Australia's pre-eminent bushfire researchers, such as the CSIRO's Phil Cheney and Monash University's David Packam, say it has been proven to reduce the power and intensity of fire. Every bushfire inquiry since the 1939 Stretton royal commission has recommended increased prescribed burning to mitigate the effects of inevitable wildfire.
It is a matter of public record that green groups have long opposed such systematic prescribed burning, as is evident in their submissions to bushfire inquiries from as far back as 1992. They complain of a threat to biodiversity, including to fungi, from "frequent burning" regimes and urge resources be spent on water bombers and early detection, as well as on stopping climate change - good luck with that.
Yet last week, Jonathan La Nauze of Friends of the Earth, Melbourne, in a letter to this newspaper claimed: ".not one Australian environmental organisation is opposed to prescribed burning . Environment groups are engaged in a sophisticated debate about where and how prescribed burning can be most effective." Yes, it's sophisticated, all right. It just depends how you define "prescribed burning".
On the other side of the country, one Peter Robertson, the West Australian co-ordinator of the Wilderness Society, was singing from a different song sheet. His letter last week to The West Australian stated: "Experience and risk analysis show that repeatedly burning tens of thousands of hectares of remote bushland and forest will do little to address the threat of bushfires to human communities . It would be a huge mistake if the community was led to believe that a massive, expensive and environmentally destructive prescribed burning program was going to protect them when it could make matters worse." Robertson is no lone ranger among greens in opposition to prescribed burning.
The WA Forest Alliance, for instance, lodged a submission to the NSW parliamentary inquiry into the 2001-02 bushfires, claiming: "Frequent fires have a disastrous effect on many species of flora and fauna and their habitat structure." WWF Australia's submission claimed: "Inappropriate fire hazard regimes can damage biodiversity leading to the loss of native species, communities and ecosystems."
The NSW Greens state on their website as part of their bushfire risk management policy: "There is an urgent need to correct the common misconception that responsible fire management always involves burning or clearing to reduce moderate and high fuel loads."
In 2003, lightning strikes in fuel-rich national parks in NSW and the ACT sparked bushfires which swept into Canberra, killing four people. Days later, the NSW Nature Conservation Council's then chairman, Rob Pallin, described calls for increased prescribed burning as "futile" and a "knee-jerk reaction". "People who claim that hazard reduction burning is a cure-all for bushfire risk are either fooling themselves or deliberately trying to fool the public." It is another clever tactic of those who oppose broadscale prescribed burning to claim that it is not a "cure-all" for bushfire risk. No one has ever claimed it is.
As Cheney repeatedly has said, wildfires will occur, but prescribed burning reduces the intensity of a fire burning "under any set of meteorological conditions", and it reduces the spread of the fire, allowing firefighters to construct effective control lines. And yet there have been recent moves to have controlled burning listed as a "key threatening process" under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Such a submission has reportedly been received by the Threatened Species Scientific Committee. In NSW, already, the Department of Environment and Conservation has listed "too frequent fire" as a "key threatening process to biodiversity".
But the real threatening process is the holocaust we have just seen in Victoria. Last week angry fire survivors in Victoria pointed the finger at local authorities who prevented clearing of vegetation. At a public meeting in Arthurs Creek, Warwick Spooner, who lost his mother and brother in the Strathewen fire, stood up criticise the Nillumbik council. "We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down." Then of course, there is Liam Sheahan, the Reedy Creek home owner whose house is the only one in a two-kilometre area which survived the fires. In 2004 he was fined $50,000 for removing 247 trees around his hilltop house to protect it from fire. His two-year court battle against the Mitchell Shire Council cost him $50,000 in legal fees.
It is a rich irony that Slidders Lawyers last week launched a class action on behalf of fire victims at Kinglake, against the Singapore-owned electricity company SP AusNet, alleging the fire was caused by a fallen power line. After all, it was only in 2001 that Transgrid bulldozed a 60-metre wide firebreak under its high-voltage lines in the Snowy Mountains. For that it was prosecuted by four government agencies, blasted for "environmental vandalism" by the then NSW premier Bob Carr, and fined $500,000.
Two years later, during the disastrous firestorm that engulfed the mountains, the offending firebreak became the only safe haven for kangaroos and workers constructing a fire trail. The sad truth of such holocausts is that the environmental toll ends up worse than the most vigorous prescribed burning regime ever could be.
Victoria's bushfires have spewed millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - more than a third of Australia's entire output for a year, according to Sydney University's Professor Mark Adams. No doubt the royal commission will recommend, like previous inquiries, that prescribed burning should be increased. After so many deaths will anyone listen this time?
SOURCE
Rudd has stretched the facts: Howard
John Howard has accused Kevin Rudd of "stretching the facts" of the global financial crisis in an unsustainable economic argument to score "a base political point". In his first response to the Prime Minister's extended attack on extreme capitalism, Wall Street greed, neo-liberals, free marketeers and the Howard years, Mr Howard says the global crisis is not the result of a neo-liberal failure. "Our current predicament is not the result of some malign economic philosophy having held total sway for the past 30 years," the former Liberal prime minister says in a speech to be delivered in Melbourne tonight.
"We all face a very difficult economic climate. There will be legitimate differences in our responses, based on different philosophies. Nothing, however, will be achieved by stretching the facts to serve an unsustainable economic proposition, designed to score a base political point." Mr Howard also argues that far from needing further regulation, the Australian banking system's prudential and regulatory system has kept domestic banks strong -- a direct result of sensible market forces.
Early this month, Mr Rudd wrote an essay of more than 7000 words arguing that capitalism was "cannibalising itself" and that the free-market governments of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, George W. Bush and Mr Howard had contributed to the worst global financial crisis in 75 years. "The time has come, off the back of the current crisis, to proclaim that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30years has failed, that the emperor has no clothes," he wrote in The Monthly. Targeting the Liberal Party and the economic policies of the Howard government, which he said had "not served Australia well in preparing for the current crisis", Mr Rudd argued that regulators had failed to stop extreme capitalism.
But in the inaugural Howard lecture for the Menzies Research Centre in Melbourne tonight, Mr Howard will say Mr Rudd's arguments are contradictory and implausible and ignore similar policies pursued by US Democratic presidents and British Labour prime ministers. Mr Howard says that if there has been a prevailing neo-liberal view in the past 30 years "that philosophy, to a greater or lesser extent, has beguiled both sides of the political divide in many countries".
He argues that instead of being a failure, the systems of free trade and competitive capitalism have succeeded. "In the past 30 years, the freer functioning of markets inherently involved in the globalisation process has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Competitive capitalism has been integral to this historic development. So far from failing, it has succeeded," he says.
"I have watched with fascination the contradictions flowing from senior government figures as they deal with current economic challenges. They deserve their rhetorical dilemma. They cannot have it both ways. "It is not plausible for the Rudd Government to argue on the one hand that Australia has entered the financial crisis in better shape than just about any other nation, and yet declare my government guilty of the extreme neo-liberalism which has allegedly brought about the crisis. "Both positions cannot be right."
Mr Howard says Julia Gillard's presentation at the World Economic Forum in Davos "declared her pride in the well-regulated Australian banking system, the great strength of the Australian economy, and the fact that our nation entered these difficult economic times in better shape than others". "The strength of the Australian banking system, of which the Deputy Prime Minister is so proud, is a direct result of a sensible balance between market forces and prudential regulation in Australia which was both reaffirmed and modernised by the Wallis Financial Inquiry's recommendations adopted by my government not long after it came to office," he says.
In the past 30 years "some regulation has failed and some have not been enforced". "In some instances, governments have not intervened enough. In others, such as through Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae in relation to the spread of sub-prime mortgages, governments, their agencies and legislators have intervened too much."
SOURCE. There is another response to Rudd's attack on capitalism: here
Private sector rescues problem students
Violent, out-of-control students as young as four are fuelling the growth of a private school sector catering for pupils the public system doesn't want. With more than 55,000 suspensions handed out to state school students last financial year - a jump of more than 20 per cent in two years - Independent Schools Queensland acting executive director David Robertson said the "disengaged and at-risk" school sector was now a growth industry. He said four private schools already catered for problem students in Queensland's southeast, with a fifth to open at Deception Bay later this year. Two more are proposed at Logan and Springfield.
The Toogoolawa School, built for secondary school students by Queensland-based millionaire property developer John Fitzgerald at Ormeau, south of Brisbane, in 1998, has opened a primary school for the increasing numbers of younger students being excluded from the mainstream system.
Principal Gerry Moloney said his students' violence and anger often stemmed from bad home and family situations, and once they were given respect, proper time and appropriate individualised academic goals, their behaviour and attitudes turned around. He said the school recently enrolled a Prep-year student, facing expulsion, who was referred to him by a mother who didn't know what else to do. Toogoolawa students have often been through heart-breaking circumstances, with some housed in more than 40 foster homes, he said. Mr Moloney said they were able to turn more than 90 per cent of their students' behaviour around within six to 12 months.
An Education Queensland spokeswoman said the "growth in the numbers of school disciplinary suspensions" was evidence it was enforcing higher behaviour standards. This was "to ensure the best quality outcomes for all state school students without the need to resort to more serious disciplinary actions of an exclusion or cancellation of enrolment", she said. But exclusions - the start of the expulsion process - also have risen over the past three financial years. The EQ spokeswoman said expulsion figures were unavailable because they were collected on a school and district basis. In the past financial year 55,302 suspensions were handed out - with multiple suspensions recorded by some students - and 866 exclusion processes were initiated. In 2005 to 2006, 43,929 suspensions were ordered and 777 exclusion processes initiated.
SOURCE
Strange that the police say nothing about the attackers? Not really. Past reports indicate that the attackers are mainly Africans. And we mustn't under any circumstances let anybody know how dangerous Africans can be, must we?
Indian students will be taught not to speak loudly in their native tongue or display signs of wealth such as iPods when travelling on trains at night, as part of a strategy to crack down on violent robberies. Robberies in Melbourne's western suburbs jumped by 27 per cent last financial year. Police estimated almost a third of victims were of Indian appearance. A special police group has been formed to combat the robberies amid fears that some are racially motivated and that Indian international students are soft targets because they carry iPods and laptops on trains late at night.
The Federation of Indian Students of Australia says Melbourne, which has about 33,000 Indian international students, may no longer be seen as a safe destination.
Inspector Scott Mahony, of Brimbank police, said it was crucial to stop Indian students becoming victims and address their mistrust of police. "They need to make sure they walk through a well-lit route, even if it might be longer, and they are not openly displaying signs of wealth with iPods and phones, and not talking loudly in their native language," Inspector Mahony said. " We do believe there are some where the victim is targeted because of Indian appearance."
Dayajot Singh, who helped organise a protest last year over attacks on Indians, said Indian students should be taught crime prevention as part of their university induction course. "They should be taught that if you go on public transport in this country, people don't talk loudly, they talk in a low voice. If you talk loudly it could be taken as violent behaviour. It's different cultural behaviour - speaking loudly to each other is not taken offence to in India." He said an important message was not to carry valuables on trains at night.
Federation of Indian Students of Australia president Raman Vaid said most students carried valuables. "It's not being told to other communities or other students, 'Don't speak loudly in your native tongue, don't carry laptops'," he said. Mr Vaid said racist attacks gave Indian students a bad impression and could encourage them to study in other states or countries.
The Police Indian Western Reference Group was formed after 100 Indian men marched on Sunshine police station in December to protest against what they said was a poor response to the attacks. Mr Singh said police had since met representatives of the Indian community and police behaviour had improved.
Police were frustrated that the crime prevention message did not appear to be getting through. "We need to re-examine what we are doing to find out why it's not working," Inspector Mahony said.
Ricky Ahluwalia told The Age he was knocked unconscious and robbed last year while walking to his Albion home from the station at night. "There is a lot of racism. My friends, they have always had the same problems. It only happens with Indians, no Asians, no other people." Other attacks on Indians include the stabbing of taxi driver Jalvinder Singh last year and the bashing of former Australian Medical Association president Mukesh Haikerwal.
Victoria University academic Dr Zhongjun Cao was bashed to death in Footscray last year. He was not Indian, but the court heard two gang members suggested they go out "curry bashing". Four members later bashed and robbed a second man, Binesh Mosaheb, a Mauritian, believing he was Indian.
Last month, communications and peer support teams, made up of police and Indian community representatives, were set up. Inspector Mahony said the peer support team would provide support to Indian victims of crime and explain cultural differences. "Some people simply had no concept of the meaning of bail and how we can arrest an offender on a robbery charge and they can be back on the street the next day," he said. "The perception was that offenders get away with crime."
Indian students had raised concerns police had not responded immediately to victims' calls or notified them when arrests were made. "There is a perception we don't care, and we have to do a lot of work around changing that perception," he said. Robberies in the western suburbs, including Brimbank, Hobsons Bay, Maribyrnong, Melton and Wyndham, jumped from 417 in 2006-07 to 530 in 2007-2008.
SOURCE
Greenies lying about their responsibility for the big fires
One of the biggest furphies in the supercharged debate in the wake of Victoria's bushfires is the claim by green groups that they are great supporters of hazard reduction burning. Also known as prescribed burning, this scientific regime creates a mosaic of lightly burned land at regular intervals of five to seven years, thus reducing surface fuel loads by varying amounts within the mosaic. This reduction of fuel loads is expensive, but Australia's pre-eminent bushfire researchers, such as the CSIRO's Phil Cheney and Monash University's David Packam, say it has been proven to reduce the power and intensity of fire. Every bushfire inquiry since the 1939 Stretton royal commission has recommended increased prescribed burning to mitigate the effects of inevitable wildfire.
It is a matter of public record that green groups have long opposed such systematic prescribed burning, as is evident in their submissions to bushfire inquiries from as far back as 1992. They complain of a threat to biodiversity, including to fungi, from "frequent burning" regimes and urge resources be spent on water bombers and early detection, as well as on stopping climate change - good luck with that.
Yet last week, Jonathan La Nauze of Friends of the Earth, Melbourne, in a letter to this newspaper claimed: ".not one Australian environmental organisation is opposed to prescribed burning . Environment groups are engaged in a sophisticated debate about where and how prescribed burning can be most effective." Yes, it's sophisticated, all right. It just depends how you define "prescribed burning".
On the other side of the country, one Peter Robertson, the West Australian co-ordinator of the Wilderness Society, was singing from a different song sheet. His letter last week to The West Australian stated: "Experience and risk analysis show that repeatedly burning tens of thousands of hectares of remote bushland and forest will do little to address the threat of bushfires to human communities . It would be a huge mistake if the community was led to believe that a massive, expensive and environmentally destructive prescribed burning program was going to protect them when it could make matters worse." Robertson is no lone ranger among greens in opposition to prescribed burning.
The WA Forest Alliance, for instance, lodged a submission to the NSW parliamentary inquiry into the 2001-02 bushfires, claiming: "Frequent fires have a disastrous effect on many species of flora and fauna and their habitat structure." WWF Australia's submission claimed: "Inappropriate fire hazard regimes can damage biodiversity leading to the loss of native species, communities and ecosystems."
The NSW Greens state on their website as part of their bushfire risk management policy: "There is an urgent need to correct the common misconception that responsible fire management always involves burning or clearing to reduce moderate and high fuel loads."
In 2003, lightning strikes in fuel-rich national parks in NSW and the ACT sparked bushfires which swept into Canberra, killing four people. Days later, the NSW Nature Conservation Council's then chairman, Rob Pallin, described calls for increased prescribed burning as "futile" and a "knee-jerk reaction". "People who claim that hazard reduction burning is a cure-all for bushfire risk are either fooling themselves or deliberately trying to fool the public." It is another clever tactic of those who oppose broadscale prescribed burning to claim that it is not a "cure-all" for bushfire risk. No one has ever claimed it is.
As Cheney repeatedly has said, wildfires will occur, but prescribed burning reduces the intensity of a fire burning "under any set of meteorological conditions", and it reduces the spread of the fire, allowing firefighters to construct effective control lines. And yet there have been recent moves to have controlled burning listed as a "key threatening process" under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Such a submission has reportedly been received by the Threatened Species Scientific Committee. In NSW, already, the Department of Environment and Conservation has listed "too frequent fire" as a "key threatening process to biodiversity".
But the real threatening process is the holocaust we have just seen in Victoria. Last week angry fire survivors in Victoria pointed the finger at local authorities who prevented clearing of vegetation. At a public meeting in Arthurs Creek, Warwick Spooner, who lost his mother and brother in the Strathewen fire, stood up criticise the Nillumbik council. "We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down." Then of course, there is Liam Sheahan, the Reedy Creek home owner whose house is the only one in a two-kilometre area which survived the fires. In 2004 he was fined $50,000 for removing 247 trees around his hilltop house to protect it from fire. His two-year court battle against the Mitchell Shire Council cost him $50,000 in legal fees.
It is a rich irony that Slidders Lawyers last week launched a class action on behalf of fire victims at Kinglake, against the Singapore-owned electricity company SP AusNet, alleging the fire was caused by a fallen power line. After all, it was only in 2001 that Transgrid bulldozed a 60-metre wide firebreak under its high-voltage lines in the Snowy Mountains. For that it was prosecuted by four government agencies, blasted for "environmental vandalism" by the then NSW premier Bob Carr, and fined $500,000.
Two years later, during the disastrous firestorm that engulfed the mountains, the offending firebreak became the only safe haven for kangaroos and workers constructing a fire trail. The sad truth of such holocausts is that the environmental toll ends up worse than the most vigorous prescribed burning regime ever could be.
Victoria's bushfires have spewed millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - more than a third of Australia's entire output for a year, according to Sydney University's Professor Mark Adams. No doubt the royal commission will recommend, like previous inquiries, that prescribed burning should be increased. After so many deaths will anyone listen this time?
SOURCE
Rudd has stretched the facts: Howard
John Howard has accused Kevin Rudd of "stretching the facts" of the global financial crisis in an unsustainable economic argument to score "a base political point". In his first response to the Prime Minister's extended attack on extreme capitalism, Wall Street greed, neo-liberals, free marketeers and the Howard years, Mr Howard says the global crisis is not the result of a neo-liberal failure. "Our current predicament is not the result of some malign economic philosophy having held total sway for the past 30 years," the former Liberal prime minister says in a speech to be delivered in Melbourne tonight.
"We all face a very difficult economic climate. There will be legitimate differences in our responses, based on different philosophies. Nothing, however, will be achieved by stretching the facts to serve an unsustainable economic proposition, designed to score a base political point." Mr Howard also argues that far from needing further regulation, the Australian banking system's prudential and regulatory system has kept domestic banks strong -- a direct result of sensible market forces.
Early this month, Mr Rudd wrote an essay of more than 7000 words arguing that capitalism was "cannibalising itself" and that the free-market governments of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, George W. Bush and Mr Howard had contributed to the worst global financial crisis in 75 years. "The time has come, off the back of the current crisis, to proclaim that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30years has failed, that the emperor has no clothes," he wrote in The Monthly. Targeting the Liberal Party and the economic policies of the Howard government, which he said had "not served Australia well in preparing for the current crisis", Mr Rudd argued that regulators had failed to stop extreme capitalism.
But in the inaugural Howard lecture for the Menzies Research Centre in Melbourne tonight, Mr Howard will say Mr Rudd's arguments are contradictory and implausible and ignore similar policies pursued by US Democratic presidents and British Labour prime ministers. Mr Howard says that if there has been a prevailing neo-liberal view in the past 30 years "that philosophy, to a greater or lesser extent, has beguiled both sides of the political divide in many countries".
He argues that instead of being a failure, the systems of free trade and competitive capitalism have succeeded. "In the past 30 years, the freer functioning of markets inherently involved in the globalisation process has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Competitive capitalism has been integral to this historic development. So far from failing, it has succeeded," he says.
"I have watched with fascination the contradictions flowing from senior government figures as they deal with current economic challenges. They deserve their rhetorical dilemma. They cannot have it both ways. "It is not plausible for the Rudd Government to argue on the one hand that Australia has entered the financial crisis in better shape than just about any other nation, and yet declare my government guilty of the extreme neo-liberalism which has allegedly brought about the crisis. "Both positions cannot be right."
Mr Howard says Julia Gillard's presentation at the World Economic Forum in Davos "declared her pride in the well-regulated Australian banking system, the great strength of the Australian economy, and the fact that our nation entered these difficult economic times in better shape than others". "The strength of the Australian banking system, of which the Deputy Prime Minister is so proud, is a direct result of a sensible balance between market forces and prudential regulation in Australia which was both reaffirmed and modernised by the Wallis Financial Inquiry's recommendations adopted by my government not long after it came to office," he says.
In the past 30 years "some regulation has failed and some have not been enforced". "In some instances, governments have not intervened enough. In others, such as through Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae in relation to the spread of sub-prime mortgages, governments, their agencies and legislators have intervened too much."
SOURCE. There is another response to Rudd's attack on capitalism: here
Private sector rescues problem students
Violent, out-of-control students as young as four are fuelling the growth of a private school sector catering for pupils the public system doesn't want. With more than 55,000 suspensions handed out to state school students last financial year - a jump of more than 20 per cent in two years - Independent Schools Queensland acting executive director David Robertson said the "disengaged and at-risk" school sector was now a growth industry. He said four private schools already catered for problem students in Queensland's southeast, with a fifth to open at Deception Bay later this year. Two more are proposed at Logan and Springfield.
The Toogoolawa School, built for secondary school students by Queensland-based millionaire property developer John Fitzgerald at Ormeau, south of Brisbane, in 1998, has opened a primary school for the increasing numbers of younger students being excluded from the mainstream system.
Principal Gerry Moloney said his students' violence and anger often stemmed from bad home and family situations, and once they were given respect, proper time and appropriate individualised academic goals, their behaviour and attitudes turned around. He said the school recently enrolled a Prep-year student, facing expulsion, who was referred to him by a mother who didn't know what else to do. Toogoolawa students have often been through heart-breaking circumstances, with some housed in more than 40 foster homes, he said. Mr Moloney said they were able to turn more than 90 per cent of their students' behaviour around within six to 12 months.
An Education Queensland spokeswoman said the "growth in the numbers of school disciplinary suspensions" was evidence it was enforcing higher behaviour standards. This was "to ensure the best quality outcomes for all state school students without the need to resort to more serious disciplinary actions of an exclusion or cancellation of enrolment", she said. But exclusions - the start of the expulsion process - also have risen over the past three financial years. The EQ spokeswoman said expulsion figures were unavailable because they were collected on a school and district basis. In the past financial year 55,302 suspensions were handed out - with multiple suspensions recorded by some students - and 866 exclusion processes were initiated. In 2005 to 2006, 43,929 suspensions were ordered and 777 exclusion processes initiated.
SOURCE
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Australian householders to be charged for each flush of toilet
The latest Greenie brainwave to avoid building dams. Much of Northern Australia is experiencing severe floods so "drought" is not the problem. Catching and distributing the water is where governments have been failing -- due to Greenie pressure. With the huge amount of "stimulus" money available for infrastructure, it is a pity that there are no plans for a big North/South water pipeline. But the Greenies would oppose that too, of course
HOUSEHOLDERS would be charged for each flush under a radical new toilet tax designed to help beat the drought. The scheme would replace the current system, which sees sewage charges based on a home's value - not its waste water output. CSIRO Policy and Economic Research Unit member Jim McColl and Adelaide University Water Management Professor Mike Young plan to promote the move to state and federal politicians and experts across the country. "It would encourage people to reduce their sewage output by taking shorter showers,recycling washing machine water or connecting rainwater tanks to internal plumbingto reduce their charges,''Professor Young said. "Some people may go as far as not flushing their toilet as often because the less sewage you produce, the less sewage rate you pay.''
Professor Young said sewer pricing needed to be addressed as part of the response to the water crisis. "People have been frightened to talk about sewage because it is yucky stuff, but it is critically important to address it, as part of the whole water cycle,'' he said. "We are looking at reforming the way sewage is priced and this plan will drive interest in the different ways water is used throughout Australia.''
The reform would see the abolition of the property-based charge with one based on a pay-as-you-go rate and a small fixed annual fee to cover the cost of meter readings and pipeline maintenance, Professor Young said. The pay-as-you-go rate would provide financial savings for those who reduce their waste water output.
Professor Young and Mr McColl will promote the plan nationally through their Droplet, a newsletter whose 6000 subscribers include state and federal politicians, water policy specialists and economists around the country. Professor Young said a sewage pricing plan, like the one proposed, was already used in the US. "In places like the City of Bellaire, Texas (a virtual suburb of Houston), they do it and the system seems to work,'' he said.
"As nearly all of (the homes in) mainland Australia's cities and towns already have water meters, introduction of a volumetric charge, such as that used in the City of Bellaire, would not be difficult to implement.'' Mr McColl said the plan had to be viewed in the context of "the crucial issues surrounding water resources'' in Australia. "We should be prepared for the (drought) situation we are going through now to occur again, as well as the potential impact of climate change, so we have to act now for the future,'' he said.
SOURCE
Floods hit NSW, Queensland and WA while boy drowns in Darwin
So much for the "drought" Greenies keep talking about. But reality has never been important to Greenies. They live in a world of fantasy and superstition
EVEN while firefighters are still battling bush infernos in scorched Victoria huge amounts of Australia are under floodwaters. Rains have eased, but more than 4000 people remain isolated by flood waters in parts of northern New South Wales, the State Emergency Service (SES) says. Heavy rains falling since Friday have soaked large parts of the state between Bourke and Sydney, but began easing last night, SES director general Murray Kear said.
"We've got about 4,000 people still isolated along the Bellinger River at the communities of Bellingen, Darkwood and Thora,'' Mr Kear said. "Those communities are isolated by the Bellinger River, which we are monitoring and has showed a slight lowering. "There have been no signs of an increase overnight, with no further rain, and the river is steady at about 5.3m currently.'' The Bureau of Meteorology forecasts a further 100mm of rain in the area today, but Mr Kear said satellite images showed the rain falling over the Pacific Ocean.
At Bourke in the state's central north, where a natural disaster zone has been declared, 200mm of rain has fallen in the past few days, equivalent to two-thirds of the city's annual rainfall. Between Bourke and Sydney and stretching to the coast, the SES has received more than 2000 calls for assistance since Friday. "We've conducted nine flood rescues across the north coast - people stranded in vehicles, et cetera,'' Mr Kear said. Last night and early today, the SES received 100 calls for help in the greater Sydney area from people beset by water inundation.
In far North Queensland flooded Gulf of Carpentaria communities and properties have been cut off for six weeks and face another six weeks in isolation, The Courier-Mail reports. As cooped-up residents go stir crazy from a month of isolation and as emergency fodder drops begin, there have been reports of feral pigs and dingoes feasting on the carcasses of dead cattle and snakes taking refuge in and around homes. "We found an olive green python skin about 12ft long (3.6m) in my craft room," Burke Shire mayor Annie Clarke, of Brinawa Station, said yesterday. "And our highest dry ground has been under the house where there's a fair few brown snakes. The browns tend to make you lift your skirts and go like hell.
Premier Anna Bligh said yesterday the Croydon-Normanton flood zone, the Norman, Flinders and Cloncurry river lower reaches would be the priority for $3m worth of helicopter drops.
In Western Australia's Pilbara region two national parks have been closed and mining activity disrupted after heavy rainfall. The Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) has closed all roads in the Millstream-Chichester National Park and all gravel roads in the Karijini National Park, PerthNow reports. Falls of up to 250mm caused widespread flooding in creeks and rivers in the Pilbara last night. Severe flooding in rivers and creeks at Millstream had resulted and water levels were set to rise in the next few days as heavy rain was forecast to continue. At Karijini, the park was closed with gorges at risk of flash flooding and landslides.
Rio Tinto Ltd said today that its Pilbara iron ore operations were being impeded by heavy rains and high winds, and it had evacuated stranded staff in the region by helicopter. And the Chinese operator of a Pilbara mine admitted today that workers had ridden on a grader to escape floodwaters but denied union claims it had put them at risk.
In the Northern Territory a swollen creek claimed the life of 13-year-old Daniel Browne yesterday despite the heroic effort of three mates to save him. Andrew Demetriou, Tiernan Anderson and Morgan Wise - all 15-year-olds - were the first to jump in and try and save Browne after his foot got tangled on rope and he drowned in the swollen Rapid Creek in Darwin's northern suburbs. The boys said they could not touch the bottom and that the 3m-deep water was fast-flowing. "It was so wet, wild and running quite fast," Morgan said.
SOURCE
Australian steel chief sounds job-loss alarm over proposed Warmist scheme
AUSTRALIA'S second-biggest steelmaker says the Rudd Government's emissions trading scheme is likely to cause job losses and force new investments offshore. Onesteel chief executive Geoff Plummer said, that even though the Government had tried to address the industry's concerns, his company "cannot support the carbon pollution reduction scheme based on its current design". "We understand the Government's intentions, but the practical effect of the scheme as it stands is that we will bear a cost not borne by our competitors," he said. "We would be the only steelmakers in the world to have these costs and that would put us at a material disadvantage."
Onesteel employs 10,000 people and is a major employer in the Newcastle and Whyalla regions.
Mr Plummer said the carbon pollution reduction scheme, as it stood, was likely to lead to job losses in the steel industry. The industry is collapsing globally as construction slumps during the economic crisis, a situation Mr Plummer said made the implementation of the scheme at this time even more difficult. "In the current economic environment there is an increased sensitivity around price and competitive positioning," he said. "We are finding it difficult enough at the moment. Since November, we have been forced to reduce our workforce, in terms of direct and indirect employees, by 650."
Onesteel said there was still uncertainty about the level of special assistance it would qualify for under the Government's proposed compensation for emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries. It said it was likely its integrated iron and steel making would initially qualify to receive 90 per cent of its necessary emission permits for free, while electric arc furnace operations would qualify for 60 per cent free permits.
Mr Plummer said Australian steel operations were among the most efficient in the world. If the carbon pollution reduction scheme boosted production from less efficient operations overseas, it could actually increase global emissions. He said his company would continue talks with the Government about possible changes to the emissions trading scheme, but had been forced to deliver a view about its impact as part of its first-half results were reported yesterday.
Industry concerns about the emissions trading scheme intensified during the summer as the economic conditions worsened. The Rudd Government is drafting legislation for its proposed scheme, which it hopes will pass the Senate by June. It argues that revenue from the scheme has been fully committed to its proposed compensation funds, leaving little room to increase free permits to industry.
SOURCE
Leading universities trash the plan for a vast expansion of higher education
The envious bitch who wrote the plan seems to have had no capacity for any thought beyond kneejerk Leftist responses and no idea of all that her proposals would lead to
The Group of Eight has savaged the Bradley review, describing it as a "road map to mediocrity", foolish and deeply flawed, in a confrontation likely to fuel political tensions ahead of the federal Government's promised education overhaul. The Government is formulating a response to the Bradley review in a fiscal climate dramatically altered from that in which the review was commissioned, and Education Minister Julia Gillard met the Go8 yesterday as part of her consultations with the sector. The group's response to the Bradley review has hardened this past month.
On Monday evening, University of NSW vice-chancellor Fred Hilmer warned the Government not to accept the review as a whole, saying it was not properly thought through and costed, and could not deliver dramatic increases in quality and output. He told the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney that he and "many of my colleagues" were troubled by the review's lack of a clear vision. He said the review did "not clearly acknowledge the fundamentally important principles of excellence, differentiation of mission and the importance of auniversity education for its own sake". "There is little recognition in the Bradley report of the special and key role played by research intensive, internationally well-ranked institutions."
The Go8 bristled at comments by Denise Bradley, former vice-chancellor of the University of South Australia, which it believes reflect a "hidden agenda" to "de-concentrate" research. Go8 vice-chancellors were fearful before the release of the Bradley review, in late December, that the hostility its chairwoman was believed to harbour against the research elite might influence her recommendations. The group decided to air its concerns, published today in the HES, after Professor Bradley revealed to a recent Australian Technology Network conference that her review had stressed the teaching and research nexus to counter an "extreme position" on research concentration.
Professor Bradley told the ATN conference: "I am aware of the arguments about the strategic importance of greater concentration of internationally competitive research performance, but I think that there are good national reasons for us to adopt a model which continues to encourage some spread across institutions." She argued against "too much concentration of research capacity in too small a number of what will inevitably be capital city institutions".
The Go8, which argued forcefully for research concentration to meet global challenges in a paper released before the Bradley report, slams the findings of her panel today. "What is presented as a tightening of criteria for university status, based on the mythical 'teaching-research nexus', could well loosen expectations of research quality and further dissipate the nation's research investment," argues the group's executive director Michael Gallagher. "The Bradley report reflects a parochial and complacent view in the context of aggressive concentration of research investment in many other countries."
But universities outside theGo8 sprang to Bradley's defence. In a direct response to Professor Hilmer's criticism, ATN director Vicki Thomson said: "We think that it is unfortunate that the Bradley review is being picked apart and that might diminish the opportunity for significant reform." The ATN and the Innovative Research Universities met MsGillard in Melbourne on Monday as part of the consultation process.
Representing the ATN, University of Technology, Sydney, vice-chancellor Ross Milbourne said the Bradley review was the best he had seen on the sector. He said its vision was to create a world-class university system. "We need a great university system, not one or two great universities," Professor Milbourne said.
Ms Gillard has finished her round of consultations and the HES understands that bureaucrats have been given two weeks to consolidate the sector's views for her consideration.
In his article for the HES, Mr Gallagher does not limit his criticisms to the research agenda. He asserts the Bradley report's "vision for the long-term tertiary education system is confused; it fails to offer incentives for diversification, either through competition or governmental strategies; and its financing model will not sustain quality higher education and university research".
The Go8's tough stand against Professor Bradley has been echoed by University of Melbourne professorial fellow Vin Massaro, who points out that the review's targets for enrolment growth would involve producing an extra 544,000 graduates by 2020, housed in an additional 20universities. "Assuming that the Government (was) prepared to fund these places, no mention has been made of the likelihood of finding the academic workforce to teach them, nor of the cost of building the necessary teaching infrastructure, nor of the plausibility that demand would rise so quickly," Professor Massaro says in an analysis for HES online. He estimates that the capital costs required to meet the challenges of this enrolment explosion would be in the range of $25billion-$30 billion.
SOURCE
Jump in fertility rates shows Peter Costello's baby bonus has delivered 12,000 extra children
Those evil old capitalistic "incentives" just keep on working, regardless of how much Leftists hate them
FORMER treasurer Peter Costello's baby bonus could have delivered almost 12,000 extra births, accounting for the surprise jump in Australian fertility rates between 2004 to 2006. A Melbourne Institute study has found that the controversial bonus succeeded in convincing at least some parents to follow Mr Costello's exhortation in 2004 to have "one for mum, one for dad, and one for your country".
Study co-author Mark Wooden said analysis of intentions to have a child and of reported births suggested the baby bonus had increased the fertility rate by 3.2 per cent. The figure matches the increase in Australian fertility rates from 1.763 in 2004, when 254,246 children were born, to 1.817 in 2006, when 265,949 were born. "If the baby bonus hadn't worked, and our estimates are correct, probably those 12,000 (additional) kids born in 2006 wouldn't have been born," Professor Wooden said.
Most of the women who had children in 2006, however, were swayed by factors other than the baby bonus to have children, making the job of convincing the remainder an expensive proposition for government, the study by US and Australian researchers found. "The small size of the effect yields a marginal cost per additional child figure of at least $124,000," it concluded.
The bold new estimates lend support to Howard government claims that the initiative drove up birthrates. It also challenges Families Minister Jenny Macklin's assertion last year that the recent rise in births was unrelated to the bonus. It also comes as the Rudd Government considers a Productivity Commission draft recommendation to roll the baby bonus, now worth $5000 per child, into a wider paid maternity leave scheme.
Professor Wooden said a higher birth rate had an economic value that could be assessed against the costs. "The point is, is $124,000 a waste of money? Well, what's the discounted value of a child? One day they're going to be future taxpayers," he said.
Labor announced in the last budget it would means-test the baby bonus, but has otherwise retained a policy it once labelled "appalling" and "poorly targeted and inefficient". It has abandoned the fertility argument for the baby bonus in favour of one stressing its value in offsetting some of the costs of having children. "There are a range of views about how best to increase fertility in Australia," a spokeswoman for Ms Macklin said. "The baby bonus provides support to families at a time of additional financial need."
SOURCE
The latest Greenie brainwave to avoid building dams. Much of Northern Australia is experiencing severe floods so "drought" is not the problem. Catching and distributing the water is where governments have been failing -- due to Greenie pressure. With the huge amount of "stimulus" money available for infrastructure, it is a pity that there are no plans for a big North/South water pipeline. But the Greenies would oppose that too, of course
HOUSEHOLDERS would be charged for each flush under a radical new toilet tax designed to help beat the drought. The scheme would replace the current system, which sees sewage charges based on a home's value - not its waste water output. CSIRO Policy and Economic Research Unit member Jim McColl and Adelaide University Water Management Professor Mike Young plan to promote the move to state and federal politicians and experts across the country. "It would encourage people to reduce their sewage output by taking shorter showers,recycling washing machine water or connecting rainwater tanks to internal plumbingto reduce their charges,''Professor Young said. "Some people may go as far as not flushing their toilet as often because the less sewage you produce, the less sewage rate you pay.''
Professor Young said sewer pricing needed to be addressed as part of the response to the water crisis. "People have been frightened to talk about sewage because it is yucky stuff, but it is critically important to address it, as part of the whole water cycle,'' he said. "We are looking at reforming the way sewage is priced and this plan will drive interest in the different ways water is used throughout Australia.''
The reform would see the abolition of the property-based charge with one based on a pay-as-you-go rate and a small fixed annual fee to cover the cost of meter readings and pipeline maintenance, Professor Young said. The pay-as-you-go rate would provide financial savings for those who reduce their waste water output.
Professor Young and Mr McColl will promote the plan nationally through their Droplet, a newsletter whose 6000 subscribers include state and federal politicians, water policy specialists and economists around the country. Professor Young said a sewage pricing plan, like the one proposed, was already used in the US. "In places like the City of Bellaire, Texas (a virtual suburb of Houston), they do it and the system seems to work,'' he said.
"As nearly all of (the homes in) mainland Australia's cities and towns already have water meters, introduction of a volumetric charge, such as that used in the City of Bellaire, would not be difficult to implement.'' Mr McColl said the plan had to be viewed in the context of "the crucial issues surrounding water resources'' in Australia. "We should be prepared for the (drought) situation we are going through now to occur again, as well as the potential impact of climate change, so we have to act now for the future,'' he said.
SOURCE
Floods hit NSW, Queensland and WA while boy drowns in Darwin
So much for the "drought" Greenies keep talking about. But reality has never been important to Greenies. They live in a world of fantasy and superstition
EVEN while firefighters are still battling bush infernos in scorched Victoria huge amounts of Australia are under floodwaters. Rains have eased, but more than 4000 people remain isolated by flood waters in parts of northern New South Wales, the State Emergency Service (SES) says. Heavy rains falling since Friday have soaked large parts of the state between Bourke and Sydney, but began easing last night, SES director general Murray Kear said.
"We've got about 4,000 people still isolated along the Bellinger River at the communities of Bellingen, Darkwood and Thora,'' Mr Kear said. "Those communities are isolated by the Bellinger River, which we are monitoring and has showed a slight lowering. "There have been no signs of an increase overnight, with no further rain, and the river is steady at about 5.3m currently.'' The Bureau of Meteorology forecasts a further 100mm of rain in the area today, but Mr Kear said satellite images showed the rain falling over the Pacific Ocean.
At Bourke in the state's central north, where a natural disaster zone has been declared, 200mm of rain has fallen in the past few days, equivalent to two-thirds of the city's annual rainfall. Between Bourke and Sydney and stretching to the coast, the SES has received more than 2000 calls for assistance since Friday. "We've conducted nine flood rescues across the north coast - people stranded in vehicles, et cetera,'' Mr Kear said. Last night and early today, the SES received 100 calls for help in the greater Sydney area from people beset by water inundation.
In far North Queensland flooded Gulf of Carpentaria communities and properties have been cut off for six weeks and face another six weeks in isolation, The Courier-Mail reports. As cooped-up residents go stir crazy from a month of isolation and as emergency fodder drops begin, there have been reports of feral pigs and dingoes feasting on the carcasses of dead cattle and snakes taking refuge in and around homes. "We found an olive green python skin about 12ft long (3.6m) in my craft room," Burke Shire mayor Annie Clarke, of Brinawa Station, said yesterday. "And our highest dry ground has been under the house where there's a fair few brown snakes. The browns tend to make you lift your skirts and go like hell.
Premier Anna Bligh said yesterday the Croydon-Normanton flood zone, the Norman, Flinders and Cloncurry river lower reaches would be the priority for $3m worth of helicopter drops.
In Western Australia's Pilbara region two national parks have been closed and mining activity disrupted after heavy rainfall. The Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) has closed all roads in the Millstream-Chichester National Park and all gravel roads in the Karijini National Park, PerthNow reports. Falls of up to 250mm caused widespread flooding in creeks and rivers in the Pilbara last night. Severe flooding in rivers and creeks at Millstream had resulted and water levels were set to rise in the next few days as heavy rain was forecast to continue. At Karijini, the park was closed with gorges at risk of flash flooding and landslides.
Rio Tinto Ltd said today that its Pilbara iron ore operations were being impeded by heavy rains and high winds, and it had evacuated stranded staff in the region by helicopter. And the Chinese operator of a Pilbara mine admitted today that workers had ridden on a grader to escape floodwaters but denied union claims it had put them at risk.
In the Northern Territory a swollen creek claimed the life of 13-year-old Daniel Browne yesterday despite the heroic effort of three mates to save him. Andrew Demetriou, Tiernan Anderson and Morgan Wise - all 15-year-olds - were the first to jump in and try and save Browne after his foot got tangled on rope and he drowned in the swollen Rapid Creek in Darwin's northern suburbs. The boys said they could not touch the bottom and that the 3m-deep water was fast-flowing. "It was so wet, wild and running quite fast," Morgan said.
SOURCE
Australian steel chief sounds job-loss alarm over proposed Warmist scheme
AUSTRALIA'S second-biggest steelmaker says the Rudd Government's emissions trading scheme is likely to cause job losses and force new investments offshore. Onesteel chief executive Geoff Plummer said, that even though the Government had tried to address the industry's concerns, his company "cannot support the carbon pollution reduction scheme based on its current design". "We understand the Government's intentions, but the practical effect of the scheme as it stands is that we will bear a cost not borne by our competitors," he said. "We would be the only steelmakers in the world to have these costs and that would put us at a material disadvantage."
Onesteel employs 10,000 people and is a major employer in the Newcastle and Whyalla regions.
Mr Plummer said the carbon pollution reduction scheme, as it stood, was likely to lead to job losses in the steel industry. The industry is collapsing globally as construction slumps during the economic crisis, a situation Mr Plummer said made the implementation of the scheme at this time even more difficult. "In the current economic environment there is an increased sensitivity around price and competitive positioning," he said. "We are finding it difficult enough at the moment. Since November, we have been forced to reduce our workforce, in terms of direct and indirect employees, by 650."
Onesteel said there was still uncertainty about the level of special assistance it would qualify for under the Government's proposed compensation for emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries. It said it was likely its integrated iron and steel making would initially qualify to receive 90 per cent of its necessary emission permits for free, while electric arc furnace operations would qualify for 60 per cent free permits.
Mr Plummer said Australian steel operations were among the most efficient in the world. If the carbon pollution reduction scheme boosted production from less efficient operations overseas, it could actually increase global emissions. He said his company would continue talks with the Government about possible changes to the emissions trading scheme, but had been forced to deliver a view about its impact as part of its first-half results were reported yesterday.
Industry concerns about the emissions trading scheme intensified during the summer as the economic conditions worsened. The Rudd Government is drafting legislation for its proposed scheme, which it hopes will pass the Senate by June. It argues that revenue from the scheme has been fully committed to its proposed compensation funds, leaving little room to increase free permits to industry.
SOURCE
Leading universities trash the plan for a vast expansion of higher education
The envious bitch who wrote the plan seems to have had no capacity for any thought beyond kneejerk Leftist responses and no idea of all that her proposals would lead to
The Group of Eight has savaged the Bradley review, describing it as a "road map to mediocrity", foolish and deeply flawed, in a confrontation likely to fuel political tensions ahead of the federal Government's promised education overhaul. The Government is formulating a response to the Bradley review in a fiscal climate dramatically altered from that in which the review was commissioned, and Education Minister Julia Gillard met the Go8 yesterday as part of her consultations with the sector. The group's response to the Bradley review has hardened this past month.
On Monday evening, University of NSW vice-chancellor Fred Hilmer warned the Government not to accept the review as a whole, saying it was not properly thought through and costed, and could not deliver dramatic increases in quality and output. He told the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney that he and "many of my colleagues" were troubled by the review's lack of a clear vision. He said the review did "not clearly acknowledge the fundamentally important principles of excellence, differentiation of mission and the importance of auniversity education for its own sake". "There is little recognition in the Bradley report of the special and key role played by research intensive, internationally well-ranked institutions."
The Go8 bristled at comments by Denise Bradley, former vice-chancellor of the University of South Australia, which it believes reflect a "hidden agenda" to "de-concentrate" research. Go8 vice-chancellors were fearful before the release of the Bradley review, in late December, that the hostility its chairwoman was believed to harbour against the research elite might influence her recommendations. The group decided to air its concerns, published today in the HES, after Professor Bradley revealed to a recent Australian Technology Network conference that her review had stressed the teaching and research nexus to counter an "extreme position" on research concentration.
Professor Bradley told the ATN conference: "I am aware of the arguments about the strategic importance of greater concentration of internationally competitive research performance, but I think that there are good national reasons for us to adopt a model which continues to encourage some spread across institutions." She argued against "too much concentration of research capacity in too small a number of what will inevitably be capital city institutions".
The Go8, which argued forcefully for research concentration to meet global challenges in a paper released before the Bradley report, slams the findings of her panel today. "What is presented as a tightening of criteria for university status, based on the mythical 'teaching-research nexus', could well loosen expectations of research quality and further dissipate the nation's research investment," argues the group's executive director Michael Gallagher. "The Bradley report reflects a parochial and complacent view in the context of aggressive concentration of research investment in many other countries."
But universities outside theGo8 sprang to Bradley's defence. In a direct response to Professor Hilmer's criticism, ATN director Vicki Thomson said: "We think that it is unfortunate that the Bradley review is being picked apart and that might diminish the opportunity for significant reform." The ATN and the Innovative Research Universities met MsGillard in Melbourne on Monday as part of the consultation process.
Representing the ATN, University of Technology, Sydney, vice-chancellor Ross Milbourne said the Bradley review was the best he had seen on the sector. He said its vision was to create a world-class university system. "We need a great university system, not one or two great universities," Professor Milbourne said.
Ms Gillard has finished her round of consultations and the HES understands that bureaucrats have been given two weeks to consolidate the sector's views for her consideration.
In his article for the HES, Mr Gallagher does not limit his criticisms to the research agenda. He asserts the Bradley report's "vision for the long-term tertiary education system is confused; it fails to offer incentives for diversification, either through competition or governmental strategies; and its financing model will not sustain quality higher education and university research".
The Go8's tough stand against Professor Bradley has been echoed by University of Melbourne professorial fellow Vin Massaro, who points out that the review's targets for enrolment growth would involve producing an extra 544,000 graduates by 2020, housed in an additional 20universities. "Assuming that the Government (was) prepared to fund these places, no mention has been made of the likelihood of finding the academic workforce to teach them, nor of the cost of building the necessary teaching infrastructure, nor of the plausibility that demand would rise so quickly," Professor Massaro says in an analysis for HES online. He estimates that the capital costs required to meet the challenges of this enrolment explosion would be in the range of $25billion-$30 billion.
SOURCE
Jump in fertility rates shows Peter Costello's baby bonus has delivered 12,000 extra children
Those evil old capitalistic "incentives" just keep on working, regardless of how much Leftists hate them
FORMER treasurer Peter Costello's baby bonus could have delivered almost 12,000 extra births, accounting for the surprise jump in Australian fertility rates between 2004 to 2006. A Melbourne Institute study has found that the controversial bonus succeeded in convincing at least some parents to follow Mr Costello's exhortation in 2004 to have "one for mum, one for dad, and one for your country".
Study co-author Mark Wooden said analysis of intentions to have a child and of reported births suggested the baby bonus had increased the fertility rate by 3.2 per cent. The figure matches the increase in Australian fertility rates from 1.763 in 2004, when 254,246 children were born, to 1.817 in 2006, when 265,949 were born. "If the baby bonus hadn't worked, and our estimates are correct, probably those 12,000 (additional) kids born in 2006 wouldn't have been born," Professor Wooden said.
Most of the women who had children in 2006, however, were swayed by factors other than the baby bonus to have children, making the job of convincing the remainder an expensive proposition for government, the study by US and Australian researchers found. "The small size of the effect yields a marginal cost per additional child figure of at least $124,000," it concluded.
The bold new estimates lend support to Howard government claims that the initiative drove up birthrates. It also challenges Families Minister Jenny Macklin's assertion last year that the recent rise in births was unrelated to the bonus. It also comes as the Rudd Government considers a Productivity Commission draft recommendation to roll the baby bonus, now worth $5000 per child, into a wider paid maternity leave scheme.
Professor Wooden said a higher birth rate had an economic value that could be assessed against the costs. "The point is, is $124,000 a waste of money? Well, what's the discounted value of a child? One day they're going to be future taxpayers," he said.
Labor announced in the last budget it would means-test the baby bonus, but has otherwise retained a policy it once labelled "appalling" and "poorly targeted and inefficient". It has abandoned the fertility argument for the baby bonus in favour of one stressing its value in offsetting some of the costs of having children. "There are a range of views about how best to increase fertility in Australia," a spokeswoman for Ms Macklin said. "The baby bonus provides support to families at a time of additional financial need."
SOURCE
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
ZEG
In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG says that sharks are a lot less dangerous than arsonists>
Arrogant Italian restaurateur refuses to admit that his serving sizes are small
Part of the email correspondence between the restaurateur and his customer above. The full story is here. I have been dining out frequently for many years and have had the same problem with mini-dinners at fancy restaurants, particularly fancy Italian ones. They seem to think everyone is on a Weightwatcher's diet. I now mostly avoid such restaurants and eat ethnic instead. You get much better value that way -- and better service too. Anyway, the above episode is fair warning to avoid Harry Ferrante's "Simon's Seafood Restaurant" in Northbridge, if you live in or are visiting Perth.
British stupidity of getting more people into university about to be repeated in Australia
So lots of kids attempt courses they cannot handle and people with degrees end up as waiters. Brilliant! Inflation of credential requirements is already a problem so they want to make it worse! Heaps of jobs that were once done with only high school education now require degrees -- meaning that kids spend 3 or 4 years wasting time and not earning or contributing. And if Fred Hilmer -- a cautious bureaucratic type not given to rocking the boat -- thinks it's foolish, then you can be sure it is REALLY foolish
The Bradley review of higher education lacks vision and sets unrealistic and unaffordable goals, the University of NSW vice-chancellor, Fred Hilmer, said in a speech last night. On the eve of a meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, Professor Hilmer said the review failed to provide a vital blueprint for the sector's future. He highlighted the proposed increase in undergraduates as being a huge and uncosted financial burden, saying another six or seven new universities the size of UNSW would be required.
Ms Gillard will meet Professor Hilmer and other members of the elite Group of Eight universities in Sydney. Ms Gillard began the series of six discussions two weeks ago so universities and other stakeholders could respond before the Government's official response to the review.
The former vice-chancellor of the University of South Australia, Denise Bradley, released her review of higher education in December, urging the nation to increase participation in higher levels of education and give fairer access to people from lower socio-economic groups and rural areas.
Professor Hilmer said the Secretary of the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Lisa Paul, should be appointed to map out the long-term overhaul of the system with full and realistic costings. He said extra funding would ensure the viability of a strained higher education system in the short term by allowing immediate action on problems such as student/staff ratios and research funding shortfalls.
But the blueprint for a highly effective, affordable plan for higher education was missing, Professor Hilmer told the Centre for Independent Studies forum at St Leonards. "The problem is not the themes themselves but the lack of a vision and a clear and affordable path. The proposed path seems to be to recommend processes without a sense of where they might take us, and at what cost," he said.
The Bradley target that 40 per cent of 25-34 year-olds will have attained a qualification at bachelor level would require about "a 70 per cent increase in commencing students annually, 3.2 million additional enrolments over a decade, $15 billion in capital works, the equivalent of about six or seven new universities the size of UNSW, and an additional 17,700 academic staff", Professor Hilmer said.
SOURCE
Dentists lash out at socialization plan
If you knew what socialized dentistry is like in Britain -- with people reduced to pulling out their own teeth with pliers -- you would run a mile from this. "Free" dentistry just leads to massive waiting lists -- sometimes even leading to death when serious problems are left untreated. There are in fact "free" dental hospitals in capital cities already but you can wait years to access them
Dentists have condemned a Medicare-style system for free universal dental care being considered by the Rudd Government as impractical, and massively expensive. The Denticare plan is part of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission's sweeping makeover in hospital and health services, including for indigenous people, the aged and young people with mental illness. Denticare would be financed by a 0.75 per cent income levy.
In its interim report released yesterday, the commission raised three options for reshaping state and federal governments' running of the health system. The proposals range from an improved version of the existing system, through to the development of a European-style social insurance scheme financed by the Commonwealth under which people could choose from health fund plans which would purchase services on their behalf. The commission is to decide which scheme it would favour in its final report to the Government expected by midyear.
The Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, said the Government was happy to have a debate about the possibility of a new tax to finance Denticare, which she described as a "fairly radical proposal . but we are interested in the community's response to this".
But Dr Neil Hewson, the president of the Australian Dental Association, representing private dentists, slammed the Denticare proposal, saying it could nearly double to $11 billion the cost of dentistry to the government and individual patients. "The recommendation . for a universal Denticare scheme is impractical, nonsensical, overly simplistic and flies in the face of much of the deliberations that have taken place on this issue over the past decade," he said. "It shows no appreciation of the real problems facing dental delivery in Australia."
The association believed the Government should target the 35 per cent of the community who could not access or afford proper dental care and said it would be fiscally irresponsible to introduce a universal scheme for dentistry.
The chief executive of the Australian Health Insurance Association, Dr Michael Armitage, said insurers would consider the dental care proposal and other recommendations and compile a response to the reform commission. "The industry would support any plan to improve access to dental care for Australians but it is about more than that - it's about quality, safety and achieving better health outcomes - not just health financing," he said.
The Opposition's health spokesman, Peter Dutton, said taxpayers would pay billions of dollars in extra taxes for a national Denticare scheme. "Almost 11 million Australians or 50 per cent of the population would pay more than they currently do to meet the costs of the Denticare scheme," he said.
SOURCE
How to reduce the unemployment threat
Swan has already acknowledged the global financial crisis will result in increased unemployment in Australia. Australia is about the 14th largest economy and, as a nation trading goods and services, its economy is very dependent on the world economy. Now that the Prime Minister and his colleagues concede that the challenge they face is to sustain as many jobs as possible in the climate of increasing unemployment, what can be done?
The Government's two expenditure packages are already in place and few would argue that over the next couple of years it should spend more and borrow more to finance such expenditure. Yet there is much that can be done to support employment, especially in small business, without in any way further increasing the budget deficit.
* Unfair dismissal legislation is a clear disincentive to small business to take on full-time workers. Rudd is about to reintroduce unfair dismissal legislation covering small business. Certainly this is not as draconian as that which prevailed before the Howard government. But it is a disincentive to employment, nevertheless. It is not clear why any employer should be effectively compelled to employ anyone whom he or she does not wish to employ. But the unfair dismissal provisions are now well entrenched with respect to larger businesses. The return of these provisions covering enterprises employing fewer than 100 workers should be postponed at least until the global economic crisis is over.
* Whatever may be said of the Coalition's Work Choices legislation, it went hand-in-hand with a reduction in unemployment and the creation of job scarcities in certain parts of Australia. While much of the developed world is in recession, it would make sense for the Prime Minister to at least delay Labor's Fair Work Australia legislation.
* Last Thursday Craig Thomson, the Labor chairman of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, announced that the Treasurer had asked his committee to "inquire into the choice of emissions trading as the central policy to reduce Australia's carbon pollution taking into account the need to reduce carbon pollution at the lowest economic cost". Thomson and his colleagues are required to report back later this year.
The rapid decline in the world carbon price, along with reduced emissions due to the economic downturn, could give the committee ample reason to recommend that the Government postpone its carbon reduction scheme until at least 2011 or 2012. There are few commentators who would argue that a tax on businesses which emit carbon will increase employment. It is much more likely to lead to a net rise in unemployment. So it makes sense to delay the policy until the end of the economic crisis. Especially since neither China nor India seems likely to embrace carbon reduction and since it is unclear how far the Obama Administration and/or the Congress will go in reducing carbon when unemployment is on the march in the United States.
There is no convincing evidence that any government or individual knows how to handle the global financial crisis. So it makes sense for politicians to focus on how not to make a bad situation worse. As Robert Skidelsky wrote in Interests & Obsessions, Britain recovered rapidly from the Depression in the absence of any fiscal stimulus. Yet despite Franklin Roosevelt's expansionary New Deal, the US recovery was slow. Australia's economic policy at the time was closer to that of Britain than the US, as is documented in C.B. Schedvin's Australia And The Great Depression.
If the Rudd Government has any cash left over, it would be advised to focus on reducing taxation and costly regulation on small business. Unlike government, small business is the main driver in Australia of job creation and job support.
More here
Conservative Senator says nation can't afford maternity leave
In Sweden, which has very "generous" maternity leave laws, the great majority of young females work for the government. Few others can risk hiring them
QUEENSLAND Senator Barnaby Joyce says the nation can no longer afford paid maternity leave and business would stop hiring females if forced into it. Senator Joyce said Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's $42billion economic stimulus package had drained the coffers and paid maternity leave was now a casualty of the nation's newly acquired debt.
The Productivity Commission last year proposed a $450million-a-year paid parental leave scheme that would pay mothers 18 weeks' leave at the minimum wage. The commission's final report is due within weeks. Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the Government would respond to the final report but paid maternity leave had not been ruled out of this year's Budget. "Paid maternity leave will be considered in the Budget context," Ms Gillard told Channel 9 yesterday. "Obviously things that amount to expenditure, particularly ongoing expenditure for the nation, will be dealt with in the Budget context."
Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner was preaching the same message yesterday on Channel 10's Meet the Press. "That along with a range of issues (including) our commitment to increase the living standards of the pensioners of Australia, other important issues that are on the table, they will be in the mix for the Budget," Mr Tanner said. "There's a lot of issues within the paid maternity leave question that have to be dealt with as well. "It's not a simple matter by any means."
Meanwhile, Senator Joyce said increasing the base rate of the aged pension was more important than having paid maternity leave. He said businesses would stop hiring female employees if they were forced to fund their own maternity schemes. "They will just start employing blokes," Senator Joyce said. He said Mr Rudd's stimulus package was to blame. "The money is no longer there. In its place is a silo of debt," he said.
SOURCE
In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG says that sharks are a lot less dangerous than arsonists>
Arrogant Italian restaurateur refuses to admit that his serving sizes are small
Part of the email correspondence between the restaurateur and his customer above. The full story is here. I have been dining out frequently for many years and have had the same problem with mini-dinners at fancy restaurants, particularly fancy Italian ones. They seem to think everyone is on a Weightwatcher's diet. I now mostly avoid such restaurants and eat ethnic instead. You get much better value that way -- and better service too. Anyway, the above episode is fair warning to avoid Harry Ferrante's "Simon's Seafood Restaurant" in Northbridge, if you live in or are visiting Perth.
British stupidity of getting more people into university about to be repeated in Australia
So lots of kids attempt courses they cannot handle and people with degrees end up as waiters. Brilliant! Inflation of credential requirements is already a problem so they want to make it worse! Heaps of jobs that were once done with only high school education now require degrees -- meaning that kids spend 3 or 4 years wasting time and not earning or contributing. And if Fred Hilmer -- a cautious bureaucratic type not given to rocking the boat -- thinks it's foolish, then you can be sure it is REALLY foolish
The Bradley review of higher education lacks vision and sets unrealistic and unaffordable goals, the University of NSW vice-chancellor, Fred Hilmer, said in a speech last night. On the eve of a meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, Professor Hilmer said the review failed to provide a vital blueprint for the sector's future. He highlighted the proposed increase in undergraduates as being a huge and uncosted financial burden, saying another six or seven new universities the size of UNSW would be required.
Ms Gillard will meet Professor Hilmer and other members of the elite Group of Eight universities in Sydney. Ms Gillard began the series of six discussions two weeks ago so universities and other stakeholders could respond before the Government's official response to the review.
The former vice-chancellor of the University of South Australia, Denise Bradley, released her review of higher education in December, urging the nation to increase participation in higher levels of education and give fairer access to people from lower socio-economic groups and rural areas.
Professor Hilmer said the Secretary of the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Lisa Paul, should be appointed to map out the long-term overhaul of the system with full and realistic costings. He said extra funding would ensure the viability of a strained higher education system in the short term by allowing immediate action on problems such as student/staff ratios and research funding shortfalls.
But the blueprint for a highly effective, affordable plan for higher education was missing, Professor Hilmer told the Centre for Independent Studies forum at St Leonards. "The problem is not the themes themselves but the lack of a vision and a clear and affordable path. The proposed path seems to be to recommend processes without a sense of where they might take us, and at what cost," he said.
The Bradley target that 40 per cent of 25-34 year-olds will have attained a qualification at bachelor level would require about "a 70 per cent increase in commencing students annually, 3.2 million additional enrolments over a decade, $15 billion in capital works, the equivalent of about six or seven new universities the size of UNSW, and an additional 17,700 academic staff", Professor Hilmer said.
SOURCE
Dentists lash out at socialization plan
If you knew what socialized dentistry is like in Britain -- with people reduced to pulling out their own teeth with pliers -- you would run a mile from this. "Free" dentistry just leads to massive waiting lists -- sometimes even leading to death when serious problems are left untreated. There are in fact "free" dental hospitals in capital cities already but you can wait years to access them
Dentists have condemned a Medicare-style system for free universal dental care being considered by the Rudd Government as impractical, and massively expensive. The Denticare plan is part of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission's sweeping makeover in hospital and health services, including for indigenous people, the aged and young people with mental illness. Denticare would be financed by a 0.75 per cent income levy.
In its interim report released yesterday, the commission raised three options for reshaping state and federal governments' running of the health system. The proposals range from an improved version of the existing system, through to the development of a European-style social insurance scheme financed by the Commonwealth under which people could choose from health fund plans which would purchase services on their behalf. The commission is to decide which scheme it would favour in its final report to the Government expected by midyear.
The Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, said the Government was happy to have a debate about the possibility of a new tax to finance Denticare, which she described as a "fairly radical proposal . but we are interested in the community's response to this".
But Dr Neil Hewson, the president of the Australian Dental Association, representing private dentists, slammed the Denticare proposal, saying it could nearly double to $11 billion the cost of dentistry to the government and individual patients. "The recommendation . for a universal Denticare scheme is impractical, nonsensical, overly simplistic and flies in the face of much of the deliberations that have taken place on this issue over the past decade," he said. "It shows no appreciation of the real problems facing dental delivery in Australia."
The association believed the Government should target the 35 per cent of the community who could not access or afford proper dental care and said it would be fiscally irresponsible to introduce a universal scheme for dentistry.
The chief executive of the Australian Health Insurance Association, Dr Michael Armitage, said insurers would consider the dental care proposal and other recommendations and compile a response to the reform commission. "The industry would support any plan to improve access to dental care for Australians but it is about more than that - it's about quality, safety and achieving better health outcomes - not just health financing," he said.
The Opposition's health spokesman, Peter Dutton, said taxpayers would pay billions of dollars in extra taxes for a national Denticare scheme. "Almost 11 million Australians or 50 per cent of the population would pay more than they currently do to meet the costs of the Denticare scheme," he said.
SOURCE
How to reduce the unemployment threat
Swan has already acknowledged the global financial crisis will result in increased unemployment in Australia. Australia is about the 14th largest economy and, as a nation trading goods and services, its economy is very dependent on the world economy. Now that the Prime Minister and his colleagues concede that the challenge they face is to sustain as many jobs as possible in the climate of increasing unemployment, what can be done?
The Government's two expenditure packages are already in place and few would argue that over the next couple of years it should spend more and borrow more to finance such expenditure. Yet there is much that can be done to support employment, especially in small business, without in any way further increasing the budget deficit.
* Unfair dismissal legislation is a clear disincentive to small business to take on full-time workers. Rudd is about to reintroduce unfair dismissal legislation covering small business. Certainly this is not as draconian as that which prevailed before the Howard government. But it is a disincentive to employment, nevertheless. It is not clear why any employer should be effectively compelled to employ anyone whom he or she does not wish to employ. But the unfair dismissal provisions are now well entrenched with respect to larger businesses. The return of these provisions covering enterprises employing fewer than 100 workers should be postponed at least until the global economic crisis is over.
* Whatever may be said of the Coalition's Work Choices legislation, it went hand-in-hand with a reduction in unemployment and the creation of job scarcities in certain parts of Australia. While much of the developed world is in recession, it would make sense for the Prime Minister to at least delay Labor's Fair Work Australia legislation.
* Last Thursday Craig Thomson, the Labor chairman of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, announced that the Treasurer had asked his committee to "inquire into the choice of emissions trading as the central policy to reduce Australia's carbon pollution taking into account the need to reduce carbon pollution at the lowest economic cost". Thomson and his colleagues are required to report back later this year.
The rapid decline in the world carbon price, along with reduced emissions due to the economic downturn, could give the committee ample reason to recommend that the Government postpone its carbon reduction scheme until at least 2011 or 2012. There are few commentators who would argue that a tax on businesses which emit carbon will increase employment. It is much more likely to lead to a net rise in unemployment. So it makes sense to delay the policy until the end of the economic crisis. Especially since neither China nor India seems likely to embrace carbon reduction and since it is unclear how far the Obama Administration and/or the Congress will go in reducing carbon when unemployment is on the march in the United States.
There is no convincing evidence that any government or individual knows how to handle the global financial crisis. So it makes sense for politicians to focus on how not to make a bad situation worse. As Robert Skidelsky wrote in Interests & Obsessions, Britain recovered rapidly from the Depression in the absence of any fiscal stimulus. Yet despite Franklin Roosevelt's expansionary New Deal, the US recovery was slow. Australia's economic policy at the time was closer to that of Britain than the US, as is documented in C.B. Schedvin's Australia And The Great Depression.
If the Rudd Government has any cash left over, it would be advised to focus on reducing taxation and costly regulation on small business. Unlike government, small business is the main driver in Australia of job creation and job support.
More here
Conservative Senator says nation can't afford maternity leave
In Sweden, which has very "generous" maternity leave laws, the great majority of young females work for the government. Few others can risk hiring them
QUEENSLAND Senator Barnaby Joyce says the nation can no longer afford paid maternity leave and business would stop hiring females if forced into it. Senator Joyce said Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's $42billion economic stimulus package had drained the coffers and paid maternity leave was now a casualty of the nation's newly acquired debt.
The Productivity Commission last year proposed a $450million-a-year paid parental leave scheme that would pay mothers 18 weeks' leave at the minimum wage. The commission's final report is due within weeks. Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the Government would respond to the final report but paid maternity leave had not been ruled out of this year's Budget. "Paid maternity leave will be considered in the Budget context," Ms Gillard told Channel 9 yesterday. "Obviously things that amount to expenditure, particularly ongoing expenditure for the nation, will be dealt with in the Budget context."
Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner was preaching the same message yesterday on Channel 10's Meet the Press. "That along with a range of issues (including) our commitment to increase the living standards of the pensioners of Australia, other important issues that are on the table, they will be in the mix for the Budget," Mr Tanner said. "There's a lot of issues within the paid maternity leave question that have to be dealt with as well. "It's not a simple matter by any means."
Meanwhile, Senator Joyce said increasing the base rate of the aged pension was more important than having paid maternity leave. He said businesses would stop hiring female employees if they were forced to fund their own maternity schemes. "They will just start employing blokes," Senator Joyce said. He said Mr Rudd's stimulus package was to blame. "The money is no longer there. In its place is a silo of debt," he said.
SOURCE
Monday, February 16, 2009
Creditable national leadership
I have always had some time for Mr Rudd. His instincts seem to be good even if, as a Leftist, he is at times prone to some silly ideas. I have now been particularly impressed by his attitude to the bushfires. Instead of just paying a flying visit to the area, as many politicians would, he seems to have been spending most of his time with the victims and firefighters. And his presence among the victims has been a notably sympathetic one -- giving the victims a sense that their problems are recognized and that they are respected. The fact that Mr Rudd is clearly a committed Christian undoubtedly helps.
And I am a bit prejuduced in favour of our Governor General because she has been an active supporter of my old church but she too has been constantly visiting afflicted parts of the country, particularly the vast areas up North that have been flooded. And that too gives people the feeling that their problems are recognized and that they are appreciated.
There seems to have been a conspicuous absence of the Victorian and Queensland State governments from their respective disaster areas.
Public hospitals have triple the baby deaths of private
Poor people tend to have worse health but the gap here seems too large for that to be the main factor. And the grave problems often reported with public hospital obstetric services leave little room for doubt about where the main fault lies
For every baby that dies soon after birth in an Australian private hospital, three die in the public system, alarming new figures reveal. Women who give birth in public hospitals are also more than twice as likely to suffer tearing, or that their babies will need resuscitation, according to the alarming findings of a new study. Associate Professor Steve Robson and colleagues examined the outcomes of almost 790,000 births which took place over four years, and about a third were in the nation's private hospitals.
Dr Robson said he was shocked not only by the "striking difference" between the two systems, but also by the results that contradict a common criticism of births in private hospitals. "There is often a lot of criticism in the medical press of rates of caesarean birth and rates of the induction of labour - everybody says 'Wow they're so much higher in private hospitals,"' says Dr Robson, of the Australian National University Medical School. "And if you take the literature at face value ... all of those things ought to up the complication rate, (but) it was lower. "We found that quite staggering."
Dr Robson says the study raises questions about the view that some in the medical fraternity hold that "increased rates of obstetric intervention are bad for women and their babies". "Our study suggests these things could be beneficial because the rate of babies dying is about half in the private hospital, and the rate of serious maternal injury is less than half," he said. Dr Robson said differences in the health and socio-economic status of the mothers alone could not explain the performance gap between public and private hospitals, and that further research was needed. "And it's not as though we've taken a small sample, we basically looked at every birth in the country (over four years)," he says.
The study, to be published in the Medical Journal of Australia, reported women giving birth in public hospitals had more than twice the rate of "severe perineal tearing", and their babies were more than twice as likely to require "high-level resuscitation" at birth. The neonatal death rate was one for every 1,000 babies born in private hospitals, compared to three in 1,000 in public hospitals.
The study was also undertaken by Elizabeth Sullivan and Paula Laws from the Perinatal and Reproductive Epidemiology Research Unit, at the University of NSW. Australia's rate of caesarean sections has risen from a single digit per cent in the 1980s to now account for more than 30 per cent of all births.
SOURCE
The most politically incorrect man in the world?
The Top Gear live stage show in Sydney last week caused waves in Britain that we barely noticed. Iconic British host Jeremy Clarkson had barely alighted from his plane when he called his prime minister, Gordon Brown, a "one-eyed Scottish idiot". Since Brown does have only one eye, disabled groups in Britain were outraged, as were Scots, Labour supporters and idiots. Clarkson, 48, was lambasted in front-page stories in his homeland until he apologised - which he did, to all but the idiots.
For Australian audiences who packed the Acer Arena from last Thursday for 10 live performances of the top-rating SBS show, such Clarkson irreverence rated a chuckle rather than a scolding. Such is the relaxed Australian attitude to politician abuse, he could have said whatever he liked about Kevin Rudd and no one would have minded.
But the furore illustrates what is the key to Top Gear's success: Clarkson's brazen political incorrectness. He will bag Audis with one breath and greenies with the next. He has no sacred cows. The British version of Top Gear, which attracts as many as 1million Australian viewers each week, is an exuberant thumbing of noses at climate alarmists and safety Nazis. It is a relief valve from a politically correct world full of admonitions and tongue-biting. Just when cars were being targeted as dangerous, polluting anachronisms, Top Gear became one of the world's most popular television shows. Women make up more than 40 per cent of its audience.
Paradoxically, as environmental alarmism grows, so too does our attachment to cars, with Top Gear's popularity one indication. We've just had Clint Eastwood's movie Gran Torino, about a retired auto-worker and his most precious possession - his red 1972 muscle car, the Ford Gran Torino. Next month we will have the ultimate car lovers' movie, Eric Bana's Love The Beast, starring his red Ford GT Falcon Coupe. A documentary charting Bana's 25-year love affair with his car, it also features his three best friends, Jay Leno, Dr Phil and, of course, Jeremy Clarkson.
Apart from great cars, Top Gear's appeal is about three middle-aged men having unrestrained blokey fun, and insulting each other and everyone else, in classic pommy style. Clarkson once had a custard pie thrown in his face by green protesters; his advice to cyclists was: "Do not cruise through red lights. Because if I'm coming the other way, I will run you down, for fun."
At his Sydney press conference last week he slammed environmentalist critics of the show. "We don't have a carbon footprint. That's because we drive everywhere." And he claimed Britain's current cold snap was caused by "too many green people in the world . not buying enough Range Rovers to warm it up."
Then he insulted his British studio audiences of his Top Gear live show: "You should see some of the apes that turn up." He obviously hasn't been to a WWF wrestling match. It was quite a different crowd last Friday at the ACER Arena from the one I got to know a little too well when my sons were wrestling fanatics. Fewer tattoos, shorter hair, no John Cena T-shirts. Top Gear drew families from middle Australia, in Holdens and Fords, Audis and Subarus. The most flamboyant young men wore Holden jackets or T-shirts with such slogans as "Own the road" and "I am the Stig" - in reference to Top Gear's test driver.
The live show came to Sydney on the last part of its tour to South Africa, Hong Kong and New Zealand, "a tour of countries we used to own," said Clarkson, before joking about his first sightseeing adventure in Sydney last week. "Coogee Bay Hotel - chocolate chip heaven", referring to last year's faeces in the ice-cream scandal. "I'm sure there was sweet corn in there," quipped his sidekick Richard Hammond.
There were brunettes in tight red jumpsuits, and French stunt motorcyclists performing death-defying feats inside a giant mesh sphere which Clarkson called "the colander of death". "They're only French," said Clarkson. "If something goes wrong it will just be corned beef," said Hammond.
There was also ritual audience humiliation. Clarkson singled out one hapless man and called him a "cock" for owning an Audi and a "poor cock" because it was an A6. "You can tell he's an Audi driver because he's wearing a branded shirt." The audience squirmed as the man, sitting with his young son, turned beetroot red with embarrassment. We mightn't care about politicians but perhaps British schoolyard bullying of the type Clarkson practises isn't enjoyed in Australia. And it's just as well the audience didn't know some of the cars were fakes. Car soccer went down rather better, with six little cars pushing a giant inflatable soccer ball around the stadium, with only one fender bender and many close misses in a display of superb stunt driving.
There is something about Top Gear's unabashed celebration of human ingenuity, technological precision, speed, snazzy styling, comfort and independence that ignites the passions of car fans and car agnostics alike. Killjoy car-haters: eat your hearts out.
SOURCE
Where did Sydney's summer go?
About one week after western suburbs endured its hottest four-day heatwave in 37 years; Sydney is likely to be heading for it coolest February period in more than 50 years. The city is in the middle of at least a week where the temperature stays below 25 degrees. The likely number of days is nine, with next Wednesday being the first day warmer than 25 since last Sunday. This will make it the longest February stretch below 25 degrees since the 1950s. Sydney also had nine days in-a-row below 25 in February 1953 and eight in 1996. The last time there was a longer stretch was in 1950 when there were 13.
The extraordinary turnaround from last week's heat is a due to plenty of cloud and showers being blown in by persistent onshore southeasterly winds. When will the summer warmth return? The middle of next week as winds turn warmer northeasterly, but it will only be brief, just a few days. The city is likely to reach the high 20s, possibly the low 30s, but a cooler change late next week will put an end to that warmth. Western suburbs will hit the low-to-mid 30s before the change.
SOURCE
I have always had some time for Mr Rudd. His instincts seem to be good even if, as a Leftist, he is at times prone to some silly ideas. I have now been particularly impressed by his attitude to the bushfires. Instead of just paying a flying visit to the area, as many politicians would, he seems to have been spending most of his time with the victims and firefighters. And his presence among the victims has been a notably sympathetic one -- giving the victims a sense that their problems are recognized and that they are respected. The fact that Mr Rudd is clearly a committed Christian undoubtedly helps.
And I am a bit prejuduced in favour of our Governor General because she has been an active supporter of my old church but she too has been constantly visiting afflicted parts of the country, particularly the vast areas up North that have been flooded. And that too gives people the feeling that their problems are recognized and that they are appreciated.
There seems to have been a conspicuous absence of the Victorian and Queensland State governments from their respective disaster areas.
Public hospitals have triple the baby deaths of private
Poor people tend to have worse health but the gap here seems too large for that to be the main factor. And the grave problems often reported with public hospital obstetric services leave little room for doubt about where the main fault lies
For every baby that dies soon after birth in an Australian private hospital, three die in the public system, alarming new figures reveal. Women who give birth in public hospitals are also more than twice as likely to suffer tearing, or that their babies will need resuscitation, according to the alarming findings of a new study. Associate Professor Steve Robson and colleagues examined the outcomes of almost 790,000 births which took place over four years, and about a third were in the nation's private hospitals.
Dr Robson said he was shocked not only by the "striking difference" between the two systems, but also by the results that contradict a common criticism of births in private hospitals. "There is often a lot of criticism in the medical press of rates of caesarean birth and rates of the induction of labour - everybody says 'Wow they're so much higher in private hospitals,"' says Dr Robson, of the Australian National University Medical School. "And if you take the literature at face value ... all of those things ought to up the complication rate, (but) it was lower. "We found that quite staggering."
Dr Robson says the study raises questions about the view that some in the medical fraternity hold that "increased rates of obstetric intervention are bad for women and their babies". "Our study suggests these things could be beneficial because the rate of babies dying is about half in the private hospital, and the rate of serious maternal injury is less than half," he said. Dr Robson said differences in the health and socio-economic status of the mothers alone could not explain the performance gap between public and private hospitals, and that further research was needed. "And it's not as though we've taken a small sample, we basically looked at every birth in the country (over four years)," he says.
The study, to be published in the Medical Journal of Australia, reported women giving birth in public hospitals had more than twice the rate of "severe perineal tearing", and their babies were more than twice as likely to require "high-level resuscitation" at birth. The neonatal death rate was one for every 1,000 babies born in private hospitals, compared to three in 1,000 in public hospitals.
The study was also undertaken by Elizabeth Sullivan and Paula Laws from the Perinatal and Reproductive Epidemiology Research Unit, at the University of NSW. Australia's rate of caesarean sections has risen from a single digit per cent in the 1980s to now account for more than 30 per cent of all births.
SOURCE
The most politically incorrect man in the world?
The Top Gear live stage show in Sydney last week caused waves in Britain that we barely noticed. Iconic British host Jeremy Clarkson had barely alighted from his plane when he called his prime minister, Gordon Brown, a "one-eyed Scottish idiot". Since Brown does have only one eye, disabled groups in Britain were outraged, as were Scots, Labour supporters and idiots. Clarkson, 48, was lambasted in front-page stories in his homeland until he apologised - which he did, to all but the idiots.
For Australian audiences who packed the Acer Arena from last Thursday for 10 live performances of the top-rating SBS show, such Clarkson irreverence rated a chuckle rather than a scolding. Such is the relaxed Australian attitude to politician abuse, he could have said whatever he liked about Kevin Rudd and no one would have minded.
But the furore illustrates what is the key to Top Gear's success: Clarkson's brazen political incorrectness. He will bag Audis with one breath and greenies with the next. He has no sacred cows. The British version of Top Gear, which attracts as many as 1million Australian viewers each week, is an exuberant thumbing of noses at climate alarmists and safety Nazis. It is a relief valve from a politically correct world full of admonitions and tongue-biting. Just when cars were being targeted as dangerous, polluting anachronisms, Top Gear became one of the world's most popular television shows. Women make up more than 40 per cent of its audience.
Paradoxically, as environmental alarmism grows, so too does our attachment to cars, with Top Gear's popularity one indication. We've just had Clint Eastwood's movie Gran Torino, about a retired auto-worker and his most precious possession - his red 1972 muscle car, the Ford Gran Torino. Next month we will have the ultimate car lovers' movie, Eric Bana's Love The Beast, starring his red Ford GT Falcon Coupe. A documentary charting Bana's 25-year love affair with his car, it also features his three best friends, Jay Leno, Dr Phil and, of course, Jeremy Clarkson.
Apart from great cars, Top Gear's appeal is about three middle-aged men having unrestrained blokey fun, and insulting each other and everyone else, in classic pommy style. Clarkson once had a custard pie thrown in his face by green protesters; his advice to cyclists was: "Do not cruise through red lights. Because if I'm coming the other way, I will run you down, for fun."
At his Sydney press conference last week he slammed environmentalist critics of the show. "We don't have a carbon footprint. That's because we drive everywhere." And he claimed Britain's current cold snap was caused by "too many green people in the world . not buying enough Range Rovers to warm it up."
Then he insulted his British studio audiences of his Top Gear live show: "You should see some of the apes that turn up." He obviously hasn't been to a WWF wrestling match. It was quite a different crowd last Friday at the ACER Arena from the one I got to know a little too well when my sons were wrestling fanatics. Fewer tattoos, shorter hair, no John Cena T-shirts. Top Gear drew families from middle Australia, in Holdens and Fords, Audis and Subarus. The most flamboyant young men wore Holden jackets or T-shirts with such slogans as "Own the road" and "I am the Stig" - in reference to Top Gear's test driver.
The live show came to Sydney on the last part of its tour to South Africa, Hong Kong and New Zealand, "a tour of countries we used to own," said Clarkson, before joking about his first sightseeing adventure in Sydney last week. "Coogee Bay Hotel - chocolate chip heaven", referring to last year's faeces in the ice-cream scandal. "I'm sure there was sweet corn in there," quipped his sidekick Richard Hammond.
There were brunettes in tight red jumpsuits, and French stunt motorcyclists performing death-defying feats inside a giant mesh sphere which Clarkson called "the colander of death". "They're only French," said Clarkson. "If something goes wrong it will just be corned beef," said Hammond.
There was also ritual audience humiliation. Clarkson singled out one hapless man and called him a "cock" for owning an Audi and a "poor cock" because it was an A6. "You can tell he's an Audi driver because he's wearing a branded shirt." The audience squirmed as the man, sitting with his young son, turned beetroot red with embarrassment. We mightn't care about politicians but perhaps British schoolyard bullying of the type Clarkson practises isn't enjoyed in Australia. And it's just as well the audience didn't know some of the cars were fakes. Car soccer went down rather better, with six little cars pushing a giant inflatable soccer ball around the stadium, with only one fender bender and many close misses in a display of superb stunt driving.
There is something about Top Gear's unabashed celebration of human ingenuity, technological precision, speed, snazzy styling, comfort and independence that ignites the passions of car fans and car agnostics alike. Killjoy car-haters: eat your hearts out.
SOURCE
Where did Sydney's summer go?
About one week after western suburbs endured its hottest four-day heatwave in 37 years; Sydney is likely to be heading for it coolest February period in more than 50 years. The city is in the middle of at least a week where the temperature stays below 25 degrees. The likely number of days is nine, with next Wednesday being the first day warmer than 25 since last Sunday. This will make it the longest February stretch below 25 degrees since the 1950s. Sydney also had nine days in-a-row below 25 in February 1953 and eight in 1996. The last time there was a longer stretch was in 1950 when there were 13.
The extraordinary turnaround from last week's heat is a due to plenty of cloud and showers being blown in by persistent onshore southeasterly winds. When will the summer warmth return? The middle of next week as winds turn warmer northeasterly, but it will only be brief, just a few days. The city is likely to reach the high 20s, possibly the low 30s, but a cooler change late next week will put an end to that warmth. Western suburbs will hit the low-to-mid 30s before the change.
SOURCE
Sunday, February 15, 2009
ZEG
In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is surprised and pleased to note that Germaine Greer has named the culprits for the huge fires in Victoria -- politicians pandering to Greenie irrationality
Many Australian High School students can't read and write
Ever-declining standards. I think our leftist "educators" will only be happy when NO-ONE can read and write
Reading skills at some Queensland high schools have slumped to alarming levels with about one in every three students considered to be reading below their age level, according to teachers and private tutors. And in a parallel problem some students are being taught one subject by as many as 12 different teachers because of staff shortages in state high schools.
An internal screening test on Year 8 students at one school has found that most of the struggling students - one-third of that year level - were reading at the standard of a Year 4 student. The worst readers among those Year 8s - about one-sixth of the entire group needing learning support - were reading at a level of Year 3 student or below, the tests revealed.
Frustrated school learning support staff say they have begun to refer students to reading lessons outside schools, as the curriculum is failing to address the problem. Their claims are backed by private tutors interviewed by The Sunday Mail, who say they regularly encounter teenagers reading three to four years below their age. It is understood the internal testing that highlights the problem was done in schools at Logan and the northern Gold Coast. But many educators say similar reading level issues can be found state-wide. Gold Coast-based private tutor Dr Bruce Cruicks is teaching 15 state high school students with reading problems: "Some of these kids came to me with no reading level at all. They could have been in Grade 3 or 4."
A Brisbane-based tutor, who asked not to be identified to shield his students, said many were initially up to four years behind in their reading. A state school teacher who was involved in recent testing of literacy levels, and also asked not to be named, said: " Some kids are really stuck at such a basic level, and the gap between them and other students just keeps widening. Yet we get told (by governments) that (the reading level) is getting better."
Education Queensland does not gather each school's internal testing data on reading levels, and the only official guide can be found in State Budget figures. Those statistics back up the concerns of education leaders, with national benchmark figures showing that reading for Year 7 students has dropped by more than 11 percentage points in three years, down from around 93 per cent in the 2004-05 period.
Queensland Teachers Union president Steve Ryan said he believed the State and Federal governments should focus on providing more resources, rather than worrying about preparing students for national benchmark testing. An Education Queensland spokesman said the Government was investing $18 million implementing a literacy framework.
On a second front underlining more problems in education, sources say some students are being taught one subject by as many as 12 different teachers as state high schools attempt to deal with staff shortages. And when substitute teachers can't be slotted in, classes are often combined. At one school, three senior classes were combined and seated in a sports hall recently with the students told to do crosswords because of a lack of teachers, the sources told The Sunday Mail.
Figures released by the State Government show an extra 5400 students enrolled in state schools this year - leaving a shortfall of 150 teachers. Education Minister Rod Welford has acknowledged a lack of maths and science teachers, employing more than 530 graduate teachers this year in the face of a 17 per cent jump in primary and secondary teacher resignations since 2003. But The Sunday Mail understands up to eight teachers at one school, employed to teach maths, are only qualified in physical education. "They are just bringing in primary school and excess PE teachers," a source revealed.
But Mr Welford denies the system will be unable to cope with an increased influx of students this year. "Our government plans for the future, continually monitoring regions with high population growth to ensure there are local state school options for all Queenslanders," he said. "That's why we opened three new schools on the northern Gold Coast this year, to cater for population increases in one the state's fastest-growing regions. "We've also opened a new school this year north of Brisbane, another fast-growing area."
Mr Welford said there has been unprecedented growth in prep enrolments, with an increase of almost 1900 on last year. He said upper secondary schools also had more than 750 extra students enrolling in Year 11 and more than 1000 in Year 12. "All these new students create a need for more teachers so that we can continue to meet our class size targets, which are among the lowest in the country."
Mr Welford says the 150 new teaching spots would be permanent appointments in mainly manual arts, maths and science. "These are roles which have been traditionally difficult to fill because their skills were so much in demand outside of teaching," he said. "With demand slowing in other sectors we are hoping to see more of these skilled workers moving back into teaching where the jobs are available, secure and stable."
SOURCE
Dangerous precedent for medical profession
WHEN judges hand out damages for the birth of a child, it is a sign that society is in trouble. It suggests that some of us have become so self-obsessed that we have forgotten that the arrival of a new human being is a cause for celebration, not litigation. Many parents - and would-be parents - will be angered by this decision. But it is really a cause for pity.
What sort of mother runs off to court because she has two children instead of one? And what sort of court believes it has the capacity to restore the supposed injury caused by the arrival of a child?
Lawyers and doctors should be very worried by this ruling. It suggests that the law of negligence is in deep trouble - at least in the ACT Court of Appeal. For reasons that have not been made public, the territory's top court has taken the law of negligence and stretched it to breaking point. The Court of Appeal has overturned a compelling decision by Justice Annabel Bennett, who is also a well-regarded judge of the Federal Court. Bennett had refused to give one dollar to the greedy women at the heart of this case. Bennett based her decision on a close analysis of the facts. She found that the obstetrician in question, Sydney Robert Armellin, had conducted himself reasonably. He had no breached his duty of care.
The mother in question, Ms G, received two embryos instead of one because of flawed communication in the system used by her fertility clinic. But Armellin, in Bennett's view, was not at fault. Here's why: Ms G had changed her mind about the number of embryos she wanted implanted. And she did so in the operating theatre after earlier signing documents agreeing to have ``one to two'' embryos implanted.
When Ms G told Armellin she wanted one embryo, the doctor believed this information was not new. He thought it had previously been conveyed to the clinicians who had prepared the implant. The doctor believed Ms G would have conveyed this information during the clinic's pre-surgery procedures. In fact, Ms G had failed to take part in those procedures. It is a great pity that the Court of Appeal has not yet explained why it believes Bennett and Armellin were wrong. When it does, it had better be good.
Unless the court has extremely compelling reasons, it looks as though the real victim here is the obstetrician. If this decision stands, the ACT has a choice: change the law or accept the fact that this branch of medicine will rarely be practised in the nation's capital.
SOURCE
'Don't call Qld cops in a hurry'
I know from my own experience that they quite often just don't come at all in response to calls
A NSW triple-zero [emergency] operator has accused his Queensland colleagues of providing a 'shocking' service after an attack victim's call went unanswered. The NSW operator recently received a call diverted from Queensland, where a woman said she was being assaulted.
In an email to the Queensland opposition, tabled in the Queensland parliament on Thursday, the operator said he listened to the panicked call for more than three minutes before it dropped out. He said he called the Queensland Police emergency call centre in Brisbane, but the phone rang for more than eight minutes without answer. "It is the running joke in our call centre that you wouldn't call Qld Police if you needed them in a hurry," he wrote. "This delay is also causing inconvenience for the rest of the nation when they call triple-zero as we are unable to answer their calls due to being on hold waiting for Qld Police to answer." He described the Queensland Police operators' service as "shocking" given that calls were supposed to be answered within four seconds.
Queensland Police Minister Judy Spence said the complaint would be investigated. "I have not had feedback from the police that there are particular problems with our triple-zero system. If they are feeling that then I encourage them to come and talk to me about it," Ms Spence told parliament.
SOURCE
ROUNDUP OF THE LATEST GREENIE DESTRUCTIVENESS IN AUSTRALIA
Three reports below
Greenie shark madness in NSW
In the same week men were attacked by sharks in Woolloomooloo and Bondi Beach, the state Government banned NSW fishermen from catching them. Despite overwhelming evidence numbers are at record levels, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal the state's 25 shark hunters last week received a letter from the NSW Department of Primary Industries declaring the ban. The letter stated the restriction was being imposed because the State's annual shark quota had already been reached. Despite a frightening summer of shark attacks and sightings up and down the NSW coast, fishermen will now be prohibited from taking sharks until July 1.
In the past week, navy diver Able Seaman Paul de Gelder, 31, was mauled by a shark at Woolloomooloo at 7am on Wednesday and lost a hand, while Glen Orgias, 33, was attacked at Bondi on Thursday at 8pm. Both men were continuing their recovery from surgery at St Vincent's Hospital yesterday. Mr Orgias's right hand has been reattached after 10 hours of surgery.
Under new fishing restrictions imposed last year, NSW fisherman are limited to catching just 160 tonnes of shark a year. In Queensland, fishermen are allowed to take 3000 tonnes.
North Coast fisherman Bill Litchfield described the ban as ludicrous given the increasing numbers of sharks being sighted. "We consistently get around 100 a night; that's an average catch. So how many of the buggers are out there?" he said. "The largest we've caught was a 15-foot (4.6m) tiger shark just 200 yards (183m) from Evans Head Surf Club. My skipper took his kids out of nippers the next day."
Mr Litchfield said he had written numerous letters to State Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald requesting the quota be reviewed. Mr Macdonald said the shark quotas affected species that were not man-eaters - a claim disputed by fishermen who said it protected bull sharks, which are thought to be were responsible for last week's attacks. The ban also protects dangerous tiger sharks, bronze whalers, hammerheads and black tips.
Mr Macdonald said: "The quotas are based on sound scientific advice. Everyone needs to remember there are no 100 per cent guarantees when swimming in the ocean - sharks are a natural part of the ocean environment."
NSW fishermen also blame a 1995 restriction on salmon beach-hauling for booming shark numbers close to the coast. "The salmon swim close to shore and bring in the sharks," Mr Litchfield said. "I've seen white pointers chasing them at surfing beaches at Newcastle. It is only time before a surfer gets taken there - it is going to happen."
Bondi fisherman Udo Edlinger also blamed a rise in salmon numbers for a spike in shark sightings. "I wouldn't be swimming around Sydney during dawn or dusk at the moment," he said. Fishing websites and live angling blogs are full of shark sightings, close encounters and stories of the day's catch. Doonside fisherman Peter Brennan said he didn't know whether to laugh or cry when he saw a 4m shark steal the kingfish right off his line on Monday at Clifton Gardens, near Mosman.
Other sightings include Roseville Marina, Woolloomooloo Wharf and Saunders Wharf at Darling Harbour. Professional Sydney fisherman and guide Craig McGill said he's never seen as much shark activity in the harbour in his 25 years of fishing. He said he had noticed a gradual increase in shark numbers over the past five years. "I certainly wouldn't be swimming anywhere in Sydney Harbour (now) ... and I wouldn't be going to Balmoral," he said. Mr McGill identified other hotspots as Chowder Bay, Clontarf and Rushcutters Bay.
Opposition industry spokesman Duncan Gay called for the quota cap to be lifted immediately. "This is serious ... and needs a Minister who is engaged with his portfolio to make sure our waters are safe as possible." Shark-hunting can be a lucrative industry, with fisherman earning up to $600 per kill. The jaws go to WA where they are sold as souvenirs, heads to The Philippines, fins and tails to Asia, spinal cords to the cosmetic industry and the meat to fish and chip shops around Australia.
SOURCE
Warmist celebrates economic troubles
THE international economic downturn may result in a short-term benefit with a decrease in production leading to a slowing in the growth of greenhouse pollution, one of the Federal Government's top advisers has forecast. Ross Garnaut, who was commissioned by the Government to write a comprehensive report on climate change, said the rate of the increase of greenhouse gas emissions had already fallen."[The downturn] has for a time stopped the rapid growth in emissions of the early 21st century," Professor Garnaut told a conference in Cairns yesterday.
"Since mid-2008, emissions from the developed economies as a whole, and from China, have been falling."But, he said, the reprieve would not halt the rapid rise in greenhouse pollution predicted for the coming decades." The global financial crisis gives us a little breathing space, but mitigation of climate change remains urgent and of central importance," Professor Garnaut said.
He criticised the Federal Government's proposed emissions trading scheme, saying it was offering too much compensation to heavy polluting industries. The draft legislation establishing the scheme is expected later this month.
SOURCE
Kyoto treaty to cost Australia $870 million
Australia faces the prospect of paying an extra $870 million for greenhouse gas emissions after Kevin Rudd's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and a new UN target for carbon pollution. After a year-long review by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change committee, Australia has been given a tougher target to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. The UN has reduced the amount of greenhouse gas emissions Australia is allowed to produce by 6.6 million tonnes ayear. If Australia is above the carbon emissions target at the end of 2012, it will be required tomake up any shortfall by buying carbon credits from other nations.
Continuing growth in carbon emissions in Australia and the new target have led leading global carbon market analyst Point Carbon to estimate a potential extra cost to taxpayers of $870 million in carbon credits in 2012. "The revision could force Australia to purchase over 30million assigned amount units (AAUs) more than expected, which could cost up to some $870 million, unless it can achieve further emission cuts domestically," Point Carbon's latest Australian emissions report says. The report adds that the credits Australia would buy are left over from the economic restructuring of former Soviet satellites after the fall of the Berlin Wall and hold "little or no environmental integrity".
The UN's reduction of 6.6million tonnes annually in Australia's emissions comes as the Department of Climate Change predicts that greenhouse gas emissions figures for 2007, to be released soon, will rise 9million tonnes above the levels of 2006. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong confirmed last night that the UN target had changed but remained confident Australia could meet it in 2012. "Our current projections, released last December, show we are on track to meet our Kyoto target, so there is no projected shortfall," Senator Wong said last night.
The Government is finalising an emissions trading scheme that is due to begin next year. The moves come as the global financial crisis puts extra cost pressures on industry, creating turmoil in world carbon markets and prompting claims that European polluters are abusing emissions trading schemes to raise quick finance. The price of carbon in the European ETS has crashed to a record low in the past two weeks - down from E30 ($59) a tonne to E10 - as heavy carbon polluters sold more than E1 billion worth of carbon credits to raise finance for their businesses.
European cement producers and electricity generators have unloaded carbon credits they do not need because economic growth has crashed. The Rudd Government's updated forecasts estimate Australian industry will have to pay $23.5billion for carbon emission permits in the first two years of the ETS. Point Carbon last week estimated the recession sparked by the financial crisis would cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 500 million tonnes
SOURCE
In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is surprised and pleased to note that Germaine Greer has named the culprits for the huge fires in Victoria -- politicians pandering to Greenie irrationality
Many Australian High School students can't read and write
Ever-declining standards. I think our leftist "educators" will only be happy when NO-ONE can read and write
Reading skills at some Queensland high schools have slumped to alarming levels with about one in every three students considered to be reading below their age level, according to teachers and private tutors. And in a parallel problem some students are being taught one subject by as many as 12 different teachers because of staff shortages in state high schools.
An internal screening test on Year 8 students at one school has found that most of the struggling students - one-third of that year level - were reading at the standard of a Year 4 student. The worst readers among those Year 8s - about one-sixth of the entire group needing learning support - were reading at a level of Year 3 student or below, the tests revealed.
Frustrated school learning support staff say they have begun to refer students to reading lessons outside schools, as the curriculum is failing to address the problem. Their claims are backed by private tutors interviewed by The Sunday Mail, who say they regularly encounter teenagers reading three to four years below their age. It is understood the internal testing that highlights the problem was done in schools at Logan and the northern Gold Coast. But many educators say similar reading level issues can be found state-wide. Gold Coast-based private tutor Dr Bruce Cruicks is teaching 15 state high school students with reading problems: "Some of these kids came to me with no reading level at all. They could have been in Grade 3 or 4."
A Brisbane-based tutor, who asked not to be identified to shield his students, said many were initially up to four years behind in their reading. A state school teacher who was involved in recent testing of literacy levels, and also asked not to be named, said: " Some kids are really stuck at such a basic level, and the gap between them and other students just keeps widening. Yet we get told (by governments) that (the reading level) is getting better."
Education Queensland does not gather each school's internal testing data on reading levels, and the only official guide can be found in State Budget figures. Those statistics back up the concerns of education leaders, with national benchmark figures showing that reading for Year 7 students has dropped by more than 11 percentage points in three years, down from around 93 per cent in the 2004-05 period.
Queensland Teachers Union president Steve Ryan said he believed the State and Federal governments should focus on providing more resources, rather than worrying about preparing students for national benchmark testing. An Education Queensland spokesman said the Government was investing $18 million implementing a literacy framework.
On a second front underlining more problems in education, sources say some students are being taught one subject by as many as 12 different teachers as state high schools attempt to deal with staff shortages. And when substitute teachers can't be slotted in, classes are often combined. At one school, three senior classes were combined and seated in a sports hall recently with the students told to do crosswords because of a lack of teachers, the sources told The Sunday Mail.
Figures released by the State Government show an extra 5400 students enrolled in state schools this year - leaving a shortfall of 150 teachers. Education Minister Rod Welford has acknowledged a lack of maths and science teachers, employing more than 530 graduate teachers this year in the face of a 17 per cent jump in primary and secondary teacher resignations since 2003. But The Sunday Mail understands up to eight teachers at one school, employed to teach maths, are only qualified in physical education. "They are just bringing in primary school and excess PE teachers," a source revealed.
But Mr Welford denies the system will be unable to cope with an increased influx of students this year. "Our government plans for the future, continually monitoring regions with high population growth to ensure there are local state school options for all Queenslanders," he said. "That's why we opened three new schools on the northern Gold Coast this year, to cater for population increases in one the state's fastest-growing regions. "We've also opened a new school this year north of Brisbane, another fast-growing area."
Mr Welford said there has been unprecedented growth in prep enrolments, with an increase of almost 1900 on last year. He said upper secondary schools also had more than 750 extra students enrolling in Year 11 and more than 1000 in Year 12. "All these new students create a need for more teachers so that we can continue to meet our class size targets, which are among the lowest in the country."
Mr Welford says the 150 new teaching spots would be permanent appointments in mainly manual arts, maths and science. "These are roles which have been traditionally difficult to fill because their skills were so much in demand outside of teaching," he said. "With demand slowing in other sectors we are hoping to see more of these skilled workers moving back into teaching where the jobs are available, secure and stable."
SOURCE
Dangerous precedent for medical profession
WHEN judges hand out damages for the birth of a child, it is a sign that society is in trouble. It suggests that some of us have become so self-obsessed that we have forgotten that the arrival of a new human being is a cause for celebration, not litigation. Many parents - and would-be parents - will be angered by this decision. But it is really a cause for pity.
What sort of mother runs off to court because she has two children instead of one? And what sort of court believes it has the capacity to restore the supposed injury caused by the arrival of a child?
Lawyers and doctors should be very worried by this ruling. It suggests that the law of negligence is in deep trouble - at least in the ACT Court of Appeal. For reasons that have not been made public, the territory's top court has taken the law of negligence and stretched it to breaking point. The Court of Appeal has overturned a compelling decision by Justice Annabel Bennett, who is also a well-regarded judge of the Federal Court. Bennett had refused to give one dollar to the greedy women at the heart of this case. Bennett based her decision on a close analysis of the facts. She found that the obstetrician in question, Sydney Robert Armellin, had conducted himself reasonably. He had no breached his duty of care.
The mother in question, Ms G, received two embryos instead of one because of flawed communication in the system used by her fertility clinic. But Armellin, in Bennett's view, was not at fault. Here's why: Ms G had changed her mind about the number of embryos she wanted implanted. And she did so in the operating theatre after earlier signing documents agreeing to have ``one to two'' embryos implanted.
When Ms G told Armellin she wanted one embryo, the doctor believed this information was not new. He thought it had previously been conveyed to the clinicians who had prepared the implant. The doctor believed Ms G would have conveyed this information during the clinic's pre-surgery procedures. In fact, Ms G had failed to take part in those procedures. It is a great pity that the Court of Appeal has not yet explained why it believes Bennett and Armellin were wrong. When it does, it had better be good.
Unless the court has extremely compelling reasons, it looks as though the real victim here is the obstetrician. If this decision stands, the ACT has a choice: change the law or accept the fact that this branch of medicine will rarely be practised in the nation's capital.
SOURCE
'Don't call Qld cops in a hurry'
I know from my own experience that they quite often just don't come at all in response to calls
A NSW triple-zero [emergency] operator has accused his Queensland colleagues of providing a 'shocking' service after an attack victim's call went unanswered. The NSW operator recently received a call diverted from Queensland, where a woman said she was being assaulted.
In an email to the Queensland opposition, tabled in the Queensland parliament on Thursday, the operator said he listened to the panicked call for more than three minutes before it dropped out. He said he called the Queensland Police emergency call centre in Brisbane, but the phone rang for more than eight minutes without answer. "It is the running joke in our call centre that you wouldn't call Qld Police if you needed them in a hurry," he wrote. "This delay is also causing inconvenience for the rest of the nation when they call triple-zero as we are unable to answer their calls due to being on hold waiting for Qld Police to answer." He described the Queensland Police operators' service as "shocking" given that calls were supposed to be answered within four seconds.
Queensland Police Minister Judy Spence said the complaint would be investigated. "I have not had feedback from the police that there are particular problems with our triple-zero system. If they are feeling that then I encourage them to come and talk to me about it," Ms Spence told parliament.
SOURCE
ROUNDUP OF THE LATEST GREENIE DESTRUCTIVENESS IN AUSTRALIA
Three reports below
Greenie shark madness in NSW
In the same week men were attacked by sharks in Woolloomooloo and Bondi Beach, the state Government banned NSW fishermen from catching them. Despite overwhelming evidence numbers are at record levels, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal the state's 25 shark hunters last week received a letter from the NSW Department of Primary Industries declaring the ban. The letter stated the restriction was being imposed because the State's annual shark quota had already been reached. Despite a frightening summer of shark attacks and sightings up and down the NSW coast, fishermen will now be prohibited from taking sharks until July 1.
In the past week, navy diver Able Seaman Paul de Gelder, 31, was mauled by a shark at Woolloomooloo at 7am on Wednesday and lost a hand, while Glen Orgias, 33, was attacked at Bondi on Thursday at 8pm. Both men were continuing their recovery from surgery at St Vincent's Hospital yesterday. Mr Orgias's right hand has been reattached after 10 hours of surgery.
Under new fishing restrictions imposed last year, NSW fisherman are limited to catching just 160 tonnes of shark a year. In Queensland, fishermen are allowed to take 3000 tonnes.
North Coast fisherman Bill Litchfield described the ban as ludicrous given the increasing numbers of sharks being sighted. "We consistently get around 100 a night; that's an average catch. So how many of the buggers are out there?" he said. "The largest we've caught was a 15-foot (4.6m) tiger shark just 200 yards (183m) from Evans Head Surf Club. My skipper took his kids out of nippers the next day."
Mr Litchfield said he had written numerous letters to State Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald requesting the quota be reviewed. Mr Macdonald said the shark quotas affected species that were not man-eaters - a claim disputed by fishermen who said it protected bull sharks, which are thought to be were responsible for last week's attacks. The ban also protects dangerous tiger sharks, bronze whalers, hammerheads and black tips.
Mr Macdonald said: "The quotas are based on sound scientific advice. Everyone needs to remember there are no 100 per cent guarantees when swimming in the ocean - sharks are a natural part of the ocean environment."
NSW fishermen also blame a 1995 restriction on salmon beach-hauling for booming shark numbers close to the coast. "The salmon swim close to shore and bring in the sharks," Mr Litchfield said. "I've seen white pointers chasing them at surfing beaches at Newcastle. It is only time before a surfer gets taken there - it is going to happen."
Bondi fisherman Udo Edlinger also blamed a rise in salmon numbers for a spike in shark sightings. "I wouldn't be swimming around Sydney during dawn or dusk at the moment," he said. Fishing websites and live angling blogs are full of shark sightings, close encounters and stories of the day's catch. Doonside fisherman Peter Brennan said he didn't know whether to laugh or cry when he saw a 4m shark steal the kingfish right off his line on Monday at Clifton Gardens, near Mosman.
Other sightings include Roseville Marina, Woolloomooloo Wharf and Saunders Wharf at Darling Harbour. Professional Sydney fisherman and guide Craig McGill said he's never seen as much shark activity in the harbour in his 25 years of fishing. He said he had noticed a gradual increase in shark numbers over the past five years. "I certainly wouldn't be swimming anywhere in Sydney Harbour (now) ... and I wouldn't be going to Balmoral," he said. Mr McGill identified other hotspots as Chowder Bay, Clontarf and Rushcutters Bay.
Opposition industry spokesman Duncan Gay called for the quota cap to be lifted immediately. "This is serious ... and needs a Minister who is engaged with his portfolio to make sure our waters are safe as possible." Shark-hunting can be a lucrative industry, with fisherman earning up to $600 per kill. The jaws go to WA where they are sold as souvenirs, heads to The Philippines, fins and tails to Asia, spinal cords to the cosmetic industry and the meat to fish and chip shops around Australia.
SOURCE
Warmist celebrates economic troubles
THE international economic downturn may result in a short-term benefit with a decrease in production leading to a slowing in the growth of greenhouse pollution, one of the Federal Government's top advisers has forecast. Ross Garnaut, who was commissioned by the Government to write a comprehensive report on climate change, said the rate of the increase of greenhouse gas emissions had already fallen."[The downturn] has for a time stopped the rapid growth in emissions of the early 21st century," Professor Garnaut told a conference in Cairns yesterday.
"Since mid-2008, emissions from the developed economies as a whole, and from China, have been falling."But, he said, the reprieve would not halt the rapid rise in greenhouse pollution predicted for the coming decades." The global financial crisis gives us a little breathing space, but mitigation of climate change remains urgent and of central importance," Professor Garnaut said.
He criticised the Federal Government's proposed emissions trading scheme, saying it was offering too much compensation to heavy polluting industries. The draft legislation establishing the scheme is expected later this month.
SOURCE
Kyoto treaty to cost Australia $870 million
Australia faces the prospect of paying an extra $870 million for greenhouse gas emissions after Kevin Rudd's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and a new UN target for carbon pollution. After a year-long review by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change committee, Australia has been given a tougher target to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. The UN has reduced the amount of greenhouse gas emissions Australia is allowed to produce by 6.6 million tonnes ayear. If Australia is above the carbon emissions target at the end of 2012, it will be required tomake up any shortfall by buying carbon credits from other nations.
Continuing growth in carbon emissions in Australia and the new target have led leading global carbon market analyst Point Carbon to estimate a potential extra cost to taxpayers of $870 million in carbon credits in 2012. "The revision could force Australia to purchase over 30million assigned amount units (AAUs) more than expected, which could cost up to some $870 million, unless it can achieve further emission cuts domestically," Point Carbon's latest Australian emissions report says. The report adds that the credits Australia would buy are left over from the economic restructuring of former Soviet satellites after the fall of the Berlin Wall and hold "little or no environmental integrity".
The UN's reduction of 6.6million tonnes annually in Australia's emissions comes as the Department of Climate Change predicts that greenhouse gas emissions figures for 2007, to be released soon, will rise 9million tonnes above the levels of 2006. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong confirmed last night that the UN target had changed but remained confident Australia could meet it in 2012. "Our current projections, released last December, show we are on track to meet our Kyoto target, so there is no projected shortfall," Senator Wong said last night.
The Government is finalising an emissions trading scheme that is due to begin next year. The moves come as the global financial crisis puts extra cost pressures on industry, creating turmoil in world carbon markets and prompting claims that European polluters are abusing emissions trading schemes to raise quick finance. The price of carbon in the European ETS has crashed to a record low in the past two weeks - down from E30 ($59) a tonne to E10 - as heavy carbon polluters sold more than E1 billion worth of carbon credits to raise finance for their businesses.
European cement producers and electricity generators have unloaded carbon credits they do not need because economic growth has crashed. The Rudd Government's updated forecasts estimate Australian industry will have to pay $23.5billion for carbon emission permits in the first two years of the ETS. Point Carbon last week estimated the recession sparked by the financial crisis would cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 500 million tonnes
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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
