Five Jews hospitalised after mob attack in Bondi;  Ordinary Ockers spring to their assistance

What would be the religion of a group of 8 males who attacked a group of peaceful Jewish pedestrians?   Lebanese Muslims would be  my best guess. 

Two men remain in hospital with serious injuries after an alleged anti-Semitic attack near Bondi Beach on Saturday.  Five people were injured suffering a fractured cheekbone, broken nose, concussion, lacerations and bruising when they were set upon by eight youths on Blair Street.

St Vincent's Hospital spokesman and member of the Bondi Jewish community David Faktor said the victims told him the attack was unprovoked and racially motivated.  He said the family was returning from a Jewish Sabbath dinner and did not know their attackers or do anything to incite the violence.

"Any kind of serious unprovoked attack is of great concern but the fact it was racially motivated is all the more concerning," Mr Faktor said.  "It is extremely shocking that an attack like this could happen in Australia let alone in Bondi being such a multicultural area."

Mr Faktor said the victims were wearing skullcaps and told him the attack felt like it went for about 15 minutes.

Police said four men, aged 27 to 66, and a 62-year-old woman were walking along Blair Street when a group of eight males started hurling abuse and assaulting them at 12.30am on Saturday. Police said the melee continued along Glenayr Avenue before police arrived and the attackers fled.  Police have arrested two teenage boys, 17, and a 23-year-old man.

Beach Road Hotel licensee Ben Pearce said four bouncers and two managers from the hotel went to help stop the attack.  He said the hotel's employees jumped into the middle of the brawl in an effort to break it up and were able to restrain a couple of offenders before the police arrived.

"The guys did the best they could to grab as many of [the attackers] as possible," Mr Pearce said. "The fact it had that extra component [was racially motivated] makes it even more ugly.  "If it ever happened again we'd do the same to try and help."

Mr Pearce said a taxi driver also stopped to try and grab one of the youths as they ran away.  He said the youths were not patrons of the hotel. The hotel provided security footage and statements to police.

Mr Faktor said two of the victims were released from hospital early on Saturday with superficial injuries while another man, 27, whose face and eye were injured was expected to be released later on Saturday.

Another man, 66, who suffered serious head injuries will stay in hospital overnight. He is expected to make a full recovery.

Two 17-year-old boys were charged with affray and breach of bail.  They were refused bail and will appear at children's court on Sunday.

A 23-year-old man was charged with affray and granted bail to appear at Waverley Local Court on December 3.

The NSW Anti-discrimination Board of NSW will investigate the incident. Board president Stepan Kerkyasharian told Channel 7 News there appeared to be "severe racial vilification involved in the incident".  "That’s a term under the [anti-discrimination] legislation," he said.  "And I think that we should be taking action."

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Prime Minister Abbott tells the US of the wacko Rudd-Gillard government

TONY Abbott has offered Americans an insight into the "wonderful, wacko world" of the Rudd-Gillard government, describing his federal predecessors as "scandalous".

In an interview with the Washington Post, the newspaper that famously exposed the Watergate scandal during the Nixon years, the Prime Minister also rubbished suggestions the recent bushfires were linked to climate change.

"Welcome to the wonderful, wacko world of the former government," he said.  "I thought it was the most incompetent and untrustworthy government in modern Australian history."

Asked to expand on his argument, Mr Abbott said the former government made a whole lot of commitments, "which they scandalously failed to honour".

"They did a lot of things that were scandalously wasteful and the actual conduct of government was a circus.

"They were untrustworthy in terms of the carbon tax. They were incompetent in terms of the national broadband network," he said. "They were a scandal when it came to their own internal disunity.

"They made a whole lot of grubby deals in order to try and perpetuate themselves in power. It was an embarrassing spectacle, and I think Australians are relieved they are gone."

Mr Abbott also told Americans the arguments around climate change had become too "theological" - Australia had had fires and floods since the beginning of time.

"We've had much bigger floods and fires than the ones we've recently experienced. You can hardly say they were the result of anthropic global warming," he said.

"This argument has become far too theological for anyone's good. I accept that climate change is a reality. And I support policies that will be effective in reducing emissions, but I do think there is too much climate-change alarmism."

Mr Abbott told the Tasmanian Liberal Party Conference yesterday his "stop the boats" pledge was already being realised, despite Labor shifting to a hard line policy in June.

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Boat people policy that works

"Tony Abbott makes a beeline in my arse," says people smuggler Reza Kord on a secretly recorded phone call recently.

It's a particularly rude piece of idiom in the Farsi language, apparently, but just one of the unkind things being said about the new Australian Prime Minister among people smugglers and asylum seekers in Indonesia.

If Australia's aim was, in Julia Gillard's words, to "smash the people smugglers' business model", then the recent policy changes have done the job.

Smashing the model has fragmented it into a series of complex and expensive alternative options, proposals and pipedreams, which, even if they are possible, will never see the huge volume of people hitting Australia as we've seen in the past.

"All Australian prime ministers have been chosen for two terms," one people smuggler was recorded saying recently. "Two terms means six years. Without any doubt, for six years, Australia's door will be shut for asylum seekers."

The irony here is that it's not Abbott's policies, but Kevin Rudd's uncompromising final stand - the Papua New Guinea and Nauru options - as well as Indonesia's decision (under pressure from Labor) to stop Iranians using visas-on-arrival to get to Indonesia, that have stopped the people traffic in its tracks.

So, why is Abbott being accused of making the beeline? Because his tough talk - known in the finance industry as "jawboning" - has almost fully convinced the people smugglers and their customers that this time Australia means it.

Labor's frequent policy reversals encouraged the impression that asylum seekers merely had to wait and the door would inch back open.

Of Abbott they hold no such hope.  So, now, in desperation, they are casting around for alternatives.

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Hodgman calls for Tasmanian election

The Green/Left have ruined Tasmania's industries -- Hydro, timber, pulp & paper -- through environmental restrictions -- and Tasmania now lives on Federal handouts.  It's time to free the place up

TASMANIAN Opposition Leader Will Hodgman is demanding an increasingly beleaguered state government name an election date.

A poll is due in the state on March 15 but Premier Lara Giddings is yet to confirm the date.

A new bout of turmoil has hit the Labor-Green alliance with rogue ALP backbencher Brenton Best calling for Ms Giddings to quit as leader.

Mr Best has been a ticking time bomb for the party for months, criticising it over its partnership with the Greens, who have two ministers in the government.

He says Ms Giddings should now step aside for police and economic development minister David O'Byrne.

Labor is languishing in the polls after 15 years in power with Ms Giddings' most recent approval rating at just 18 per cent, its lowest level yet.

Mr Hodgman, the son of late former federal minister Michael Hodgman, has used his address to the Liberals' state council to call for an election.

"It should be called today," he told members.  "(It) will be the most important election in our lifetime, probably in our state's history."

Mr Hodgman said Labor had reached the point where it was unfit to govern the economically ailing state.

"Infighting has now escalated to open warfare," he said.  "It is appalling for Tasmanians who want to see a government that's focused on them, not on itself."

The Liberals have long drawn a comparison between the state's Labor-Green power-sharing arrangement and the former federal minority government headed by Julia Gillard.

Mr Hodgman's address came under banners reading "Jobs. Growth. Majority Government".

He repeated a warning to Labor voters that only by voting Liberal will another hung parliament be avoided, since Tasmania has the unusual Hare-Clark system which delivers five members per seat.

He said a vote for minor players like the Palmer United Party, which won a Tasmanian Senate spot in September's federal election, could also mean no clear majority.  "Don't risk it and don't waste your vote," he said.

Mr Hodgman has ruled out deals with any other party.

The state Liberals' buoyancy was boosted when prime Minister Tony Abbott addressed the conference on Saturday, 50 days after supplanting three Tasmanian Labor members at the federal election.

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