Leftist elitism again

In America, there seem to be only minor grumbles about politicians who claim to represent "the little guy" flitting about in private jets and living in huge mansions etc (The Clintons, John Edwards and Al Gore spring to mind), but egalitarianism is much more deeply embedded in the Australian psyche and the story below about Australia's Federal Leftist leader will be very critically received by many Australians.

Rudd might claim that his preferential treatmment was the work of the restaurateur rather than his own doing but many Australians would have expected him to wait his turn. Conservative Prime Minister John Howard is known for lining up patiently on election day and waiting for his turn to vote.

The pic is from a Brisbane free newspaper (of June 14) called "City News" and the story appeared on p.17



In case the text is not clear, I reproduce it below:

Ruddy fish thief

DOESN'T it warm the cockles of your heart that Australia is an egalitarian nation where power and privilege won't curry you any favours? Yeah, right. Reader Josh ordered the salmon when he and his mates went for lunch at swanky Eagle St Pier eatery II Centro recently. They then noticed prime ministerial hopeful Kevin Rudd and a bunch of 'suits' arrive. Within 10 minutes they had food on their table, despite arriving after our luckless Josh, who noted our Kev had also picked the salmon. Then I was told that they'd run out of salmon and I had to choose something else. "Bloody Rudd was eating my lunch," Josh told Buzz.




Police "too busy" to stop dangerous party

Australian police are "too busy" for most things, it seems. See also my posting of June 8th. It's lucky that no-one mentioned below was killed or seriously harmed

DRUNKEN girls as young as 14 were cavorting naked in a street during a wild pool party, neighbours said last night. Older men tried to lure some of the children into their utes, and a few of the girls had passed out. A neighbour said about 150 youngsters attended the party in an inner-city Darwin suburb on Saturday night. "Some of them were really young girls who were very drunk," she said. "And there were lots of gatecrashers."

The party spilled into the street. "Several of the girls were vomiting in the gutter by my nature strip," she said. "There were people lying in the middle of the road."

The neighbour, who has two young children, said many of the girls were in bikinis. Others were topless or naked. She cared for two girls who had passed out until they were collected by their guardians. "I was worried about the people on the street and that someone was going to get run over," she said.

The neighbour said some of the teenage girls were calling up their friends and bragging about being drunk and naked. "The guys were trying to get the girls to walk off with them," she said. "It looked like everyone was trying to get laid, which is awful for kids at that age."

The neighbour said the party started about 6pm and didn't finish until 3am. She telephoned police about 11.30pm, but was told they were "too busy". Police turned up around 1am.

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Labor party supports tough proposals on black welfare

INDIGENOUS policy faces a revolution no matter who wins the federal election, with Labor backing Noel Pearson's push to link welfare and personal responsibility. Opposition indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jenny Macklin has thrown Labor's support behind radically restructuring welfare payments, while the Howard Government is preparing cabinet submissions that would ensure welfare was quarantined for use on housing and food.

The plans embrace proposals put forward by Mr Pearson, the Cape York indigenous activist, who wants Aboriginal families to be stripped of welfare payments if their children are abused or miss school. He has spent a decade arguing for an end to passive welfare but until now has failed to win bipartisan political support.

A report by Mr Pearson's Cape York Institute, to be launched today, calls for an overhaul of the Aboriginal work for the dole program, CDEP, under which 35,000 Aboriginal people work in return for welfare. He suggests abolishing the program for anyone younger than 21, and placing them under "conditional income management" if they do not begin a traineeship or find a job within three months of finishing school. The report also calls for an expansion of private home ownership, with a subsidy for families who want to construct houses in remote communities.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough said he was preparing several cabinet submissions in line with Mr Pearson's hard-core approach. Under Mr Brough's plan, all families - white and black - that spent welfare money on alcohol, gambling and drugs would be forced to direct-debit part of their benefits to pay for rent, electricity and food.

Ms Macklin said while she did not agree with everything Mr Pearson proposed, anything that supported the interests of children deserved to be taken seriously. "The principle that family tax benefits follow the interests of the child is one we strongly support for both indigenous and non-indigenous children," she said.

While Ms Macklin gave cautious support to Mr Pearson's plans, Labor federal vice-president Linda Burney, the first Aboriginal cabinet minister in the NSW parliament, expressed her concern. "It really is about playing god with people's lives," Ms Burney said. "It feels a bit like a rerun of punitive practices in the past that proved fruitless."

On Queensland's Palm Island, which has unemployment of more than 90 per cent, the proposal for a community-based "cop" with power to withhold welfare payments was also universally rejected. "There are other reasons kids don't go to school other than parental neglect," said Mayor Delena Oui-Foster, who said the proposal smacked of racism. School attendance on Palm Island is high, largely because an increasing number of parents, such as Nazareth Foster, place enormous value in education. Her children, Mia and Teri, have not missed school this year: "I want them to have a good education - these days, you get indigenous people getting certificates and degrees, and that's what we've got to aim for here."

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Judicial arrogance attacks freedom of the press

LAST week, the High Court of Australia displayed a disdain for a jury verdict that went to the heart of free speech in this country. It concerned the small matter of a restaurant review. I say small because in the scheme of things a restaurant review is hardly cutting-edge commentary. But when restaurant critics are gagged, it does not augur well for free speech.

By and large, we are fortunate in Australia to have a sensible bunch of judges on our highest court. But when they go awry, sidelining common sense, they really go for broke. Which is what they did when they set aside a jury verdict that decided a review about a swank Sydney restaurant, while critical about some of the food and some of the service, did not defame the restaurant owner.

In 2003, The Sydney Morning Herald food critic Matthew Evans was unimpressed with Coco Roco, which billed itself as “Sydney’s most glamorous restaurant”. The limoncello oyster had flavours that “jangle like a car crash”. The carpaccio arrived with a “dreary roast almond paste”. And, Evans asked, what was the chef thinking by adding apricot halves to a sherry-scented white sauce adorning a prime rib steak? Food critics can be a snippy lot. But that’s the gig. Anything less and they become spruikers for prime rib steak laced with sherry-scented sauce and apricot halves.

The restaurant owner sued for defamation under NSW’s 7A system where a jury decides whether something is defamatory. In a separate later hearing, a judge decides on whether defences are made out and on damages payable. The jury found Evans’s review did not defame the owner of Coco Roco. On appeal, the NSW Court of Appeal tossed the jury verdict in the bin, preferring its own view that the review was defamatory. Late last week, the High Court agreed.

Although Australia has a new set of uniform defamation laws, in some states and territories the jury will still determine what is defamatory. That is why the High Court case sends a chilling message. According to justices Ian Callinan and Dyson Heydon, the restaurant review was defamatory and any other finding was unimaginable. There was no point sending the issue back to a jury for redetermination, Callinan said during argument, because you might end up with the same perverse finding.

Which raises the question: why bother with a jury at all? Of course, courts have powers to overturn perverse jury verdicts. But was the jury’s decision so perverse? Or was it a case where reasonable minds may differ, where criticism of some bad food and some poor service did not reflect on the competence of the restaurateur? No, said the High Court. No room for reasonable debate here.

Even more troubling, the majority judges said community standards were irrelevant in determining whether the review amounted to defamation of a business. It’s an odd rule that lowers the defamation bar for businesses. (Even stranger given that if a business incorporates, it cannot sue for defamation.) Again, so why bother with a jury comprised of men and women from the community? By effectively telling us to skip the jury trial where something negative is said, the High Court has told critics that they can expect litigation if they are too honest in their opinions.

Equally concerning was the tone of the judges during the hearing. Argument got off to a rollicking start when Justice William Gummow asked: “But when were (the restaurateurs) going to get their hands on some money and how?” Slow down, judge. Damages are determined after defamation has been established and after a court rejects defences.

Now, I’ve seen some scary-looking Santas in my time, but none more so than when a judge such as Gummow does his Santa routine, looking around for someone else’s money to dole out to a disgruntled plaintiff. It’s a quaint and other-worldly judicial view that regards newspapers as so influential that one review is so obviously defamatory as to send a restaurant bankrupt. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have been campaigning against the Howard Government for the past decade. And to no avail.

So did the review really destroy the restaurant? Or was it the poor food? Indeed, some bad reviews bring in the crowds. Am I the only one who goes to see a movie after it is panned by certain trendy critics? A give-it-a-miss review from certain quarters almost guarantees that it’s a movie not to bemissed.

The decision to throw out the jury verdict evinces not so much an air of unreality about how the world works as a thick fog of arrogance that judicial views on questions of fact ought to supplant those of ordinary beings who make up a jury.

In a curious turn of events, Justice Michael Kirby - the great dissenter - injects a healthy dose of common sense into this case. Usually he’s busily crafting the law to suit his own preference, often disguising his views under the cloak of community standards. But then, as the saying goes, even a broken watch is right twice a day. Here he is full of judicial humility and restraint. He deferred to parliament’s intent to have a jury decide defamatory material according to community standards and rejected the view of his haughty buddies who preferred their view to that of a pesky parliament or a jury.

Callinan’s apparent disdain for the jury is especially odd. In a speech given just after his High Court appointment, he scoffed at elitist criticism of juries and cited the view of Patrick Devlin, a former lord justice of Britain’s Court of Appeal, that “trial by jury is more than an instrument of justice and more than one wheel of the constitution: it is the lamp that shows freedom lives.” As Callinan will soon step down from the High Court after a distinguished career, hopefully he won’t mind the criticism.

After all, his spirited defence of juries was accompanied by an admission that criticism of judges is par for the course. Criticism of judgments is rather like being on the end of a stinging theatre review, he mused. He then cited a few colourful reviews including a damning criticism of a J.B. Priestley play, When We are Married, where the critic described the play as “an ideal treat as a night out for your despicable in-laws”.

After the High Court effectively sidelined juries last week, tilting the playing field against free speech, we may no longer be able to enjoy such robust criticism of theatre, books, restaurants and the like. Judges may prefer to live in an overly precious society where polite talk replaces honest criticism. But it will dull the lamp that shows freedom.

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Kneejerk Leftist policy ideas undermined by the facts

Productivity figures blast a hole in Leftist propaganda plans but "spin" based on old figures is the suggested solution!

KEVIN Rudd's economic brains trust has told him that productivity is likely to accelerate, blasting a hole in Labor's election-year argument over the state of the economy. Just days after John Howard accused the Opposition Leader of economic illiteracy, his senior advisers have told him the outlook for productivity is looking better, after years of low growth. They also partly blamed the productivity slowdown, reversed only in the past two quarters, on the booming labour market, which has seen unemployment fall to a 32-year low of 4.2 per cent. This undermines the ALP's claim that the productivity slump is largely due to a lack of investment in education and infrastructure.

A confidential nine-page briefing document was prepared for Mr Rudd last Friday - one day after he failed during a radio interview to acknowledge the rebound in productivity growth. A spokesman for Mr Rudd said last night the briefing paper was consistent with the party's expectation that, although there was likely to be "some correction" in productivity numbers, there were "no clear signs of a return to the strong productivity growth of the 1990s". Labor argues that Australia needs an education and broadband "revolution", as promised in its platform, to deliver stronger productivity growth, which the Government's May budget forecast to flatline over the next year.

But the briefing document, prepared by Mr Rudd's senior economics advisers, Tim Dixon and John O'Mahony, says the outlook is already looking rosier. "We should expect that as the rateof GDP growth picks up, quarterly productivity statistics will be strong in the next year or so," Mr Rudd was told. And while productivity growth has slowed over the past few years, the Labor analysis, obtained by The Australian, backs up the Government's claim that it is partly due to the strong employment market. "Part of the reason (for the decline in productivity) is because employment growth was stronger in the early 2000s compared with the mid 1990s," the document says. "Stronger employment growth is often associated with weaker productivity growth." It also blames the drought and the massive investment in mining as factors that have caused a slowdown in productivity growth.

Labor seized on the May budget - which forecast zero productivity growth - to argue the Government has no reform agenda to ensure economic prosperity after the resources boom ends. But last week's national accounts figures showed a pick-up in productivity in recent months - 1.4 per cent in the December quarter and 0.6 per cent in the March quarter. Mr Rudd, however, failed to acknowledge this rebound during a radio interview on the ABC's flagship AM program last Thursday morning. John Howard and Peter Costello later seized on Mr Rudd's comments during a robust parliamentary debate, claiming that he knew "precious little" about economics.

Labor's economic brains trust provided the Opposition Leader with a detailed briefing paper, titled Productivity and the National Accounts, the day after this parliamentary tussle. The "leader's meeting/policy brief" was is designed to "provide a response to the questions on productivity raised by (ABC journalist) Chris Uhlmann on AM on June 14". Mr Rudd's office last night verified the document.

With economic management certain to dominate the election campaign, Mr Rudd is determined to prosecute the Government over the rate of productivity growth. But he has been warned that the next national accounts figures - due out in early September, just before the likely start of the formal election campaign - is likely to back the Government's argument. Labor's economic team argues that Mr Rudd should continue to cite the Budget forecast - of zero productivity growth - "as it has not been updated by Treasury". "While quarterly or annual productivity statistics are not reliable, it is still worth making the point that there is no evidence that we are out of the low productivity cycle," Mr Rudd is told. The Opposition Leader is told by his advisers that productivity "in its simplest form ... equals outputs divided by inputs".

A spokesman for Mr Rudd last night noted that in January Labor stated that "while the even sharper decline in productivity since 2004 is unlikely to continue without some correction, it nevertheless indicates that there are no clear signs of a return to the strong productivity growth of the 1990s". "Therefore when the briefing paper refers to the fact that we 'should expect that as the rate of the GDP growth picks up quarterly productivity statistics will be strong in the next year or so', this is consistent with federal Labor's public observation in January (and) is entirely consistent with Labor's argument that we have seen a long-term decline in productivity growth."

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These are the guys the Left wants to put back in charge of Australian workplaces

Union bullying of site manager taped

A SECRETLY recorded video and audio tape shows the federal secretary of a militant construction union standing by as three underlings bully and intimidate an occupational health and safety manager on a Perth building site, calling him a "f..king maggot" and a "f..king idiot".

The recordings, obtained by The Australian, show Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union national secretary Dave Noonan, assistant state secretary Joe McDonald and three other union officials being asked at least a dozen times to leave a city building site run by Len Buckeridge's BGC, one of the country's biggest construction companies.

While Labor takes more hits in the polls because of its perceived ties to renegade unionists, media companies will today apply to the West Australian Supreme Court to get access to two other damaging video tapes of Mr McDonald and other CFMEU officials. One tape shows Mr McDonald calling a builder a "f..king, thieving parasite dog" who would end up working at Hungry Jack's. Some have interpreted this as a veiled threat should Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd win the next election.

While those tapes were deemed admissible by the Supreme Court last week when Broad Constructions moved to ban CFMEU officials from their building sites, they were not shown to the court because union lawyers argued that they were embarrassing and could be used for political purposes. The tape obtained by The Australian was taken by BGC occupational health and safety manager Paul Smedley, a former detective, in November 2004. It was used in a West Australian Industrial Relations Commission finding against a union organiser, Michael (Mick) Powell, who the commission last year found acted in an "unacceptable and improper" manner while he was with Mr Noonan at the Barrack Street site. The commission found Mr Powell's language and behaviour to be "unprovoked, aggressive and intimidatory".

The tape records Mr Smedley asking the unionists to identify themselves after he discovered they were on the BGC site. He then asked if they had their right-of-entry cards on them. When Mr Noonan, then the CFMEU's assistant federal secretary, replied that he did not, Mr Smedley told him to leave. This sparked a barrage of abuse from Mr Powell and fellow union organiser Jamie Leggo, in which Mr Smedley was called a "f..king maggot", a "piece of shit", a "cockhead" and a "f..king idiot". Mr Leggo tells Mr Smedley: "Me and you are going to have a lot of fun, c...'. Eventually, after seven minutes of abuse and threatening language, the union officials - including Mr McDonald, who Mr Smedley claimed was singing Skip to my Lou, my darlin' in the background - left the site.

When the matter was dealt with in the WAIRC in April last year, Mr Powell had his right-of-entry card suspended for one month because of his renegade behaviour. He was counselled by the CFMEU.

Mr Noonan yesterday defended his union, saying the exchanges were part of a dispute over safety "in an industry where a worker dies, on average, every week". "When safety is an issue, there is no place for shrinking violets - the proposition that swearing on a building site is some form of scandal is a joke," he said. He accused Mr Buckeridge of threatening behaviour himself, referring to a 2005 parliamentary speech by Labor senator Glenn Sterle, who accused the tough-talking businessman of boasting in an HR Nicholls Society speech that he had compiled a hit list of 30 unionists who should be "rubbed out".

UnionsWA secretary Dave Robinson told The Australian he condemned the behaviour of the CFMEU officials caught using insulting language on tape, but added that construction industry union officials were frequently subjected to strong-arm tactics of bosses who were far from saintly. "The CFMEU operates in a very tough environment ... it's a bitter struggle to improve things for their membership," he said. "None of that excuses any unacceptable conduct but the industry generates that sort of behaviour from the employers as well as from the unions representing their members." CFMEU state secretary Kevin Reynolds said he condemned violence but bad language was the language of the construction industry. He said Mr Buckeridge used "extremely colourful language himself" and it was no accident that he employed as his safety manager a former police officer.

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Trust your bureaucracy to set intelligent education priorities

Universities are producing thousands of useless graduates in sociology and English literature (etc.) but useful disciplines are being cut back

MINING-RELATED departments in universities are shrinking at the time of the nation's biggest resources boom, with 10 geoscience schools closing or downsizing over the past 10 years and only 30 metallurgists graduating a year. Mining companies are forced to hire graduates trained in similar disciplines, such as chemical engineering and materials science, and train them on the job to meet the shortfall in professions such as metallurgy.

A skills summit organised by the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers Australia in Canberra today will highlight the severe shortages of qualified professionals in geoscience, metallurgy and mining engineering. APESMA chief executive John Vines said public debate over the skills shortage to date had focused on the trades, and the intention of the summit was to highlight the shortage of skilled professionals in the engineering, science and technology sectors. In a discussion paper, APESMA calls for a tax incentive scheme, similar to the one promoting research and development, offering employers a 150 per cent tax rebate for spending more than 2 per cent of labour costs on training development. Mr Vines said the Australian average was 1.3 per cent of a company's payroll, while 4 per cent was considered world-best practice.

In its position paper for the summit, the Australasian Institute of Metals and Metallurgy calls on the federal Government to increase its university funding for mining degrees as part of a strategy to remedy the "dire state of minerals education". It wants the federal Government to increase funding for minerals courses by about $4000 per student, to bring it into the highest cluster of university funding, along with agriculture. Universities receive $13,411 from the Government for every student in science and engineering courses, which are expensive to deliver, compared with $17,870 for agriculture students.

The institute, representing more than 8000 professionals in geoscience, minerals processing and mining engineering, also calls on the Government to commit to a set of national principles for higher education, along the lines of the National Research Priorities, to ensure that "disciplines of national importance" are maintained.

Geosciences professor at Monash University Ray Cas described geosciences as a "nationally endangered species" and AIMM chief executive Don Larkin said at least eight minerals departments had closed since 2000. Mr Larkin said the federal Government had given a commitment to fund disciplines of national importance but, because of the Government's philosophy to move to a user-pays and market-driven tertiary education system, that was not happening.

A survey of almost 2000 members conducted last month by AIMM, and due for release on Friday, found that about two-thirds said the professional skills shortage had left them short-staffed. More than half said the shortage meant more people were working in senior roles outside their experience. And more than 60 per cent believed their employer was paying more for less-experienced personnel, with salaries rising about 18 per cent since 2005. A paper by Professor Cas says at least 10 geoscience departments have "either been closed down or downsized to the point of being ineffectual" over the past 10 years.

The closures include the geoscience department at the University of NSW, once the biggest in Australia; previously significant departments in the universities of La Trobe, RMIT, Bendigo and Deakin in Victoria; Flinders and South Australia in Adelaide; New England and the University of Technology, Sydney, in NSW; as well as smaller, regional schools. Other departments have been amalgamated into other disciplines such as geography and environmental sciences, leading to a rationalisation and decrease in staff at universities including Sydney, Wollongong, Western Australia, Melbourne and Ballarat.

But student enrolments are growing in second and third years. Professor Cas says Monash University has a record number of students, and now the largest in Australia, despite the number of first-year students not growing beyond about 200. The number of graduates at Queensland University is also growing. A 2005 agreement between international mining company Xstrata, which has a number of operations in Australia, and UQ is designed to lift the number of metallurgy graduates at the institution from five in 2004 to 20 next year.

Australian Council of Deans of Science chairman John Rice said it would take 10 years to rebuild the infrastructure, expertise and resources of these departments, with a skills shortage in the industry also translating into a shortage of people able to teach in universities. Professor Rice said the shift by government to funding universities based on student numbers made the low-enrolment schools unviable, but said the removal of the cap on full-fee paying places in the last federal budget left room for industry to step in and pay for mining courses.

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His Eminence hits back at attempts to silence him



THE Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, has criticised "intolerant parliamentarians" for trying to stifle the right of religions to speak out on ethical matters. Cardinal Pell singled out the Greens MP Lee Rhiannon for seeking to limit the say of the churches. "I'm not sure that Lee Rhiannon could be characterised as particularly tolerant or sympathetic to Christian religions," he said. "I think she has a considerable history in that area. I don't have chapter and verse but my office does." Cardinal Pell said he expected his right to lobby MPs on a bill that aims to overturn the ban on embryonic stem cell research would be upheld by State Parliament's privileges committee. It is investigating whether his warning to Catholic MPs that a vote for the bill would have consequences for their position in church life constituted contempt of Parliament.

Speaking at an inter-faith conference , Cardinal Pell said the principle of the separation of church and state was not intended to silence religious leaders but to protect clerics like himself from "interfering government and over-enthusiastic parliamentarians". A small minority of commentators and intolerant MPs wanted to delegitimise the public expression of religious views, he said. "None of us as religious people should co-operate with that or oblige them in any way. We must insist on our right of expression of public views." Cardinal Pell said he would continue his lobbying efforts when the bill reaches the upper house later this month.

James Haire, from the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, defended the right of religions to involve themselves in politics. Professor Haire said privatising religion to the nave, the temple or the cloister was a foolish and futile way of dealing with the variety of legitimate views held by people of faith.

Ms Rhiannon defended her right to comment and criticise. "I've consistently said Cardinal Pell has a right to participate in debate but he did cross the line when he used people's religious life as a point of leverage to gain support for a no vote in the stem cell bill," she said. "In singling me out he is failing to recognise there was much stronger criticism from cabinet. In referring his comments to the privileges committee we've had an outcome. "Cardinal Pell is learning there [are] boundaries in the way he conducts himself."

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It's the economy, Kevin

PETER Costello has a running gag in Parliament, which tickles tiny minds, including the one behind this column. Every now and then the Treasurer will, in mock solemnity, advise the House that the annual Fundamental Injustice Day is fast approaching. Costello says this calender event was established by Labor's Kevin Rudd on June 30, 1999, in the House of Representatives. Rudd, an MP for less than a year, had said, "When the history of this Parliament, this nation and this century is written, June 30, 1999, will be recorded as a day of fundamental injustice." Rudd vowed that this was "injustice that is real, an injustice which is not simply conjured up by the fleeting rhetoric of politicians". What he was talking about was the introduction of GST. [A sales tax. Now long accepted]

And Fundamental Injustice Day would be a forgotten faux commemoration, mere fleeting political rhetoric, were it not for Peter Costello's frequent, playful reminders. He is scoffing at Rudd's overblown foreboding delivered eight years ago and poking fun at the Labor leader's current grasp of economics generally. Costello's jokes verge on arrogance, but a glance at the economy shows he might have something to be arrogant about.

Something extraordinary is happening to the Australian economy. A boom is under way, and it is an unusual one. It is not a matter of interest rates possibly rising next year; the big news is that they haven't risen already. It is not all pretty, and Labor can make a case showing the current boom has an unpleasant underbelly, as shown by bankruptcy figures. But there is much that is good, as shown in a speech last week by Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens, who noted changes in the past 12 months. "Compared to what we expected a year ago, then, growth has turned out to be stronger, employment higher but underlying inflation a bit lower and wages growth has been steady in the face of unanticipated labour market strength," said Stevens.

There is a lot of money sloshing around the nation and it is being used by employers to hire workers, and to increase wages generally, and by households to buy things and borrow. Usually when these factors are combined, inflation goes through the roof, dragging interest rates with it. But that is not happening, and it is not seriously anticipated it will happen for some time.

Stevens said one of the reasons for the restraint, at least in part, was the industrial relations structure - the workplace laws covering wage decisions in a market in which workers should be able to name their price because demand for them is high. "Despite, on most counts, the tightest labour market conditions for a generation, growth in most measures of labour costs has remained well disciplined for the past two years or more, after a mild acceleration earlier," said the central bank chief, whose duties include setting interest rates. "Wages are rising quickly in some areas, but quite slowly in others. "That is, relative wages are changing, adjusting to the forces at work on the economy but without, so far at least, a serious inflation of the whole economy-wide cost structure."

That means wages are going up significantly where they can be afforded, say in the mining industry, but those increases are not being passed on to industry sectors and individual companies where they can not be afforded. That means pay rises can be paid for by increased company earnings, and are not jacking up the costs - and thus prices - in companies without boosted revenue.

Back when he was trying to install Fundamental Injustice Day in the nation's history books, Kevin Rudd explained why this appealing situation had arisen. He quoted Prime Minister John Howard acknowledging financial deregulation and tariff reduction completed by the previous Labor governments. Rudd said Howard believed the third pillar of reform was "fiscal consolidation" - cutting debt - and the fourth was changes to industrial relations law. Hey, maybe he was right.

Nobody should think the economy is problem-free and that all are benefiting from good times. The organisation Australians for Affordable Housing notes that over the past year house prices have risen twice as fast as incomes, and that rents are increasing faster than general inflation.

In another direction, the Australian Industry Group last week warned that the high value of the Australian dollar was making it hard to sell manufactured goods overseas.

Then there is the boom itself. Labor's shadow treasurer Wayne Swan dismisses Government involvement in the boom's creation, saying it is a product of "the strongest global economic growth in more than 30 years". Swan also points to Stevens' speech, where he mentions the expanded global economy and called it "a boost of first-order importance, with real national income nearly eight per cent higher than it would otherwise have been". However, at the coming election the issue might not be the derivation of good times but whether or not Kevin Rudd knows enough about the economy to maintain them

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Geography revival?

FIRST it was history, then English - now the Federal Government has geography firmly in its sights. Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop yesterday announced a $45,000 study into the teaching of geography in Australian schools in a bid to ensure the subject is included in the curriculum. The inquiry will look at what is being taught in states, including Queensland, where geography and history have been subsumed into Studies of Society and the Environment in most schools.

The federal inquiry follows lobbying by geography teachers and academics, who yesterday welcomed the move. Ms Bishop said it would investigate the decline in the quality of geography tuition in schools. "The Institute of Australian Geographers and the Australian Geography Teachers Association have raised concerns with me that too little geography is being taught in schools, and that in some cases, environmental and political studies are masquerading as geography," she said.

Queensland Education Minister Rod Welford welcomed the inquiry and said most of the concern centred on how well students were being prepared up to Year 10 to take on the subject at senior level.

Australian Geography Teachers Association President Nick Hutchinson said geography professionals had lobbied hard for the inquiry after geography barely rated a mention when the national curriculum was being mooted. "I think we were really afraid that geography was going to disappear," Mr Hutchinson said. The inquiry will examine the time devoted to geography and determine minimum course requirements and should be completed by August.

Mr Welford, meanwhile, announced yesterday that teaching graduates unable to find jobs would be paid by the State Government to retrain in a bid to tackle the chronic shortage in special education. The Government was offering 35 scholarships worth $4000 each, he said. The scholarships will fund graduate certificate courses in semester two this year and will target primary graduates with good results.

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'Tough love' plan for Aboriginal communities

ABORIGINAL families would be stripped of welfare payments if their children are abused or miss school under a plan by indigenous leader Noel Pearson to make benefits conditional on behaviour. Payments would also be withheld if public housing was damaged or rent not paid, or if people were found guilty of domestic violence.

In the most far-reaching reforms ever outlined for Aboriginal communities, Mr Pearson recommends a community-based authority be established with enough powers to withhold welfare entitlements.

Just days after a landmark report found sexual abuse was rife throughout indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, Mr Pearson's Cape York Institute has called for all welfare payments to be conditional as part of a program to rebuild "social norms". The blueprint, From Hand Out to Hand Up, a copy of which has been obtained by The Australian, is expected to be released within days. Financed by the Federal Government, it lays out a series of "obligations" that indigenous families would have to meet in order to receive full welfare entitlements, such as Newstart and Community Development Employment Project allowances. The report places better education outcomes at the heart of a push to improve Aboriginal self-sufficiency and remove the last vestiges of a "passive welfare" culture.

Mr Pearson, whose template to wean indigenous people off welfare has been criticised by some Aboriginal leaders, recommends that family payments be halted if three unexplained absences are recorded by a child during a school year. To ensure children are not left destitute as a result, payments would be redirected to a responsible adult within the community. They would then ensure the child was properly cared for. Entitlements could also be withheld when children were found to have been neglected or when parents knowingly allowed abuse to occur.

With alcoholism and drug-taking rife in some indigenous communities, the report recommends people be stripped of their benefit rights if they commit offences involving alcohol, drugs, gambling or domestic violence. And a month after the federal Budget placed a new premium on private housing for indigenous communities, the report says adults must abide by public housing tenancy agreements. Payments would be stopped if people were found guilty of using their homes for illegal purposes, if they damaged the houses or if rent were not paid.

In order to police the new approach, the report recommends a statutory authority - the Families Responsibilities Commission - be established and granted sweeping powers. The institute suggests that the FRC be chaired by a former magistrate - to give it the "gravitas and stature of a Crown body" - and be given a series of options for dealing with transgressions. For minor offences, a warning could be issued. But more serious - or recurring - offences would see the FRC step in and order payments be stopped.

The recommendations will be a challenge for the Coalition and the Labor Party ahead of the election. A series of senior ministers have in the past backed the thrust of Mr Pearson's "tough love" approach to reform, but it is far from certain that the Coalition will endorse his new recommendations, which would require significant changes to social security laws.

In a searing assessment of life in Cape York, which has four main indigenous communities, the institute says a welfare "pedestal" exists. This encourages people to obtain welfare and remain on it, "despite employment or education opportunities being available in or near communities". "The goal of policy solutions to address the pedestal is to see individuals come off welfare (or not enter welfare) and join the real economy or undertake education and training opportunities," the report says.

Mr Pearson has over the past decade led debate on the need for reform, but his often uncompromising approach has raised hackles within sections of the indigenous community.

Source






Flesh-eating bacterium on rapid rise in Victoria

HUNDREDS of Victorians each year are contracting a virulent flesh-eating bug described by scientists as "the most dangerous in the world". More than 300 Victorians fell victim to the invasive 'A' streptococcal disease during a two-year period of a study and 25 of them died.

Medical experts want the disease to become a reportable condition in Victoria. Australian streptococcal expert Prof Jonathon Carapetis, who led the study, said people in Victoria were not being protected against the spread of the bacteria. "There is a strong case that people who come in contact with streptococcal patients are at risk," he said. "They should be given antibiotics to prevent contracting the nasty bug, as is done with those who come in contact with meningococcal - and they are not. "We also believe that immuno globulin and clindamycin can stop the bacteria, but most people are not being given these drugs."

The disease particularly affects children under five, pregnant women and the elderly. One of the victims in the study was a two-year-old child, with a history of a sore throat, who died of streptococcal bacteraemia.

Prof Carapetis said the Victorian health department needed to make it a notifiable disease because Victorians were at risk. "It has been around for decades and we suspect in that time there have been many more severe cases," he said.

The study, between 2002 and 2004, tracked the number of serious strep cases found in hospitals and GP's surgeries in Victoria. Of the 25 victims, five died from necrotising fasciitis (flesh-eating disease) caused by the streptococcal bacteria and 11 died from toxic shock because of overwhelming infection.

Source

School discipline revival in Western Australia?

SCHOOL bullies and other disruptive students will be removed from schools and taught in behaviour centres, away from their victims. Education Minister Mark McGowan announced the controversial pilot program yesterday. Three centres for teenagers are expected to be set up in Fremantle-Peel, the City of Canning and Kalgoorlie by October as part of the trial, which will be extended to other areas if successful. Five behaviour centres for primary school students are planned for 2008.

Mr McGowan said yesterday it was unfair for well-behaved students to put up with disruptive and violent classmates. It was also unfair to keep troublemakers in learning environments where they were unhappy. Mr McGowan said many disruptive students had underlying mental-health or emotional problems, learning difficulties or dysfunctional home lives, for which they needed help. "They need specialist help that is not always available in schools so that they can return to a mainstream school, training, employment or a combination of these options,'' Mr McGowan said. "The behaviour centres will offer intensive literacy and numeracy support, a specialised curriculum focusing on problem solving, coping strategies and regulation of behaviour, and individualised school transition plans.''

Yesterday's announcement follows a commitment by Mr McGowan earlier this year to improve the image of public schools. He said he was educated in public schools and believed in them. ``While (troublemakers) make up less than 1 per cent of the total student population, their impact is great,'' he said. ``There is no point expecting teachers to struggle on handling these students because everyone suffers. ``About 25 students are excluded from WA public schools every year, almost all of them secondary students. ``The pressure on teachers, other students and families is intolerable. ``Some kids have a very tough life and they will show behaviour that reflects that. ``I am not targeting them, but I am trying to find an environment that suits them while at the same time making the rest of the school better.''

Source





The unhinged Left in Australia

By Andrew Bolt

I WENT to Doctor S yesterday up at the Epworth and said I was in strife. That much I know is true. Something was wrong with my vision, I said. I wasn't seeing things as they surely must be if all was well. And that's true, too. Please tell me all I need is the long holiday I'm going on this very week, I pleaded. But Dr S rules out stress. So the awful suspicion grows that there's nothing wrong with my vision and the unbelievable things I've been seeing are all true, as well. How frightening.

For a start, I this week read - or thought I read - a United Nations Environment Program manual, which insisted the real problem with Zimbabwe was not that it was ground so deep in the dirt by its brutal leader that it was short of food, work and even power. No, it was simply growing too fast. "Zimbabwe is presently entering a stage of rapid industrialisation and motorisation," the UNEP sighed. "This has resulted in increased air pollution, as well as the increased emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide." Still, I guess the country's huge power blackouts will soon fix that.

But please tell me, dear reader, that it's just my eyes letting me down. Can such madness really be? Not all the odd things I'm seeing are so serious. Take Dust, a book the ABC has published with the sole purpose, it seems, of making happy children very sad. Again I thought I must have gone cross-eyed because no publicist could sell a children's book like this:

"In a perfect world, this book would not exist. But we do not live in a perfect world. At any given moment of any given day, there are people dying from natural disasters over which we have no control. Beyond natural disasters we add disasters of our own making, but even if we all learn to live in peace, there will still be millions of people who need help."

And no book for children could open with these words of a starved child in Niger: "I died last night." Or end with an image of the Grim Reaper leading black children across a hill littered with skulls. I know this is just a trivial example of those things I see that cannot be, yet like all the others it shows glad being subverted for grim, or foul being hailed as fair, or evil mistaken for good. A world stood on its head.

I first feared my eyes were playing up when I read the diatribe of Amnesty International's chief, Irene Khan, in her latest annual report on the world's worst villainy. She'd singled out just four evildoers by name: in order, our John Howard, the US's George Bush, Sudan's genocidal Field Marshal Omar Al-Bashir and Zimbabwe's brutal Robert Mugabe. I must be reading wrong, right?

Or is it really also true that of all the regimes that crush workers, ban unions and shoot union leaders, our ACTU picked Australia for the International Labor Organisation's shame file of the worst of the worst? Indeed, I heard ACTU president Sharan Burrow on radio, confirming that's exactly what she did. So maybe the problem's affecting my hearing, as well.

After all, yesterday I heard journalist David Marr complain for 15 minutes on the government-funded ABC that this Howard Government was silencing exactly his kind of dissent. What's more, I've witnessed Marr make the same claim on ABC television (twice) and in a new book and huge articles this month in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. If the Government is crushing dissent, what is this Dissenting Marr, this Sydney Solzhenitsyn? Just another of my strange visions? Indeed, Marr even spent a whole session of the government-backed Sydney Writers Festival whingeing along with Clive Hamilton, who so furiously agrees the Government is stifling debate that he's written his own book, Silencing Dissent, one of at least six new tomes this past year that damn dissent-crushing Howard. Whole perches of intellectuals now squawk that they cannot speak in fascist Australia, deafening us with complaints of being silenced, and deaf to irony themselves.

I'd laugh if I wasn't still worrying about my eyes, which cannot see the Australia that all these smart people say festers under my feet. Take retired County Court judge Peter Gebhardt, who this week said he agreed with Fascist America, in 10 easy steps, in which writer Naomi Wolf tells how America supposedly lost its freedoms under Fuhrer Bush. Gebhardt listed some of the ways: "creating a gulag (Guantanamo Bay); developing a thug caste (security contractors); setting up an internal surveillance system; harassing citizens' groups; engaging in arbitrary detention and release; targeting key individuals; controlling the media (arrests of US journalists are at a record level); believing that dissent equals treason; suspending the rule of law . . ." And he warned: "Over the past decade, many of Wolf's 10 steps have been evident in this country . . ."

Gosh, they have? Yet the police state this ex-judge describes resembles nothing remotely like the country I've lived in, and still see today. But you see why I worry. Surely all these intellectuals, so many with important public jobs, cannot all be mad? You might try to cheer me by saying such people see things more gloomily than the rest of us, but up bobs Prof Robert Manne, voted our Most Influential Public Intellectual. Sure, Manne is as convinced as Marr that "debate is presently under threat", but he's also quick to hail a kinder, gentler, more moral society when he's told of one.

Hear barking Manne start to coo when he describes not our own foul society, but the "enchanted world" of Aborigines before whites came: "(Anthropologists have) discovered a world that was filled with economic purpose; leavened by playfulness, joy and humour; soaked in magic, sorcery, mystery and ritual; pregnant at every moment with deep and unquestioned meaning." But still I worry: How could our top intellectual so praise a society in which the strong ruled the weak, infanticide was common, death rates by warfare horrific, life expectancy low and bashing of women - as measured by the fractured skulls since found - astonishingly high?

Is it me? Or is upside now down? Inside out? Maybe it is. Consider . . . We now worship global warming preachers who belch more greenhouse gases from their mansions and private planes than do their disciples. Our richest musicians stage Make Poverty History concerts in which not a dollar is raised for the poor and even the fans get in free. Our politicians say "sorry" for stealing Aboriginal children no one can find or name. The head of Melbourne University Press, formed to publish academic works of the highest quality, now wants to publish the memoirs of al-Qaida recruit and dropout David Hicks. The Sydney Peace Prize is given to a writer who tells us to join the "Iraqi resistance" - now blowing up women and children - because their "battle is our battle".

The Australian Catholic University gives an honorary PhD to Age cartoonist Michael Leunig, who likens Israel to Auschwitz, paints George Bush as the devil, asks us to pray for Osama bin Laden and praises "the music you can hear playing in your toes at night". Our leading historians defend the fashionable untruths they tell about our "genocidal" past by sighing - as did Professor Lyndall Ryan - "Two truths are told. Is only one 'truth' correct?" Marrickville Council, in inner Sydney, decides this month to twin, not with any town in Israel, but with the Palestinian town of Bethlehem, now under the control of Hamas extremists.

On it goes: the artists who take pride in displeasing; the Age columnist who yesterday declared, "I'd be happy with a benevolent socialist dictatorship"; the prominent Leftists, led by the ABC's Phillip Adams, who invite Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez to come here to "inspire" us to be just that; the academics who want to try George Bush, not David Hicks; the immigrants who want Australia to be more like the countries they fled; the discrimination police who entrap Christian pastors, but leave hate-preaching imams well alone; and . . . And? God, it's all true. I'm out of here. Goodbye.

Source




Well-deserved Royal recognition for Australia's greatest satirist

CBE is in the middle ranking of the order -- just below where the title "Sir" confers



HIS comic creations Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson, have had an "in" with the Queen for years. Now, it's finally Barry Humphries' turn. One of Australia's funniest and most beloved performers was yesterday awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. "It's very nice to receive an honour from the Queen," Humphries said while eating breakfast in the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens. "It means that I can be called Commander. It also might help me getting a good table in a restaurant," he joked.

In Brisbane until next Sunday with his production Barry Humphries - Back with a Vengeance, the 73-year-old said it was lovely to receive such unexpected recognition. "This really came out of the blue," he said. "You get a letter from Downing St, from the Prime Minister, asking if you would accept it and you write back and say, 'I think I might'." The satirist received his letter three weeks ago and has had to keep the award secret since, even from his family. "It was rather hard. I did feel like running around immediately with a loud hailer and telling the world," he laughed. "It's put a little smile on my face which might not have been so broad yesterday."

Source. More on Humphries here. There is a description of his latest performance here.






Nuke deal between Russia and Australia very close



AUSTRALIA is set to strike a controversial nuclear deal with Russia. Uranium from Australian mines could be powering Russian nuclear power plants by the end of the year, Federal Government officials say. The Howard Government is close to finalising a treaty with Vladimir Putin's regime to allow exports of Australian yellowcake, and possibly enriched uranium. The Opposition says the Government also has plans to accept nuclear waste from overseas. Australia has never exported yellowcake to its Cold War foe, although Russia has processed Australian uranium for other countries under a 1990 agreement.

John Carlson, head of the Federal Government's Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office, said the bilateral treaty could be finalised by September. "The timetable is very tight but I believe we can do it," Mr Carlson told a Russian news agency. Mr Carlson discussed the deal on a visit to Russia this month. He also told Russia that Australia would enrich its own uranium at some point. "It's too early to say whether we will or will not participate in the Russian (enrichment) centre but our principle is to have enrichment in Australia in future," he said.

Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett said the treaty with Russia raised doubts about the Government's uranium policy: "As a senior government official has now admitted that we will have nuclear enrichment in Australia, we also need to know what discussions and commitments were given to Russian officials or any other countries concerning Australia being used, as Russia's nuclear weapons stockpile is one of the world's largest, although Moscow is not making new bombs, and its three plutonium reactors are used for power generation."

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said a condition of the treaty was Russia's decision in 2006 to separate its civilian nuclear program from its military one. Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane confirmed on Friday that Australia was considering building an enrichment facility. There has been speculation it would cost $2.5 billion, and could be located at Caboolture in Queensland, Redcliffe in South Australia or outback Western Australia.

Source

AUSTRALIAN DEVELOPMENTS IN EDUCATION:

Three current articles below that may herald a return to the more realistic practices of the past

Bring back the cane, says Federal Minister

FEDERAL Health Minister Tony Abbott has suggested a return to corporal punishment to ensure discipline returns to schools. The comments came after Mr Abbott watched footage of a vicious attack on a Melbourne schoolgirl. The grainy vision from a mobile phone showed a teenage girl repeatedly kicked in the head and body by two other teenagers.

Mr Abbott was alarmed by the footage and said it showed that current methods of discipline in schools were not working. "I mean, we've taken corporal punishment out of the schools because we think that's brutal and yet our playgrounds seem to be becoming more brutal than ever," the minister told the Nine Network today. "Maybe a little bit more discipline in the schools would prevent some of the ugliness that we've just seen."

Mr Abbott said it was a different situation in his day. "When I was a kid at school, if you got up to mischief you were punished, not severely, but never-the-less you were punished." Victoria Police have cautioned two teenage girls over the assault [Big of them! How much evidence do they need to lay an assault charge?] which took place last year in Melbourne's western suburbs

Source




Violent pupils out of control

TASMANIAN teachers want separate schools for violent children who attack them and other students. Every week the Australian Education Union hears about a teacher who has been hit, punched, stood over or threatened. AEU state manager Chris Lane said teachers' only option was to suspend violent children, who returned to the classroom just as out of control. "They come back after two weeks and just do it again," he said.

AEU welfare officer Barbara Elliot said in one classroom kids had "rioted" and broken legs off chairs to beat each other. She said teachers needed separate education facilities for children to learn how to control their anger. Teachers could work with violent students individually or in small groups in a calm and safe environment where there was nothing to throw. "You would make such a difference," Mrs Elliot said. "A child might only need two or three weeks and they could return to the classroom. You would save so much money because teachers would not be off work on stress leave and the jails would not be so full."

Mrs Elliot said suspending a violent child was like temporarily turning off a machine that had cut off a hand. "You turn it back on in a couple of weeks and nothing has changed," she said. "It is still dangerous."

Mrs Elliot and Education Minister David Bartlett rejected calls from Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott to bring back corporal punishment. Mr Bartlett said he "absolutely" rejected a return to the cane but said teachers needed better support to discipline students. He said he was discussing options with the AEU to protect teachers, including strengthening the law. "We need to provide clarity for our teachers to ensure ... they are strengthened by law and protected by the system to ensure they're not the ones that end up in the firing line," he said.

Mrs Elliot said corporal punishment would only teach students that violence was OK. "The state school system is not overrun with violent children," she said. "But there are violent children and we need a sensible way to deal with them when they can't remain in the classroom. "Teachers have a right to a safe workplace." She said after assaults, teachers found it hard to return to the classroom. "Some sit in their car and cry at the end of the day, others get home and break down," she said.

Source




Professor to take state's schools back to basics



In a further move away from its disastrous foray into outcomes-based education, the West Australian Government has appointed the head of the respected NSW curriculum authority to advise it on newcourses for kindergarten to Year 10. The chairman of the NSW Board of Studies, Gordon Stanley, will head a national advisory panel appointed by the West Australian Government to review proposed content for the reintroduction of school syllabuses. [I know Gordon Stanley, a very conscientious man. I doubt that he would like the label but he is as conservative as you can get in his circles without being marginalized. And the NSW High School curriculum is undoubtedly the nation's most traditional]

The West Australian approach to school curriculums, detailing what students should be able to do rather than the knowledge they should be taught, has been widely criticised for dumbing down school subjects. In the discredited courses, Year 12 English students were asked to study the Big Brother TV show and Mr Men children's books, and music students were not required to read music or play an instrument. By contrast, the NSW syllabuses are renowned for their rigour, and often cited as the gold standard, not only by NSW education ministers, in the debate over a national curriculum.

Professor Stanley's involvement will be viewed as an acknowledgement of the superior quality of the NSW school syllabuses, which West Australian Education Minister Mark McGowan has previously cited as the model for the state. Mr McGowan yesterday said the new syllabuses would dictate that all primary school students spend half their school day studying maths and English.

But the minister said it was too simplistic to interpret the changes as the death of outcomes-based education. "We will never move away from the idea of focusing on student-centred learning; that is, what does the student learn from this?" Mr McGowan said. "But the idea that we don't need a syllabus, and teachers just use their imaginations and experience - particularly for those who have no experience - is just flawed."

The new syllabuses will also allow teachers to use traditional marking methods such as grades or percentages, but they can choose to use the controversial "levels", associated with the outcomes-based education method. Mr McGowan said he was correcting an error by former Liberal education minister Colin Barnett, who in 1998 "scrapped the syllabus from kindergarten to Year 10 and introduced a curriculum framework that did not contain specific course content". He said that while he had full confidence in the state's Curriculum Council, which oversaw the implementation of the ill-fated OBE courses, it made sense to appoint a national panel of experts for the overhaul.

Joining Professor Stanley on the board are foundation chair of mathematics education at Melbourne University Kaye Stacey; associate professor of early childhood at the University of South Australia Susan Hill; associate professor in history at the University of NSW Bruce Scates; and director of the Wesley Research Institute Julie Campbell.

Mr McGowan became Education Minister late last year in an attempt by the Carpenter Government to quell widespread revolt against the state's version of outcomes-based education and the hasty introduction of new courses in Years 11 and 12. His predecessor, Ljiljanna Ravlich, also faced questions over allegations that her department had mishandled claims of sexual misconduct by teachers.

Professor Stanley has been president of the NSW Board of Studies since 1998 and oversaw the introduction of a restructured Higher School Certificate in 2000-01.

Source




GREEN DOOM-MONGERS ARE TRAUMATISING A WHOLE GENERATION OF CHILDREN

A report released today by the Australian Childhood Foundation, in the lead up to their annual fundraiser Childhood Hero Day Thursday 14 June, has revealed that Australian children are deeply concerned about the state of the environment and the impact of climate change. The report, 'Children's fears, hopes and heroes - Modern Childhood in Australia', surveyed 600 10-14 year-olds across Australia and revealed that:

* 52% are scared that there will not be enough water in the future

* 44% of children are worried about the impact of climate change

* 43% of children are worried about the pollution in the air and water

Dr Joe Tucci, CEO of the Australian Childhood Foundation, said "Children's sense of their place in the world is under threat. Children are nervous about global problems and the implications for the future they are faced with. "It is often said that children and young people live in the here and now with little regard for the future. These findings clearly challenge this popular notion."

The report also revealed that more than a third of children were anxious about terrorism, were worried about having to fight in a war and one in four believed the world will end before they reach adulthood.

FULL STORY here




Major government hospital boss: We're in crisis

THE chief of one of Queensland's biggest hospitals has branded the facility "in crisis" and urged staff they must discharge patients quicker. In a damning leaked email, Princess Alexandra Hospital senior clinical chief executive officer David Theile warned staff that the hospital was not coping with demand. The admission by Dr Theile is a massive blow to the State Government's claim that Queensland's health system is "turning the corner" after a massive funding injection.

"The hospital is in a crisis situation with beds unavailable and emergency department access block," Dr Theile wrote in the email late last month. "Could all effort be applied to discharge all clinically suitable patients as rapidly as possible. Such effort is required now and needs to be sustained."

Meanwhile, the hospital's ability keep its two operating theatres open for urgent surgery is being compromised by Queensland's chronic shortage of radiographers. Another leaked email from director of medical imaging Wayne Nuss warned because the hospital needed 10 additional radiographers, only one would be rostered on outside business hours. There had been occasions outside normal working hours when two theatres that required radiographers were simultaneously requesting a radiographer, he said. "In most circumstances, unless considerable notice is provided and staff are available, we unfortunately will not be able to provide that level of coverage." Princess Alexandra staff said the hospital would now struggle to deal with multiple trauma cases needing X-rays.

Similar problems are occurring in other hospitals across Queensland with the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital having difficulty keeping its CT scanners functioning. Figures obtained by The Courier-Mail show the radiographer shortage is causing a big blowout in waiting times for cancer victims needing chemotherapy.

Dr Theile yesterday admitted the PA Hospital was "desperately short of beds" and the need to discharge patients quicker occurred "reasonably frequently". But he said there was "virtually no chance" of compromising patient care as doctors were required to speed up administrative rather than clinical work. The dire situation with radiographers had improved with five hirings but on weekends only one remained, Dr Theile said.

Source

The New Mufti of Muslim Australia

A more charming fanatic



Report by Andrew Bolt

I WAS chatting to the charming Sheik Fehmi Naji el-Imam, now Australia's new Mufti, when we were interrupted by the Queen. Her Majesty settled herself at her table, while we and the other few hundred guests at the Royal Exhibition Building lunch waited politely. Two archbishops - one Catholic and the other Anglican - then said Grace and I whispered to the sheik, "Why aren't you up there, too?" "One day I will be," he replied. I was joking, but I'm sure Fehmi was not.

And why shouldn't he hope to be up there, making the Christians shuffle up a bit to make room for his very different and demanding faith? I mention this not to damn his cheek, but to point out Fehmi - however moderate he is painted - is not there to police our Muslims and assimilate them for you. His job isn't to get Muslims used to secular Australia, but Australia used to Muslims.

That point may be lost by commentators who, with me, have long wanted him to replace the disastrous Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilaly as Mufti, our senior Muslim cleric. I wanted Hilaly sacked for preaching hatred, and thought it disturbing that Muslims chose to be led by a man who'd praised suicide bombers as heroes, called the September 11 terror attacks "God's work against oppressors", and insisted raped women be "jailed for life". And what a symbol of determined apartness he was, with so little English after 30 years here. But how much better off are we with Fehmi chosen on Sunday by the new Australian National Imam's Council to take over as Mufti?

Not so much. But let me first count Fehmi's blessings. He is a most courteous man, who has often preached against violent jihad at his Preston mosque, and publicly and often called for the Sydney-based Hilaly to go. Lebanese-born, he speaks fine English after 55 years here, and has impressed leaders of other faiths, with the admired Rabbi John Levi praising him in a 2001 ABC profile as "extremely wise and compassionate".

Yet, last year, Levi said Fehmi had "shocked" him: "He is under great pressure from a radicalised community, but nothing can excuse his destruction of decades-long work on Jewish-Muslim understanding." And here's the problem. In the end, Fehmi leads believers who demand he be far more radical than you'd expect from a "moderate". What alarmed Levi, and the Howard Government, is that Fehmi backed the Hezbollah terrorists in their war with Israel, hailing them at a rally as "freedom fighters". Worse, when asked at his first press conference as Mufti if he accepted Osama bin Laden was behind the September 11 attacks, he stalled: "What evidence?" Advisers then stopped him from speaking on Iraq.

Excuses will be made that Fehmi dares not be as moderate as he'd like, and he's often hinted that's so. He urged that the Danish cartoons of Mohammed not be published here because they'd "disturb people who can do things that we don't want them to do." He criticised police raids on suspected extremists in Perth because "we worry about some amongst our people who become so angry about this sort of thing, and might do some act, which we won't be happy about".

When Channel 9 asked him about Sheik Mohammed Omran, who has been linked to terrorists, Fehmi said only: "I know him and he has his own way of thinking, which I don't want to talk about." And note this. At Monday's press conference, he refused to repeat his past criticisms of Hilaly, defending him instead. What's more, the imams' council went out of its way to save Hilaly's face, saying it first voted to keep this notorious bigot as Mufti, only to have him turn it down. This was no repudiation of him. And back at his Lakemba mosque, Australia's biggest, Hilaly reminded us: "Control will always be in Lakemba." Which is why I fear Fehmi is just a soothing distraction.

Source





Call for surgeon report cards

Long overdue. If the profession refuses to police itself, information should at least be made available, imperfect though it may be

REPORT cards for surgeons showing patient death rates should be introduced to help people make decisions about which doctor to choose for an operation. The recommendation from bioethics expert Justin Oakley includes making mortality rates available to the public on an internet database that lists every surgeon and hospital in Australia.

Professor Oakley, from Melbourne's Monash University, has called on federal and state governments to help fund the development of a public reporting system following the Bundaberg Hospital scandal, in which Jayant Patel was linked to at least a dozen deaths and dozens of injuries through incompetence. Professor Oakley said the national database should start with report cards for cardiac surgeons, a system that has recently been set up in Britain. It should then be expanded to include all surgeons. He said the report cards, which could also include surgery complication rates, would keep surgeons more accountable to the public. "The mortality rates of each surgeon should be made available to patients so they have a better idea of their surgeon's track record," Professor Oakley said. "It also improves the safety and quality of care. If surgeons know their performance will be seen by the community, that is a powerful incentive for surgeons to maintain their performance."

The Patel scandal at Bundaberg Hospital had shown that internal peer review was not enough to keep the profession accountable, he said. Professor Oakley, who heads Monash's Centre of Human Bioethics, said any mortality rate for surgeons would have to be adjusted based on the risk of the operation. "They would adjust the mortality rate depending on the mixture of patients," he said. "It would take into account patient profile. If a surgeon performs on a lot of patients that are high risk, like those that are a bit sicker or older, that is factored in to the rate."

Professor Oakley, who has co-edited a book on the subject due out in August, said governments would need to invest significant resources to make a report card system viable and it should be set up sooner rather than later. "I don't think we should wait for a scandal to occur to allow patients to get access to the track records of surgeons," he said.

However, Royal Australasian College of Surgeons president Andrew Sutherland said there were immense practical difficulties in implementing report cards, calculating a mortality rate and making risk adjustment. "It's a terrific idea but the risk assessment (of mortality rates) is very difficult," he said. Factors such as high-risk operations would make it almost impossible to determine a fair rating. "We are totally against report cards because there is so much opportunity for unfairness," Dr Sutherland said. "The practicalities are not possible at this time."

Dr Sutherland said the college had started conducting audits of surgery deaths in some states and said there were plans to expand the program nationally. Deaths were reviewed by specialists with the aim of trying to prevent problems from recurring, but the findings were not made public, he said. "Pretty soon we'll have an audit of surgical mortality in every state."

Source




Trains may be "green" but they cost taxpayers a bomb



TAXPAYERS fork out $900 to subsidise every Traveltrain passenger journeying from Brisbane and Cairns - the equivalent of seven air fares. Damning new figures have revealed a massive blowout in the cost to taxpayers of keeping Queensland Rail's Sunlander and Tilt Train services operating. The figures show the State Government's subsidy cost has more than tripled in just six years and taxpayers will be slugged $130 million in 2007-08. Plummeting passenger numbers in the age of budget airfares has been blamed for the blowout.

Transport Minister Paul Lucas last night said the Government was committed to keeping rail services operating - regardless of the costs. However, the Coalition accused the Government of milking cash from coal companies - who must pay for track improvements - to subsidise inefficient services. A comparison of Budget figures shows the subsidy cost of each passenger per kilometre will be 50> in 2007-08 compared with 15> in 2001-02. A passenger wanting to travel one way by train between Brisbane and Cairns pays $206.80 for an economy seat and up to $742.50 for a first-class cabin. The journey would take between 26 and 31 hours. However, the real cost would be $1106.80 and $1642.50 without the 50>/km subsidy for the 1800km trip.

But with air fares between Brisbane and Cairns as cheap as $129 one way, the Government could fly about seven people for free at the same price it pays to send a single Traveltrain passenger on the same journey. The flights take two hours and 25 minutes.

In 2001-02, 632,000 passenger trips were made on Traveltrain. This fell to 432,000 in 2006-07. The Tilt Train derailment in 2005 contributed to the fall in passenger numbers. Queensland Rail was predicting an increase in patronage of 1250 in 2007-08.

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Merit pay for Australian teachers is coming

Schools should trial a new teacher salary system

In the face of near hysterical opposition from teacher unions and state Labor governments, the federal Education Minister Julie Bishop is pushing ahead with a plan to introduce merit-based pay for teachers, and so she should. As The Australian reported yesterday, Ms Bishop has asked teams of expert consultants to develop different models for merit-based pay. It may be that good teachers get a cash bonus for lifting the grades of an entire class; or that the principal recommends a pay rise for a particularly outstanding individual; or that parents and students push for a rise for a teacher who has tamed a particularly unruly bunch of students. With some luck, there will be a host of schools jostling to sign up to trial the new models before the system can be rolled out across the nation.

Merit-based pay is obviously good for teachers, but there is evidence it is good for students, too. In the US, where teachers can get a cash bonus if they lift their student's scores, literacy and numeracy has improved. Australian teacher unions say they would rather use any extra money to hire more teachers and reduce class sizes. But there is no evidence that smaller class sizes automatically or even necessarily lead to better results.

Unions are likewise wary of competition among staff, complaining that it could erode the pleasant, collegial atmosphere of a school. The argument does not make sense. In most workplaces, there are talented high flyers and flat-footed time-wasters. There are juniors, seniors, big bosses and trainees. They get paid on merit, and they are required to work towards common goals. They don't kill each other over the fact that some earn more than others. Also, it is standard practice in most professions that if you work hard, you can ask for a pay rise. If you don't get one, you can take your labour to a different workplace that will give your pay packet a boost.

Recent reports have proved beyond doubt that teaching no longer attracts as many bright students as it did in the 1980s, in part because women, who make up the bulk of teachers, have more career options. But the problem with teacher pay obviously has an impact. In NSW, a teacher reaches the peak salary after nine years, which usually means, by the age of 31 or 32, they are earning as much as they will ever earn. By the age of 50, their morale must be completely shot.

It is often said that nobody goes into teaching for the money. Some go in for the short days and the generous holidays, for a love of children, or to perform public service. But greater financial rewards will make teaching a more attractive profession for smart people, who might otherwise drift to economics, medicine or the law, or indeed any job where their performance is recognised with one thing we all need, money.

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Typical Optus stupidity

As woeful as Telstra is, Optus is worse. It once took me nearly a year to get Optus to admit to a fault and reimburse me -- and that was only after I wrote to the chief executive of their parent company -- which was in London at the time. And when I tried to get some details about their wireless internet service recently, I had to write to their parent company again -- by now in Singapore -- before I got any information out of them. The journalist below only got any information because he had the private number of an Optus executive. I would LOVE to see Optus go broke. Whoever bought up their assets might figure out how to run a REAL phone company. Optus at the moment are living testimony to the fact that a duopoly is not much better than a monopoly.

I am back with Telstra at the moment but only because I have found the one guy there who is able and willing to help with problems. And, boy, is he needed! He is some guy called Sol Trujillo. He doesn't fix you up himself but he passes your letter on to someone who can. Now if only I could get his phone no.!

I note that Telstra has just cut off one of the avenues for complaints about it so arrogance just seems to be the hallmark of Australian phone companies. And, as I pointed out on May 25th, the government "Ombudsman" who is supposed to keep them in line is of very limited help. It's lucky Australians are such an easygoing lot. In any other country, one of the company officials concerned would probably have been shot by now. We do however now have a lot of Muslims living here who may not be so easygoing

For me, not being able to access the internet is like losing an arm. Imagine how I felt on Saturday morning when the wild weather not only knocked me offline but took my home phone with it. Both my home phone and cable internet are provided by Optus - a usually harmonious relationship that last weekend was put to the test.

Now, I'm not for a minute comparing my woes to the devastation across the state. There were people far worse off at the weekend but for me the frustration of trying to get some information out of Optus, to confirm the storm caused the dramas, drove me to the brink of insanity. After dialling the customer number using my mobile (also Optus but thankfully still working) I got a painfully annoying auto-reply recorded message which asked me to explain the nature of my inquiry. I got the dreaded "I'm sorry, I didn't get that" reply and after four attempts (two were ruined because I swore into the phone) I advanced to the next stage. I was finally put in touch with a "customer service representative".

After more time on hold I was connected to a friendly man named Ravi who had a distinct Indian accent, which was at times hard to understand. He suggested I restart my modem - which I'd already tried. Ravi told me he was unaware of any network problems. I asked Ravi where he was and he told me he was in Delhi, India. "What's the weather like?" I asked. "It's very hot," he said. "Do you know about the weather in Sydney?" I said. "No," Ravi answered. "What's it like?" I explained we were seeing some of the worst storms, wind and rain in the past 30 years. Ravi suggested I wait things out.

I then called the office number of a contact at Optus corporate affairs on the off chance she would receive it before the end of the long weekend. To her credit, I got a call back an hour later and it was only then I found out there were several surrounding areas without internet and phone connections and technicians were working on the problem. It's a shame, I told her, I had to talk to a robot and someone in India to try and find out what was going on in my own backyard.

Services were restored nearly 24 hours later. The weather was still hot in India.

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Leftist candidate mocks aspirational Australians

A LABOR candidate has caused an uproar by dismissing thousands of voters as being on the edge of Kath & Kim country. Labor's Barbara Norman has made the unfavourable comparison of Melbourne's leafy eastern suburb of Ashburton. And Ms Norman has effectively given up on the fight for the Liberal-held Melbourne seat of Higgins before the campaign has even started. She made the Kath & Kim comparison this week, claiming that the seat held by Treasurer Peter Costello was diverse but impossible to win. At one end of Higgins was the multicultural, gay suburb of Prahran, and at the core of the seat were the captains of industry in Toorak. "Then at the other end it has Ashburton, out near Chadstone, which is almost Kath & Kim country," Ms Norman told The Canberra Times. "So it's very diverse."

The comment prompted an angry response from some Ashburton residents, who have seen their house prices soar in the latest boom, making it one of the hot suburbs. And Mr Costello immediately shot back. "I stand up for the people of Higgins," he said. "And anyone who makes a statement like that shows they have no understanding of our residents and our area."

Ms Norman, who is a senior manager at RMIT, yesterday defended the comparison with Kath & Kim. Kath and Kim were the main characters in the highly successful ABC TV satire of the same name, which ridiculed families in Melbourne's outer suburbs as ignorant and materialistic. Of the comparison to the program, Ms Norman told the Herald Sun: "That was just a description that I guess it's something that people readily associate with." Ms Norman said she supported her potential constituents, adding that they were "all terrific". Winning the seat, held with a margin of 8.8 per cent, was a tough ask. "I see it as a big challenge," she said.

In yesterday's Canberra Times she said she had no chance. Despite being preselected in a tough seat, Ms Norman has formidable credentials. She is the business and partnerships manager of the Global Cities Institute at RMIT, the Australian Fabian Society's national president, and a life fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia. Higgins has been held by two prime ministers.

Ashburton locals were yesterday outraged by Ms Norman's description of their area as "almost Kath & Kim country". Eliza Spring, 32, said she hadn't seen anyone who looked like Kath or Kim in the area. "It's quite the opposite," she said. "Has she been out here? "She's trying to draw an analogy that we'll all respond to, I guess. Maybe she's just got it wrong. "There's actually a really good sense of community, which is good."

Trent Bussell, 21, from Glen Iris, said the description was "a bit over the top". "Chapel St (South Yarra) is more of a nightlife area and this is more suburban, but you wouldn't say it's Kath & Kim country." Chris Turner, 57, said Ms Norman's label was "a disgrace". "Actually this area has always voted Labor, the south ward. Kath & Kim - how insulting," he said. "I would say she hasn't been here very much. "I do vote Labor, but I'm a little worried if she's the candidate."

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Another delusory whine about "gagging" from a Leftist

CLIVE Hamilton calls himself an author but surely he's a comedian. How else to explain the following? Yesterday, New Matilda ran Hamilton's latest piece in which he said of The Australian: "No news organisation in Australia has done more to silence critics and independent voices." Now, here's the pay-off: this was run on the same day that The Australian published Hamilton's latest research paper. So while Hamilton was complaining that The Australian was silencing critics, The Australian was publishing Hamilton. Late last year, The Australian also published a report produced by the Australia Institute, of which he is executive director, on the subject of corporate pedophilia.

Hamilton complains that The Australian declined to publish extracts from his new book. That's quite right. We didn't think it was up to scratch.

Hamilton's latest paper focuses on the relationship between universities and the fuel industry. He says BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Woodside are providing universities with funding and this should generate "grounds for concern." But why? Hamilton surely isn't suggesting that fuel companies will try to crush academic freedom? Of course he is. His report says academic freedom "could be compromised as commercial interests penetrate decision-making". This is an anti-capitalist, Marxist conspiracy theory and offensive to academics across the nation, whose freedom, rigour and intellectual honesty can't be so easily purchased.

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Rescuing Australia's blacks from the Greens

By Noel Pearson

THE aspirations of indigenous people in remote Australia to re-establish a real economy underpinning the sustainability of their society are at odds with the vision of urban-based conservation organisations such as the Wilderness Society. The confrontation that has emerged between the advocates of land rights in Cape York and those who advocate for so-called wilderness may be the start of a sharpening clash of values.

Traditional land owners and communities in northern Australia are caught in a dilemma: the preservation of the natural and cultural heritage is foremost among their concerns about the future of their land and culture, while they also understand economic development is essential for the future of their people. Without economic development, indigenous people are dying on welfare dependency. The only other solution to a real economy is wholesale migration to urban areas and the abandonment of their culture: to die in a miserable urban underclass. So which is it to be: no development and continuing the downward spiral of social breakdown, or seeking development that can sustain people on their traditional lands?

In the wider society, attitudes towards the environment and development range between two extremes. The extreme of one side argues that environmental and development policy must serve the needs of the human species and nature must yield. Few tears are shed when another species becomes extinct. The extremity of the other side argues that policy must serve the needs of preserving and enhancing ecological diversity and humans must yield. Few tears are shed when thousands die and billions suffer in poverty. It may be that the underlying psychology of extreme Western environmentalism is that mass depopulation from disease and starvation would be an ecological benefit.

The rest of us, positioned somewhere between these two extremes, want something called sustainable development. The achievement of sustainable development depends on working out this conflict between the two camps, which seem interested only in their own side of the argument. Somehow, compromises are fashioned out of this conflict, because if either side had its way, development would either stop completely or it would be completely unrestrained.

But does the vast middle determine the terms of the policy debate, or is the concept of sustainable development just a veneer for what is really a crude struggle between two extreme (whitefella) ideologies? When indigenous groups I know of are confronted by the opportunities and challenges of economic development, and they are faced by a wider society that is generally divided into two opposing camps, they have to come to terms with both sides of the argument. They hear the precaution and prudence of those who advocate for the environment, and this precaution and prudence resonates for them, because it is part of their tradition. But they also can see that the world beyond their own is underpinned by development, and they too need development. So they seek to balance the need for development with the imperatives of environment and culture. They seek sustainability.

The problem facing indigenous people in Cape York is that in recent years land-use policy has been most influenced by the relatively extreme end of the green spectrum. Single-issue environmental organisations, which see conservation in a particular way, are in a unique position to determine policy affecting remote parts of Australia because of the value they provide to political parties in delivering green votes in marginal seats in urban centres. They are able to trade environmental lock-up in remote and regional areas for organised green electoral support. But the capacity to deliver 2 per cent to 3 per cent of the vote in marginal seats hardly represents a basis for a mandate to determine crucial environmental and social sustainability questions.

This week Queensland Premier Peter Beattie tabled the Cape York Peninsula Heritage Bill, which represents our best opportunity to strike a balance between conservation and development for the future of this region. This law has the potential to ease Cape York people’s struggle to reconcile conservation and development. The tabling of this bill represents the culmination of decades of conflict between pastoralist, mining, Aboriginal and conservationist interests. In 1996, at the height of the controversy over native title in pastoral leases, Rick Farley succeeded in bringing together the conflicting parties, who signed the Cape York heads of agreement on land use. The former head of the National Farmers Federation and member of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation was a conservationist (he was a founder of Landcare), a cattleman and a supporter of Aboriginal people. It was he who guided the parties to the view that we needed to find a balanced solution.

Farley succeeded in bringing the parties together because the conservation lobby was led by Greg Sargent, a campaigner from the Wilderness Society who understood that conservation needed to respect the land rights of indigenous people as well as the economic development needs of the pastoralists and people who lived in the region. The third person responsible for bringing these parties together was Goombra Jacko, an elder from the Junjuwarra clan.

Beattie has finally delivered on the hopes of these men. The new law provides for joint management of Cape York’s national parks between the state Government and the traditional owners. The original wild rivers legislation that threatened to frustrate indigenous economic development will be amended to protect native title rights and interests and to provide for mandatory water allocations for indigenous communities in each of the catchments affected by a wild river declaration. Indigenous communities will be able to make applications for vegetation clearing on Aboriginal land for sustainable agriculture, aquaculture and animal husbandry.

This new legislative framework is a step in the right direction. It provides indigenous communities with the key to the door when it comes to finding real jobs and pursuing enterprise. The new legislation needs to allow indigenous communities to take advantage of development opportunities that are supported by science and economics.

Australia, and indeed the world, has entered a phase where the environment looms large on domestic and international agendas. The environment has not been so pressing an electoral issue since the 1990 election won by Bob Hawke.

In crisis conditions it is important for nations to make rational decisions. The recessionary effects of wild decision-making based on electoral impulses is a risk the Australian people face in the lead-up to this year’s poll. The consignment of indigenous people in remote Australia to perpetual welfare dependency on the grounds of environmental lock-up is another risk. The problem with the latter is that the potential indigenous victims of these policies do not have electoral power and their needs are likely to be overrun.

The search for sustainable development will continue as legitimate concerns for the future of the environment grow. I hope Western environmentalism does not turn out to have a fundamentally misanthropic (nature before humans) and genocidal (just keep the indigenes on welfare) ethical foundation.

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NUCLEAR BOOM ON THE WAY?

THE price of uranium - already up 85 per cent since January - could reach $US200 a pound within two years, Australia's biggest securities firm, Macquarie, says. Analysts have revised forecasts for the nuclear fuel upwards following its dramatic run this year, driven by dwindling supplies and limited expansion opportunities. The spot price of uranium rose to $US138 a pound last week. It began the year at $US72 a pound.

Macquarie analysts Max Layton and John Moorhead believe the price will average about $US125 a pound this year, but have tipped a peak of about $US150 a pound by year's end. "We would not be surprised to see prices move up to around $US200 a pound over the next two years," they said, citing supply deficits and growing interest in speculative trading.

The world uranium market is expected to remain in deficit for at least the next two years as secondary supplies of ex-military uranium are depleted and miners race to catch up with demand. In March, Paladin Resources shipped the first uranium from its Langer Heinrich project in Namibia - the world's first new uranium mine in more than a decade.

Canada's Cameco was due to bring on the giant Cigar Lake mine soon but a flood last October will delay production until at least 2010. At the same time, concern about climate change has prompted a rush towards nuclear power, with 30 nuclear reactors under construction and 74 more planned.

Macquarie has forecast a 14.4 per cent rise in reactor requirements, but demand could be much higher with a further 182 reactors proposed, mostly in Asia. Resource Capital Research recently raised its uranium price forecast to $US125 a pound this year, and $US140 a pound next year. The value of Australian uranium explorers was up 23 per cent in the first three months of the year

Macquarie said reports suggested almost 20 per cent of mine supply, or about 8000 tonnes of uranium, was being held off the market by traders - and tipped increased speculative activity could quickly drive prices lower. Mr Layton and Mr Moorhead said traders, speculators and hedge funds could "very quickly become drivers of the down leg to this cycle".

The New York Mercantile Exchange launched a uranium futures market last month, which Macquarie has described as a "potentially bullish wild card". The June contract closed yesterday at $US137 a pound, while the December contract was at $US148.

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