Australian Politics
A rare flash of light illumines the brains of a chronically dense bureaucracy
LONG overdue, though. Note the unprecedent thought in red below. Against all precedent, they actually want to buy something that works!
A TENDER for an automatic grenade launcher for Australian troops in Afghanistan has been scrapped 3½ years after bids were received, after the Department of Defence accused the company provisionally awarded the contract of breaking promises.
The Defence Materiel Organisation confirmed last week that the negotiations over the contract, believed to be worth about $150 million, had been cancelled. A Defence spokesman said the effect on the troops in Afghanistan would be "minimal".
But tender documents show the weapons were to address "the current direct fire support deficiencies" in infantry battalions. "A weakness exists … in that at the rifle company/combat team level, the principal systems are limited to small arms with an effective range of 400 metres."
The tender states the automatic grenade launchers must be able to fire a stream of grenades at least two kilometres.
"Defence has cancelled contract negotiations with the preferred tenderer because it became clear that the company was not going to deliver what Defence had assessed it had promised," the spokesman said. He did not name the company but it is believed to be a Melbourne business..
The spokesman said Defence was working out the best way to give troops automatic grenade launchers and might turn to the "off-the-shelf" weapons used by allies in Afghanistan.
SOURCE
Single carriageway claims another life
Julia can find $46 BILLION to build a white-elephant fibre network but can't find the money to make Australia's major North/South road safe?? Insane priorities
The single-carriageway stretch of the Pacific Highway where a male motorist was killed in a fiery collision with a semi-trailer was only 500 metres from where two elderly women were killed in a crash just weeks ago.
A 30-year-old Alstonville man died after he was thrown from his southbound Subaru when it collided with a northbound semi-trailer at Warrell Creek, just south of Macksville, at 4am yesterday. The semi-trailer, which was loaded with chemicals, almost immediately burst into flames and incinerated both vehicles.
Despite the inferno, the 52-year-old semi driver was able to get far enough away from the blaze that he suffered only minor injuries. He was released from hospital yesterday.
The fire left little more than a charred wreck and closed the highway to traffic in both directions for 11 hours.
Investigators are examining whether the collision occurred because the Subaru was trying to pass another truck on a no-overtaking section of the highway. It is believed the Subaru crossed to the other side of the road and struck the semi-trailer going the opposite way.
The crash occurred 500 metres north of a roadside memorial erected to mark where two sisters, aged 77 and 78, from Tuncurry died in a head-on collision on February 16.
Five kilometres north of that site a man was killed in October 2009 when his car was ripped in half after going under a truck as he tried to overtake two semi-trailers.
It took fire crews more than two hours to extinguish the fire yesterday. Firefighters had only limited access to water because of the remote location.
SOURCE
Spray and pay: repeat graffiti offenders should face jail, says new NSW A-G
YOUNG people repeatedly convicted of graffiti offences and property damage should be given jail terms as a reminder that graffiti is a "serious offence", the new state Attorney-General, Greg Smith, has said.
Graffiti infuriated the community, said Mr Smith, who knows the problem first hand: the building housing his Epping electorate office is targeted every few weeks.
Youths accused of graffiti crime should be brought before the courts, not diverted to youth conferencing or given cautions. A repeat offender could be sent to jail, lose their driver's licence or be ordered to clean up graffiti, the former Crown prosecutor said.
"I don't think it is just a spanking offence myself. It is also a sign for the lack of respect of the community. If it is unchecked, a lot of the young guys … get worse and move into worse crimes," he said.
Although graffiti is not his first priority, he spoke about it with passion.
Mr Smith listed his first priorities as appointing a new chief justice and director of public prosecutions, closely followed by reviews of the Bail Act, sentencing legislation and standard non-parole periods.
Recent changes to the Crimes Act and apprehended violence laws would also be reviewed, he said, citing the case involving the 2GB broadcaster Ray Hadley.
Mr Smith wants judges to have more discretion to give weight to the trauma of relatives of murder victims by allowing judges to take into account their victim's impact statements.
The job of the DPP would be advertised, he said, and a selection panel would choose the preferred candidate, while the chief justice would be selected after consultation.
Mr Smith refused to be drawn on likely candidates, saying of the DPP appointment: "I don't have a shortlist but I have in mind [some of] the people who are likely to apply."
After a decade of dispute between the previous DPP and the attorney-general, Mr Smith said there was a need to mend bridges between the departments.
And there are other jobs to be filled; the Coalition wants to reinstate the position of inspector of corrective services, which Labor abolished.
Mr Smith said he had no plans to get rid of the head of the Corrective Services Department, Ron Woodham. But, he added: "I may have wondered out aloud whether he would fit in with the changes I would like to see."
The Coalition had talked about reducing the prison population and criticised Mr Woodham and the "penal culture" in NSW. Jail should be reserved for violent offenders and others should be given greater support for rehabilitation, they said before the election.
Mr Smith also promised to introduce shield laws to protect journalists and their sources, saying: "I think it is time we recognise the importance of those laws."
This week the NSW Law Society also called for a review of court funding and staffing, improved funding for DNA testing, a charter of human rights and rationalisation of the model of personal injury claims.
SOURCE
Feisty mayor of South Australian city
THE mayor of a regional city in South Australia has threatened to set the dogs on Aborigines from interstate if they try to squat in her town.
Port Augusta mayor Joy Baluch said she would bring in the dog squads to stop illegal camping in the South Australian city, The Northern Territory News reports.
Dozens of indigenous people from the Northern Territory have moved to Adelaide after fighting in the Central Australian community of Yuendemu.
"They will not camp illegally in my city," Ms Baluch said. "We have got the police, we have got a dog squad and I would arrange merry hell.
"Anybody who comes and camps illegally on the foreshore or anywhere else in Port Augusta would be moved on. I would not tolerate such stupidity.
"I would not put up with any government authority, any government agency, that allowed that to happen in my city."
SOURCE
Racial Discrimination Act has chilling effect on freedom of speech
By James Allan (Garrick Professor of Law at the University of Queensland)
COLUMNIST Andrew Bolt is before the Federal Court because various plaintiffs are seeking a declaration against him under the Racial Discrimination Act (together with a court-ordered apology, which sounds Orwellian even writing it down).
They want the court to declare that Bolt's opinion pieces about light-skinned Aborigines were unlawful under the act, which strangely enough need not be the same thing as being a criminal offence under that act. And they want the court to enjoin their being republished.
In 1995, the last year of the Keating government, this act was amended to include racial vilification, meaning it became unlawful "to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group" on the basis of their race. But because of the fear of how stifling this could be for free expression in this country, the act also limits remedies for this as well as providing for lots of exemptions. So you don't infringe the act if your words were said reasonably and in good faith in such contexts as being part of an artistic work, or an academic debate, or was "a fair comment on any event or matter of public interest".
The Bolt trial is testing the limits of this legislation. We will see how this 1995 legislative amendment, controversial even back then, is interpreted by the courts. We will see how much room there is in Australia to say things that offend others, the sort of issues that really do lie at the heart of free speech concerns.
Four comments only indirectly related to that trial are worth making. First, I have always said that Australia has more free speech than Canada and Britain. And in practice, if you factor in the sort of self-censorship you see on American university campuses, then we have more scope to speak our minds here than even in the US.
Depending on how this trial goes, that could all change.
Second, a number of commentators have mistakenly claimed this couldn't happen if we had a bill of rights. Wrong! Canada has one of the strongest bills of rights in the common law world. It also has way more limits on your scope to speak your mind when it comes to so-called hate speech, and indeed defamation and campaign finance rules, than we have here. That's why Mark Steyn was dragged before courts and pseudo-courts in Canada, bill of rights and all. The mistake is to think a bill of rights with its "right to free speech" somehow gives you an absolute right along those lines. Wrong. All you buy with a bill of rights is the judges' views about the proper scope of the right, how it relates to other enumerated rights, and what limits on it are reasonable.
Put differently, you can be an unstinting critic of bills of rights at the same time as you are in favour of lots and lots and lots of free speech. There is nothing inconsistent in that and people who point to some supposed mismatch between the two simply don't know how bills of rights work. When you buy one, you are simply buying the views of the unelected judges. You are not buying absolutist guarantees of rights.
Third, however this court case goes, and even if there be some sort of appeal, the people to blame for this infringement of free speech are our legislators. This 1995 amendment ought to be repealed, and now. Sure, you can read this statute as giving such wide exemptions that you could drive a truck through them. So maybe Bolt will walk away unscathed.
But the very fact he (and you) can be brought to court at all can impose a massive chilling effect on free speech. We shouldn't have an act that allows complaints of a quasi-defamatory nature to be turned into ones dressed up as racial vilification. Those who think, like me, that the valuable sort of free speech is the kind that protects stuff many find offensive and distasteful will want this 1995 amending legislation repealed.
Otherwise claims to be in favour of free speech start to look like favouring only the warm, fuzzy varieties of free speech.
The only valuable sort of freedom of speech is the sort that allows people to do or to say what others find wrong-headed, offensive, distasteful and intolerant.
Being free to say and do what everyone else wants you to say and do is not a liberty or freedom you will ever have to fight for; it will make little difference to anything.
Already this Bolt trial is getting publicity in the US. Steyn is writing about it, as are others. And they're painting us as a Mickey Mouse little jurisdiction where being offended is enough to allow victims to paint some speakers as acting unlawfully. Some are suggesting we might be heading down the road Canada travelled.
I think any good, well-functioning democracy requires its citizens to man up and grow a thick skin. If you're offended, tell us why the speaker is wrong. Don't ask for a court-ordered apology and some two-bit declaration.
Of course none of this is the court's fault. They didn't pass this legislation. Our legislature did. And it's time to repeal it. Now.
SOURCE
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
The Gillard gospel
Most of her "Whitlam" speech dealt with day to day politics but on broad philosophy there was a fair bit that conservatives could applaud. Some excerpts below. Some critics have dismissed that segment as too mushy but emotion plays a considerable part in politics (particularly Leftist politics) so I think it will help the lady to have said those things
I am absolutely clear what Labor stands for, what we aspire to achieve, what our culture is and our role as a party of government.
The historic mission of our political party is to ensure the fair distribution of opportunity. From the moment of our inception our mission has been to enable the son of the labourer, the daughter of the cleaner, to have access to same the opportunities in life as the son of the millionaire, the daughter of the lawyer.
Creating opportunity and enabling social mobility has required different policies in every age. We have moved beyond the days of big government and big welfare, to opportunity through education and inclusion through participation.
But at every stage in our history fair access to opportunity has been our historic mission.
And we have always acknowledged that access to opportunity comes with obligations to seize that opportunity. To work hard, to set your alarm clocks early, to ensure your children are in school. We are the party of work not welfare, that’s why we respect the efforts of the brickie and look with a jaundiced eye at the lifestyle of the socialite.
The Labor culture values effort more than status.
It prizes the great Australian tradition of informality and rejects the sort of snobbishness and obsequiousness that infect other societies.
Labor culture values the strength that comes from working as a team and supports the role of unions in ensuring working people succeed together and that their work is recognised, rewarded and appreciated. This is the best self to which Labor must always be true.
This is our continuing culture, born in Barcaldine and Balmain, the culture of mateship and the fair go, hard work and respect, that we have shared from our first days.
We happily leave to the Greens being a party of protest with no tradition of striking the balance required to deliver major reform.
The differences between Labor and the Greens take many forms but at the bottom of it are two vital ones.
The Greens wrongly reject the moral imperative to a strong economy. The Greens have some worthy ideas and many of their supporters sincerely want a better politics in our country. They have good intentions but fail to understand the centrepiece of our big picture - the people Labor strives to represent need work.
And the Greens will never embrace Labor’s delight at sharing the values of every day Australians, in our cities, suburbs, towns and bush, who day after day do the right thing, leading purposeful and dignified lives, driven by love of family and nation.
SOURCE
Julia Gillard reaches out to Christian leaders
JULIA Gillard has reassured leaders of Australia's 20 major Christian churches that she supports traditional values and freedom of religion, and is listening to their concerns about the Greens' social agenda on legalising same-sex marriage and euthanasia.
The Christian leaders urged the Prime Minister to ensure that freedom of religion in public continued to be protected by law and a clear human right.
Ms Gillard repeated her personal opposition to same-sex marriage and euthanasia, while the church leaders told her of their concerns about changes to the anti-discrimination act that could make it more difficult for Christian schools to hire on the basis of religion.
Australia's Catholic leader, George Pell, told The Australian last night that the Prime Minister "as always" was "friendly and gave us a good hearing".
Cardinal Pell said the leaders told Ms Gillard: "We are very keen to ensure that the right to practise religion in public life continues to be protected in law. It is not ideal that religious freedom is protected by so called 'exemptions and exceptions' in anti-discrimination law, almost like reluctant concessions, crumbs from the secularists' table. What is needed is legislation that embodies and recognises these basic religious freedoms as a human right."
Cardinal Pell also asked Ms Gillard to do "what she could to protect the rights of religious minorities in Islamic countries, particularly for Coptic Christians in Egypt, whose situation has deteriorated in the last few months and worsened since the revolution".
The meeting with Ms Gillard in Canberra yesterday - which came as Tony Abbott took part in a charity bike ride part-sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons - was organised by Australian Christian Lobby chief Jim Wallace. Mr Wallace had organised similar meetings with Kevin Rudd when he was prime minister.
Leaders of the Catholic, Anglican, orthodox and evangelical churches all raised concerns about social policy agendas that threatened Christian values, and appealed for help for refugees.
The meeting came as Ms Gillard continues her fight with the Greens over "traditional family values", and as her Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, overturned a ban on giving religious books such as the Bible or the Koran to newly sworn-in citizens of Australia.
In recent weeks, Ms Gillard, who has publicly declared she is an atheist, has told parliament she can still recite scripture learned at her Baptist Sunday school and opposes euthanasia and same-sex marriage on the basis of maintaining traditional values.
The Prime Minister has portrayed herself as socially conservative and last Thursday attacked the values of the Greens, who "wrongly reject the moral imperative to a strong economy". "The Greens have some worthy ideas and many of their supporters sincerely want a better politics in our country," she said. "They have good intentions but fail to understand the centrepiece of our big picture - the people Labor strives to represent need work. And the Greens will never embrace Labor's delight at sharing the values of everyday Australians, who day after day do the right thing, leading purposeful and dignified lives, driven by love of family and nation."
Greens leader Bob Brown says Ms Gillard is wrong to suggest the Greens and their supporters do not value lives driven by "family and nation".
SOURCE
Strife in the Green/Left coalition
GREENS leader Bob Brown has labelled Julia Gillard's claim his party is out of touch as "obnoxious, quite insulting and unacceptable" and demanded a face-to-face meeting to settle the row.
Mr Brown slammed the Prime Minister's claim in a speech last Thursday that the Greens would never embrace "Labor's delight" at sharing the values of average Australians who led "purposeful and dignified lives, driven by love of family and nation".
He said her comments, whilst delivering the Gough Whitlam Oration, had been a "huge mistake" and accused her of "very clearly turning both barrels on her supporters in government".
"The tone of those words, carefully weighted, I would say, that 1.5 million Australian voters who backed the Greens at the last election weren't people who would love their family or love their country or who would want to do the right thing was obnoxious, quite insulting and not acceptable," Mr Brown told ABC's Lateline. He did temper his remarks, however, saying the stoush would not undermine his party's alliance with the minority Labor government.
His comments come as a liberal MP and gay rights advocate also rejected Ms Gillard's as "desperate" and warned it could leave her open to the suspicion she was homophobic.
And the Prime Minister faced a fresh attack from former Labor leader Mark Latham, who has accused her of lacking empathy because of her decision not to have children and to focus instead on her career.
Coalition MP Warren Entsch, who represents the Queensland seat of Leichhardt, said Ms Gillard's comments were like saying only the Greens cared for the environment or that only Labor cared for social justice.
Mr Entsch said no politician had the right to make comment on another politician's love of their family.
"If I was a Greens supporter, I would be highly offended by that," said Mr Entsch, who campaigned hard in the Howard government for equal legal rights for same-sex couples. "I don't agree with a lot of the stuff that he (Senator Brown) does, either, but I don't say that he doesn't love his mum or love his family or anyone else."
Ms Gillard made clear she stood by her speech. She said through a spokesman late yesterday that some suggestions about the speech and her views which had appeared in the media were "absurd".
Carol Johnson, a professor of politics at the University of Adelaide, said Ms Gillard might have been deliberately provocative.
"I think Labor is currently sandwiched and is losing votes to the Liberals and votes to Greens and they are desperately trying to differentiate themselves from both to regain support," she said.
SOURCE
Warmists admit to pervasive uncertainties
So their hedging is well underway. They feel sure that there is SOME warming but not sure how much. And one of their scenarios envisages a temperature rise of around one degree Celsius -- which even skeptics would be comfortable with. Such a rise would be trivial in its effects -- as it was in the 20th century
It was a long way from picture postcard blue skies in Cairns yesterday as the nation's top 450 climate scientists gathered to take stock of global warming.
The tropical rainstorm may pale alongside the political cyclone that has been unleashed by the federal government's talk about a carbon tax. But the continued wet weather may prove relevant to this week's scientific discussions, which are expected to have a heavy focus on how much there is still to understand about climate change.
For Australia, whether the north can expect to get more or less rainfall because of global warming remains one of the great unknowns.
The Cairns meeting is Australia's peak biannual conference at which climate scientists meet to discuss the state of research. And while organisers of Greenhouse 2011 say participants represent a broad church, the uniform view is undeniably one of a warmer future for the planet.
Beyond that, everything from atmospheric carbon, feedback cycles, ocean temperatures, sea levels, carbon sinks, mitigation and adaptation are on the table for discussion.
Delegates will even be told how emotional responses to climate change represent a missing link to behaviour, with those who accept man-made climate change motivated to act by fear. Others who believe the climate is changing naturally are likelier to feel irritation and refuse to engage or respond.
CSIRO principal research scientist Kevin Hennessy says understanding the causes, both natural and human, of climate change is central to the conference agenda, as is consideration of future projections of climate change globally and regionally.
Surprisingly, a key theme through the conference will be the state of scientific uncertainty. This does not mean that sceptics have crashed the CSIRO-sponsored climate change party, however. "These are the real uncertainties as opposed to the uncertainties that some of the sceptics might claim are important," Hennessy says.
The uncertainties include things such as the various causes of regional climate change and extreme weather events, uncertainty about the future level of greenhouse gas emissions, the rate of global warming, the rate of future sea level rises and the scale and impact of future extreme weather events.
"When we are talking about global warming it is not about whether there will be global warming but about the rate of change," Hennessy says.
The approach reflects a new approach by the climate science community after the issue lost significant momentum in the lead-up to the 2009 Copenhagen conference following claims of exaggerated research claims.
The new caution was reflected in an updated statement issued by Britain's Royal Society last year summarising the scientific evidence on climate change and its drivers. The statement highlighted the areas where the science is well established, where there is still some debate and where substantial uncertainties remain. The Royal Society even held a two-day discussion meeting in March last year on handling uncertainty in science.
The Australian conference agenda reflects the new approach has been taking place elsewhere ahead of the release of a new data from global modelling that will form the basis of the International Panel of Climate Changes update due in 2013.....
Penny Whetton, a senior scientist with the CSIRO's Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, says there are two ways to deal with the uncertainty. "One is trying to reduce it," she says. "The other is working with uncertainty and communicating it because we have to decide how to deal with the climate change issue while the information is somewhat uncertain.
"There are some things we know with great certainty in our climate change understanding and some things we know with less certainty, and we really need to make that clear in our communications as well. "The best example is that we are expecting increasing temperatures in future and the only uncertainty associated with that is how much and exactly how rapid it will be.
"If you move to another variable such as rainfall change, although we are reasonably certain about decreased rainfall in southern Australia we don't actually know the direction of rainfall change in northern Australia.
"As we go forward, some of that growth in knowledge creates new uncertainties while clarifying the certainties we have been previously working with." ....
Clarification is also needed on what global warming means for rainfall in the tropical north. "I will be particularly interested to see what the new crop of models are showing for rainfall in northern Australia because that has been a major source of uncertainty," Whetton says.
"Many lines of evidence over many years have pointed towards decreases in rain in southern Australia. "But it has been more uncertain about how precipitation will change in the north, with some models showing decrease and some showing increase," she says.... Research is still under way to establish what role, if any, climate change has had on the most recent extreme rainfall events in Queensland.
Climate scientists generally say it is not possible to identify a climate change signal in any particular weather event. And the higher than average rainfall in eastern Australia last year is consistent with the La Nina weather pattern.
But the question of whether the La Nina system was strengthened by associated climate change phenomena is contested, just as there is global discussion about the extent to which natural feedback mechanisms, such as cloud and air-borne particulate matter, complicate the task of modelling effectively.
One of the reasons global climate models differ from one another on how much warming they show relates to different feedback processes operating in those models. Water vapour feedback is well understood as a positive feedback, reinforcing warming. Aerosols tend to have a cooling effect, but the amount of aerosol in the atmosphere is expected to decrease, limiting their beneficial effect.
While high cloud is understood to reinforce warming, there is uncertainty about the extent to which low cloud has a cooling effect.
More HERE
Neville Nicholls on Australia's Extreme Rainfall
Neville Nicholls is one of Australia's leading climate scientists. He is also a long-time participant in the IPCC and current president of the Australian Meteorological & Oceanographic Society. I first met Neville in the mid 1990s (at a meeting in Vietnam I think) and I have had nothing but great respect for him ever since. In his latest "AMOS - President's Column" he asks, "What caused the eastern Australia heavy rains and floods of 2010/11?"
He begins his answer by pointing to the strength of the current record La Niña event and the relationship of the SOI (Southern Oscillation Index, a measure of the strength of La Niña and El Niño events) and Australian rainfall (see his figure above). He concludes: "Given the well-known relationship between the SOI and heavy rains in eastern Australia (eg., McBride and Nicholls, 1983) we can conclude that the fundamental cause of the heavy rains this past six months was indeed this record La Niña event. Other heavy rain years (1917/18, 1950/51, 1973/74, 1975/76) were also the result of strong La Niña events. The relationship between rainfall and the SOI is very strong, with a correlation coefficient of 0.66. So, the heavy rains were not caused by global warming, but by a record la Niña event – a natural fluctuation of the climate system."
But he doesn't stop there. He next asks: "But perhaps 2010/11 was a record La Niña because of global warming?" His answer: "There has not been any trend in the SOI over the past 111 years, despite the warming of global mean temperature of about 0.75°C over that period. Nor do climate models consistently predict increased strength of La Niña events from enhanced atmospheric content of greenhouse gases (eg., Vecchi and Wittenberg, 2010). So there is no reason, at this moment, for us to suspect that global warming is increasing the frequency or intensity of La Niña events.
He doesn't stop there either, and next asks, "But was the impact of the 2010/11 La Niña on Australian rainfall stronger because of the record warm sea surface temperatures around northern Australia in 2010?" His answer: "These waters have increased substantially over the last century and are now about a degree warmer than early in the 20th century. If these warmer waters were enhancing the impact of La Niña on Australian rainfall we might expect to be seeing heavier rains in recent decades, relative to the rains that accompanied earlier strong La Niña events. There is some evidence of this (eg., Nicholls et al 1996), and there has been a weak tendency towards increased rainfall since 1900, independent of the influence from the El Niño – Southern Oscillation. Perhaps this trend towards increased rainfall might be related to the warmer sea surface temperatures – but much more work is needed to test this. The effect, if there is one, does not look very strong."
He concludes: "The record La Niña event was the fundamental cause of the heavy rains and floods, ie it was a natural fluctuation of the climate system. There may be a global warming signal enhancing this natural variability, but if so then this effect has been quite subtle, at least thus far."
SOURCE
Most of her "Whitlam" speech dealt with day to day politics but on broad philosophy there was a fair bit that conservatives could applaud. Some excerpts below. Some critics have dismissed that segment as too mushy but emotion plays a considerable part in politics (particularly Leftist politics) so I think it will help the lady to have said those things
I am absolutely clear what Labor stands for, what we aspire to achieve, what our culture is and our role as a party of government.
The historic mission of our political party is to ensure the fair distribution of opportunity. From the moment of our inception our mission has been to enable the son of the labourer, the daughter of the cleaner, to have access to same the opportunities in life as the son of the millionaire, the daughter of the lawyer.
Creating opportunity and enabling social mobility has required different policies in every age. We have moved beyond the days of big government and big welfare, to opportunity through education and inclusion through participation.
But at every stage in our history fair access to opportunity has been our historic mission.
And we have always acknowledged that access to opportunity comes with obligations to seize that opportunity. To work hard, to set your alarm clocks early, to ensure your children are in school. We are the party of work not welfare, that’s why we respect the efforts of the brickie and look with a jaundiced eye at the lifestyle of the socialite.
The Labor culture values effort more than status.
It prizes the great Australian tradition of informality and rejects the sort of snobbishness and obsequiousness that infect other societies.
Labor culture values the strength that comes from working as a team and supports the role of unions in ensuring working people succeed together and that their work is recognised, rewarded and appreciated. This is the best self to which Labor must always be true.
This is our continuing culture, born in Barcaldine and Balmain, the culture of mateship and the fair go, hard work and respect, that we have shared from our first days.
We happily leave to the Greens being a party of protest with no tradition of striking the balance required to deliver major reform.
The differences between Labor and the Greens take many forms but at the bottom of it are two vital ones.
The Greens wrongly reject the moral imperative to a strong economy. The Greens have some worthy ideas and many of their supporters sincerely want a better politics in our country. They have good intentions but fail to understand the centrepiece of our big picture - the people Labor strives to represent need work.
And the Greens will never embrace Labor’s delight at sharing the values of every day Australians, in our cities, suburbs, towns and bush, who day after day do the right thing, leading purposeful and dignified lives, driven by love of family and nation.
SOURCE
Julia Gillard reaches out to Christian leaders
JULIA Gillard has reassured leaders of Australia's 20 major Christian churches that she supports traditional values and freedom of religion, and is listening to their concerns about the Greens' social agenda on legalising same-sex marriage and euthanasia.
The Christian leaders urged the Prime Minister to ensure that freedom of religion in public continued to be protected by law and a clear human right.
Ms Gillard repeated her personal opposition to same-sex marriage and euthanasia, while the church leaders told her of their concerns about changes to the anti-discrimination act that could make it more difficult for Christian schools to hire on the basis of religion.
Australia's Catholic leader, George Pell, told The Australian last night that the Prime Minister "as always" was "friendly and gave us a good hearing".
Cardinal Pell said the leaders told Ms Gillard: "We are very keen to ensure that the right to practise religion in public life continues to be protected in law. It is not ideal that religious freedom is protected by so called 'exemptions and exceptions' in anti-discrimination law, almost like reluctant concessions, crumbs from the secularists' table. What is needed is legislation that embodies and recognises these basic religious freedoms as a human right."
Cardinal Pell also asked Ms Gillard to do "what she could to protect the rights of religious minorities in Islamic countries, particularly for Coptic Christians in Egypt, whose situation has deteriorated in the last few months and worsened since the revolution".
The meeting with Ms Gillard in Canberra yesterday - which came as Tony Abbott took part in a charity bike ride part-sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons - was organised by Australian Christian Lobby chief Jim Wallace. Mr Wallace had organised similar meetings with Kevin Rudd when he was prime minister.
Leaders of the Catholic, Anglican, orthodox and evangelical churches all raised concerns about social policy agendas that threatened Christian values, and appealed for help for refugees.
The meeting came as Ms Gillard continues her fight with the Greens over "traditional family values", and as her Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, overturned a ban on giving religious books such as the Bible or the Koran to newly sworn-in citizens of Australia.
In recent weeks, Ms Gillard, who has publicly declared she is an atheist, has told parliament she can still recite scripture learned at her Baptist Sunday school and opposes euthanasia and same-sex marriage on the basis of maintaining traditional values.
The Prime Minister has portrayed herself as socially conservative and last Thursday attacked the values of the Greens, who "wrongly reject the moral imperative to a strong economy". "The Greens have some worthy ideas and many of their supporters sincerely want a better politics in our country," she said. "They have good intentions but fail to understand the centrepiece of our big picture - the people Labor strives to represent need work. And the Greens will never embrace Labor's delight at sharing the values of everyday Australians, who day after day do the right thing, leading purposeful and dignified lives, driven by love of family and nation."
Greens leader Bob Brown says Ms Gillard is wrong to suggest the Greens and their supporters do not value lives driven by "family and nation".
SOURCE
Strife in the Green/Left coalition
GREENS leader Bob Brown has labelled Julia Gillard's claim his party is out of touch as "obnoxious, quite insulting and unacceptable" and demanded a face-to-face meeting to settle the row.
Mr Brown slammed the Prime Minister's claim in a speech last Thursday that the Greens would never embrace "Labor's delight" at sharing the values of average Australians who led "purposeful and dignified lives, driven by love of family and nation".
He said her comments, whilst delivering the Gough Whitlam Oration, had been a "huge mistake" and accused her of "very clearly turning both barrels on her supporters in government".
"The tone of those words, carefully weighted, I would say, that 1.5 million Australian voters who backed the Greens at the last election weren't people who would love their family or love their country or who would want to do the right thing was obnoxious, quite insulting and not acceptable," Mr Brown told ABC's Lateline. He did temper his remarks, however, saying the stoush would not undermine his party's alliance with the minority Labor government.
His comments come as a liberal MP and gay rights advocate also rejected Ms Gillard's as "desperate" and warned it could leave her open to the suspicion she was homophobic.
And the Prime Minister faced a fresh attack from former Labor leader Mark Latham, who has accused her of lacking empathy because of her decision not to have children and to focus instead on her career.
Coalition MP Warren Entsch, who represents the Queensland seat of Leichhardt, said Ms Gillard's comments were like saying only the Greens cared for the environment or that only Labor cared for social justice.
Mr Entsch said no politician had the right to make comment on another politician's love of their family.
"If I was a Greens supporter, I would be highly offended by that," said Mr Entsch, who campaigned hard in the Howard government for equal legal rights for same-sex couples. "I don't agree with a lot of the stuff that he (Senator Brown) does, either, but I don't say that he doesn't love his mum or love his family or anyone else."
Ms Gillard made clear she stood by her speech. She said through a spokesman late yesterday that some suggestions about the speech and her views which had appeared in the media were "absurd".
Carol Johnson, a professor of politics at the University of Adelaide, said Ms Gillard might have been deliberately provocative.
"I think Labor is currently sandwiched and is losing votes to the Liberals and votes to Greens and they are desperately trying to differentiate themselves from both to regain support," she said.
SOURCE
Warmists admit to pervasive uncertainties
So their hedging is well underway. They feel sure that there is SOME warming but not sure how much. And one of their scenarios envisages a temperature rise of around one degree Celsius -- which even skeptics would be comfortable with. Such a rise would be trivial in its effects -- as it was in the 20th century
It was a long way from picture postcard blue skies in Cairns yesterday as the nation's top 450 climate scientists gathered to take stock of global warming.
The tropical rainstorm may pale alongside the political cyclone that has been unleashed by the federal government's talk about a carbon tax. But the continued wet weather may prove relevant to this week's scientific discussions, which are expected to have a heavy focus on how much there is still to understand about climate change.
For Australia, whether the north can expect to get more or less rainfall because of global warming remains one of the great unknowns.
The Cairns meeting is Australia's peak biannual conference at which climate scientists meet to discuss the state of research. And while organisers of Greenhouse 2011 say participants represent a broad church, the uniform view is undeniably one of a warmer future for the planet.
Beyond that, everything from atmospheric carbon, feedback cycles, ocean temperatures, sea levels, carbon sinks, mitigation and adaptation are on the table for discussion.
Delegates will even be told how emotional responses to climate change represent a missing link to behaviour, with those who accept man-made climate change motivated to act by fear. Others who believe the climate is changing naturally are likelier to feel irritation and refuse to engage or respond.
CSIRO principal research scientist Kevin Hennessy says understanding the causes, both natural and human, of climate change is central to the conference agenda, as is consideration of future projections of climate change globally and regionally.
Surprisingly, a key theme through the conference will be the state of scientific uncertainty. This does not mean that sceptics have crashed the CSIRO-sponsored climate change party, however. "These are the real uncertainties as opposed to the uncertainties that some of the sceptics might claim are important," Hennessy says.
The uncertainties include things such as the various causes of regional climate change and extreme weather events, uncertainty about the future level of greenhouse gas emissions, the rate of global warming, the rate of future sea level rises and the scale and impact of future extreme weather events.
"When we are talking about global warming it is not about whether there will be global warming but about the rate of change," Hennessy says.
The approach reflects a new approach by the climate science community after the issue lost significant momentum in the lead-up to the 2009 Copenhagen conference following claims of exaggerated research claims.
The new caution was reflected in an updated statement issued by Britain's Royal Society last year summarising the scientific evidence on climate change and its drivers. The statement highlighted the areas where the science is well established, where there is still some debate and where substantial uncertainties remain. The Royal Society even held a two-day discussion meeting in March last year on handling uncertainty in science.
The Australian conference agenda reflects the new approach has been taking place elsewhere ahead of the release of a new data from global modelling that will form the basis of the International Panel of Climate Changes update due in 2013.....
Penny Whetton, a senior scientist with the CSIRO's Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, says there are two ways to deal with the uncertainty. "One is trying to reduce it," she says. "The other is working with uncertainty and communicating it because we have to decide how to deal with the climate change issue while the information is somewhat uncertain.
"There are some things we know with great certainty in our climate change understanding and some things we know with less certainty, and we really need to make that clear in our communications as well. "The best example is that we are expecting increasing temperatures in future and the only uncertainty associated with that is how much and exactly how rapid it will be.
"If you move to another variable such as rainfall change, although we are reasonably certain about decreased rainfall in southern Australia we don't actually know the direction of rainfall change in northern Australia.
"As we go forward, some of that growth in knowledge creates new uncertainties while clarifying the certainties we have been previously working with." ....
Clarification is also needed on what global warming means for rainfall in the tropical north. "I will be particularly interested to see what the new crop of models are showing for rainfall in northern Australia because that has been a major source of uncertainty," Whetton says.
"Many lines of evidence over many years have pointed towards decreases in rain in southern Australia. "But it has been more uncertain about how precipitation will change in the north, with some models showing decrease and some showing increase," she says.... Research is still under way to establish what role, if any, climate change has had on the most recent extreme rainfall events in Queensland.
Climate scientists generally say it is not possible to identify a climate change signal in any particular weather event. And the higher than average rainfall in eastern Australia last year is consistent with the La Nina weather pattern.
But the question of whether the La Nina system was strengthened by associated climate change phenomena is contested, just as there is global discussion about the extent to which natural feedback mechanisms, such as cloud and air-borne particulate matter, complicate the task of modelling effectively.
One of the reasons global climate models differ from one another on how much warming they show relates to different feedback processes operating in those models. Water vapour feedback is well understood as a positive feedback, reinforcing warming. Aerosols tend to have a cooling effect, but the amount of aerosol in the atmosphere is expected to decrease, limiting their beneficial effect.
While high cloud is understood to reinforce warming, there is uncertainty about the extent to which low cloud has a cooling effect.
More HERE
Neville Nicholls on Australia's Extreme Rainfall
Neville Nicholls is one of Australia's leading climate scientists. He is also a long-time participant in the IPCC and current president of the Australian Meteorological & Oceanographic Society. I first met Neville in the mid 1990s (at a meeting in Vietnam I think) and I have had nothing but great respect for him ever since. In his latest "AMOS - President's Column" he asks, "What caused the eastern Australia heavy rains and floods of 2010/11?"
He begins his answer by pointing to the strength of the current record La Niña event and the relationship of the SOI (Southern Oscillation Index, a measure of the strength of La Niña and El Niño events) and Australian rainfall (see his figure above). He concludes: "Given the well-known relationship between the SOI and heavy rains in eastern Australia (eg., McBride and Nicholls, 1983) we can conclude that the fundamental cause of the heavy rains this past six months was indeed this record La Niña event. Other heavy rain years (1917/18, 1950/51, 1973/74, 1975/76) were also the result of strong La Niña events. The relationship between rainfall and the SOI is very strong, with a correlation coefficient of 0.66. So, the heavy rains were not caused by global warming, but by a record la Niña event – a natural fluctuation of the climate system."
But he doesn't stop there. He next asks: "But perhaps 2010/11 was a record La Niña because of global warming?" His answer: "There has not been any trend in the SOI over the past 111 years, despite the warming of global mean temperature of about 0.75°C over that period. Nor do climate models consistently predict increased strength of La Niña events from enhanced atmospheric content of greenhouse gases (eg., Vecchi and Wittenberg, 2010). So there is no reason, at this moment, for us to suspect that global warming is increasing the frequency or intensity of La Niña events.
He doesn't stop there either, and next asks, "But was the impact of the 2010/11 La Niña on Australian rainfall stronger because of the record warm sea surface temperatures around northern Australia in 2010?" His answer: "These waters have increased substantially over the last century and are now about a degree warmer than early in the 20th century. If these warmer waters were enhancing the impact of La Niña on Australian rainfall we might expect to be seeing heavier rains in recent decades, relative to the rains that accompanied earlier strong La Niña events. There is some evidence of this (eg., Nicholls et al 1996), and there has been a weak tendency towards increased rainfall since 1900, independent of the influence from the El Niño – Southern Oscillation. Perhaps this trend towards increased rainfall might be related to the warmer sea surface temperatures – but much more work is needed to test this. The effect, if there is one, does not look very strong."
He concludes: "The record La Niña event was the fundamental cause of the heavy rains and floods, ie it was a natural fluctuation of the climate system. There may be a global warming signal enhancing this natural variability, but if so then this effect has been quite subtle, at least thus far."
SOURCE
Monday, April 04, 2011
Ban on childcare naughty corner, Easter parades
This is just a feast for lawyers and the people paying for it will be the parents -- as fees go up to cover liability insurance. Isn't childcare dear enough now?
CHILDCARE workers who send tantrum-throwing toddlers to "time out" risk hefty fines under national childcare laws to come into force next year.
New regulations will expose childcare centres to penalties if children are required to take part in religious or cultural activities, such as Christmas tree decoration or Easter hat parades hunts.
Childcare supervisors risk personal fines for the first time, under the national legislation being adopted by state and territory governments.
Centres could be fined as much as $50,000, and supervisors $10,000, for failing to ensure children are adequately supervised, or for using "inappropriate discipline" to keep order.
Centres will be banned from using any form of corporal punishment, as well as "any discipline that is unreasonable in the circumstances".
The Education and Care Services National Act, which has been passed by Victoria as the "host jurisdiction" and will be replicated by other states and territories, does not define "unreasonable" discipline.
But draft regulations with the legislation show childcare supervisors risk $2000 fines for "separating" children.
Supervisors must "ensure that a child being educated and cared for by the service is not separated from other children for any reason other than illness or an accident", the regulations state.
Children cannot be "required to undertake activities that are inappropriate, having regard to each family's family and cultural values, age and physical and intellectual development".
The childcare industry yesterday demanded greater clarity, warning that staff could be fined for putting a toddler in "time out" or asking a child to help decorate a Christmas tree.
The Australian Childcare Alliance, representing private centres, called for a definition of "separation", noting that each state and territory could interpret the law differently.
Childcare centres had banned smacking, and no longer used the "naughty corner" technique of isolating children who were violent or disobedient, alliance president Gwynn Bridge said.
But the regulations left the way open for a supervisor to be fined if a litigious parent objected to a child being taken out of a group for hitting other children, or throwing sand.
"There is time out but naughty corners went out years ago," Ms Bridge said. "You move a child a short way from the group and talk to them about their behaviour.
"But we don't know the meaning of the word 'separate' - is it distance? This needs clarification, otherwise people will be in breach without realising it."
The regulations also require family carers, who normally look after a handful of children in their homes, to ensure regular visitors are "fit and proper persons".
Criminal checks would have to be carried out on any neighbours, friends or relatives who visit while children are present on more than three days in a month, or seven days a year.
SOURCE
Mark Latham says Julia Gillard has no empathy because she's childless
For once I actually agree with Latham but politics is more than emotion. Cost-benefit calculations are more important and with her hugely expensive boondoggle of a fibre network that will be obsolete as soon as it is built, Gillard is a major failure there -- not to mention her witless carbon tax that will achieve exactly nothing
MARK Latham has renewed his attack on Julia Gillard's personal life and character, questioning her ability to empathise and experience true love because of her decision to remain childless.
After derailing her election campaign last year, the former Labor leader today resurfaced to critique the Prime Minister once again.
In an interview to spruik a re-release of his 2005 book The Latham Diaries, Mr Latham said the ability to empathise with small children was a good test of character.
“I think having children is the great loving experience of any lifetime. And by definition you haven't got as much love in your life if you make that particular choice,” he told ABC radio.
“Choice in Gillard's case is very, very specific. Particularly because she's on the public record saying she made a deliberate choice not to have children to further her parliamentary career.
“One would have thought to experience the greatest loving experience in life having children you wouldn't particularly make that choice.”
Mr Latham said the proof Ms Gillard had no empathy was her “very wooden” performance during the Queensland floods.
“I'm not the only one saying that. I've also had some experience where around small children she was wooden. And I think the two go together.”
Mr Latham has previously attacked Ms Gillard's decision to pursue her career over children, saying in February: “Anyone who chooses a life without children, as Gillard has, cannot have much love in them.”
He's not the first politician to attack the Prime Minister on such grounds.
In 2007 Liberal senator Bill Heffernan said that “anyone who chooses to deliberately remain barren ... they've got no idea what life's about”.
And last year opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis questioned Julia Gillard's ability to “understand the way parents think” about virginity because she didn't have children.
Defending Tony Abbott's right to discuss the advice he gave to his daughters on virginity, Senator Brandis said Ms Gillard was a “one-dimensional” person who had “chosen not to be a parent”.
SOURCE
Millions behind on basic skills; threatens Australia's international competitiveness
AUSTRALIA'S international competitiveness is under threat because up to eight million Australian workers don't have the reading, writing or numeracy skills to undertake training for trade or professional jobs.
The nation's 11 Industry Skills Councils will today call for a new campaign to tackle endemic numbers of workers with poor reading and writing skills, launching a report detailing the problems being faced by industry training bodies.
The bodies say they are confronting inadequately prepared school leavers, an ageing workforce struggling to cope with technological advances and overseas-born workers with English as a second language.
The report, No More Excuses, calls for the Council of Australian Governments to develop a national "overarching blueprint for action on language, literacy and numeracy".
The report will reignite the skills debate at a time when industry is warning of the re-emergence of shortages of trained workers and Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott have thrust workforce participation and getting the long-term unemployed into work to the front of the political debate.
The report says "the situation looks as if it could be getting worse, not better" in terms of the language, literature and numeracy skills of workers.
"International studies have shown that over the past two decades, Australia's literacy and numeracy skill levels have stagnated while those of other countries, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, have improved.
"By continuing to accept the current levels, we are limiting the future success of individuals, businesses and our economy," the Industry Skills Councils say in a joint statement to be released today.
The report calls for industry training programs to be provided with specific funding to tackle language, literacy and numeracy gaps faced by students and overseas-born workers with English as a second language.
It also calls for recruits to be given better advice about the language and maths requirements of training courses.
Forest Works chief executive Michael Hartman, who runs training programs for the forest, wood, paper and timber products industry, said literacy and numeracy were the "foundation of productivity".
A failure to improve skills among both school leavers and experienced workers would see Australian businesses fall behind international competitors.
Electrocomms and Energy Utilities Industry Skills Council chief executive Bob Taylor told The Australian a decade of calls for skill-ready school leavers had failed to achieve any tangible improvements.
And the resources and infrastructure industry skills council, SkillsDMC, writes in the report that some indigenous recruits on resources projects have learning levels as low as primary school grade four.
This means that providing them with literacy and numeracy skills "is costly and time-consuming, and often results in the employee spending more time at training than at work".
Mr Taylor said industry had been complaining about the poor quality of literacy and numeracy among school leavers looking to enter the trades for more than 10 years and there had been no improvement.
He said the report was aimed at ending the "blame game" and incorporating basic reading, writing and numeracy skills into preliminary training courses.
He said lack of skills in this area was a "real issue" in terms of drop-out rates of apprentices and schools needed to become more focused on providing the relevant skills to the 70 per cent of students who would not attend university and seek work in a trade.
Mr Taylor said preliminary training courses to allow regional workers access to jobs on the National Broadband Network included facets of basic literacy and numeracy training.
He said it was "quite frustrating" that basic maths and physics of the 15- to 16-year-olds seeking trades in the 1960s was superior to today's 18-year-olds seeking trades.
Mr Hartman said his industry was confronting literacy and numeracy problems among older workers who had been long-term employees in industries that were suddenly facing technological change.
He said under current training arrangements, there was not a lot of money available to enable trainers to help students struggling with basic literacy and numeracy skills and this needed to be addressed: "It is a major problem in our society; unless we tackle it, we'll fall further behind in terms of international competitiveness and the skills of our people."
SOURCE
Confidential documents reveal Queensland's public hospitals are risky business
CONFIDENTIAL documents have raised questions over public hospital mismanagement which has put Queenslanders' lives at risk.
The Queensland Health documents reveal incidents in hospitals ranging from admission or behaviour problems, to falls, infections, medication, nutrition or treatment issues.
On Brisbane's northside, in October 2008, hospitals averaged 26 incidents and three deaths a day listed in Queensland Health's reporting system. By May 2009, it was 32 incidents and four deaths a day.
Opposition Health spokesman Mark McArdle acknowledged that while it was natural that not everybody who went to hospital survived, more needed to be done to ensure the system improved, not deteriorated.
"Death is a part of our hospital system (but) it is important to understand, however, why people die and learn as much as we can to prevent these deaths,'' he said.
"It's time for the Minister to open the books and fully inform Queenslanders of what is going on so they can properly assess the status of their public hospital system.''
Queensland Health is locked in a legal battle to prevent documents being released to The Courier-Mail under Right to Information laws.
Information Commissioner Clare Smith has ruled that Queensland Health hand over documents on deaths in emergency departments but the Government has refused. Queensland's Civil and Administrative Tribunal will rule on the matter.
Other documents obtained by The Courier-Mail show Metro North Health Service District monthly reporting for incidents and patient deaths increased or stagnated over 2008-09 at Prince Charles, Redcliffe, Caboolture-Kilcoy hospitals and northside mental health, aged care, residential and disability and community health services.
Root cause analyses show breakdowns in the system, such as a patient with a history of bipolar and attempted suicides, who was released from a mental health unit and found dead from a drug overdose by her young son two days later.
Another included a very sick man who died when he tripped over his IV pole.
Health Community Councils, introduced by former premier Peter Beattie and now disbanded, previously monitored performance reviews and discussed improvements.
However, it's unknown what, if anything, is being done to reverse the upward trend of hospital errors and negligence.
Mr McArdle said he was alarmed the figures showed the situation wasn't improving. "Consequences could be dire if the Government continues to get this wrong,'' he said.
Health Minister Geoff Wilson said constant vigilance was needed in hospitals, which was why Queensland Health has a Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Service that proactively reported on clinical incidents and hospitals' responses to them.
SOURCE
This is just a feast for lawyers and the people paying for it will be the parents -- as fees go up to cover liability insurance. Isn't childcare dear enough now?
CHILDCARE workers who send tantrum-throwing toddlers to "time out" risk hefty fines under national childcare laws to come into force next year.
New regulations will expose childcare centres to penalties if children are required to take part in religious or cultural activities, such as Christmas tree decoration or Easter hat parades hunts.
Childcare supervisors risk personal fines for the first time, under the national legislation being adopted by state and territory governments.
Centres could be fined as much as $50,000, and supervisors $10,000, for failing to ensure children are adequately supervised, or for using "inappropriate discipline" to keep order.
Centres will be banned from using any form of corporal punishment, as well as "any discipline that is unreasonable in the circumstances".
The Education and Care Services National Act, which has been passed by Victoria as the "host jurisdiction" and will be replicated by other states and territories, does not define "unreasonable" discipline.
But draft regulations with the legislation show childcare supervisors risk $2000 fines for "separating" children.
Supervisors must "ensure that a child being educated and cared for by the service is not separated from other children for any reason other than illness or an accident", the regulations state.
Children cannot be "required to undertake activities that are inappropriate, having regard to each family's family and cultural values, age and physical and intellectual development".
The childcare industry yesterday demanded greater clarity, warning that staff could be fined for putting a toddler in "time out" or asking a child to help decorate a Christmas tree.
The Australian Childcare Alliance, representing private centres, called for a definition of "separation", noting that each state and territory could interpret the law differently.
Childcare centres had banned smacking, and no longer used the "naughty corner" technique of isolating children who were violent or disobedient, alliance president Gwynn Bridge said.
But the regulations left the way open for a supervisor to be fined if a litigious parent objected to a child being taken out of a group for hitting other children, or throwing sand.
"There is time out but naughty corners went out years ago," Ms Bridge said. "You move a child a short way from the group and talk to them about their behaviour.
"But we don't know the meaning of the word 'separate' - is it distance? This needs clarification, otherwise people will be in breach without realising it."
The regulations also require family carers, who normally look after a handful of children in their homes, to ensure regular visitors are "fit and proper persons".
Criminal checks would have to be carried out on any neighbours, friends or relatives who visit while children are present on more than three days in a month, or seven days a year.
SOURCE
Mark Latham says Julia Gillard has no empathy because she's childless
For once I actually agree with Latham but politics is more than emotion. Cost-benefit calculations are more important and with her hugely expensive boondoggle of a fibre network that will be obsolete as soon as it is built, Gillard is a major failure there -- not to mention her witless carbon tax that will achieve exactly nothing
MARK Latham has renewed his attack on Julia Gillard's personal life and character, questioning her ability to empathise and experience true love because of her decision to remain childless.
After derailing her election campaign last year, the former Labor leader today resurfaced to critique the Prime Minister once again.
In an interview to spruik a re-release of his 2005 book The Latham Diaries, Mr Latham said the ability to empathise with small children was a good test of character.
“I think having children is the great loving experience of any lifetime. And by definition you haven't got as much love in your life if you make that particular choice,” he told ABC radio.
“Choice in Gillard's case is very, very specific. Particularly because she's on the public record saying she made a deliberate choice not to have children to further her parliamentary career.
“One would have thought to experience the greatest loving experience in life having children you wouldn't particularly make that choice.”
Mr Latham said the proof Ms Gillard had no empathy was her “very wooden” performance during the Queensland floods.
“I'm not the only one saying that. I've also had some experience where around small children she was wooden. And I think the two go together.”
Mr Latham has previously attacked Ms Gillard's decision to pursue her career over children, saying in February: “Anyone who chooses a life without children, as Gillard has, cannot have much love in them.”
He's not the first politician to attack the Prime Minister on such grounds.
In 2007 Liberal senator Bill Heffernan said that “anyone who chooses to deliberately remain barren ... they've got no idea what life's about”.
And last year opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis questioned Julia Gillard's ability to “understand the way parents think” about virginity because she didn't have children.
Defending Tony Abbott's right to discuss the advice he gave to his daughters on virginity, Senator Brandis said Ms Gillard was a “one-dimensional” person who had “chosen not to be a parent”.
SOURCE
Millions behind on basic skills; threatens Australia's international competitiveness
AUSTRALIA'S international competitiveness is under threat because up to eight million Australian workers don't have the reading, writing or numeracy skills to undertake training for trade or professional jobs.
The nation's 11 Industry Skills Councils will today call for a new campaign to tackle endemic numbers of workers with poor reading and writing skills, launching a report detailing the problems being faced by industry training bodies.
The bodies say they are confronting inadequately prepared school leavers, an ageing workforce struggling to cope with technological advances and overseas-born workers with English as a second language.
The report, No More Excuses, calls for the Council of Australian Governments to develop a national "overarching blueprint for action on language, literacy and numeracy".
The report will reignite the skills debate at a time when industry is warning of the re-emergence of shortages of trained workers and Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott have thrust workforce participation and getting the long-term unemployed into work to the front of the political debate.
The report says "the situation looks as if it could be getting worse, not better" in terms of the language, literature and numeracy skills of workers.
"International studies have shown that over the past two decades, Australia's literacy and numeracy skill levels have stagnated while those of other countries, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, have improved.
"By continuing to accept the current levels, we are limiting the future success of individuals, businesses and our economy," the Industry Skills Councils say in a joint statement to be released today.
The report calls for industry training programs to be provided with specific funding to tackle language, literacy and numeracy gaps faced by students and overseas-born workers with English as a second language.
It also calls for recruits to be given better advice about the language and maths requirements of training courses.
Forest Works chief executive Michael Hartman, who runs training programs for the forest, wood, paper and timber products industry, said literacy and numeracy were the "foundation of productivity".
A failure to improve skills among both school leavers and experienced workers would see Australian businesses fall behind international competitors.
Electrocomms and Energy Utilities Industry Skills Council chief executive Bob Taylor told The Australian a decade of calls for skill-ready school leavers had failed to achieve any tangible improvements.
And the resources and infrastructure industry skills council, SkillsDMC, writes in the report that some indigenous recruits on resources projects have learning levels as low as primary school grade four.
This means that providing them with literacy and numeracy skills "is costly and time-consuming, and often results in the employee spending more time at training than at work".
Mr Taylor said industry had been complaining about the poor quality of literacy and numeracy among school leavers looking to enter the trades for more than 10 years and there had been no improvement.
He said the report was aimed at ending the "blame game" and incorporating basic reading, writing and numeracy skills into preliminary training courses.
He said lack of skills in this area was a "real issue" in terms of drop-out rates of apprentices and schools needed to become more focused on providing the relevant skills to the 70 per cent of students who would not attend university and seek work in a trade.
Mr Taylor said preliminary training courses to allow regional workers access to jobs on the National Broadband Network included facets of basic literacy and numeracy training.
He said it was "quite frustrating" that basic maths and physics of the 15- to 16-year-olds seeking trades in the 1960s was superior to today's 18-year-olds seeking trades.
Mr Hartman said his industry was confronting literacy and numeracy problems among older workers who had been long-term employees in industries that were suddenly facing technological change.
He said under current training arrangements, there was not a lot of money available to enable trainers to help students struggling with basic literacy and numeracy skills and this needed to be addressed: "It is a major problem in our society; unless we tackle it, we'll fall further behind in terms of international competitiveness and the skills of our people."
SOURCE
Confidential documents reveal Queensland's public hospitals are risky business
CONFIDENTIAL documents have raised questions over public hospital mismanagement which has put Queenslanders' lives at risk.
The Queensland Health documents reveal incidents in hospitals ranging from admission or behaviour problems, to falls, infections, medication, nutrition or treatment issues.
On Brisbane's northside, in October 2008, hospitals averaged 26 incidents and three deaths a day listed in Queensland Health's reporting system. By May 2009, it was 32 incidents and four deaths a day.
Opposition Health spokesman Mark McArdle acknowledged that while it was natural that not everybody who went to hospital survived, more needed to be done to ensure the system improved, not deteriorated.
"Death is a part of our hospital system (but) it is important to understand, however, why people die and learn as much as we can to prevent these deaths,'' he said.
"It's time for the Minister to open the books and fully inform Queenslanders of what is going on so they can properly assess the status of their public hospital system.''
Queensland Health is locked in a legal battle to prevent documents being released to The Courier-Mail under Right to Information laws.
Information Commissioner Clare Smith has ruled that Queensland Health hand over documents on deaths in emergency departments but the Government has refused. Queensland's Civil and Administrative Tribunal will rule on the matter.
Other documents obtained by The Courier-Mail show Metro North Health Service District monthly reporting for incidents and patient deaths increased or stagnated over 2008-09 at Prince Charles, Redcliffe, Caboolture-Kilcoy hospitals and northside mental health, aged care, residential and disability and community health services.
Root cause analyses show breakdowns in the system, such as a patient with a history of bipolar and attempted suicides, who was released from a mental health unit and found dead from a drug overdose by her young son two days later.
Another included a very sick man who died when he tripped over his IV pole.
Health Community Councils, introduced by former premier Peter Beattie and now disbanded, previously monitored performance reviews and discussed improvements.
However, it's unknown what, if anything, is being done to reverse the upward trend of hospital errors and negligence.
Mr McArdle said he was alarmed the figures showed the situation wasn't improving. "Consequences could be dire if the Government continues to get this wrong,'' he said.
Health Minister Geoff Wilson said constant vigilance was needed in hospitals, which was why Queensland Health has a Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Service that proactively reported on clinical incidents and hospitals' responses to them.
SOURCE
Sunday, April 03, 2011
Lighthouse light dimmed to protect muttonbirds
This is criminal. People could die from failing to notice a lighthouse
A Tasmanian bird conservation group has praised efforts to protect muttonbirds that are being killed by a lighthouse in north-east Tasmania.
The Tasmanian Aboriginal Land Council raised concerns that thousands of muttonbirds are killed each year after flying into the Eddystone Point light.
The historic main light at the lighthouse has now been switched off and replaced with a lower intensity light.
Eric Woehler of Birds Tasmania says the Eddystone Lighthouse has killed many birds over several years. "We're talking about not just the shearwaters or the muttonbirds that are killed by lighthouses but a very high number of species are killed by flying into lighthouses." "So any measure that we can argue to improve the conservation of birds we'd certainly propose that," Mr Woehler said.
SOURCE
Reconsidering compulsory voting
Jeremy Sammut
The NSW election made me reconsider my opposition to compulsory voting.
The case against compulsion is that people with little interest in public affairs are driven into polling booths. A good citizen – according to the classic liberal conception – should not need to be forced to fulfil his or her fundamental civic duty.
The fear is that the votes of the informed and public-spirited will be discounted by the votes of the apathetic and ignorant, who only turn out to avoid the fine. The collective wisdom of the polity is reduced.
In addition, people cannot choose to stay away in disgust with the low standards of politics. If ever there was an election when voters wished to register their contempt for the political class by not turning out, last Saturday’s was it.
The counter view is that most compelled voters take their civic duty to decide who governs seriously. Most cast their ballot for one of the major parties because they know something about their programs. They do not spoil their ballot or vote for a minor party, such as the Australian Greens.
Commentators have noted the underperformance of the Greens at the NSW election. No matter the circumstances, the Green vote does not seem capable of rising much higher than 10% of first preferences.
I think compulsory voting plays a role in keeping the Greens politically marginalised, relatively speaking.
The NSW Labor Party shed an unprecedented number of votes. But most of these votes went straight to the Coalition and only a small percent to the Greens. This happened even in the key inner-city seats that the Greens were tipped to win: ‘Trotsky-ville’ (Balmain) and ‘The People’s Republic of Marrickville.’
The Greens’ agenda is radical and its constituency is the tertiary ‘educated,’ latte-left who are engaged with politics and ideologically motivated. Nothing short of a disaster of biblical proportions would keep Greens supporters away from the polls. A low turnout in NSW would have been in the interest of the Greens, as it would have increased the value of its rusted on (composted?) 10% of the vote.
But if there had been no compulsion to vote, and had Labor voters either stayed away in disgust or not taken the duty to decide between the major parties seriously and drifted to the Greens, then the election might have turned out differently.
The Greens might have won the seats they didn’t, and the election might have shifted the political culture in the state and the nation to the Left.
Instead, the compelled voters of NSW, in their collective wisdom, helped keep the Greens on the political fringe – where they belong.
This suggests that compulsory voting helps put the ‘main’ in mainstream politics. Therefore, despite what I think about compulsory voting in theory, in practice the outcomes are not malign.
The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated April 1. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590.
Transport Department racks up huge taxi bill
Physician heal thyself
THE state government department responsible for Victoria's train, tram and bus network has racked up an enormous bill for staff to catch taxis.
Department of Transport bureaucrats spent up to $659,853 on cabs in a single year as Victorians were left stranded by late trains.
Financial documents obtained by the Sunday Herald Sun through Freedom of Information laws show transport bureaucrats charged thousands of cabs to the taxpayer instead of riding on the trains, trams and buses they are employed to get moving. Instead of catching public transport to city meetings, many of the workers charged the public for cab fares as low as $5.20.
Many caught taxis between Melbourne airport and the eastern suburbs at fares beyond $130.
One public servant had an $8.80 claim for a cab fare from "hotel to hotel" in the CBD at the peak of the festive season.
The big spend on taxis could have bought 173,645 zone-one two-hour Metlink fares, 94,264 daily zone-one travel tickets or 548 yearly zone-one passes.
Public Transport Users Association treasurer Kerryn Wilmot said public servants should get out of taxis and on board the services in need of improvement. "They should be using the transport that they have a responsibility for and actually experience what people who don't have the luxury of a corporate Cabcharge do," she said.
"If it's not good enough for them, then why should it be good enough for us? "Either use the services and get to know what is wrong or fix them so they are suitable."
Monthly Cabcharge reports and receipts show Transport staff spent $293,784.88 from February last year to February 2 this year, but a separate list of expenses shows the department spent $363,096.41 in the same period on taxis and miscellaneous expenses. The department spent $20,198 on cabs in May last year alone.
Former public transport minister Martin Pakula spent $3347 on cabs in the period.
With 1280 staff on the department's books at June 30 last year, the cab bill equates to more than $515 per employee.
SOURCE
Budget cuts at Queensland hospitals will cost lives, warn doctors
SENIOR doctors are predicting chaos and possible deaths at Queensland's biggest hospital if beds and theatres are closed as part of a budget crackdown.
The Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital specialists warn of bigger ambulance queues outside the emergency department, longer elective surgery waiting lists and damage to staff morale if threatened budget cuts are carried out.
Bed and theatre closures have been discussed at several meetings of RBWH staff as part of measures to rein in the budget, but no decisions have been made.
"Bed and theatre closures at RBWH are highly likely to cause harm and death for people in Queensland," senior doctors said in a letter to their management, leaked to The Courier-Mail.
"Bed and theatre closures will create havoc in the emergency department, with worsened access block and ramping. Bed and theatre closures will damage staff morale, and make it much more difficult to pursue efficiency measures. Poor staff morale also impacts on the quality and safety of healthcare provision.
"We want to make it absolutely clear that as health professionals, we do not support these measures."
However, they said they understood the harsh financial reality confronting Queensland Health and were committed to finding efficiencies and responding with innovative solutions. The doctors' names have been withheld on their request.
The Courier-Mail has previously revealed the RBWH is $60 million overbudget so far this financial year and QH faces a $300 million budget blowout unless savings are made.
RBWH Medical Staff Association chairwoman Dana Wainwright said doctors had a moral objection to bed and theatre closures because of their commitment to patients.
"Our hospital is underfunded for the services it supplies at a time when we've got increased demand," she said. "The budget isn't adequate for what we do. Staff are upset. We can't do any more. We're doing all we can."
Opposition health spokesman Mark McArdle said the doctors' letter was a clear statement the budget crisis sweeping Queensland Health could impact upon RBWH with catastrophic consequences for patients. But Queensland Health Director-General Mick Reid said he had made it clear to all health service districts any budget-saving measures must first be approved by the department. "Metro North Health Service District has not proposed the closure of beds or theatres," he said.
Health Minister Geoff Wilson said Mr Reid had assured him he had processes in place to ensure any budget measures implemented were responsible.
The RBWH doctors said they would not sanction closures or having their budgets reduced so beds and theatres remained fully operational, but not funded unless directed to in writing by Mr Reid.
SOURCE
This is criminal. People could die from failing to notice a lighthouse
A Tasmanian bird conservation group has praised efforts to protect muttonbirds that are being killed by a lighthouse in north-east Tasmania.
The Tasmanian Aboriginal Land Council raised concerns that thousands of muttonbirds are killed each year after flying into the Eddystone Point light.
The historic main light at the lighthouse has now been switched off and replaced with a lower intensity light.
Eric Woehler of Birds Tasmania says the Eddystone Lighthouse has killed many birds over several years. "We're talking about not just the shearwaters or the muttonbirds that are killed by lighthouses but a very high number of species are killed by flying into lighthouses." "So any measure that we can argue to improve the conservation of birds we'd certainly propose that," Mr Woehler said.
SOURCE
Reconsidering compulsory voting
Jeremy Sammut
The NSW election made me reconsider my opposition to compulsory voting.
The case against compulsion is that people with little interest in public affairs are driven into polling booths. A good citizen – according to the classic liberal conception – should not need to be forced to fulfil his or her fundamental civic duty.
The fear is that the votes of the informed and public-spirited will be discounted by the votes of the apathetic and ignorant, who only turn out to avoid the fine. The collective wisdom of the polity is reduced.
In addition, people cannot choose to stay away in disgust with the low standards of politics. If ever there was an election when voters wished to register their contempt for the political class by not turning out, last Saturday’s was it.
The counter view is that most compelled voters take their civic duty to decide who governs seriously. Most cast their ballot for one of the major parties because they know something about their programs. They do not spoil their ballot or vote for a minor party, such as the Australian Greens.
Commentators have noted the underperformance of the Greens at the NSW election. No matter the circumstances, the Green vote does not seem capable of rising much higher than 10% of first preferences.
I think compulsory voting plays a role in keeping the Greens politically marginalised, relatively speaking.
The NSW Labor Party shed an unprecedented number of votes. But most of these votes went straight to the Coalition and only a small percent to the Greens. This happened even in the key inner-city seats that the Greens were tipped to win: ‘Trotsky-ville’ (Balmain) and ‘The People’s Republic of Marrickville.’
The Greens’ agenda is radical and its constituency is the tertiary ‘educated,’ latte-left who are engaged with politics and ideologically motivated. Nothing short of a disaster of biblical proportions would keep Greens supporters away from the polls. A low turnout in NSW would have been in the interest of the Greens, as it would have increased the value of its rusted on (composted?) 10% of the vote.
But if there had been no compulsion to vote, and had Labor voters either stayed away in disgust or not taken the duty to decide between the major parties seriously and drifted to the Greens, then the election might have turned out differently.
The Greens might have won the seats they didn’t, and the election might have shifted the political culture in the state and the nation to the Left.
Instead, the compelled voters of NSW, in their collective wisdom, helped keep the Greens on the political fringe – where they belong.
This suggests that compulsory voting helps put the ‘main’ in mainstream politics. Therefore, despite what I think about compulsory voting in theory, in practice the outcomes are not malign.
The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated April 1. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590.
Transport Department racks up huge taxi bill
Physician heal thyself
THE state government department responsible for Victoria's train, tram and bus network has racked up an enormous bill for staff to catch taxis.
Department of Transport bureaucrats spent up to $659,853 on cabs in a single year as Victorians were left stranded by late trains.
Financial documents obtained by the Sunday Herald Sun through Freedom of Information laws show transport bureaucrats charged thousands of cabs to the taxpayer instead of riding on the trains, trams and buses they are employed to get moving. Instead of catching public transport to city meetings, many of the workers charged the public for cab fares as low as $5.20.
Many caught taxis between Melbourne airport and the eastern suburbs at fares beyond $130.
One public servant had an $8.80 claim for a cab fare from "hotel to hotel" in the CBD at the peak of the festive season.
The big spend on taxis could have bought 173,645 zone-one two-hour Metlink fares, 94,264 daily zone-one travel tickets or 548 yearly zone-one passes.
Public Transport Users Association treasurer Kerryn Wilmot said public servants should get out of taxis and on board the services in need of improvement. "They should be using the transport that they have a responsibility for and actually experience what people who don't have the luxury of a corporate Cabcharge do," she said.
"If it's not good enough for them, then why should it be good enough for us? "Either use the services and get to know what is wrong or fix them so they are suitable."
Monthly Cabcharge reports and receipts show Transport staff spent $293,784.88 from February last year to February 2 this year, but a separate list of expenses shows the department spent $363,096.41 in the same period on taxis and miscellaneous expenses. The department spent $20,198 on cabs in May last year alone.
Former public transport minister Martin Pakula spent $3347 on cabs in the period.
With 1280 staff on the department's books at June 30 last year, the cab bill equates to more than $515 per employee.
SOURCE
Budget cuts at Queensland hospitals will cost lives, warn doctors
SENIOR doctors are predicting chaos and possible deaths at Queensland's biggest hospital if beds and theatres are closed as part of a budget crackdown.
The Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital specialists warn of bigger ambulance queues outside the emergency department, longer elective surgery waiting lists and damage to staff morale if threatened budget cuts are carried out.
Bed and theatre closures have been discussed at several meetings of RBWH staff as part of measures to rein in the budget, but no decisions have been made.
"Bed and theatre closures at RBWH are highly likely to cause harm and death for people in Queensland," senior doctors said in a letter to their management, leaked to The Courier-Mail.
"Bed and theatre closures will create havoc in the emergency department, with worsened access block and ramping. Bed and theatre closures will damage staff morale, and make it much more difficult to pursue efficiency measures. Poor staff morale also impacts on the quality and safety of healthcare provision.
"We want to make it absolutely clear that as health professionals, we do not support these measures."
However, they said they understood the harsh financial reality confronting Queensland Health and were committed to finding efficiencies and responding with innovative solutions. The doctors' names have been withheld on their request.
The Courier-Mail has previously revealed the RBWH is $60 million overbudget so far this financial year and QH faces a $300 million budget blowout unless savings are made.
RBWH Medical Staff Association chairwoman Dana Wainwright said doctors had a moral objection to bed and theatre closures because of their commitment to patients.
"Our hospital is underfunded for the services it supplies at a time when we've got increased demand," she said. "The budget isn't adequate for what we do. Staff are upset. We can't do any more. We're doing all we can."
Opposition health spokesman Mark McArdle said the doctors' letter was a clear statement the budget crisis sweeping Queensland Health could impact upon RBWH with catastrophic consequences for patients. But Queensland Health Director-General Mick Reid said he had made it clear to all health service districts any budget-saving measures must first be approved by the department. "Metro North Health Service District has not proposed the closure of beds or theatres," he said.
Health Minister Geoff Wilson said Mr Reid had assured him he had processes in place to ensure any budget measures implemented were responsible.
The RBWH doctors said they would not sanction closures or having their budgets reduced so beds and theatres remained fully operational, but not funded unless directed to in writing by Mr Reid.
SOURCE
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Crooked Muslim jockey
He has been in trouble with the Stipes before. They suspended him for 9 months for testing positive for cocaine, for instance. Not mentioned below is that, following his second placing at Eagle Farm, Bold Glance won the $100,000 Gold Coast Stakes on March 19 when ridden by another jockey
JOCKEY Bobby El-Issa was resolute and composed as racing stewards hit him with a two-year disqualification.
Racing Queensland Limited stewards issued El-Issa with three charges emanating from his ride on runner-up Bold Glance in the $100,000 Falvelon Stakes at Eagle Farm on February 26.
El-Issa appeared resigned to the lengthy penalty but declared: "I have not broken any rules of racing. I will beat these charges on appeal."
An appeal was lodged late yesterday and a stay of proceedings granted allowing him to ride at Eagle Farm today.
The charges effectively were based on the fact El-Issa did not show his usual vigour over the final 200m when Bold Glance was challenged by the odds-on favourite Essington.
Stewards took exception to the fact El-Issa had used the whip only in a back-hand motion on three occasions in contrast to his ride at Bold Glance's previous start, when he rode aggressively in the straight to win at the Gold Coast. The charge stated El-Issa had "deliberately and consciously ridden to deprive Bold Glance of a real and legitimate chance of wining the race".
El-Issa's defence on his riding style was that "Bold Glance was trying his heart out and I chose not to punish the horse".
"The charge you face is one of the most serious, if not the most serious, a jockey can face," Racing Queensland chief steward Wade Birch told El-Issa. "It goes straight to the heart of the integrity of thoroughbred racing. And this was in a feature race at the state's premier venue. You have betrayed the trust and offended people (punters) who in effect keep it going."
One of the charges against El-Issa was that he had colluded with professional Sydney punter Stephen Fletcher to succeed with bets to win on Essington and backing Bold Glance to lose.
Fletcher's betting records in the previous three months with betting exchange Betfair showed he had bet heavily against horses ridden by El-Issa in 10 southeast Queensland races.
An inquiry into Fletcher's betting on the Bold Glance race was later adjourned to allow him until Wednesday to provide evidence of his normal betting activities.
SOURCE
How I lost faith in multiculturalism
Greg Sheridan
In his speech Bowen sets up a neat dichotomy between a good Australian multiculturalism and a bad European multiculturalism.
Bowen is right to point out that Australian official policy, whether at any given moment describing itself as multiculturalism or not, has always stressed English as the national language and the need for immigrants to commit to democracy and the rule of law. But at the declaratory level, European multiculturalism has also stressed the national language and a commitment to democracy.
There are two obvious, logical flaws in the way Bowen treats immigration into Europe.
The first is that he puts the entire burden for the success or failure of an immigrant community's experience down to the attitude of the host society and places absolutely no analytical weight at all on the performance and behaviour of the immigrants themselves.
Second, the problems that Bowen is talking about are problems with Muslim immigrants, not with immigrants generally. Chinese and non-Muslim Indian immigrants have been immensely successful in Britain. Indeed, being Indian in Britain is extremely chic.
These minorities for the most part have done OK in France, too. Certainly immigrants to Britain from the rest of Europe don't display anything like the alienation of a serious minority of Muslim immigrants.
So this must, logically, lead to one extremely inconvenient, politically incorrect and desperately fraught question. Could it be that the main difference between Europe, with its seething immigration problems, and the US, Canada and Australia, with their success, is not actually a difference based on some footling interpretation of multiculturalism?
There is one other variable that is consistent with the results. The US, Canada and Australia have far smaller Muslim migrant communities as a percentage of their total populations than do most of the troubled nations of Europe. Could this be the explanation?
Several trends in Australian society give pause to wonder whether we, all unintentionally and all fast asleep, may be heading away from the US-Canada-Australia success story and towards a European future. That would be a very bad outcome for Australia.
Discussing these issues is very difficult. It goes without saying that most Muslims in Australia are perfectly fine, law-abiding citizens. The difficulty with discussing Muslim immigration problems is that you don't want to make people feel uncomfortable because of their religion.
Muslims are not only individuals, wholly different from each other, but national Islamic cultures are very different from each other. The Saudi culture is different from the Turkish culture, which is different from the Afghan culture. So generalisations are dangerous.
Then there is the ever present risk of being labelled a racist. No matter how calmly the discussion is conducted, that is a big danger.
But the only people who don't think there is a problem with Islam are those who live on some other planet. The reputation of Islam in the West is not poor because of prejudiced Western Islamophobia, still less because Western governments conduct some kind of anti-Islamic propaganda. Instead, it is the behaviour of people claiming the justification of Islam for their actions that affects the reputation of Islam.
In January, the governor of the Punjab province in Pakistan, Salman Taseer, was murdered because he opposed the severity of the nation's blasphemy laws.
One of his last acts was to visit a Christian woman sentenced to death for insulting the prophet. The governor's murderer won wide public support.
ABC television recently showed a documentary on the killing of Ahmediya sect members in Indonesia, among the most liberal Muslim nations, because their Muslim murderers regarded them as a deviant sect. On YouTube you can watch scenes of a young Afghan woman being publicly flogged because she was seen in the company of a man who wasn't her husband or brother.
In Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive cars. In Iran, government thugs beat protesters to death to safeguard the rule of the mullahs.
This list could go on and on. It may very well be that the overwhelming majority of the world's Muslims reject such actions. But it is fatuous to try to find a similar pattern of Christian, Buddhist or Jewish behaviour. You can find extremists in every religion and from every background, but there is no equivalence in the size and strength of the extremist tendency in other religions. The Australian Muslim population is still relatively small, perhaps 400,000 or just under 2 per cent of the population.
Because of my passionate commitment to the refugee issue, it took me a long time to wake up to the routine scamming of refugee processes today.
The same is happening in northern Australia now, and as the Gillard government loses control of the situation, the number of illegal immigrants, almost all Muslim, will increase, exactly replicating the dynamics of Europe's disaster, though of course on a much smaller scale.
Lakemba and surrounding areas such as Punchbowl had a large Lebanese Muslim population, many of whom had come when Malcolm Fraser crazily instituted a come-one, come-all admissions policy for those claiming to be refugees from the Lebanon conflicts of the 80s.
Replicating the European experience that the second generation had more trouble than the first, it was the sons of some of these immigrants who figured heavily in anti-social activities.
I was shocked to discover the growth of jihadi culture in Lakemba. We used to go to its main street for shopping and for food.
One day, waiting for a pizza order, I wandered into the Muslim bookshop. I was astounded to see titles such as The International Jew or The Truth about the Pope, amid a welter of anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and pro-extremist literature.
The revenge attacks on white Australians after the Cronulla riots originated out of Punchbowl. A number of media crews were attacked when they went to local mosques. A large number of those charged with terrorism offences in Australia stayed in or had associations with the area.
Due to the brilliant and fearless reporting of this paper's Richard Kerbaj, who spoke perfect Arabic, we found that at a number of the mosques in the area outright hatred was being preached: anti-Semitic, misogynist, conspiratorial. Most of the time, these sermons didn't advocate violence. The speakers were what Britain's David Cameron has called "non-violent extremists".
The advent of satellite television made it easier for these folks to live a life apart. Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV station was available on satellite packages. Most Arab homes you went into had Arabic TV playing in the background.
The anti-social behaviour became more acute. One son was playing cricket with friends when they were challenged by a group of teenagers, whom they presumed to be Lebanese but may have been of other Middle Eastern origin, who objected to white boys playing cricket. A full-scale, if brief, fist fight ensued.
One son was challenged by a boy with a gun. Lakemba police station was shot up. Crime increased on the railway line.
The worst thing I saw myself was two strong young men, of Middle Eastern appearance, waiting outside the train station.
A middle-aged white woman emerged from the station alone. She was rather oddly dressed, with a strange hair-do.
The two young men walked up beside her, began taunting her and then finished their effort by spitting in her face. They laughed riotously and walked away. She wiped the spittle off her face and hurried off home. It was all over in a few seconds.
These events in Lakemba and nearby are not unique. Lots of people from lots of different backgrounds commit violent crime in Australia. There is a good deal of unemployment, combined with a highly advanced informal culture of welfare exploitation, often freely discussed at the local schools, in the area. But Lakemba is different from most of Australia.
A senior policeman from nearby Bankstown once told me that policing in the Bankstown area was unlike working anywhere else in Australia, and he was amazed how much violent crime went unreported by the media.
Does Islam itself have a role in these problems? The answer is complex and nuanced but it must be a qualified, and deeply reluctant, yes.
This is the only explanation consistent with the fact other immigrant communities, which may have experienced difficult circumstances in the first generation, don't display the same characteristics in the second generation.
Australia has been a successful immigration country. But the truth is not all immigrants are the same. And it may be much easier than people think to turn success into failure.
Much more HERE
Catholic school bans gay 'cure' seminar at Caboolture
Some ideas may not be expressed -- even ones that the Holy Father would endorse!
A CATHOLIC school has kiboshed a "curing homosexuality seminar" set to be held at their Caboolture college.
The meeting sparked outrage on Facebook, with a protest page set up against it.
But the group holding the meeting has accused Catholic Education of discrimination over the decision.
A statement released by Brisbane Catholic Education says St Columban's College at Caboolture "immediately" withdrew permission for its hall to be used as a venue by the Miracle Christian Center when they realised what the meeting was about.
"Permission was given by the school, on the basis that the nature of the meeting would need to be in line with the college's Catholic Christian values," the statement said.
Principal Ann Rebgetz said the group had deliberately withheld from the school the real nature of the event.
But Miracle Christian Center president Dorian Ballard denied the accusation, saying when they hired halls they didn't advise what they would be preaching about.
He denied the group was homophobic. He said they had been discriminated against and the case was now with their lawyers.
"We are not homophobic, many of us have come out of the homosexual lifestyle," he said.
"We are not afraid of homosexuals; we love them, we've ministered to them for years.
"This topic is always up for debate. It's great to hear a lot of different views in the broad spectrum and we have been silenced, we have been discriminated against."
Former student and Facebook "Protest against the curing homosexuality seminar" page organiser Lexi Ryan said the school had done the right thing and she had cancelled the protest, which had 353 people who had replied they would be attending.
SOURCE
GREENIE ROUNDUP
Four articles below:
Carbon pricing could add $860 to annual household bills, Treasury documents show
THE carbon tax Prime Minister Julia Gillard promised never to introduce will cost average families $860 a year, Federal Government modelling has revealed.
Based on a carbon price of $30 a tonne, families would pay up to $218 more for electricity, $114 for gas, $187 for petrol and $88 for food, The Daily Telegraph reported.
Treasury documents, released under FOI, revealed households would pay the fixed price for between three and five years (before moving to an emissions trading scheme), leaving families with a bill between $2589 and $4315 over that time.Heavily censored documents claim price rises would "drive household behaviour change, with households substituting to less carbon intensive goods over time".
But it was acknowledged in a Treasury executive minute last October that low-income families would suffer the most because they spend more on things like electricity and are least able to afford low emissions technology.Treasury also raised fears the tax would reduce people's wealth.
"A carbon price will also affect wealth as the change in prices flows through to the value of financial assets, including shares, and reduces the real value of savings," the minute states.
It also shows the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme proposed in 2009 by former PM Kevin Rudd would have raised electricity prices by a maximum $120 a year and gas by $52 - half the cost of the Treasury estimates now.
"This just demonstrates that the Government has known all along that its carbon tax won't clean up the environment but it will clean out your wallet," Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said.
Treasurer Wayne Swan hit back yesterday, claiming the figures were preliminary numbers and he said he could not nominate how much assistance families would be given by way of compensation.
"Until the final design and modelling have been settled, anyone who uses these figures to scare families about prices is engaging in a scare campaign," he said.
The Government is reportedly considering tax and welfare breaks of between $600 and $1500 a year.
It comes as an exclusive survey by The Daily Telegraph reveals why voters are so angry about the proposal. A quarter of the 2500 households surveyed said they were already struggling to make ends meet and almost 9 per cent said they didn't have enough money to pay bills.
"I think it might be an unnecessary tax, I could probably do better with the money in my pocket and make a concerted effort to reduce my carbon emissions, rather than be taxed," Greg Hudson, 32, from Neutral Bay, said yesterday.
SOURCE
Labor at war with climate adviser Ross Garnaut
ENERGY Minister Martin Ferguson has slapped down the government's chief climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, flatly rejecting calls for more regulation on electricity markets and warning that mandatory renewable energy targets are pushing up power prices.
Mr Ferguson rejected Professor Garnaut's claims that electricity price rises were a result of "gouging" by electricity generators.
The senior cabinet minister said electricity prices had risen because of costs in replacing ageing plants and he warned that prices would rise by 30per cent in the next three years because of investment costs, a carbon price and the mandatory target for renewable energy generation.
Mr Ferguson and the Australian Energy Market Commission both warned that the government's compulsory target of 20 per cent electricity generation from renewable sources by 2020 was coming at a "cost to the community" and could "challenge" the national electricity grid.
Professor Garnaut this week recommended coal-fired power electricity generators not be compensated for a carbon tax and that a new energy regulator be formed.
At an energy conference in Melbourne yesterday, Mr Ferguson said Professor Garnaut had a role in advising the multi-party climate change committee, which includes the Greens, but he "does not speak for the government, nor for the Ministerial Council on Energy", which represents every government.
Mr Ferguson's comments come as the Labor government fights with the Greens over "extreme" policies.
It has also indicated that compensation for industries for a carbon tax will be the same as that offered in 2009, a policy the Greens voted against on the grounds it was too generous.
Mr Ferguson said: "The regulatory framework for Australia's energy sector is leading edge, and as such the Ministerial Council on Energy and the energy market bodies often review different aspects of our regulatory environment to ensure it delivers optimal outcomes for the community.
"Residential electricity prices have increased by about 40 per cent over the last three years and are forecast to increase in the order of 30 per cent in the three years to June 2013. As those who study these issues will know, there is no quick fix to rising prices.
"Prices reflect the cost of investment to maintain and replace ageing assets to ensure the community gets the reliability it has come to expect. We must ensure investment occurs to reduce emissions and meet demand, while importantly, maintaining sufficient competition and avoiding concentration in the sector."
Professor Garnaut this week released his final report on climate change for the government and said the owners of the transmission and distribution networks were overinvesting in their assets to increase their returns.
Calling for an urgent inquiry into power sector regulatory arrangements, Professor Garnaut said the current arrangements had allowed too high a rate of return for power companies, which "increases electricity prices that (are) just passed right on to the consumer".
He put the cost of a carbon tax on electricity prices at $4 to $5 a week for the average household and called for an urgent inquiry into what he believes is a "prima facie" case of excessive increases caused by electricity regulation in Australia.
Professor Garnaut conceded there might have to be commonwealth loan guarantees to keep high carbon emitting generators operating if they failed financially under the proposed carbon tax from July 1 next year.
Mr Ferguson said the nation's energy ministers tried to keep "away from the spotlight of the daily media cycle". "It is not in the public interest to trivialise these matters in a high level public debate over the network regulatory regime," the Energy Minister said.
"The market bodies and institutions already exist and have responsibility for finding the appropriate balance between reliability and value to the community.
"Trying to suppress prices ultimately leads to pain in the future when catch-up is required, as some jurisdictions are now finding."
Mr Ferguson said that, as Australia moved towards a price on carbon, "we have to be very mindful" of damaging asset values of power generators because these financial considerations can have "real energy security and market stability implications". "I am also conscious of the imminent refinancing requirements of the generation sector, with an estimated $6.4bn needed to be refinanced prior to the end of 2012.
"The expanded Renewable Energy Target, through supporting wind capacity, has delivered significant new investment over the last 15 months.
"The expanded Renewable Energy Target is effective in displacing generation investment that would otherwise come from non-renewable technologies; however, it is doing this at a cost to the community," Mr Ferguson warned.
"The fact remains that if we are hoping to achieve abatement from the electricity sector we will need to see significant investment in new generation capacity in the years ahead. At some point in the future we will need additional investment in baseload capacity."
SOURCE
Background on an Australian "Green" senator
Being Green is the way to get on in politics for a far Leftist. She's a Trot so the fact that she disowns Stalinism means nothing. The Trots and Stalin never did get on. Before Stalin rose to power, however, Trotsky led the Red army and murdered hundreds of thousands
AS the child of Australian communists and a former member of the Socialist Party, Greens senator-elect Lee Rhiannon insists she's been unfairly tagged as a hardline left-winger or "watermelon" -- green on the outside but red inside.
She says her parents were among many Australians who became disillusioned with Moscow after Soviet tanks crushed Czechoslovakia's move towards "socialism with a human face" in 1968.
That was when the Communist Party of Australia formally split from the Russian communists.
Ms Rhiannon is the daughter of women's rights activist Freda Yetta Brown and Bill Brown, who were both CPA members.
She has insisted that her parents joined the CPA because of their deep commitment to social justice and equal rights and not for any subversive reason.
But the association was enough to have her feature in an ASIO file when she was just seven years old.
During last year's election campaign, Ms Rhiannon insisted that she would support Bob Brown's pragmatic approach to politics, and said she had no wish to lead the party.
"I am not a communist," Ms Rhiannon told The Weekend Australian in August. "I and Greens members condemn the crimes committed under Stalin."
She strongly denied then that she wanted to steer the Greens towards a more radical agenda and said dealing with climate change was her priority.
Ms Rhiannon, 59, was elected last year to one of the six NSW seats and will join the Senate in July. She joined the Greens in 1991 and was elected to the NSW Upper House in 1999.
Among her priorities in the Legislative Council were better public transport and a ban on the building of any new motorways.
In the 1970s she was arrested during anti-apartheid protests and in the 1980s she helped organise the peace camp outside the joint US-Australian intelligence facility at Pine Gap in central Australia.
SOURCE
Eight myths of a carbon tax
Even a Warmist (below) can see that the arguments for an Australian carbon tax don't stack up
1. The greatest myth is that if we lead the world in carbon pricing the rest of the world will follow. We produce 1.5 per cent of the world's CO2; China and America account for 40 per cent. A 5 per cent reduction in Australia's emissions would be cancelled out by as little as a 0.3 per cent increase in China's emissions.
2. Another myth is that we have to lead the world because we are a carbon-based economy and will be more affected when and if the world introduces carbon pricing. Our carbon-based economy is one of our main competitive advantages. To lead on a carbon tax puts our industry at a serious disadvantage against our competitors.
Eighty per cent of power is generated from coal. This low-cost power has underpinned our standard of living by encouraging manufacture and giving low-cost electricity to consumers.
A carbon tax on imports from countries without CO2 pricing is unworkable. We would need to significantly increase the Customs Department and we would still be at risk. Such a move would undo the hard won reforms of the 1990s.
3. Another myth says if we introduce the tax now it will give industry time to adapt. Industry needs years to make the investment to meet the new environment. Planning approval alone can take four or more years. The logic of starting a carbon tax in barely 12 months' time has not been thought through; five years would barely be enough.
It would be better to advise industry that CO2 will be taxed at about $50/$60 a tonne in 10 years' time when our trading partners also start to price carbon and industry should start to adjust its long term capital plans and debt financing accordingly.
The rise in the cost of fossil fuels is already affecting local prices. We must be careful not to hit the domestic and business consumer with a double whammy. If the domestic price for gas continues to rise the price for CO2 will have to rise further to force the change from coal to gas generation.
4. Another myth is that Big Business should have known a carbon tax was coming and should have been prepared. Most of our coal-fired power stations were built and owned by state governments. The taxpayer is the largest single owner with 36 per cent capacity overall, 54 per cent in NSW and 67 per cent in Queensland.
The recent sale in NSW was at a deep discount to the replacement value because of the threat of carbon pricing; NSW taxpayers virtually lost their equity on the threat of a tax.
In Victoria power stations were sold at huge prices largely to foreign investors expecting a proper electricity market that never eventuated. The owners invested in good faith with the reasonable expectation that if a price were put on CO2 they would be given adequate notice and compensation.
Indeed, CO2 trading in Europe, the obvious precedent scheme, was accompanied by the issue of close to 100 per cent free permits to the power generators for the first decade. If we can purchase permits globally as planned why not adopt common measures with the EU?
To say to government and private investors that the federal government will wipe out your equity without compensation is patently unfair. It will introduce a dangerous level of sovereign risk for long-term investment in Australia.
5. Then there is the myth that we are morally obliged to lead the way because we generate a larger proportion of carbon dioxide a head of population. Yes we do, but there are good reasons for this. We are rich in resources such as coal, iron ore, bauxite and uranium. It gives us one of our few competitive advantages.
We also have a significant agricultural sector and are a large exporter of beef and lamb, which are high CO2 emitters. Given the size of the country, our transport consumption is higher than more densely settled economies.
Exports contribute to more than 30 per cent of Australia's carbon emissions. If we want to cut emissions sharply, should we just stop exporting?
6. Closer to home is the myth that the carbon tax will hit the so called 1000 big polluters and consumers will be protected. In the end the consumer, whether local or overseas, will always pay. If the cost is not passed on, trade exposed industry in particular will either fail to survive (and jobs will be lost), or move elsewhere (loss of jobs again).
The other illogicality in this myth is that the consumer should be protected. If the government wishes to discourage the production of CO2 then the end consumer must be sent a price signal.
The concept of charging the big emitters and passing the proceeds back to the consumer is fatally flawed. The big emitters will reduce emissions or be forced out of the economy. Then there will be no money for compensation and the shock will be large.
7. Then there is the myth that renewable energy can replace coal and gas-fired energy production without a substantial cost to the consumer or business.
Putting aside the serious issues of reliability, availability and transmission, the cost of all of the available renewables, such as wind, is far higher than coal.
8. And then there is the myth that a carbon tax or ETS will force the same big polluters to invest in alternative technologies that will create jobs. The expectation that investors who have seen their investment seriously impaired by a carbon tax will race to invest in new high-cost technologies is illogical. Banks won't lend to the impaired incumbents.
Where is the plan for what Australia will look like in 2020 or 2030? Will we still have an aluminium or steel industry or any form of processing requiring energy such as food or an agricultural sector?
California legislated to introduce a cap and trade scheme in 2006, with effect from 2012. There has been no explosion in green jobs there and unemployment stands at 12.5 per cent. Jobs have simply moved across state borders.
Global emissions are a global problem. A global solution is the only answer. If we reduce our carbon emissions unilaterally there will be no benefit to the global environment.
What is the negotiation benefit of giving away our hand now, when we should be seeking to agree an emissions trajectory for Australia as part of a global deal?
This is a momentous decision and we appear to be relying on a business and investment community that we are proposing to punish. A cross your fingers approach is just not good enough when we are considering the very basis of our economic future.
SOURCE
He has been in trouble with the Stipes before. They suspended him for 9 months for testing positive for cocaine, for instance. Not mentioned below is that, following his second placing at Eagle Farm, Bold Glance won the $100,000 Gold Coast Stakes on March 19 when ridden by another jockey
JOCKEY Bobby El-Issa was resolute and composed as racing stewards hit him with a two-year disqualification.
Racing Queensland Limited stewards issued El-Issa with three charges emanating from his ride on runner-up Bold Glance in the $100,000 Falvelon Stakes at Eagle Farm on February 26.
El-Issa appeared resigned to the lengthy penalty but declared: "I have not broken any rules of racing. I will beat these charges on appeal."
An appeal was lodged late yesterday and a stay of proceedings granted allowing him to ride at Eagle Farm today.
The charges effectively were based on the fact El-Issa did not show his usual vigour over the final 200m when Bold Glance was challenged by the odds-on favourite Essington.
Stewards took exception to the fact El-Issa had used the whip only in a back-hand motion on three occasions in contrast to his ride at Bold Glance's previous start, when he rode aggressively in the straight to win at the Gold Coast. The charge stated El-Issa had "deliberately and consciously ridden to deprive Bold Glance of a real and legitimate chance of wining the race".
El-Issa's defence on his riding style was that "Bold Glance was trying his heart out and I chose not to punish the horse".
"The charge you face is one of the most serious, if not the most serious, a jockey can face," Racing Queensland chief steward Wade Birch told El-Issa. "It goes straight to the heart of the integrity of thoroughbred racing. And this was in a feature race at the state's premier venue. You have betrayed the trust and offended people (punters) who in effect keep it going."
One of the charges against El-Issa was that he had colluded with professional Sydney punter Stephen Fletcher to succeed with bets to win on Essington and backing Bold Glance to lose.
Fletcher's betting records in the previous three months with betting exchange Betfair showed he had bet heavily against horses ridden by El-Issa in 10 southeast Queensland races.
An inquiry into Fletcher's betting on the Bold Glance race was later adjourned to allow him until Wednesday to provide evidence of his normal betting activities.
SOURCE
How I lost faith in multiculturalism
Greg Sheridan
In his speech Bowen sets up a neat dichotomy between a good Australian multiculturalism and a bad European multiculturalism.
Bowen is right to point out that Australian official policy, whether at any given moment describing itself as multiculturalism or not, has always stressed English as the national language and the need for immigrants to commit to democracy and the rule of law. But at the declaratory level, European multiculturalism has also stressed the national language and a commitment to democracy.
There are two obvious, logical flaws in the way Bowen treats immigration into Europe.
The first is that he puts the entire burden for the success or failure of an immigrant community's experience down to the attitude of the host society and places absolutely no analytical weight at all on the performance and behaviour of the immigrants themselves.
Second, the problems that Bowen is talking about are problems with Muslim immigrants, not with immigrants generally. Chinese and non-Muslim Indian immigrants have been immensely successful in Britain. Indeed, being Indian in Britain is extremely chic.
These minorities for the most part have done OK in France, too. Certainly immigrants to Britain from the rest of Europe don't display anything like the alienation of a serious minority of Muslim immigrants.
So this must, logically, lead to one extremely inconvenient, politically incorrect and desperately fraught question. Could it be that the main difference between Europe, with its seething immigration problems, and the US, Canada and Australia, with their success, is not actually a difference based on some footling interpretation of multiculturalism?
There is one other variable that is consistent with the results. The US, Canada and Australia have far smaller Muslim migrant communities as a percentage of their total populations than do most of the troubled nations of Europe. Could this be the explanation?
Several trends in Australian society give pause to wonder whether we, all unintentionally and all fast asleep, may be heading away from the US-Canada-Australia success story and towards a European future. That would be a very bad outcome for Australia.
Discussing these issues is very difficult. It goes without saying that most Muslims in Australia are perfectly fine, law-abiding citizens. The difficulty with discussing Muslim immigration problems is that you don't want to make people feel uncomfortable because of their religion.
Muslims are not only individuals, wholly different from each other, but national Islamic cultures are very different from each other. The Saudi culture is different from the Turkish culture, which is different from the Afghan culture. So generalisations are dangerous.
Then there is the ever present risk of being labelled a racist. No matter how calmly the discussion is conducted, that is a big danger.
But the only people who don't think there is a problem with Islam are those who live on some other planet. The reputation of Islam in the West is not poor because of prejudiced Western Islamophobia, still less because Western governments conduct some kind of anti-Islamic propaganda. Instead, it is the behaviour of people claiming the justification of Islam for their actions that affects the reputation of Islam.
In January, the governor of the Punjab province in Pakistan, Salman Taseer, was murdered because he opposed the severity of the nation's blasphemy laws.
One of his last acts was to visit a Christian woman sentenced to death for insulting the prophet. The governor's murderer won wide public support.
ABC television recently showed a documentary on the killing of Ahmediya sect members in Indonesia, among the most liberal Muslim nations, because their Muslim murderers regarded them as a deviant sect. On YouTube you can watch scenes of a young Afghan woman being publicly flogged because she was seen in the company of a man who wasn't her husband or brother.
In Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive cars. In Iran, government thugs beat protesters to death to safeguard the rule of the mullahs.
This list could go on and on. It may very well be that the overwhelming majority of the world's Muslims reject such actions. But it is fatuous to try to find a similar pattern of Christian, Buddhist or Jewish behaviour. You can find extremists in every religion and from every background, but there is no equivalence in the size and strength of the extremist tendency in other religions. The Australian Muslim population is still relatively small, perhaps 400,000 or just under 2 per cent of the population.
Because of my passionate commitment to the refugee issue, it took me a long time to wake up to the routine scamming of refugee processes today.
The same is happening in northern Australia now, and as the Gillard government loses control of the situation, the number of illegal immigrants, almost all Muslim, will increase, exactly replicating the dynamics of Europe's disaster, though of course on a much smaller scale.
Lakemba and surrounding areas such as Punchbowl had a large Lebanese Muslim population, many of whom had come when Malcolm Fraser crazily instituted a come-one, come-all admissions policy for those claiming to be refugees from the Lebanon conflicts of the 80s.
Replicating the European experience that the second generation had more trouble than the first, it was the sons of some of these immigrants who figured heavily in anti-social activities.
I was shocked to discover the growth of jihadi culture in Lakemba. We used to go to its main street for shopping and for food.
One day, waiting for a pizza order, I wandered into the Muslim bookshop. I was astounded to see titles such as The International Jew or The Truth about the Pope, amid a welter of anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and pro-extremist literature.
The revenge attacks on white Australians after the Cronulla riots originated out of Punchbowl. A number of media crews were attacked when they went to local mosques. A large number of those charged with terrorism offences in Australia stayed in or had associations with the area.
Due to the brilliant and fearless reporting of this paper's Richard Kerbaj, who spoke perfect Arabic, we found that at a number of the mosques in the area outright hatred was being preached: anti-Semitic, misogynist, conspiratorial. Most of the time, these sermons didn't advocate violence. The speakers were what Britain's David Cameron has called "non-violent extremists".
The advent of satellite television made it easier for these folks to live a life apart. Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV station was available on satellite packages. Most Arab homes you went into had Arabic TV playing in the background.
The anti-social behaviour became more acute. One son was playing cricket with friends when they were challenged by a group of teenagers, whom they presumed to be Lebanese but may have been of other Middle Eastern origin, who objected to white boys playing cricket. A full-scale, if brief, fist fight ensued.
One son was challenged by a boy with a gun. Lakemba police station was shot up. Crime increased on the railway line.
The worst thing I saw myself was two strong young men, of Middle Eastern appearance, waiting outside the train station.
A middle-aged white woman emerged from the station alone. She was rather oddly dressed, with a strange hair-do.
The two young men walked up beside her, began taunting her and then finished their effort by spitting in her face. They laughed riotously and walked away. She wiped the spittle off her face and hurried off home. It was all over in a few seconds.
These events in Lakemba and nearby are not unique. Lots of people from lots of different backgrounds commit violent crime in Australia. There is a good deal of unemployment, combined with a highly advanced informal culture of welfare exploitation, often freely discussed at the local schools, in the area. But Lakemba is different from most of Australia.
A senior policeman from nearby Bankstown once told me that policing in the Bankstown area was unlike working anywhere else in Australia, and he was amazed how much violent crime went unreported by the media.
Does Islam itself have a role in these problems? The answer is complex and nuanced but it must be a qualified, and deeply reluctant, yes.
This is the only explanation consistent with the fact other immigrant communities, which may have experienced difficult circumstances in the first generation, don't display the same characteristics in the second generation.
Australia has been a successful immigration country. But the truth is not all immigrants are the same. And it may be much easier than people think to turn success into failure.
Much more HERE
Catholic school bans gay 'cure' seminar at Caboolture
Some ideas may not be expressed -- even ones that the Holy Father would endorse!
A CATHOLIC school has kiboshed a "curing homosexuality seminar" set to be held at their Caboolture college.
The meeting sparked outrage on Facebook, with a protest page set up against it.
But the group holding the meeting has accused Catholic Education of discrimination over the decision.
A statement released by Brisbane Catholic Education says St Columban's College at Caboolture "immediately" withdrew permission for its hall to be used as a venue by the Miracle Christian Center when they realised what the meeting was about.
"Permission was given by the school, on the basis that the nature of the meeting would need to be in line with the college's Catholic Christian values," the statement said.
Principal Ann Rebgetz said the group had deliberately withheld from the school the real nature of the event.
But Miracle Christian Center president Dorian Ballard denied the accusation, saying when they hired halls they didn't advise what they would be preaching about.
He denied the group was homophobic. He said they had been discriminated against and the case was now with their lawyers.
"We are not homophobic, many of us have come out of the homosexual lifestyle," he said.
"We are not afraid of homosexuals; we love them, we've ministered to them for years.
"This topic is always up for debate. It's great to hear a lot of different views in the broad spectrum and we have been silenced, we have been discriminated against."
Former student and Facebook "Protest against the curing homosexuality seminar" page organiser Lexi Ryan said the school had done the right thing and she had cancelled the protest, which had 353 people who had replied they would be attending.
SOURCE
GREENIE ROUNDUP
Four articles below:
Carbon pricing could add $860 to annual household bills, Treasury documents show
THE carbon tax Prime Minister Julia Gillard promised never to introduce will cost average families $860 a year, Federal Government modelling has revealed.
Based on a carbon price of $30 a tonne, families would pay up to $218 more for electricity, $114 for gas, $187 for petrol and $88 for food, The Daily Telegraph reported.
Treasury documents, released under FOI, revealed households would pay the fixed price for between three and five years (before moving to an emissions trading scheme), leaving families with a bill between $2589 and $4315 over that time.Heavily censored documents claim price rises would "drive household behaviour change, with households substituting to less carbon intensive goods over time".
But it was acknowledged in a Treasury executive minute last October that low-income families would suffer the most because they spend more on things like electricity and are least able to afford low emissions technology.Treasury also raised fears the tax would reduce people's wealth.
"A carbon price will also affect wealth as the change in prices flows through to the value of financial assets, including shares, and reduces the real value of savings," the minute states.
It also shows the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme proposed in 2009 by former PM Kevin Rudd would have raised electricity prices by a maximum $120 a year and gas by $52 - half the cost of the Treasury estimates now.
"This just demonstrates that the Government has known all along that its carbon tax won't clean up the environment but it will clean out your wallet," Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said.
Treasurer Wayne Swan hit back yesterday, claiming the figures were preliminary numbers and he said he could not nominate how much assistance families would be given by way of compensation.
"Until the final design and modelling have been settled, anyone who uses these figures to scare families about prices is engaging in a scare campaign," he said.
The Government is reportedly considering tax and welfare breaks of between $600 and $1500 a year.
It comes as an exclusive survey by The Daily Telegraph reveals why voters are so angry about the proposal. A quarter of the 2500 households surveyed said they were already struggling to make ends meet and almost 9 per cent said they didn't have enough money to pay bills.
"I think it might be an unnecessary tax, I could probably do better with the money in my pocket and make a concerted effort to reduce my carbon emissions, rather than be taxed," Greg Hudson, 32, from Neutral Bay, said yesterday.
SOURCE
Labor at war with climate adviser Ross Garnaut
ENERGY Minister Martin Ferguson has slapped down the government's chief climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, flatly rejecting calls for more regulation on electricity markets and warning that mandatory renewable energy targets are pushing up power prices.
Mr Ferguson rejected Professor Garnaut's claims that electricity price rises were a result of "gouging" by electricity generators.
The senior cabinet minister said electricity prices had risen because of costs in replacing ageing plants and he warned that prices would rise by 30per cent in the next three years because of investment costs, a carbon price and the mandatory target for renewable energy generation.
Mr Ferguson and the Australian Energy Market Commission both warned that the government's compulsory target of 20 per cent electricity generation from renewable sources by 2020 was coming at a "cost to the community" and could "challenge" the national electricity grid.
Professor Garnaut this week recommended coal-fired power electricity generators not be compensated for a carbon tax and that a new energy regulator be formed.
At an energy conference in Melbourne yesterday, Mr Ferguson said Professor Garnaut had a role in advising the multi-party climate change committee, which includes the Greens, but he "does not speak for the government, nor for the Ministerial Council on Energy", which represents every government.
Mr Ferguson's comments come as the Labor government fights with the Greens over "extreme" policies.
It has also indicated that compensation for industries for a carbon tax will be the same as that offered in 2009, a policy the Greens voted against on the grounds it was too generous.
Mr Ferguson said: "The regulatory framework for Australia's energy sector is leading edge, and as such the Ministerial Council on Energy and the energy market bodies often review different aspects of our regulatory environment to ensure it delivers optimal outcomes for the community.
"Residential electricity prices have increased by about 40 per cent over the last three years and are forecast to increase in the order of 30 per cent in the three years to June 2013. As those who study these issues will know, there is no quick fix to rising prices.
"Prices reflect the cost of investment to maintain and replace ageing assets to ensure the community gets the reliability it has come to expect. We must ensure investment occurs to reduce emissions and meet demand, while importantly, maintaining sufficient competition and avoiding concentration in the sector."
Professor Garnaut this week released his final report on climate change for the government and said the owners of the transmission and distribution networks were overinvesting in their assets to increase their returns.
Calling for an urgent inquiry into power sector regulatory arrangements, Professor Garnaut said the current arrangements had allowed too high a rate of return for power companies, which "increases electricity prices that (are) just passed right on to the consumer".
He put the cost of a carbon tax on electricity prices at $4 to $5 a week for the average household and called for an urgent inquiry into what he believes is a "prima facie" case of excessive increases caused by electricity regulation in Australia.
Professor Garnaut conceded there might have to be commonwealth loan guarantees to keep high carbon emitting generators operating if they failed financially under the proposed carbon tax from July 1 next year.
Mr Ferguson said the nation's energy ministers tried to keep "away from the spotlight of the daily media cycle". "It is not in the public interest to trivialise these matters in a high level public debate over the network regulatory regime," the Energy Minister said.
"The market bodies and institutions already exist and have responsibility for finding the appropriate balance between reliability and value to the community.
"Trying to suppress prices ultimately leads to pain in the future when catch-up is required, as some jurisdictions are now finding."
Mr Ferguson said that, as Australia moved towards a price on carbon, "we have to be very mindful" of damaging asset values of power generators because these financial considerations can have "real energy security and market stability implications". "I am also conscious of the imminent refinancing requirements of the generation sector, with an estimated $6.4bn needed to be refinanced prior to the end of 2012.
"The expanded Renewable Energy Target, through supporting wind capacity, has delivered significant new investment over the last 15 months.
"The expanded Renewable Energy Target is effective in displacing generation investment that would otherwise come from non-renewable technologies; however, it is doing this at a cost to the community," Mr Ferguson warned.
"The fact remains that if we are hoping to achieve abatement from the electricity sector we will need to see significant investment in new generation capacity in the years ahead. At some point in the future we will need additional investment in baseload capacity."
SOURCE
Background on an Australian "Green" senator
Being Green is the way to get on in politics for a far Leftist. She's a Trot so the fact that she disowns Stalinism means nothing. The Trots and Stalin never did get on. Before Stalin rose to power, however, Trotsky led the Red army and murdered hundreds of thousands
AS the child of Australian communists and a former member of the Socialist Party, Greens senator-elect Lee Rhiannon insists she's been unfairly tagged as a hardline left-winger or "watermelon" -- green on the outside but red inside.
She says her parents were among many Australians who became disillusioned with Moscow after Soviet tanks crushed Czechoslovakia's move towards "socialism with a human face" in 1968.
That was when the Communist Party of Australia formally split from the Russian communists.
Ms Rhiannon is the daughter of women's rights activist Freda Yetta Brown and Bill Brown, who were both CPA members.
She has insisted that her parents joined the CPA because of their deep commitment to social justice and equal rights and not for any subversive reason.
But the association was enough to have her feature in an ASIO file when she was just seven years old.
During last year's election campaign, Ms Rhiannon insisted that she would support Bob Brown's pragmatic approach to politics, and said she had no wish to lead the party.
"I am not a communist," Ms Rhiannon told The Weekend Australian in August. "I and Greens members condemn the crimes committed under Stalin."
She strongly denied then that she wanted to steer the Greens towards a more radical agenda and said dealing with climate change was her priority.
Ms Rhiannon, 59, was elected last year to one of the six NSW seats and will join the Senate in July. She joined the Greens in 1991 and was elected to the NSW Upper House in 1999.
Among her priorities in the Legislative Council were better public transport and a ban on the building of any new motorways.
In the 1970s she was arrested during anti-apartheid protests and in the 1980s she helped organise the peace camp outside the joint US-Australian intelligence facility at Pine Gap in central Australia.
SOURCE
Eight myths of a carbon tax
Even a Warmist (below) can see that the arguments for an Australian carbon tax don't stack up
1. The greatest myth is that if we lead the world in carbon pricing the rest of the world will follow. We produce 1.5 per cent of the world's CO2; China and America account for 40 per cent. A 5 per cent reduction in Australia's emissions would be cancelled out by as little as a 0.3 per cent increase in China's emissions.
2. Another myth is that we have to lead the world because we are a carbon-based economy and will be more affected when and if the world introduces carbon pricing. Our carbon-based economy is one of our main competitive advantages. To lead on a carbon tax puts our industry at a serious disadvantage against our competitors.
Eighty per cent of power is generated from coal. This low-cost power has underpinned our standard of living by encouraging manufacture and giving low-cost electricity to consumers.
A carbon tax on imports from countries without CO2 pricing is unworkable. We would need to significantly increase the Customs Department and we would still be at risk. Such a move would undo the hard won reforms of the 1990s.
3. Another myth says if we introduce the tax now it will give industry time to adapt. Industry needs years to make the investment to meet the new environment. Planning approval alone can take four or more years. The logic of starting a carbon tax in barely 12 months' time has not been thought through; five years would barely be enough.
It would be better to advise industry that CO2 will be taxed at about $50/$60 a tonne in 10 years' time when our trading partners also start to price carbon and industry should start to adjust its long term capital plans and debt financing accordingly.
The rise in the cost of fossil fuels is already affecting local prices. We must be careful not to hit the domestic and business consumer with a double whammy. If the domestic price for gas continues to rise the price for CO2 will have to rise further to force the change from coal to gas generation.
4. Another myth is that Big Business should have known a carbon tax was coming and should have been prepared. Most of our coal-fired power stations were built and owned by state governments. The taxpayer is the largest single owner with 36 per cent capacity overall, 54 per cent in NSW and 67 per cent in Queensland.
The recent sale in NSW was at a deep discount to the replacement value because of the threat of carbon pricing; NSW taxpayers virtually lost their equity on the threat of a tax.
In Victoria power stations were sold at huge prices largely to foreign investors expecting a proper electricity market that never eventuated. The owners invested in good faith with the reasonable expectation that if a price were put on CO2 they would be given adequate notice and compensation.
Indeed, CO2 trading in Europe, the obvious precedent scheme, was accompanied by the issue of close to 100 per cent free permits to the power generators for the first decade. If we can purchase permits globally as planned why not adopt common measures with the EU?
To say to government and private investors that the federal government will wipe out your equity without compensation is patently unfair. It will introduce a dangerous level of sovereign risk for long-term investment in Australia.
5. Then there is the myth that we are morally obliged to lead the way because we generate a larger proportion of carbon dioxide a head of population. Yes we do, but there are good reasons for this. We are rich in resources such as coal, iron ore, bauxite and uranium. It gives us one of our few competitive advantages.
We also have a significant agricultural sector and are a large exporter of beef and lamb, which are high CO2 emitters. Given the size of the country, our transport consumption is higher than more densely settled economies.
Exports contribute to more than 30 per cent of Australia's carbon emissions. If we want to cut emissions sharply, should we just stop exporting?
6. Closer to home is the myth that the carbon tax will hit the so called 1000 big polluters and consumers will be protected. In the end the consumer, whether local or overseas, will always pay. If the cost is not passed on, trade exposed industry in particular will either fail to survive (and jobs will be lost), or move elsewhere (loss of jobs again).
The other illogicality in this myth is that the consumer should be protected. If the government wishes to discourage the production of CO2 then the end consumer must be sent a price signal.
The concept of charging the big emitters and passing the proceeds back to the consumer is fatally flawed. The big emitters will reduce emissions or be forced out of the economy. Then there will be no money for compensation and the shock will be large.
7. Then there is the myth that renewable energy can replace coal and gas-fired energy production without a substantial cost to the consumer or business.
Putting aside the serious issues of reliability, availability and transmission, the cost of all of the available renewables, such as wind, is far higher than coal.
8. And then there is the myth that a carbon tax or ETS will force the same big polluters to invest in alternative technologies that will create jobs. The expectation that investors who have seen their investment seriously impaired by a carbon tax will race to invest in new high-cost technologies is illogical. Banks won't lend to the impaired incumbents.
Where is the plan for what Australia will look like in 2020 or 2030? Will we still have an aluminium or steel industry or any form of processing requiring energy such as food or an agricultural sector?
California legislated to introduce a cap and trade scheme in 2006, with effect from 2012. There has been no explosion in green jobs there and unemployment stands at 12.5 per cent. Jobs have simply moved across state borders.
Global emissions are a global problem. A global solution is the only answer. If we reduce our carbon emissions unilaterally there will be no benefit to the global environment.
What is the negotiation benefit of giving away our hand now, when we should be seeking to agree an emissions trajectory for Australia as part of a global deal?
This is a momentous decision and we appear to be relying on a business and investment community that we are proposing to punish. A cross your fingers approach is just not good enough when we are considering the very basis of our economic future.
SOURCE
Friday, April 01, 2011
Another one of Australia's charming Muslim citizens
A PARAMEDIC was threatened and assaulted as she tried to treat a crash patient, a court heard yesterday. Police allege Ali Mobayad, 30, was involved in a verbal altercation with paramedic Karen Matthews outside Berala Public School as she was treating a patient who was injured in a car accident.
Documents tendered to Burwood Local Court yesterday revealed that the Auburn man double parked in a school zone - the only charge he pleaded guilty to - before allegedly getting out of his car and pounding on the Rapid Response vehicle's driver-side window and "threatening" the 37-year-old paramedic.
It is alleged Mobayad then began yelling and swearing at the ambulance officer before assaulting her just after 3pm on March 7. Court documents stated the alleged offences "caused a real fear of actual physical violence" and prevented Ms Matthews from "executing her duties as a paramedic".
The court heard the accused left the scene, but was arrested [on Yarram Road, Lidcombe] shortly after 4.30pm. He was charged with negligent driving, menacing driving, common assault and hindering an ambulance officer by act of violence - all of which he has denied and pleaded not guilty to yesterday.
Outside court, Mobayad became irate after he spotted The Daily Telegraph waiting with cameras. "You see this face - if you use that image you will never see the end of this," he said. "I don't care what happens to me, I'll kill you if you use that photo ... you f ... ing idiot."
SOURCE
The Jewish Agency makes a special deal for Australia
The Australian Jewish community is mostly in Melbourne and Zionist sentiment is very strong among them -- with many Australian Jews emigrating to Israel, despite the relative safety of Australia
Australia will be the only Western country where the Jewish Agency will retain a fulltime Israel immigration emissary, despite the organization’s recent decision to replace all such employees with officials dealing with a broad spectrum of issues.
“It was decided that in Australia we keep the classic model, because Australia is a little bit different from other countries in the world,” the Agency’s director of English-speaking countries, Yehuda Katz, told Anglo File this week.
“First of all, they had an amazing increase in aliyah of almost 50 percent between 2009 and 2010,” he said in reference to the jump in immigration to Israel. “Secondly, in Australia we have a unique partnership with the Zionist Federation. We work hand in hand in the encouragement of aliyah and [other activities].”
Last month, a Jewish Agency spokesman told Anglo File there no longer would be in Australia a designated immigration emissary, known as an aliyah shaliach. “It doesn’t make sense anymore, from our perspective, that one shaliach offers educational programs and a different shaliach works on aliyah,” he had said, before learning of a special agreement the Australian Zionist Federation had made with the agency.
The venerable institution recently embarked on a new strategic plan that shifts its focus from promoting immigration to strengthening Jewish identity, including replacing aliyah shlichim with “multifunctional” emissaries.
“From many years of experience, we have found that dedicated aliyah shlichim make a big difference in not just making the aliyah preparation much easier, but also in promoting aliyah, establishing aliyah groups in the Zionist youth movements and giving people the confidence to take the very big step of moving to Israel,” AZF President Philip Chester told Anglo File this week. The Agency’s new strategic plan aside, “all of our [Agency] shlichim have plenty to do with their own movements, communities, etc. without also having to be responsible for aliyah,” he said.
SOURCE
Greens leader reprimands Green Senator for Israel boycott stance
She's a nasty old Trot (Trotskyite; Marxist; middle-class hater) from way back. Bob Brown thinks that the media should not have mentioned her hatred of Israel. They actually went easy on her. There's lots more they could have told about her
Greens leader Bob Brown has reprimanded fellow Green and Senator-elect, Lee Rhiannon, for advocating a trade boycott against Israel. He said the NSW Greens lost votes in the recent NSW election by not concentrating on the basic issues of transport, education, health and renewable energy.
The Greens were hoping to win up to three Lower House seats and gain the balance of power in the Upper House, but have fallen far short of that. They are likely to win only Balmain in the Legislative Assembly and retain four seats in the Legislative Council.
Senator Brown also accused the Australian newspaper - which he described as the "hate media" - as having an anti-Green agenda by "playing the issue up". The newspaper said Ms Rhiannon had "expressed regret" that the Greens did not campaign harder on the Israel boycott.
"The NSW Greens have taken to having their own shade of foreign policy - that's up to them. It was a mistake. I differ with Lee on that and she knows that," Senator Brown said. "I think the policy deliberations by [the NSW Greens] were wrong - and they know that."
He said the Greens recognise the right to sovereignty of both Israel and Palestinian territories - a mainstream position.
"It was damaging to the Greens campaign and the hate media was able to play this issue up," Senator Brown said. "I've had a good, robust discussion with Lee. "She and I, not for the first time, have engaged in a very frank discussion about the way the NSW election went."
Ms Rhiannon will take up her seat in the Senate on July 1.
SOURCE
Tony Abbott calls for welfare crackdown
YOUNG people who stay unemployed when jobs are available should be denied the dole, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott today argues in a major policy outline.
The long-term unemployed should have their $244 weekly unemployment benefits quarantined to ensure it was spent on essentials as part of a national program.
Mr Abbott today said most people on the dole spend 90 to 100 per cent of their benefits on essentials, but "occasionally people aren't fair dinkum, can't manage their income".
An Abbott government also would push more people with lower-level disabilities into jobs and make it compulsory for the under-50 unemployed under tightened welfare laws.
Mr Abbott today insisted his proposals were not "a radical right wing solution" but made it clear he wanted to put pressure on Prime Minister Julia Gillard to move further to the right than she might want.
The Government will use the May Budget to introduce its own welfare-to-work programs and Mr Abbott is getting in first to establish a policy contrast, and to push the Government towards tougher restrictions.
"The government vowed to retain Work for the Dole at the 2007 election but has since deliberately allowed it to decay," said Mr Abbott in a speech prepared for today.
"Since its introduction in 1997, more than 600,000 people have participated in Work for the Dole gaining the discipline and dignity of performing useful work while developing the life skills so critical to obtaining and keeping a real job.
"Since 2007, Work for the Dole participation has fallen by 60 per cent to less than 10,000.
"Work for the Dole should be the default option for everyone under 50 who has been on unemployment benefits for more than six months. Reasonably fit working age people should be working, preferably for a wage but if not, for the dole."
He says the quarantining of welfare income was a justified interference in people’s lives because taxpayers had a right to insist that their money was not wasted.
"I originally proposed this while Shadow Minister for Family and Community Services in May 2008," said Mr Abbott.
"Last year, as part of normalizing the intervention, the government introduced automatic welfare quarantine for all long-term unemployment beneficiaries in the Northern Territory.
"This is right in the Territory so can hardly be wrong elsewhere.
"Ensuring that at least 50 per cent of welfare income is spent on the necessities of life should be a help rather than a hindrance for unemployed people. It would also have the advantage of discouraging people who might be 'working the system'."
Mr Abbott says the hung Parliament of Britain had not stopped the UK Government from reforming the disability pension with a more targeted payment for people whose disabilities might not be permanent.
"Australian disability pension numbers are set to pass 800,000 this year at an annual cost of $13 billion," he says.
"That’s about 220,000 more working age people on the disability pension than on unemployment benefits. With just over one per cent of disability pensioners moving back into the workforce every year and with nearly 60 per cent of recipients having potentially treatable mental health or muscular-skeletal conditions, a reform of this type should be considered here.
"What’s needed is a more sophisticated benefit structure that distinguishes between disabilities that are likely to be lasting and those that could be temporary and that provides more encouragement for people with some capacity for work.
"Better directing disability payments could help to part-fund much greater assistance to people with very serious disabilities as proposed in the Productivity Commission’s recent draft report into disability care."
SOURCE
Coalition seeks debate on Industrial Relations laws
THE Coalition is pushing for a renewed debate on workplace reform after government business adviser and Australia Industry Group chief, Heather Ridout, called for an overhaul of the Fair Work Act.
Ms Ridout ran through the failings of the current workplace laws in a comprehensive speech yesterday in which she called for changes to drive productivity and workplace flexibility.
Opposition workplace relations spokesman Senator Eric Abetz seized upon the critique today, calling for a broader political debate on Labor's industrial relations laws.
"I agree with Heather Ridout that there needs to be a sensible debate about productivity and whether or not Labor's workplace laws are delivering to the Australian people what Julia Gillard and Labor promised," he told The Australian Online.
"This is a startling admission when Labor's key industrial relations and business adviser says Labor's Fair Work Laws don't increase productivity, particularly in circumstances where the Australian public was told that the cornerstone of Labor's new IR laws was to increase productivity."
Opposition Tony Abbott has previously asked business to lead the way on making the case for industrial relations changes before the Coalition would take up the fight.
South Australian Liberal MP Jamie Briggs said Ms Ridout's comments changed the tenor of the debate on workplace reform and were evidence that businesses believed Julia Gillard's reforms had gone too far. He backed Senator Abetz's call for a debate.
"She (Ms Ridout) has been closely associated with the changes and she did work with Julia Gillard closely," he said.
"So, for her to now comment like this is extremely significant. It's a massive change in her perspective. And a massive change in this debate.
"Julia Gillard's laws are significantly flawed and they are going to cause real damage to our economy if they're not fixed.
"They hand far too much power to unelected third parties in the bargaining process and they risk, at a time of Labor shortages, forcing up wage based inflation and putting increased pressure on interest rates."
In her speech, Ms Ridout called for the industrial relations debate to move beyond recriminations over the Howard government's Work Choices legislation.
She said there were many positive aspects of the Howard government's workplace relations laws retained by Labor, and it was unreasonable to characterise them as wholly unfair.
She identified problem areas with the Far Work system introduced by Ms Gillard.
"On the basis of the accumulating anecdotal evidence from our membership, there is a very strong case to suggest that the Fair Work Act is not encouraging productivity improvements and is hampering the ability of companies to restructure and to maintain flexible workforces," she said.
A spokesman for the Workplace Relations Minister Chris Evans said the government would continue to work with unions and industry to drive productivity growth.
"Published data indicates that the Fair Work Act is working well and delivering record levels of agreement making, moderate wages growth, low unemployment; and low levels of industrial disputation," he said.
SOURCE
Note: I have two other blogs covering Australian news. They are more specialized so are not updated daily but there are updates on both most weeks. See QANTAS/Jetstar for news on Qantas failings and Australian police news for news on police misbehaviour. Quite a bit up recently
A PARAMEDIC was threatened and assaulted as she tried to treat a crash patient, a court heard yesterday. Police allege Ali Mobayad, 30, was involved in a verbal altercation with paramedic Karen Matthews outside Berala Public School as she was treating a patient who was injured in a car accident.
Documents tendered to Burwood Local Court yesterday revealed that the Auburn man double parked in a school zone - the only charge he pleaded guilty to - before allegedly getting out of his car and pounding on the Rapid Response vehicle's driver-side window and "threatening" the 37-year-old paramedic.
It is alleged Mobayad then began yelling and swearing at the ambulance officer before assaulting her just after 3pm on March 7. Court documents stated the alleged offences "caused a real fear of actual physical violence" and prevented Ms Matthews from "executing her duties as a paramedic".
The court heard the accused left the scene, but was arrested [on Yarram Road, Lidcombe] shortly after 4.30pm. He was charged with negligent driving, menacing driving, common assault and hindering an ambulance officer by act of violence - all of which he has denied and pleaded not guilty to yesterday.
Outside court, Mobayad became irate after he spotted The Daily Telegraph waiting with cameras. "You see this face - if you use that image you will never see the end of this," he said. "I don't care what happens to me, I'll kill you if you use that photo ... you f ... ing idiot."
SOURCE
The Jewish Agency makes a special deal for Australia
The Australian Jewish community is mostly in Melbourne and Zionist sentiment is very strong among them -- with many Australian Jews emigrating to Israel, despite the relative safety of Australia
Australia will be the only Western country where the Jewish Agency will retain a fulltime Israel immigration emissary, despite the organization’s recent decision to replace all such employees with officials dealing with a broad spectrum of issues.
“It was decided that in Australia we keep the classic model, because Australia is a little bit different from other countries in the world,” the Agency’s director of English-speaking countries, Yehuda Katz, told Anglo File this week.
“First of all, they had an amazing increase in aliyah of almost 50 percent between 2009 and 2010,” he said in reference to the jump in immigration to Israel. “Secondly, in Australia we have a unique partnership with the Zionist Federation. We work hand in hand in the encouragement of aliyah and [other activities].”
Last month, a Jewish Agency spokesman told Anglo File there no longer would be in Australia a designated immigration emissary, known as an aliyah shaliach. “It doesn’t make sense anymore, from our perspective, that one shaliach offers educational programs and a different shaliach works on aliyah,” he had said, before learning of a special agreement the Australian Zionist Federation had made with the agency.
The venerable institution recently embarked on a new strategic plan that shifts its focus from promoting immigration to strengthening Jewish identity, including replacing aliyah shlichim with “multifunctional” emissaries.
“From many years of experience, we have found that dedicated aliyah shlichim make a big difference in not just making the aliyah preparation much easier, but also in promoting aliyah, establishing aliyah groups in the Zionist youth movements and giving people the confidence to take the very big step of moving to Israel,” AZF President Philip Chester told Anglo File this week. The Agency’s new strategic plan aside, “all of our [Agency] shlichim have plenty to do with their own movements, communities, etc. without also having to be responsible for aliyah,” he said.
SOURCE
Greens leader reprimands Green Senator for Israel boycott stance
She's a nasty old Trot (Trotskyite; Marxist; middle-class hater) from way back. Bob Brown thinks that the media should not have mentioned her hatred of Israel. They actually went easy on her. There's lots more they could have told about her
Greens leader Bob Brown has reprimanded fellow Green and Senator-elect, Lee Rhiannon, for advocating a trade boycott against Israel. He said the NSW Greens lost votes in the recent NSW election by not concentrating on the basic issues of transport, education, health and renewable energy.
The Greens were hoping to win up to three Lower House seats and gain the balance of power in the Upper House, but have fallen far short of that. They are likely to win only Balmain in the Legislative Assembly and retain four seats in the Legislative Council.
Senator Brown also accused the Australian newspaper - which he described as the "hate media" - as having an anti-Green agenda by "playing the issue up". The newspaper said Ms Rhiannon had "expressed regret" that the Greens did not campaign harder on the Israel boycott.
"The NSW Greens have taken to having their own shade of foreign policy - that's up to them. It was a mistake. I differ with Lee on that and she knows that," Senator Brown said. "I think the policy deliberations by [the NSW Greens] were wrong - and they know that."
He said the Greens recognise the right to sovereignty of both Israel and Palestinian territories - a mainstream position.
"It was damaging to the Greens campaign and the hate media was able to play this issue up," Senator Brown said. "I've had a good, robust discussion with Lee. "She and I, not for the first time, have engaged in a very frank discussion about the way the NSW election went."
Ms Rhiannon will take up her seat in the Senate on July 1.
SOURCE
Tony Abbott calls for welfare crackdown
YOUNG people who stay unemployed when jobs are available should be denied the dole, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott today argues in a major policy outline.
The long-term unemployed should have their $244 weekly unemployment benefits quarantined to ensure it was spent on essentials as part of a national program.
Mr Abbott today said most people on the dole spend 90 to 100 per cent of their benefits on essentials, but "occasionally people aren't fair dinkum, can't manage their income".
An Abbott government also would push more people with lower-level disabilities into jobs and make it compulsory for the under-50 unemployed under tightened welfare laws.
Mr Abbott today insisted his proposals were not "a radical right wing solution" but made it clear he wanted to put pressure on Prime Minister Julia Gillard to move further to the right than she might want.
The Government will use the May Budget to introduce its own welfare-to-work programs and Mr Abbott is getting in first to establish a policy contrast, and to push the Government towards tougher restrictions.
"The government vowed to retain Work for the Dole at the 2007 election but has since deliberately allowed it to decay," said Mr Abbott in a speech prepared for today.
"Since its introduction in 1997, more than 600,000 people have participated in Work for the Dole gaining the discipline and dignity of performing useful work while developing the life skills so critical to obtaining and keeping a real job.
"Since 2007, Work for the Dole participation has fallen by 60 per cent to less than 10,000.
"Work for the Dole should be the default option for everyone under 50 who has been on unemployment benefits for more than six months. Reasonably fit working age people should be working, preferably for a wage but if not, for the dole."
He says the quarantining of welfare income was a justified interference in people’s lives because taxpayers had a right to insist that their money was not wasted.
"I originally proposed this while Shadow Minister for Family and Community Services in May 2008," said Mr Abbott.
"Last year, as part of normalizing the intervention, the government introduced automatic welfare quarantine for all long-term unemployment beneficiaries in the Northern Territory.
"This is right in the Territory so can hardly be wrong elsewhere.
"Ensuring that at least 50 per cent of welfare income is spent on the necessities of life should be a help rather than a hindrance for unemployed people. It would also have the advantage of discouraging people who might be 'working the system'."
Mr Abbott says the hung Parliament of Britain had not stopped the UK Government from reforming the disability pension with a more targeted payment for people whose disabilities might not be permanent.
"Australian disability pension numbers are set to pass 800,000 this year at an annual cost of $13 billion," he says.
"That’s about 220,000 more working age people on the disability pension than on unemployment benefits. With just over one per cent of disability pensioners moving back into the workforce every year and with nearly 60 per cent of recipients having potentially treatable mental health or muscular-skeletal conditions, a reform of this type should be considered here.
"What’s needed is a more sophisticated benefit structure that distinguishes between disabilities that are likely to be lasting and those that could be temporary and that provides more encouragement for people with some capacity for work.
"Better directing disability payments could help to part-fund much greater assistance to people with very serious disabilities as proposed in the Productivity Commission’s recent draft report into disability care."
SOURCE
Coalition seeks debate on Industrial Relations laws
THE Coalition is pushing for a renewed debate on workplace reform after government business adviser and Australia Industry Group chief, Heather Ridout, called for an overhaul of the Fair Work Act.
Ms Ridout ran through the failings of the current workplace laws in a comprehensive speech yesterday in which she called for changes to drive productivity and workplace flexibility.
Opposition workplace relations spokesman Senator Eric Abetz seized upon the critique today, calling for a broader political debate on Labor's industrial relations laws.
"I agree with Heather Ridout that there needs to be a sensible debate about productivity and whether or not Labor's workplace laws are delivering to the Australian people what Julia Gillard and Labor promised," he told The Australian Online.
"This is a startling admission when Labor's key industrial relations and business adviser says Labor's Fair Work Laws don't increase productivity, particularly in circumstances where the Australian public was told that the cornerstone of Labor's new IR laws was to increase productivity."
Opposition Tony Abbott has previously asked business to lead the way on making the case for industrial relations changes before the Coalition would take up the fight.
South Australian Liberal MP Jamie Briggs said Ms Ridout's comments changed the tenor of the debate on workplace reform and were evidence that businesses believed Julia Gillard's reforms had gone too far. He backed Senator Abetz's call for a debate.
"She (Ms Ridout) has been closely associated with the changes and she did work with Julia Gillard closely," he said.
"So, for her to now comment like this is extremely significant. It's a massive change in her perspective. And a massive change in this debate.
"Julia Gillard's laws are significantly flawed and they are going to cause real damage to our economy if they're not fixed.
"They hand far too much power to unelected third parties in the bargaining process and they risk, at a time of Labor shortages, forcing up wage based inflation and putting increased pressure on interest rates."
In her speech, Ms Ridout called for the industrial relations debate to move beyond recriminations over the Howard government's Work Choices legislation.
She said there were many positive aspects of the Howard government's workplace relations laws retained by Labor, and it was unreasonable to characterise them as wholly unfair.
She identified problem areas with the Far Work system introduced by Ms Gillard.
"On the basis of the accumulating anecdotal evidence from our membership, there is a very strong case to suggest that the Fair Work Act is not encouraging productivity improvements and is hampering the ability of companies to restructure and to maintain flexible workforces," she said.
A spokesman for the Workplace Relations Minister Chris Evans said the government would continue to work with unions and industry to drive productivity growth.
"Published data indicates that the Fair Work Act is working well and delivering record levels of agreement making, moderate wages growth, low unemployment; and low levels of industrial disputation," he said.
SOURCE
Note: I have two other blogs covering Australian news. They are more specialized so are not updated daily but there are updates on both most weeks. See QANTAS/Jetstar for news on Qantas failings and Australian police news for news on police misbehaviour. Quite a bit up recently
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
