Facebook won't remove abuse page targeting Aborigines

I can't find the page concerned so maybe it has now been blocked or taken down.  I guess we must not be allowed to make our own judgments of the matter.  But there have been frequent media reports of high rates of criminality and alcohol abuse among Aborigines so I am inclined to suspect that truth might have been a defence to what the page said

FACEBOOK is continuing to defy petitions to remove an Australian "fan page" dedicated to stereotyping Aborigines as hopeless drunks.

The page, which has more than 4000 "likes", posts pictures of indigenous people with captions that some Facebook users say are offensive and, in some cases, hate speech, The Australian reports.

"How do you kill 1000 flies at once? Slap me in the face," reads one of the photo captions.

The page, created on on June 4, has attracted hundreds of vitriolic comments on at least a dozen offensive posts.

 Other Facebook users have created online petitions calling for the page to be removed.

 One campaign titled "Take down racist Facebook page" has 10 signatures, while another has 31 members.

The outrage has spread to Twitter with numerous people calling for the page to be shut  down.

 A Facebook spokeswoman told The Australian the site had no current plans to take action.

Aboriginal elder Ian Hunter, from the Wurundjeri tribe, said he wasn’t opposed to Aboriginal humour but was offended by the anonymous posts on the page.

 “If it is another Aboriginal person I don’t have any problems but if it is a so-called redneck putting these things up on the internet I’m offended by it,” Mr Hunter said.

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'WE ARE NOT MUSEUM PIECES': Aboriginal Elders blast Greens crusader Bob Brown

An Aboriginal elder in Western Australia's Kimberley region has hand-delivered a stinging letter to Bob Brown, urging the former Greens leader to back off from his protest against a major gas project.

In the letter, Jabirr Jabirr elder Rita Augustine tells Mr Brown that "The only thing we need saving from is people who disrespect our decisions and want to see our people locked up in a wilderness and treated as museum pieces".

She also says, "what saddens me most is your complete disregard for Aboriginal people. I know you care about the whales and the dinosaur footprints, but what about people?"

Mr Brown joined the environmental activist group Sea Shepherd this week as mission leader of a two week trip in the whale calving grounds around James Price Point, site of the proposed $45 billion Browse gas development.

The Browse project was negotiated in conjunction with Woodside, the WA Government and the Kimberley Land council (KLC), which is the native title representative body for Kimberley traditional owners.

As part of the deal, traditional owners in the Kimberley will receive a whopping $1.5 billion in assistance over the next 30 years. The money will go towards housing, education and health programs and will go directly to the people rather than being funnelled through the KLC.

Traditional owners told news.com.au that they accept the Browse project will be "a minor environmental hit", but they believe it was wiser to negotiate one massive development rather than as many as 20 smaller projects up and down the coast.

But there remains opposition to the Browse project from the local Goolarabooloo people, who share the same native title claim as Rita Augustine's group, the Jabirr Jabirr.

It is the Goolarabooloo people who invited Brown on the Sea Shepherd mission, and the two groups may be set for a legal showdown.

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Queensland Premier Campbell Newman to defy union and poll members

PUBLIC servants will be polled by the State Government on a new pay deal as early as this Thursday in an effort to resolve the potentially damaging deadlock.

The public sector union Together were expecting the government to ballot workers on the new pay deal from this Thursday, to try to reach agreement without union involvement.

A direct ballot of employees is allowed under new Industrial Relations laws passed by the Government in June.

Yesterday a government source said they believed the ballot would reveal the majority of public servants supported the pay offer.

But Mr Scott said he believed the ballot would show the union was more on touch with its members than the government was with its workforce.

"This will become a referendum on whether they trust the Campbell Newman leadership, and a referendum on the way that this government is governing Queensland," he said.

Together Queensland would suspend any industrial action for the duration of the ballot, expected to be two weeks, Mr Scott said.

The union dared the Queensland government to take the new pay offer directly to public servants,  and expects it will be roundly rejected.

The public sector union Together says the new offer restores conditions that were stripped away and would have amounted to a pay cut for public servants.

A government spokesman has told AAP the new deal will mean a 2.2 per cent pay rise, something Together secretary Alex Scott says is a step in the right direction.

But he says members will almost certainly reject it because it appears to do nothing to address their primary concern - job security.

Mr Scott dared the government to take the offer directly to a workers' ballot, which it can now do under changes to industrial relations laws.

"We would certainly be very surprised if members accepted it," he told AAP.

The State Government is offering a new pay deal this week designed to break the deadlock.

The new offer retains the 2.2 per cent a year pay rise but does not include the freeze on pay level rises that unions had strongly condemned.

It comes after a volatile week in which unions threatened prolonged strikes in response to a new government directive that removed "employment security" from work agreements.

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Former NSW Labor government:  Black loans, burnt boats and fast cars


Sir Lunchalot (Ian Macdonald) in happier days

A SPECTACULAR boat explosion, pointed guns, BRW rich listers and secret shareholdings in the British Virgin Islands are just some of the intriguing elements involving former government ministers, investors and controversial coalmining deals worth tens of millions of dollars.

The dramatic allegations of corruption against three former Labor ministers - Eddie Obeid, Ian Macdonald and Eric Roozendaal - are now part of an inquiry that will begin on November 1 and run at least until April.

At the heart of the investigations by the Independent Commission Against Corruption are the mysterious dealings involving the granting of coal exploration licences to friends and associates of the family of Labor kingpin Eddie Obeid, who quit politics last year.

Also under scrutiny is the disgraced former mining minister Ian Macdonald, whose department was responsible for awarding the licences. This will be the second ICAC inquiry into Mr Macdonald's alleged abuse of his government position to do favours for mates.

Last Friday ICAC began serving summonses on witnesses to give evidence at a public inquiry. Apart from the main players Mr Obeid, Mr Macdonald and Mr Roozendaal, the only one still in Parliament, there is a fascinating cast of support players.

Take Sydney playboy Justin Kennedy Lewis, 41, who is a close friend of Eddie Obeid's son Moses. Mr Lewis was one of those who, along with the Obeid family, bought land in the Bylong Valley, near Mudgee.

Like the Obeid family, Mr Lewis later received a multi-million-dollar windfall from Cascade Coal for an option over his property.

Friends of Moses Obeid claim he was furious when Mr Lewis then splashed out on a $500,000 Lamborghini Gallardo. "Mo said it was stupid of him to do that because it drew attention to himself," said an associate.

Documents tendered in a recent court case involving the Obeids show that in October 2010 an Obeid trust company made a $100,000 payment to Mr Lewis.

The previous year Mr Lewis received a $300,000 insurance payout after his seven-metre luxury yacht was destroyed by fire while in dry dock at the Rozelle Bay Superyacht Marina.

Associates of the Obeids have said the coalmining venture was an ill-kept secret and some of those who are alleged to have invested in it are colourful figures and sporting identities who are unhappy at the way things have panned out.

One insider has told the Herald he had a gun pointed at him in broad daylight after tensions boiled over. "Do you have any f---ing idea who you are dealing with!" he was told.

Of particular interest to the inquiry will be the identities of the investors in Cascade Coal, a private company that tried to sell its two coal licences - acquired for $1 million - to the publicly listed White Energy for $500 million.

Travers Duncan, Brian Flannery, John McGuigan, John Atkinson and John Kinghorn, through associated companies, were shareholders in Cascade Coal but they were also directors of White Energy. Duncan and Flannery are BRW rich-listers.

A backlash by White Energy shareholders resulted in the deal, which would have netted the five an estimated $60 million each, being scrapped. But who was to pocket the rest of the Cascade windfall remains a mystery as 40 per cent of the company is hidden through nominee companies.

When asked the identity of the other shareholders, Mr McGuigan said this year: "There's a bunch of, you know, well-known business people … I am not going into that because it is a private company."

Also of interest to the commission will be the Obeid associate Andrew Kaidbay.

While working as a mortgage broker at Yellow Brick Road with Mark Bouris's son Dane, Mr Kaidbay's $1 company successfully tendered for three of the 11 licences, despite having no experience in the resources industry.

Mr Kaidbay proceeded with only one licence. Shortly after its acquisition he sold most of his stake for $2.4 million to a big player, Coalworks.

Again, the identity of the shareholders, who still hold a minority stake in this coal licence and stand to make tens of millions of dollars if a mine goes into production, are hidden behind various companies.

One of these is registered at the office of the Obeid family's long-time accountant, Sid Sassine. The other is a company registered in the British Virgin Islands which belongs to Gardner Brook, an elusive merchant banker now living in Singapore. Mr Brook, then a Lehman Brothers executive, promised one prospective tenderer an inside run on the controversial Macdonald tender.

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Global cooling hits my home town

IT felt like a fridge in parts of southeast Queensland this morning but clear skies and sunshine should keep daytime temperatures warm until Friday, when the Ekka south westerly hits the region.

The cool conditions are part of Brisbane's longest single-digit cold snap in 17 years, after 11 days straight where overnight temperatures haven't reached double figures, and it will continue into the Ekka tomorrow.

In Brisbane this morning the mercury bottomed out at 6.7C and 5.6C at the airport. At Archerfield temperatures dropped to 4.4C but Ipswich was -0.5C.

It was -3.9C at Oakey on the Darling Downs, -1C at Gatton and a freezing -4.6C at Applethorpe.

Coolangatta recorded an overnight minimum of 5.9C while the Sunshine Coast dropped to 6.1C early this morning.

Bureau meteorologist Amber Young said the cool nights and beautiful days were all thanks to a static weather pattern affecting the region for almost two weeks.

"There's been a persistent static pattern with stable conditions, clear skies overnight, very light winds and because there have been no showers and moisture around it has just been able to dry out, giving us dry air as well," she said.

"As a result of those three things, the temperature has been dropping out overnight. And we're seeing that further west and in inland parts as well, all the way to Mount Isa."

Despite cold overnight conditions, Brisbane's days have been fabulous.  It hit 23.1C yesterday and will get to 24C today and 26C tomorrow, the first day of the Ekka.[Show]

Weather bureau forecasters expect the temperature to ease to a chilly top of just 18C on Friday. Although it will remain sunny, it will be cold, with a substantial wind-chill factor.

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Prime Minister Julia Gillard blames Queensland for soaring electricity costs

THE Prime Minister who introduced a carbon tax will today blame state governments for soaring electricity costs, calling on them to do more to cut the bills that are crippling families.

Just a month after the carbon tax started, PM Julia Gillard will today point the finger back at the states, weighing in on the the cost of living battleground Premier Campbell Newman has tried to own since storming to power.

Ms Gillard will say that state governments, including Queensland, are "doing very well" out of electricity prices.

"Revenue for enterprises wholly owned by state governments is up 50 per cent over the previous five-year period," Ms Gillard will tell the Energy Policy Institute of Australia today.

Ms Gillard will say the current rate of electricity price increases cannot continue, describing power bills as "the new petrol prices".

She will describe electricity network charges as "a threat to fairness in our society" and call for a more efficient market.

"Indeed, in many places around Australia, the state governments both own lucrative electricity assets and regulate parts of the electricity market," she will say.

"The comparison between the private and publicly owned utilities shows the states are doing very well out of this arrangement."

Figures provided to The Courier-Mail show the Queensland Government is raking in $431 in revenue per household from state-owned network service providers.

A large proportion of electricity bills for households comes from the cost of the electricity network, opposed to electricity consumed.

Queensland spent billions expanding and upgrading its network following the 2004 Somerville report.

"For too long, some state governments have been increasing their revenue at the expense of the family electricity bill that has to stop," Ms Gillard will say.

The PM will argue that the impact of price rises is falling too heavily on battlers, who can't afford new, more efficient whitegoods or solar panels.

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Queensland Teachers' Union rejects flaw claims in assessments

QUEENSLAND'S senior student assessment system is open to rorting, is prejudicial towards well resourced schools and creates unrealistic student and teacher workloads, a group of teachers claim.

But academics and the Queensland Teachers' Union say the system, set to be reviewed by the State Government, is world class.

The heated and long-running debate hit a new high last week with the Queensland Studies Authority releasing a defence on its website to teachers' claims.

"The QSA welcomes feedback from the education and wider communities ... However, it is vital that debate and discussion about curriculum and assessment is based on factual information," the QSA website states, before addressing 11 "issues".

The Courier-Mail has heard from about a dozen of more than 100 teachers who met recently to step up claims against Queensland's externally moderated school-based assessment system.

Represented by James Cook University academic Professor Peter Ridd, the teachers dismissed views of Stanford University's Linda Darling-Hammond and Australian College of Educators chair Professor Robert Lingard that Queensland's system inspired higher-order thinking skills among students and was world class.

However, the teachers say the system is open to rorting, with better resourced schools able to facilitate continuous student drafts until written pieces were effectively done by the teacher. They also claim teachers are more likely to teach to the test because they are writing them and can more easily manipulate marks.

The teachers are calling for more external exams, for some maths and science assessments to have a lesser workload and to be allowed to use numerical marks rather than "confusing" criteria.

Prof Ridd said academics who thought the system was world class lived "in fairyland".

"It is the overuse of writing, it is the overuse of assignments which is one of the biggest problems," he said.

A QSA spokeswoman said elite schools and those in disadvantaged areas had similar student result curves, proving there was no bias, and while any system had a potential for rorting, no evidence had been offered.

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Vitamins often a waste of money,  says Australian consumer watchdog

POPPING a daily multivitamin pill could be a waste of time and money, says consumer watchdog Choice.

Healthy individuals who already eat a balanced diet but also take multivitamins could be spending money unnecessarily, an investigation by Choice found.

Although there is sometimes clinical evidence to support taking a supplement, the doses can often be way below levels required to have a significant impact, the organisation said.

"If you have a healthy diet and you're not a person with specific nutritional requirements, there's a good chance you're wasting your money," Choice spokeswoman Ingrid Just said.

"At 20 to 70 cents per day for multivitamin products we priced, the 'worried well' can spend several hundred dollars a year simply by taking a daily pill.

"Marketing messages, often backed up by high-profile sporting celebrities, give the impression that we all need multivitamins to be fit and healthy," she said in a statement.

People taking a range of multivitamins without checking the recommended daily intake (RDI) requirements could be exceeding the RDI for some vitamins and potentially putting their health at risk, as not all vitamins are safe in high doses.

But most multivitamins contain lower doses of ingredients so it's harder for them to be over-consumed, the investigation found.

Vitamin labelling could also confuse consumers, with some labels stating the vitamin name such as B3, while others using the chemical name, niacin.

"An untrained person probably wouldn't know that the two things are one and the same," Ms Just said.

Manufacturers of products sold in Australia are not required to list how each ingredient amount relates to RDI.

"We want manufacturers to list vitamin and mineral values according to the percentage of an appropriate RDI in each dose to help consumers compare apples with apples," Choice's investigation concluded.

Multivitamins are big business, with Choice identifying eight different multivitamin products marketed by both Blackmores and Nature's Own, 11 by Nature's Way and 16 by Swisse.

But some groups definitely benefit from supplements, including pregnant women taking folate before and after conception, the study pointed out.

Choice recommends individuals consult a dietician or GP about their nutritional needs before opting for multivitamin or other supplements.

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The Roots of Green Politics in German Romanticism

Brian Wimborne

The apparently sudden decision of the leader of the Australian Greens, Bob Brown, to resign from federal parliament came as a surprise to most Australians but there were probably fewer raised eyebrows at his decision to visit Germany. Even without an invitation to address the Greens in Stuttgart, Bob Brown would likely still have visited the sacred home of environmentalism at some time, if only to pay respect to the founders of the movement from which his party arose.

At this point it is important to distinguish between the ideology of environmentalism and a love of nature. Most people enjoy beaches, mountains and forests, and would oppose their wanton destruction. They may consider themselves to be environmentalists because of their love of nature but they are not infused with the politics of environmentalism; nor are they ideologues with a ‘sacred’ mission. Many would not know that the ideology of environmentalism contains a dark secret of which Bob Brown must surely be aware.

To understand that secret one needs to look to Europe of the nineteenth century, in particular to the ideas of Romanticism, which were a reaction to the Enlightenment.

Not surprisingly, the Romantic movement embarked on a path that was essentially regressive and anti-rational; characteristics that all too common today among left-wing environmentalists. At its forefront was German Romanticism; a home-grown ideology that was to become highly influential in melding primitive naturalism and German nationalism.

Prior to the 1870s, Germany did not exist as a unified nation but comprised a number of independent provinces, principalities and city-states. If a common language brought the Germanic people together under Otto von Bismarck, it was belief in a mythological rustic nationalism that forged them into a nation and helped develop belief in a destiny that reached its apotheosis between 1933 and 1945.

An early exponent of the naturalist-nationalist cause was Johann Gottlieb Fichte. In a series of essays entitled Addresses to the German Nation (1808), he emphasised the ‘particular spiritual nature of the human environment’ and urged the German peoples to ‘have character and be German’. In common with later German environmentalists his idea of Germanness was bound up with anti-Semitism. Fichte argued that ‘making Jews free German citizens would hurt the German nation.’

In 1815 Ernst Arndt published an essay, On the Care and Conservation of Forests, in which he laments the exploitation of the countryside and the encroachment of German industrial expansion leading to despoliation, especially of forests. Like many of today’s environmentalists and animal rights activists, he preached the inter-dependence of all things in nature.

German land and its peasantry were at the heart of Arndt’s polemics. By combining his love of Teutonic blood and soil with a hatred of Jews, Slavs and the French, he successfully welded environmentalism with German nationalism.

Extolment of the German peasant was also a major feature of Wilhelm Riehl’s opposition to the growth of cities and industry. A disciple of Arndt, Riehl wrote in his 1853 essay, Field and Forest, ‘We must save the forest, not only so that our ovens do not become cold in winter, but also so that the pulse of life of the people continues to beat warm and joyfully, so that Germany remains German.’ His entreaty to fight for ‘the rights of wilderness’ anticipated the kind of thinking that inspires Green activists today. Known as the founder of agrarian romanticism and anti-urbanism, Riehl contrasted the glorious German peasantry with cosmopolitan Jews.

Fichte, Riehl and Arndt looked back to a simplistic agrarian utopia that had never existed; it was an imaginary landscape where purity of blood was combined with German soil to produce a Teutonic paradise that could be compared to the purgatory of urban civilisation.

The views of all three thinkers were important in the development of a movement known as the Völkisch, a loose grouping of nationalistic conservatives who combined German history and folklore with anti-urbanism and a back-to-the-land ideology.

In the words of Petteri Pietikainen, the Völkisch movement was ‘a cauldron of beliefs, fears and hopes that found expression in various movements and were often articulated in an emotional tone... Völkisch ideology was originally an ultra-nationalist reaction against the dominant social, political and cultural trends of the 1870s and 1880s.’ (‘The Völk and its Unconscious: Jung, Hauer and the German Revolution’, Journal of Contemporary History 35.4, October 2000: p. 524)

The idealised image of simple, honest, upright country farmers building a self-sufficient and sustainable lifestyle underpinned by mystical union with the soil resonated with members of the Völkisch movement. To this lifestyle were added arcane and esoteric beliefs and a worship of German folk mythology to produce an ethnic nationalism that was to find its most emphatic artistic expression in the operas of Richard Wagner. Not surprisingly, cosmopolitan Jews were to have no place in this movement, or in the idealised German nation of the future.

The hackneyed word ecology was coined by the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, who propounded a variation of social Darwinism combined with a materialistic interpretation of Spinoza and Bruno that he termed, monism—the premise that all true questions have only one true answer, all other answers being false. Haeckel’s anti-humanist philosophy aimed to reduce man to the level of just another animal; a view that is not uncommon among many environmentalists. His firm belief in the benefits of eugenics is echoed today by those who advocate the early disposal of retarded children and the elderly.

A believer in the superiority of the Nordic race, Haeckel brought together mystical racism with environmentalism, and preached a rabid nationalism and anti-Semitism that became an enduring feature of the German ecological movement.

In the view of Peter Staudenmaier (‘Fascist Ecology: The “Green Wing” of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents’, online essay) ‘ecology was bound up in an intensely reactionary political framework. The specific contours of this early marriage of ecology and authoritarian social views are highly instructive.’ Indeed they are, as the Greens consistently demonstrate.

Another of the most influential early ecologists was the German philosopher, Ludwig Klages. An opponent of rational thought, one who condemned ideas of progress and reason, Klages was also a fanatical anti-Semite. In the opinion of Walter Laqueur, he was ‘an intellectual pacemaker of the Third Reich’ who ‘paved the way for fascist philosophy in many important respects.’ (Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement, London, 1962, p. 34)

In his 1913 essay Man and Earth, Klages rails against the extinction of species, deforestation, destruction of the habitats of animals and indigenous people, urban expansion, human consumption, killing of whales and the increasing alienation of man from nature. Almost a hundred years later, the Greens express identical views and it is not surprising that Man and Earth was republished in 1980 to coincide with the founding of the German Greens Party.

At this point it is pertinent to seek an explanation for the high correlation between early environmentalism and anti-Semitism. In the first place, anti-Semitism had been preached in Germany for centuries by both the Catholic and Lutheran churches. Added to this, as far as German environmentalists were concerned, Jews were the antithesis of the idealised, conservative peasant who was bound to the soil and lived in perfect equilibrium with nature.

By contrast, German Jews were largely urbanised, increasingly educated, engaged in trade and commerce, and well represented in professions such as medicine and law. Aided by the influence of the Enlightenment, many had risen to positions of importance in German society. Nevertheless, Jews had never embraced Nordic mythology with its panoply of gods and spirits, and were too progressive to opt for a rural, subsistence lifestyle that environmentalists embrace.

The toxic mixture of mystical naturalism, extreme nationalism and anti-Semitism that characterised German environmentalism was to play an important part in the ideology of the Nazi Party.

In 1935, under the guidance of Hermann Göring, Germany passed the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz, a national conservation law that spelt out safeguards for flora, fauna and natural monuments. Wilhelm Lienenkamper, a leading conservationist of the day, saw the law not as ‘an accidental by-product of Nazi rule but a direct expression of the “new Weltanschauung”’. (Frank Uekoetter, The Green and the Brown, Cambridge, USA, 2006, p. 1)

One of the most influential thinkers in the formation of Nazi environmental ideology was Richard Walther Darré, who provided the party with an agrarian mystique that appealed to the German peasantry as well as to party leaders such as Rosenberg, Himmler and Hess. Referred to as ‘the father of the Greens’ (Anna Bramwell, ‘Darré. Was This Man “Father of the Greens”?’ History Today, Sept. 1984, Vol. 34, pp 7-13), Darré was Minister for Agriculture and Peasant Leader between 1933 and 1942.

Darré proposed that Europe should return to ruralism founded on a yeoman peasantry that would ensure racial health and ecological sustainability (Peter Staudenmaier, op. cit.). In a speech in 1930 entitled ‘Blood and Soil as the Foundations of the Nordic Race’, Darré claimed that ‘The unity of blood and soil must be restored.’

Another influential Nazi was Reichminister Fritz Todt, who established rigid criteria for protecting wetlands, forests and other sensitive areas. His chief adviser, Alwin Seifert, who was known within the party as ‘Mr Mother Earth’ advocated the total conversion of technology to nature.

In view of the Nazis’ wanton destruction, it is hard to imagine them in the vanguard of a movement that appeared committed to the environment, yet there was ‘an ideological overlap between Nazi ideas and conservationist agendas ... The Nazis created nature preserves, championed sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn highway network as a way of bringing Germans closer to Nature’. (How Green were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich, Franz-Josef Bruggemeier, Mark Cioc, and Thomas Zeller (eds.), 2005)

Robert Pois (National Socialism and the Religion of Nature, London, 1985, p. 40) describes Nazism as ‘a volatile admixture of teutonic nature mysticism, pseudo-scientific ecology, irrationalist anti-humanism, and a mythology of racial salvation through a return to the land. Its predominant themes were “natural order”, organicist holism and denigration of humanity.’

The subservience of mankind to nature is emphasised in the following quotation that might well have been written by contemporary environmentalists who so delight in doomsday prophesies: ‘When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of nature, they come into conflict with the very same principles to which they owe their existence as human beings. Their actions against nature must lead to their own downfall.’ In fact, these words were written by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf.

Interestingly, although powerful elements within the Nazi party were dedicated environmentalists, Hitler’s attempt at European domination ensured that conservation of nature took second place to rapid industrialisation. The protection of nature was never the most urgent aspect of Nazi policy.

Nevertheless, the ties that bound environmentalism to Nazism are easy to account for since, according to Jurriaan Maessen, ‘environmental fanatics care nothing for matters of liberty, gladly surrendering it to tyrants and their promises of environmental sustainability...most environmentalists love collectivism and are prepared to marry almost every regime that claims to work for a clean and green environment’. (‘The Green Nazis: Environmentalism in the Third Reich’, online essay; Frank Uekoetter, op. cit., p. 2).

No doubt Bob Brown would publicly distance himself from the extremism associated with the German founders of the environmental movement and the brutal excesses of the Nazis. To openly support them would attract few votes and the Australian Greens are hardly the Nazi party by another name.

Parallels between the Greens and [Nazis] are not in regard to policies but rather in respect of their common environmentalist roots, their quasi-religious dogmatism and their shared image of themselves as superior beings intent on converting modern, industrial society to an agrarian utopia.

Of utopias and movements that pertain to the perfect life, Sir Isaiah Berlin says: ‘it seems as if the doctrine that all kinds on monstrous cruelties must be permitted, because without these the ideal state of affairs cannot be attained … the perfect universe is not merely unattainable but inconceivable, and everything done to bring it about is founded on an enormous intellectual fallacy.’ (‘My Intellectual Path’ in The Power of Ideas. H. Hardy (ed.), London, 2001, p. 23)

Having taken it upon themselves to save the environment from trumped-up destruction, the Greens have become message-bearers of messianic significance. Yet their environmental and ecological policies are no more that the recycled detritus of German romanticism. Despite masquerading as a modern, progressive political force, the Greens are a party of reactionaries founded on hatred (or fear) of modernity and an unrealistic glorification of primitivism.

In an echo of the past, anti-Semitism of some party’s members, camouflaged as anti-Zionism, has come to the fore. An example was the decision in December 2010 of the NSW State Conference of the Australian Greens to support a boycott of Israel, and the failure of the Greens to support Senator Ron Boswell’s motion on 18 August 2011 condemning the boycott of Israeli-owned Max Brenner chocolate stores and all other Israeli companies.

To these decisions might be added the presence of Green’s Senator, Lee Rhiannon, at anti-Israel rallies accompanied by Sheikh Taj el-Din Hilaly who denounced Israel as a “terrorist state”, and her accusation that Israel had committed “crimes against humanity”. Support also came from her fellow senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, who attended an ‘Australians for Palestine’ rally where the mainly Muslim crowd carried swastikas and anti-Jewish banners.

Significantly, the Australian Greens do not protest against Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Gaza, etc where real crimes against humanity are everyday events, and where hatred of Israel and death to all Jews are sentiments that are officially encouraged.

The combination of the Green’s historical environmental credentials with an aggressive, anti-Israel posturing of some of the party’s senators—posturing that Bob Brown refused to condemn unequivocally—might appear to be a re-run of history. This was pointed-out by the NSW Attorney-General, Greg Smith, who accused the Greens of echoing the worst aspects of historical anti-Semitism in Europe (Australian, 24 August 2011).

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Abbott flags changes to discrimination law

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has recommitted a coalition government to removing parts of the Racial Discrimination Act that make it illegal to make statements that offend based on race or ethnicity.

Mr Abbott said the coalition, if elected, will repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which prohibits statements that offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people on grounds of race or ethnicity.

This section of the act was a "threat" to freedom of speech in Australia, Mr Abbott wrote in The Australian on Monday.  "Expression or advocacy should never be unlawful merely because it is offensive," he wrote.  "It ought to be inconceivable that a commentator offering an opinion should fall foul of the law just because offence was taken or might be expected to be taken."

The coalition would be prepared to maintain a prohibition on inciting hatred against or intimidation of particular racial groups, Mr Abbott said.

He again defended News Limited columnist Andrew Bolt, who was ruled to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act in articles he wrote on fair-skinned Aborigines.  The articles, published in 2009, were headlined "It's so hip to be black" and "White fellas in the black".

Mr Abbott said while the articles were not Mr Bolt's finest, the commentator should have been afforded the right of freedom of speech.  "Speech that has to be inoffensive is not free, just unerringly politically correct," he said.

"If it's all right for (former Fairfax journalist) David Marr to upset conservative Christians, why is it not all right for Bolt to upset activist Aborigines?"

Labor MP Ed Husic said there wasn't any room in public debate for inciting of hate.  "I think there's a place for reasoned argument ... but not one that seeks to marginalise one section of the community from the other," he told Sky News.

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Tattooed thug refused entry to Gold Coast nightclub

It would be a sad days if the government dictated whom we must have on our own private premises

A HUMAN rights lawyer has attacked Queensland's anti-discrimination laws after Gold Coast identity Ken Lacey was refused entry to a nightspot because of his tattoos.

Lawyer Ron Behlau said bars, clubs and restaurants should not be allowed to discriminate on the basis of a person's physical appearance.

Mr Lacey is claiming discrimination after being refused entry to Broadbeach nightclub East because of his tattoos, which include the words "revenge'' and "respect'' inked on his neck.

The millionaire businessman, and father of the Gold Coast's notorious Lacey brothers, says he has also been barred from other venues as bouncers enforce a 'no exposed tattoos' policy.

East nightclub boss James Tweddell says the Liquor Act allows venues to refuse entry to "anyone we chose''.

But Mr Behlau, a member of the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, said the policy was discriminatory and out of step with other jurisdictions.

Last week, the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission stepped in after a man claimed he was refused entry to a Ballarat bar because of his tattoos.

Mr Behlau, of Nyst Lawyers, said Queensland's anti-discrimination laws should be overhauled to reflect those in Victoria.

"Discriminating against people based on physical attributes is the thin edge of the wedge. If we allow discrimination of this kind the next thing we will see is discrimination based on piercings, hair styles and weight," he said.  "To deny someone entry in to a nightspot or a job because of a particular characteristic or attribute they hold is inherently discriminatory and should be guarded against at all costs."

Mr Lacey says a 'no tattoos' policy would see many celebrities and sports stars barred from licensed venues.

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Low income earners burnt as cost of solar subsidy spirals

RENTERS, pensioners and other low-income earners are paying for their wealthier neighbours to enjoy cheaper power under the state's skyrocketing solar subsidy system.

The Queensland Consumers Association says costs to subsidise solar are forecast to triple, as the state's bill to fund the scheme continues to grow.

More than 100,000 applications were received last month from homeowners wanting to profit from the state's generous 44c per kilowatt hour tariff - twice the retail power rate - which will continue for 16 years.

By installing solar systems up to 5kW, the mostly well-heeled applicants stand to earn $200-$300 a quarter from a subsidy that is costing their non-solar neighbours more each year.

One of those who applied was Algester resident Ron Ruys, who feels badly for his neighbours who are indirectly helping to pay for a $10,000 5kW system that will earn him extra income.

"I'm going to do it and I'm going to make money out of it," he said. "But it is unfair to other people because of the subsidy. I don't think people know what the 44c means to their bill."

Energy Minister Mark McArdle has estimated the tariff would cost $1.8 billion by 2028 if the scheme remained unchanged. The July 9 deadline limiting future payments at an 8c cent rate.

The Government projects that the annual cost of the subsidy will rise from $50 to $100 for each household from the surge in applications, and another $50 for upgrades to the power grid.

Whether the increases will become a reality depends on whether the Government is successful in cutting expenses elsewhere in the budgets of power suppliers, including "community services".

Queensland Consumers Association vice-president Ian Jarratt said the threat of a $100 annual hike should be a concern for many people trying to stretch their income.

"A dollar is always more for a pensioner," he said.

The association said it voiced concerns about the scheme's cost several years ago to state officials. "Things had been done far too quickly and not thought through enough, especially about the cost to consumers who could not afford to install solar systems," Mr Jarratt said.

The solar scheme has had some benefits: creating employment for thousands of installers, reducing the state's dependence on coal and lowering carbon emissions.

Prices of home solar systems have dropped 50 per cent.

Installer numbers have increased from 78 in 2008 to more than 1100 today. The number of customers has increased from 1200 to around 180,000.

On the downside, "all Queensland households and small businesses indirectly foot the bill", Mr McArdle said.

The Government said it was obliged by legislation to continue the 44c tariff for the next 16 years, and risked lawsuits if it reneged.

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Ramadan riot in Sydney

RAMADAN festivities turned nasty last night when two men were arrested for offensive language toward police in south west Sydney.

More than a dozen men of Middle Eastern appearance gathered on Waterloo Rd, Greenacre for a barbecue setup on the street for what is believed to have been Ramadan.

Police arrived at the scene about 1am following reports of loud and offensive language coming from the area.

Two males were arrested for allegedly yelling obscene language at officers.

Riot police and the dog squad also attended the incident.

Some members of the crowd were wearing 'Brothers 4 Life' jackets.

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Olympic boss calls for more sport in schools

With Australia trailing Kazakhstan, you can see why

AUSTRALIA'S Olympic boss John Coates believes there needs to be a greater emphasis on sport in schools in the hope of finding the next Cathy Freeman or Ian Thorpe.

The Australian team so far has failed to live up to Coates' expectations of a top-five finish at the London Games, languishing at 24 on the medals tally after the first week of competition.

The Australian Olympic Committee president says before the next Olympics in 2016 Australia needs to "talent-build" by making sport a focus in schools.

He has called on the federal government to consider changing its policy and funding to give priority to school sports.

"Perhaps the area that needs a lot of attention - and if not, funding and government intention in terms of policy - is getting sport back into the school curricula," Coates told the ABC on Monday.

The British were making "a big thing" of that being one of the legacies they're looking towards, he said.

"They've been achieving that, a greater emphasis on sport in the schools."

Some children would benefit from the health and fitness, but the next Freeman or Thorpe may also be discovered, Coates said.

Federal Sports Minister Kate Lundy is happy with the level of sports participation in schools.

"What we're seeing over at the Olympics at the moment is that we're coming so close so many times ... and it's just not going our way," she told ABC radio.

"But we're still way up there with the best of the best in the world in sport."

Senator Lundy said it was important to continue to innovate to keep sports programs strong.

"Australia's great strength is we've always punched above our weight in sport and we need to be smarter about how we use our resources to stay right up there," she said.

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Leftists can dish it out but can't take it

Calling Tony Abbott the "mad monk" because of his Catholic background was OK but we must not call Julia Gillard an old cow

Australians who think they have permission to make "sexist and silly" remarks about the leader of the country should think again, Attorney-General Nicola Roxon says.

Ms Roxon said cattle company chief executive David Farley no doubt had egg on his face after comparing Prime Minister Julia Gillard to an "old cow".

The comments, reportedly made during a speech in Adelaide on Thursday, were picked up nationally.  They have been slammed on social media and by federal politicians.

Ms Roxon said voters and public figures were free to criticise government policy but political leaders should not be subject to personal attacks.

"There's no need to make these sort of sexist and silly remarks," Ms Roxon told reporters in Sydney on Saturday.

"I am concerned that people think that there is permission to make these sorts of comments about the prime minister ... in the footy parlance, play the ball, not the man."

Federal Minister for Women Julie Collins said the comments were unacceptable. "They amount to destructive prejudices long past their use-by date in our modern, diverse society," she said in a statement on Friday.

Mr Farley was reportedly explaining his business plans for a new abattoir designed to process old cows when he made the comparison.

"So the old cows that become non-productive, instead of making a decision to either let her die in the paddock or put her in the truck, this gives us a chance to take non-productive animals off and put them through the processing system," Mr Farley reportedly said.

"So it's designed for non-productive old cows. Julia Gillard's got to watch out."

Mr Farley's comment was met with laughter.

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Premier Newman lashes out at union bosses

Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has come out swinging against union leaders, calling them wealthy Labor operatives who are organising strikes that will hurt workers’ hip pockets.

Mr Newman’s comments on Saturday came a day after a dozen irate school cleaners stormed the state government’s headquarters in Brisbane and two days after unions vowed they would hold a statewide day of strikes in September.

The union officials organising the strikes had large salaries, expense accounts and cab vouchers, Mr Newman said.  "These union officials are also Labor Party operatives," he told reporters at the launch of an anti-graffiti task force in Brisbane.  "They’re not going to lose a day’s pay if people go on strike (but) the hard-working workers will."

Mr Newman said Friday’s action was led by the same man who paid people to protest against him before the election - United Voice secretary Gary Bullock.

"He’s anti Campbell Newman. He always has been, he always will be," the premier said.  "He won’t lose a day’s pay if people go on strike.  "He’s on his fat union salary, with his expense card, with his Cabcharge vouchers."

Mr Newman also attacked Queensland Council of Unions president John Battams.  He said the union leader should declare that he worked on the Labor campaign at the last election before every press conference.  "Don’t pretend to be some impartial person, because you’re not," Mr Newman said.

Mr Bullock said the premier obviously hadn’t seen Friday’s protest.  He said one member present was an 80-year-old female teacher aide who thought Mr Newman’s government was far was worse than anything she’d seen when Joh Bjelke-Petersen was premier.   "They are angry. This isn’t me needing to whip them up," he said.

Mr Battams said he’d worked on the 2009 Labor campaign - not the one in 2012 - and the premier should stick to the issues.

"He would have plenty of associates who represent employer associations who are in the LNP," he said.  "I’m sure he doesn’t question their motives."

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Back to school for Queensland teachers who get Ds

UNDER-PERFORMING teachers will be identified and given extra training and development under a new national framework signed off by Education Ministers yesterday.

School Education Minister Peter Garrett said the Australian Teacher Performance and Development Framework, which entitles teachers to annual performance reviews, would be rolled out in Queensland schools from next year.

While Queensland teachers currently undergo performance reviews, not all schools carry them out annually.

"For the first time, teachers will be entitled to a yearly review of their progress, and will receive ongoing support and training throughout their career to help them become even better teachers," Mr Garrett said.

"Once implemented, the new agreement signed off today means that schools will offer their teachers feedback on their performance, based on evidence including classroom observation, parental and student feedback and student results.

"Teachers will have to set goals for the year and will be helped to reach their goals. Those who are found to be under-performing or who need extra support will be given access to more training and development opportunities."

The new framework will assess teachers against the National Professional Standards for Teachers developed by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL).

Under the standards teachers will be able to apply to become a highly accomplished or lead teacher and receive a one-off bonus in 2014, based on their status in 2013.

Ministers also endorsed the Australian Charter for the Professional Learning of Teachers and School Leaders.

AITSL chair Anthony Mackay said the endorsement reinforced that developing teachers was the best way to improve student learning.

Education Ministers also agreed to continue working on improving the regulation and oversight of non-Government schools to ensure public funds are spent appropriately and a national curriculum for the National Trade Cadetships scheme Years 11 and 12.

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The jury's out - and could stay out, judging from trends

Are we seeing the quiet, steady disintegration of the 800-year-old jury system? There are telltale signs that it may be going the way of the dodo, another victim of the creative-destructive forces beyond our control.

A few local examples are interesting pointers.

The Lloyd Rayney murder trial in Western Australia is being conducted without a jury. Justice Brian Martin, a judge imported from another jurisdiction, has the task of deciding alone the facts and the law.

It's a high-profile case. The accused is a former criminal prosecutor accused of murdering his glamorous wife, who was a Supreme Court registrar. It's a trial that has gripped media consumers beyond the boundaries of Perth.
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What it shows is that those who determine how the system functions do not have sufficient faith in juries when it comes to a long trial of some complexity that might be difficult to protect from "prejudice".

It could be interpreted as insulting - that jurors who can keep their minds on the task and remain undistracted by whatever the rest of the world thinks cannot be mustered for the trial of a man for murder.

Juries for murder have been one of the bedrocks of the criminal justice system and to see them shunted is an extraordinary indication of the delicacy of their condition.

Steadily, jurors have been expunged from the civil trial process, but cling on in a strange one-foot-in, one-foot-out manner in defamation trials.

They can decide the basics, whether something is defamatory, but when it comes to the money, they are not to be trusted. They might award either too much or too little, so the damages decision goes back to the judge.

It is here that judges can recast the findings of juries in a way that better reflects the judicial perspective.

We can see this in a Sydney case decided last month in the Supreme Court called Holt v Channel Nine. A jury found found that four meanings pleaded by Andrew Holt, a Gold Coast carpenter, were not true, and they all related to the way he was said to have treated his wife, who was dying of cancer: that he abandoned his wife to die in hospital; he behaved disgracefully by refusing to allow his wife to return home from hospital; he treated his wife like a dying animal; and that he wanted his wife to die.

Channel Nine also succeeded with some meanings of its own drawn from the program: that Holt callously withheld insurance money from his dying wife and that he misused thousands of dollars paid to her as part of her insurance.

Justice Christine Adamson could not have been impressed with the jury's verdict and that was reflected in her awarding the plaintiff a miserable $4500.

She took into account a number of factors adverse to Holt, which she spelt out in her judgment - including an acceptance that he took $75,000 of his wife's money and used it in a "morally despicable" way.

Appeal courts quite systematically overturn jury findings and replace them with their own verdicts. This was done in another famous defamation case in which this newspaper was sued by restaurateurs who ran the Coco Roco establishment at King Street Wharf. The High Court affirmed that appeal judges can supplant a jury's interpretation of the meaning of words with their own version.

We've also seen some big murder verdicts overturned by the criminal appeal courts, with no order for the case to go back before another jury for retrial. Most recently this was a unanimous decision in the Gordon Wood case.

So you wonder, what is the point of the extravagant luxury of juries when their findings can be cast aside by judges? In the end, to whom would you prefer to trust your fate, a judge or a jury? There can be bad juries and some god-awful judges - so in some situations each can be a check on the other.

But what ultimately will bury the ancient system is digital technology. Already suppression orders, the sanctity of pending trials, the law of contempt, and internet take-down orders are all routinely ignored by thousands of citizens who have become instant publishers, courtesy of open media platforms.

This can be seen in the case of Kieran Loveridge, accused of the murder in Kings Cross of Thomas Kelly. The social media landscape blossomed with opinions about the accused and the police, all outside the boundary of the courts traditional cordon sanitaire.

The old model where everyone dutifully did what they were told by courts is finished. While the legacy media generally abide by the rules, on Twitter and Facebook people have other ideas and are able to generate large alternative waves of defiant opinion.

We saw recently in Britain privacy superinjunctions heroically squelched by twitterers. Orders here to take down potentially prejudicial online news stories that might affect a criminal trial are also widely ignored or are beyond jurisdiction.

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Man dies after waiting four hours in an ambulance outside  hospital

A MAN died after spending more than four hours in an ambulance awaiting admission to a hospital, in the first confirmed death relating to the practice of "ramping".

Documents obtained by The Courier-Mail under Right to Information laws show that the man was admitted to Nambour Hospital's emergency department only after he "deteriorated and he became unconscious".

On the night he died the hospital's emergency department was "under extreme capacity", the documents show. Ambulances were forced to "ramp" queue with patients on board.

The report into the man's death shows handwritten notes indicating he was in the care of Queensland Ambulance Service from 6.20pm before being "brought directly to resus (resuscitation) bay" at 10.30pm in May 2010.

The man had been diagnosed as category three or "urgent" after complaining of abdominal pains. Category three patients are supposed to be treated within 30 minutes.

Later there were "apologies for ramping and circumstances of death" along with "condolences to family".

The revelations came as Health Minister Lawrence Springborg announced a major shakeup of the state's hospitals from January 1.

Hospitals will be banned from diverting ambulances to other facilities when emergency departments are full.

Emergency patients will also increasingly be transferred from ramped, or queued, ambulances into specialised hospital waiting rooms overseen by new senior nurses, helping mitigate the risks of poor supervision.

Mr Springborg pledged to adopt all 15 recommendations of the Metropolitan Emergency Department Access Initiative, headed by emergency physician David Rosengren, who warned the performance of state emergency departments had rapidly declined.

The union representing ambulance officers said ramping was still a major problem but the new measures to combat ramping announced by the State Government yesterday would "save lives".

"In a cardiac arrest, seconds count," United Voice Queensland Ambulance State Councillor Craig Crawford said.  "Most hospitals are running at extreme capacity at the moment but these new changes should turn it around."  Mr Crawford said banning hospitals going on bypass would make a "huge difference" in Brisbane.

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New submarines urgently needed  -- the existing ones are so bad

The cheeky headline last week from Defence media read "HMAS Farncomb celebrates successful sinking at RIMPAC" and I quietly cheered for the crew of the submarine for sinking their target ship during the 22-nation exercise off Hawaii.

The maintenance and sustainment issues that have dogged our Collins Class submarines must be very challenging on the morale of our dedicated submariners and this was a rare glimpse of what the sub can do.

But then came the following day's announcement from Defence, HMAS Farncomb had suffered a minor flood while at periscope depth after a hose split and the vessel was forced to surface. Farncomb was now returning to Pearl Harbour for repairs.

Farncomb is no stranger to this kind of incident as the boat and its crew had two separate emergencies last year.
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In August it lost both its propulsion motor and emergency back up in deep water off the Western Australian coast. The second, a few months later in the South China Sea, involved a build up of toxic gases that had the crew wearing oxygen masks and blowing its emergency ballast tanks for a rapid ascent.

In May last year another Collins Class submarine, HMAS Dechaineux was forced to return to Singapore for repairs after breaking down on its way to a training exercise, also in the South China Sea. It was the only submarine due to participate in the 5-nation exercise and the embarrassment was amplified when the Navy News published a pre-written account of its daring exploits on the presumption nothing could go wrong.

More concerning was the 2003 incident with HMAS Dechaineux off the Western Australian coast when the submarine had a burst seawater hose which allowed a flood ingress of 15 tonnes of water in 9 seconds just when the vessel was at its deepest diving depth.

The bravery and skill of HMAS Dechaineux's 55 crew ensured they avoided the worst military disaster since Voyager. I have often said that submarines, along with our Special Forces, are our nation's most important force element group.

Yet this year alone we will spend close to $1 billion on maintenance and sustainment of the Collins Class with sometimes two, sometimes one, and occasionally none out of six submarines operationally ready at any one time. So depressingly bad are the figures for Unit Ready Days for the Collins Class that Defence no longer publish them – citing security concerns even though they were regularly published up until 2009.

I readily accept the problems of our submarines transcend both Labor and Coalition governments. But what the Rudd/Gillard governments and the three Defence Ministers over that period have failed to do is to get the ball rolling on the Collins replacement submarine.

In May 2009, the Defence White Paper outlined ambitious plans for 12 new submarines to be assembled in South Australia under a project known as SEA 1000, with the first to be in the water by 2025. I say ambitious because there was no detail whatsoever as to how we were going to pay for them in the White Paper and conservative estimates have the cost at $36 billion although I believe it will be closer to $50 billion.

For three years after the launch of the White Paper the SEA 1000 project sat in a file on successive Defence Minister's desks with no action whatsoever. Defence commentators and experts all began to get nervous and earlier this year the government's own funded thinktank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, published a damming report warning of a significant capability gap and noting inaction was not a responsible option.

The ASPI report described the gap between when all the Collins Class have been retired and the time it would take to build a replacement as ''nothing short of catastrophic'' where Australia's submarine capability would ''essentially be run down and restarted'' and there are three years ''of no submarines at all''.

The Defence Minister's recent answer to that was to repeat the announcement from three years ago that the Navy was to acquire 12 new submarines, and there was to be a $214 million 'scoping study' to look at the options.

Why wasn't that done after the White Paper launch? These past three years of sitting on their hands will come back to haunt our submarine capability long after this government is consigned to the history books. After some prodding the Minister also declared a final decision on the replacement would not be made until late 2013 or 2014 – in other words, not until after the next election. He wants to make it someone else's problem, not his.

This is all against the backdrop of our submarines being so operationally fragile that competing in exercises with allies becomes a case of going in with fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong.

We also have our submariners reluctantly leaving the Navy because they simply don't get time at sea doing what they signed up to do. We are losing some of our most experienced submariners and it is precisely that experience that has probably prevented these incidents becoming major tragedies for the Navy and the nation.

If the latest incident with HMAS Farncomb tells us anything about the state of the submarine fleet, it is that the time for talk of a replacement for the Collins Class is over.

It is now five minutes to midnight if we want a viable submarine capability to defend our island nation over the next 20 to 30 years and we cannot afford to wait any longer.

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Desalination white elephant in Melbourne

Water is the last thing Victorians need. Since the drought broke, their dams are almost 80 per cent full and they may not require desalinated water for years, although they will pay for it at a cost of $500 million a year.

So the desal plant looks like being one of the fanciest and most monumental white elephants ever to grace the PPP landscape.  It is also is a legacy of the previous [Labor party] Victorian government, and like the abortive Ararat Prison project, the private partners in the PPP are being forced to make good on their part of the contract.

In Suez's case, its joint venture with local contractor Thiess was contracted to deliver a desalination plant by June 30 - the deadline has just passed a month ago in other words.

And now, the Degremont joint venture is copping penalties of $1.8 million a day. As the state, quite appropriately plays hardball, Suez and its partner Thiess are not happy.

For Suez, it has suffered the double whammy of recession in Europe and troubles abroad. In its latest accounts, lodged last night, losses of 310 million euros ($365 million) have already been recognised on the Melbourne Desalination Plant (MDP).

The Australian parent company (Suez Environnement Australia Holding Pty Ltd or SEAH) has pumped $365 million of equity into Degremont Pty Ltd to cover its losses to date. SEAH is a 35 per cent partner with Thiess (65 per cent) in the design and construction of the MDP.

While the joint venture is facing fines of as much as $1.8 million a day for failing to complete the MDP it has, in turn, also made claims and variations of up to $1 billion to the Victorian government.  The government has rejected these claims and also refused to extend the contractual deadline.

The losses in Melbourne have caused havoc with the Suez share price.  The stock is down 30 per cent or so in the past year - against the fall of 6 per cent in the broader French market – and Suez is so desperate it got the French Ambassador to visit the Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu to see what could be done about the Degremont deal. As yet, there is no variation.

Adding to its woes, Suez debt increased by 321 million euros during the past six months despite its stated objective of reducing debt. A dividend payment of 441 million euros during the half was largely responsible for the debt blowout.

Its heavy debt levels are mirrored in the leverage levels of its rival Veolia, the other major water company on the Australian PPP scene. Both have an 'A' credit rating.

Veolia, which provides water services to Sydney, is in a similar poor financial position although at least it is selling assets to reduce its debt. A consolation prize, of sorts.

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Law protects early-term fetus, judge says

A JUDGE has rejected a man's last-ditch attempt to have his trial for killing an unborn baby thrown out, ruling the legislation was wide enough to protect the early-term fetus.  The man was accused of causing a miscarriage after he assaulted his wife, who was 15 to 18 weeks pregnant.

He pleaded not guilty in the Supreme Court in Cairns last month to killing an unborn child in December 2004 at Saibai Island in the Torres Strait.

The man was acquitted at the end of the trial, but not before his lawyer tried to have the charge thrown out after the crown closed its case.

His lawyer argued there was no case to answer as the fetus was not a child within the meaning of the law because it was too young to survive outside its mother's womb.

Justice Jim Henry rejected the argument and published his reasons for doing so on Thursday.  Justice Henry found the law did not qualify the age of unborn children covered under the piece of legislation used to prosecute the charge.

He acknowledged the matter attracted significant philosophical debate but said that had no relevance to the interpretation of this section of law.

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Gillard gives her own industrial relations regulator the stamp of approval

THE Gillard government's review of the Fair Work Act has found the laws have not had a negative impact on productivity, delivering fairness for workers and flexibility for employers.

Despite sustained criticism of the legislation by business, The Australian understands the review, to be released by Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten today, finds the act is working as intended, and has not decreased competitiveness or led to excessive cost increases.

While not proposing sweeping changes, it is understood the three-member panel that conducted the review provides the government with about 50 options for change, many of which are technical in nature.

It is believed the review supports giving employers assistance when unions stall negotiations over greenfield agreements.

Greenfield agreements outline employment conditions on new projects before workers are employed. Under the act, it is possible for employers to make greenfield agreements only with unions.

Business groups and industrial lawyers claim unions often seek to delay making deals knowing that, the longer talks go on, project costs will increase and then companies will be more likely to make concessions.

The Australian has previously revealed that the government supports changes to ensure resources projects are not subject to excessive delays.

However, it is understood the review panel does not support a return to Work Choices-era employer-only greenfield deals, where companies could set pay and conditions on new projects without reference to unions.

It is also believed the review does not support new limits on unfair dismissal claims or a return to individual statutory contracts as operated under Work Choices.

It is understood the review explicitly notes the development of the act, which was introduced by Labor to roll back many of the Work Choices industrial relations reforms introduced by the Howard government, was subject to extensive consultation before its introduction,

The panel that conducted the review concluded productivity growth had been "disappointing" under the workplace systems of the past decade, including the Fair Work Act and Work Choices. But it said it was "not persuaded" the legislative industrial relations framework "accounted for this productivity slowdown". "The Fair Work Act itself is not three years old and judicial interpretation of some of its provisions is still evolving as issues are brought before the courts," the report says.

"The panel was disinclined to recommend legislative changes where there was a reasonable prospect that judicial interpretation of existing provisions would resolve the problem."

Mr Shorten has promised to consult on the review's findings before announcing any proposed changes in about a month.

But it is understood the government's focus during forthcoming consultations will be on the review detail and not about accepting business or union attempts to re-prosecute elements of their submissions not adopted by the panel. It is understood the government will seek to use today's release of the report to try to increase pressure on Tony Abbott to detail the Coalition's workplace policy.

While resource employers will welcome the proposed changes to the greenfields provisions, business groups are expected to express strong disappointment with the overall review findings, given their long-running campaign for substantial changes.

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said yesterday it was "vital that the government recognise the flaws" in the legislation and introduce amendments to achieve a more productive, flexible and fair workplace relations system.

"When the Fair Work Act was implemented, union rights were expanded in over 120 areas," Mr Willox said. "It is clear from businesses across a range of sectors that the introduction of the act has led to increased union activity generally, increased disputation and increased union militancy in several key sectors of the economy at a time of rising costs and global competition."

ACTU president Ged Kearney said unions would push back against any employer campaign to use the review's release to further their agenda for changes. "Any reasonable objective review would conclude the Fair Work Act was achieving its objective of delivering fairness in the workplace and economic growth. It is lazy opportunism to blame the three-year-old (act) for a decade-plus slowdown in productivity growth."

Australian Mines and Metals Association chief executive Steve Knott said while employers "expect some crumbs in terms of minor IR reforms, the scene has been set by the PM, Minister Shorten and the array of usual suspects not to expect much change".

"The government needs to stop the paternalistic approach to IR and allow employees and employers to work with creativity and innovation," he said. "If this occurs, come four years Australia can qualify for the next productivity olympics."

According to government answers to opposition questions on notice, the review is expected to cost taxpayers about $900,000. The three members of the panel worked between 229 and 236 hours each, at an hourly rate of $550. The Coalition estimates the trio were paid $382,000.

Opposition workplace relations spokesman Eric Abetz said a fundamental test for Mr Shorten would be "whether or not he addresses concerns surrounding productivity, militancy and workplace flexibility".

"If he simply decides to do nothing, it will be further proof of his ostrich-like approach to the growing body of evidence suggesting reform."

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Qld. Health Minister Lawrence Springborg announces banning of 'hospital bypassing' from January 1

QUEENSLAND hospitals will soon be banned from diverting ambulances to other facilities when their emergency departments become full.

Health Minister Lawrence Springborg today said “hospital bypass” would be outlawed from January 1 as the Newman Government implements the recommendations of a major report designed to address ambulance ramping.

The report was prepared by David Rosengren, a Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital emergency physician who also chairs the Emergency Medicine Research Foundation and is emergency medicine director at Greenslopes Private Hospital.

“According to Rosengren, no Queensland hospital should have the authority to divert ambulances elsewhere,” Mr Springborg said.

“Senior level clinician initiative nurses will be introduced to all major emergency departments to improve the flows through the front doors of our hospitals.”

Mr Springborg said addressing ramping required a whole-of-hospital approach, particularly the timely discharge of patients to prevent bed blocking.

“The report makes it clear that simply going on bypass, which is effectively diverting a patient to another facility, is an unacceptable mechanism for managing demand on emergency departments,” he said.

He promised to implement Mr Rosengren’s 15 recommendations in full.

Queensland Health director-general Tony O’Connell will also establish a special working group to drive the changes.

The recommendations:

1. Each Hospital and Health Service provide a 24-hour single point of non-ED Executive Director level (or higher) contact for the QAS on ED access issues.

2. Queensland Health includes a key performance indicator relating to Patient off-Stretcher Time (POST) in future Service Level Agreements for Hospital and Health Services.

3. Queensland Health reviews the current hospital capacity escalation framework and mandate implementation by 1 January 2013.

4. Queensland Health review the role of the Emergency Capacity Hospital Overview (ECHO) and internal ED capacity (SAPhTE) scores.

5. Patient flow and bed management strategies are implemented into all Queensland public hospitals and each Hospital and Health Service must demonstrate active use of same.

6. As at 1 January 2012 no hospital will have the authority to divert ambulances (activate ambulance bypass) to another hospital.

7. QAS is responsible for ambulance load share into emergency departments.

8. Triage must occur on arrival.

9. The introduction of senior level Clinical Initiative Nurses to the waiting room of all major EDs.

10. Patients are not to return to the back of an ambulance post triage.

11. Queensland Health and QAS introduce formal education modules into respective mandatory training ensure QAS paramedics and Queensland Health triage staff have a clear understanding of each other’s role and scope of practice.

12. That a Patient off Stretcher Time (POST) Policy directed at ensuring the time from arrival to clinical handover from QAS to the hospital is less than 30 minutes, be reviewed and implemented as a mandatory directive from Queensland Health by 1 January 2013.

13. QAS review the role of the QAS Hospital Liaison Officer (HLO), to optimise its contribution in the environment created by implementation of these recommendations.

14. Development of an Inter-hospital transfer Directive whereby patients not requiring specialist emergency medical care do not transit through the ED.

15. Establishment of a high-level Emergency Services Management Committee (ESMC) to provide policy advice to the Minister on issues affecting consumer access to (and delivery of) public hospital emergency and monitor implementation of the MEDAI recommendations.

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Unwanted mosque in NSW

A MUSLIM prayer room in use in a house in South Hurstville for more than 20 years is facing closure because neighbours have complained about parking and noise. But Anthony Mundine, the former footballer and world boxing champion who used the prayer room, believes the problem is prejudice, not parking.

Mr Mundine's mother, Lyn, lives next door to the home he considers his local mosque, which belongs to the El Maneh family. He stays at his mother's when he is in training for fights and lives at nearby Blakehurst. He said the street was big and wide, and every house had off-street parking, so was "baffled" by the objections. "I think it is just an excuse to shut the mosque down".

Mr Mundine said Muslims have "the worst rap on a Western scale than anybody. All that is shown is negativity; all that is shown is terrorism. I am sure if there was a church there, there would not be any petitions".

Alex Psarras, one of those who complained to Kogarah Council about the prayer room, has lived next door for 35 years. He said the El Maneh family were "very, very good neighbours" and it was nothing personal, but he was concerned the number of people attending was growing.

Kogarah Council's director of planning and environmental services, Rod Logan, said the council cautioned against further use of the site for public worship after temporary consent lapsed in March. A new development application has been lodged but will not be determined until after council elections in September, Mr Logan said.

The earlier consent restricted the number of attendees to 40. Prayer times were confined to 90 minutes at Friday lunchtimes and an hour each night during Ramadan.

Mr Logan said the council had received petitions with 16 households for and 23 against the application, but this was not reliable because many signatures appeared both for and against.

Amin Nasser of Hurstville, representing the El Maneh family, said he had never counted more than 46 people attending at a time, and all were local residents or employees. He said the family was content to accept the earlier restrictions permanently. He said they didn't want any trouble.

Mr Mundine said the closure of the prayer room made it more difficult for him to practise his faith. But it was worse for the elderly who "relied on this mosque and can't get to other mosques". There were typically 50 to 80 people at the prayer sessions he had attended, Mr Mundine said.

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Unwanted mosque in Canberra

A controversial anti-mosque flyer distributed in Gungahlin has probably not breached the ACT’s Discrimination Act, but has prompted the Human Rights Commissioner to again call for stronger anti-discrimination laws in the territory in a report on the matter released today.

The flyer, distributed in Gungahlin by a group calling themselves the Concerned Citizens of Canberra, urged residents to oppose the construction of a mosque on The Valley Avenue because of its "social impact" on the "Australian neighbours" in the northern Canberra region.

The flyer also raised concerns about traffic and noise, "public interest" and the proposed size of the development.

ACT Human Rights and Discrimination Commissioner Dr Helen Watchirs, who was asked to investigate concerns the flyer constituted racist material, released her advice on the matter today.

Dr Watchirs said that while the flyer was "undoubtedly offensive", the ACT’s current discrimination laws had too high a test for racial vilification for the flyer to be considered in breach of the Discrimination Act.

"It is unlikely that the flyer regarding a proposed  development of a Mosque circulated in Gungahlin would breach s.66 of the ACT Discrimination Act because it is entirely concerned with religious issues, rather than race. It is also unclear if the flyer would satisfy the high test for vilification in the Discrimination Act, which has an ‘incitement’ requirement," the advice said.

However, Dr Watchirs said complainants would likely have more success under Federal discrimination laws.

"An ACT complainant of the Muslim faith who received this flyer may have more success in the Federal jurisdiction, with the advantage of a lower threshold to establish racial hatred, as well as relying on the Explanatory Statement which explicitly envisages that Muslim people represent a racial group."

In the advice, Dr Watchirs pointed towards a review of the ACT's current discrimination laws, and recommended the Act be reformed to include better provisions for discrimination against religious groups.

"I would recommend that the ground of religious conviction be added to the current vilification protection in the Discrimination Act as a matter of priority, given the increasing incidents of this kind being reported in the media."

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Say no to boat arrivals, ex-Immigration official

A FORMER top Immigration Department official says Australia must close the door on boat people.

Former first assistant secretary Des Storer has told the Gillard Government's expert panel on asylum seekers that the current system was a confusing and contradictory farce.

Mr Storer, who was highly respected by both the Coalition and Labor governments, said in his submission that the only solution was for Australia to change migration laws to stop boat arrivals applying for visas.

"This can be done by excising Australia for the purposes of migration. This would mean that all unauthorised arrivals would be detained," he said in the submission co-authored by fellow Monash academic Adrienne Millbank.

Mr Storer told the Herald Sun yesterday that asylum seekers should be given options such as being sent back to Indonesia, returned to their home countries or sent to refugee camps of their choice.

"If you really want to stop the boats and protect people's lives that is the best way," he said.

Under the proposal, Australia would legally not be in breach of its international refugee obligations, and High Court challenges to offshore processing would be avoided.

Mr Storer and Ms Millbank said the money saved from processing and detaining asylum seekers could be used to double Australias official refugee intake to up to 25,000, with priority given to people in most need in overseas camps.

Mr Storer, who retired in 2008 and is now an adjunct professor at Monash University, said that many of those reaching Indonesia had the money to pay people smugglers who promised access to Australia's attractive legal system.

"Some may or may not be escaping serious persecution...they're taking advantage of the opportunities to be able to utilise the system better than other people can who are trapped in camps in much more serious conditions," he said.

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The  Queensland government's assault on bureaucracy continues

PUBLIC sector workers who cost more than private sector labour can now be sacked with a mere stroke of a pen.

A new directive issued by the Public Service Commission to enable mass cuts to Transport and Main Roads, has effectively stripped job security for all but police and health workers.

The Public Service Commissioner confirmed employment security and contracting out clauses had been removed from "industrial instruments" late yesterday.

"Removing these clauses, allows for the efficient restructure of Government departments which will in turn lead to greater efficiencies and savings for the public sector," Commissioner Dr Brett Heyward said.  "For example, the recent restructure announced by the Minister for Transport and Main Roads."

Unions declared the directive would be challenged in the Supreme Court.

Alex Scott from Together Queensland said the move had given Government free rein to retrench workers and hire private sector labour.

"It means the Government can pretty much decide on a day-to-day basis what their policy is about employment security," he said.    "Given it was introduced with absolutely no consultation we're looking at our options in relation to Supreme Court action around it."

The bombshell came at the end of another shattering day for public servants, who learned almost 2000 jobs would go from Transport and Main Roads before Christmas, including 600 in RoadTek and 70 at Translink.

Another 360 jobs are set to disappear from QBuild with more cuts in coming days.

Transport and Main Roads director-general Michael Caltabiano announced the restructure to staff in an email that did not mention the number of jobs being axed.

Many workers found out from reports of Minister Scott Emerson's announcement in Parliament of 1970 job cuts to save $287 million over four years.

As part of the restructure, 16 of 37 senior executives will go but Translink CEO Neil Scales will be spared, becoming a new deputy director-general.

The TMR and QBuild cuts take the number of "official" job losses in the public sector to more than 6700.

Mr Scott said another 15,000 cuts were expected in the lead up to the September 11 budget.

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Queensland government cuts Green tape

THE Queensland government insists new laws that make it faster and cheaper for developers to apply for environmental approval won't lower environmental standards.  The Greentape (Greentape) Reduction Bill was passed in parliament on Tuesday afternoon.

Environment Minister Andrew Powell says "green tape" has been strangling Queensland businesses.

He says the bill is the most significant reform to licensing processes in a decade and will save businesses thousands of dollars.

"It is crucial that we work with industry, particularly with the small business sector, to encourage economic growth and reduce government spending," he said in a statement.

The bill reduces the Environmental Protection Act by 90 pages by removing duplications.

A standard application for environmental approval will save companies on average $20,000, 150 pages in paper work and 68 days in processing time, while the environmental approval process will also be changed to ensure greater flexibility for operators, Mr Powell said.

The government will also save $12.5 million in administrative costs.

Mr Powell said the government had consulted "every step of the way" with industry, the community and government organisations on the changes.

"This in no way lowers environmental standards," he said.  "It merely simplifies the approval process, saving applicants time and money."

The new process will apply from March 2013.

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It's great to have a conscience, now tell us how we'll pay for it

You may not have noticed, but last week was among the most significant of the Gillard government's term. The commitments made may do great good, but they will also cause much pain and gnashing of teeth in the years ahead.

Last week the nation made it crystal clear to its political leaders - federal and state - it wanted them to get on with implementing the national disability insurance scheme. After decades of turning a blind eye to the difficulties faced by the disabled and their carers, last week conscience struck.

Fine. You're a believer; so am I. But the scheme is very expensive: when fully implemented in 2018, an additional $8 billion a year. Or, as the politicians and the media usually prefer to put it, $32 billion over four years.

To give you an idea, $8 billion a year is more than will be raised each year by the carbon tax or more than twice what will be raised by the new mining tax.

So how will the disability scheme be paid for? No one has any idea. The pollies were arguing about that very question when - urged on by the same radio shock jocks who on other days rail against "debt and deficit" - the electorate put a rocket under them: Just do it!

That's why I have reservations. We behaved like a teenager with his first pay packet who goes out and buys a car on the never-never, without a moment's thought about how he'll fit the repayments into his budget.

Perhaps this was the only way an increasingly self-centred nation was ever going to commit to something so caring but expensive. Had we dwelt on how much it would cost and how we'd be paying for it, we might have made an excuse and passed on.

Even so, the accountant in me remains uneasy. Sometimes in politics, good deeds aren't born of the purest motives. The Productivity Commission report that recommended the scheme called for the pilot programs to begin in 2014.

I suspect Julia Gillard brought it forward a year because she wanted to be seen doing something worthwhile - and something that didn't have Kevin Rudd's fingerprints on it. She committed to spending just $1 billion over the four-year trial phase.

If Gillard has a clear idea of how she would afford the scheme when fully implemented, she's given no hint of it. All we know is that, contrary to the commission's advice, she expects the states to bear some of the cost.

I suspect she's fingered the states as a red herring, intending to draw attention away from her own lack of forethought. That's where we got to last week. She put the wood on the premiers to make a small contribution to the cost of their state's pilot scheme, but many declined. This could have been the usual story - whenever the feds require the premiers' co-operation, their hands go out: What's it worth to you?

If that was the premiers' motivation, I'm sympathetic. Though the states are responsible for provision of many costly public services - law and order, roads and transport, schools and hospitals - their taxing powers have been greatly constrained by the High Court, leaving them heavily dependent on the feds.

John Howard's decision to grant them the full proceeds from the goods and services tax was intended to solve their problem, but it's no longer the "growth tax" it was. Our consumer spending no longer outstrips our income the way it did, and an ever-growing proportion of our spending goes on items excluded from the tax, particularly private education and health.

So the premiers can't reasonably be expected to stump up for anything much. And, indeed, it's the feds who'll have to come up with a solution to their chronic revenue problem. This week a poll shows 84 per cent of respondents oppose increasing the rate of the GST to 12.5 per cent.

But only the Liberal premiers jacked up last week. The remaining Labor state and territory leaders played along. So maybe it wasn't the standard premiers' money-motivated bail-up.

There isn't a politician in the country with the courage to openly oppose the disability scheme. Gillard's lack of courage comes in telling us how she proposes to pay for it. Maybe she's decided she'll worry about that only if she wins the next election.

Tony Abbott's more likely to win it, of course. I suspect the hard-heads on his side had been intending to relegate implementation of the full scheme to the status of an "aspiration" to be afforded only when finances permit.

That now would be a lot harder to do, following the surge of public pressure that forced the premiers of NSW and Victoria to back down after just a day or so. Such forceful expressions of the public's will stay burnt on politicians' brains long after you and I have forgotten them.

Abbott's shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, is saying it would be cruel to offer hope to the disabled when there was no guarantee the money could be found. In contrast, his more slick-tongued finance spokesman, Andrew Robb, says the full scheme would be introduced in 2018, but this "probably would require the removal or scaling back of other programs".

Don't forget Abbott would first have to cover the cost of abolishing the carbon tax and the mining tax. This is a man who professes to believe taxes must go down and may never go up. Now he's got to find a further $8 billion a year in spending cuts.

I find it hard to believe this would happen. But whatever happens, I foresee much pain and gnashing of teeth.


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