We Australians can be proud to have among us such men




Corporal Benjamin Roberts-Smith VC with his wife Emma and twin five-month old daughters Eve and Elizabeth

As corporal Ben Roberts-Smith has tattooed across his chest the simple message: "I will not fail my brothers."

Early on June 11 last year, in the rugged north of Afghanistan's Kandahar Province, the special forces soldier lived up to his own promise.

In an early morning raid on a Taliban stronghold, Corporal Roberts-Smith and two other special forces soldiers were lying in a horribly exposed position just 20m in front of an insurgent machine-gun post.

From the sparse cover of a small pile of rubble, Corporal Roberts-Smith saw gunfire tearing up the ground around his friends and realised they'd soon be killed. He leapt to his feet and charged the machine-gun, killing the gunners at point-black range.

Yesterday, he was awarded the highest award for valour, the Victoria Cross of Australia. The medal was presented in front of Corporal Roberts-Smith's family and previous VC winners Mark Donaldson and Keith Payne.

Corporal Roberts-Smith's father, West Australian Corruption and Crime Commission chief Len Roberts-Smith, told The Australian last night he was not surprised by his son's courage. He said his son lived by the message he wore on his chest.

"To have a son that you know did that is just extraordinary. We are incredibly proud of him," said Mr Roberts-Smith, himself a former army major-general. "As a parent, of course I worry enormously. We know the circumstances he goes into and we know our son, so we know he's going to be at the forefront. But we're very proud of him."

Corporal Roberts-Smith comes from a high-achieving family. His brother Sam, 24, is an opera singer critically acclaimed for his role in Carmen, which is playing in Sydney at the moment

Yesterday, Corporal Roberts-Smith, the second member of Australia Special Air Service regiment to win the VC in Afghanistan, spoke of the fear felt by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan and said they all showed great courage under fire. "I saw a lot of brave men do a lot of brave things that day," the 32-year-old SAS soldier said yesterday after being honoured for his extreme gallantry.

Governor-General Quentin Bryce said she felt honoured just pinning the medal on his chest. "In these times of hardship for so many Australians, you bring our hearts to soar," she said. "Corporal, you are not invincible, you are human, extraordinarily and exceptionally so."

Julia Gillard said Corporal Roberts-Smith was reluctant to be at the centre of "so much fuss" but he was a true hero. She said the Victoria Cross was "an honour so high that even the chief of the Defence Force salutes those that hold it".

Defence Force chief Angus Houston, himself a decorated pilot, followed convention and, despite his vastly superior rank, saluted the corporal.

Air Chief Marshal Houston said Corporal Roberts-Smith had brought great credit to himself, the Australian Army, the Special Air Service Regiment and the Australian Defence Force. "Today, we in the military feel great admiration and respect for the extreme valour shown by Corporal Roberts-Smith and we are honoured to call him one of our own," Air Chief Marshal Houston said.

The SAS soldiers were pinned down in a battle with the Taliban in Afghanistan's Shah Wali Kot region when Corporal Roberts-Smith made his life-saving dash through a storm of gunfire. "Every single bloke in that troop was at some stage fighting for their lives, every person there showed gallantry," Corporal Roberts-Smith said. "The decisions that I saw made were heroic, just watching some of my mates who were wounded by frag just keep firing, just ignoring the fact that they were drawing fire to themselves."

Corporal Roberts-Smith said he was aware of bullets flying around him as he tackled the machine-gun posts, and anyone who said they didn't feel fear was "either crazy or not telling the truth". But he said his actions were instinctive. "I saw my mates getting ripped up so I just decided to move forward. I wasn't going to just sit there and do nothing. I thought I'd have a crack, I was not going to let my mates down," he said.

The father of twin five-month-old girls said Australia was achieving results in Afghanistan. "I believe that we are making a difference in stemming the flow of terrorism into Australia, and I want my children to be able to live as everyone does now without the fear of getting on to a bus and having it blow up," he said.

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Some Australian criticism of the windmill craze at last

One of Australia's most successful company receivers is taking on the proponents of a $400 million wind farm development that plans to place turbines taller than the Sydney Harbour Bridge overlooking his rural getaway on the NSW southern tablelands.

"It started out as a NIMBY (not in my back yard) issue, but it is now much more than that," said Tony Hodgson, who co-founded the insolvency specialist Ferrier Hodgson, which has handled some of Australia's highest-profile corporate collapses, including One.Tel and Laurie Connell's Rothwells Ltd. Ferrier Hodgson also pursued Christopher Skase for his missing millions and more recently was the receiver for the failed logistics group Allco.

Mr Hodgson is no stranger to a protracted fight. He was chairman of the Melbourne Port Authority during the 1998 waterfront dispute between Patrick Ltd and the Maritime Union of Australia. "My position in life is I thought Genghis Khan was a bit of a piker so I am out there," Mr Hodgson said.

Hodgson bought his property in Collector, about 30km west of Goulburn, five years ago and said he learned of plans for a 160-megawatt, 80-tower wind farm in October.

He has launched a furious campaign against wind farm proponent Transfield Services, the state government and his absentee neighbour, a Double Bay cafe owner who has agreed to host some of the proposed wind towers in exchange for lease payments estimated at $1m a year for 20 years.

Since Mr Hodgson started his campaign, Transfield has been forced to disclose, belatedly, about $39,000 in political donations that it failed to report when it lodged its development application.

Mr Hodgson's lawyers have referred Transfield's non-disclosure to the Independent Commission Against Corruption after NSW Planning Minister Tony Kelly declined to do so. Mr Kelly said he was "satisfied" that Transfield's failure to disclose the donations with its project application on September 17 last year did not indicate "corrupt conduct". Transfield has rejected any suggestions of impropriety.

Mr Kelly has announced he will not consider the Transfield application -- as is his right under the special project status given to wind farms -- and will instead refer it to the Planning Assessment Commission for assessment. This has been claimed as a significant victory by those who object to the wind farm proposal.

Meanwhile, lawyers acting for Mr Hodgson have advised his neighbour that the businessman may sue him for loss of amenity and reduced property value if the wind farm goes ahead.

Mr Hodgson has formed a Friends of Collector group to lobby against the development. He has organised a community meeting this weekend at which Sarah Laurie, from the Waubra Foundation, will talk about her research into the health impacts of wind farms on nearby residents.

Opponents of the wind farm are planning to erect a giant billboard alongside the Federal Highway at Collector tomorrow that says "Transfield. Go stick your 80 turbines somewhere else. Try Sydney".

Mr Hodgson said he did not want the Collector wind farm to go ahead but, if it did, Transfield should be forced to make payments to the local community on a dollar-for-dollar basis on what it was paying landholders who had sold the right to host the turbines. He said the company should also be forced to lodge a bond of $200m to cover the cost of decommissioning the wind turbines at the end of their life.

Opponents want the state government to scrap the Part 3a provisions that give wind farms special project status, and exempt them from normal planning rules and land and environment court oversight.

They also want an inquiry into the environmental and economic value of wind farms and an inquiry into the health impacts of living near them. Transfield's preliminary environmental assessment says there would be a minimum 1km buffer between the wind towers and non-involved residences. The company said it was anticipated that only five non-involved residences would be within 2km of the nearest turbine.

Mr Hodgson said the size of the towers and blades -- at 150m, taller than the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge from the water level -- meant the visual impact was far-reaching. "My view is there should also be a register of easement that shows up on all the adjoining land," Mr Hodgson said. "My position would be if I knew there was going to be a wind farm here I would not have bought it five years ago. I could have gone anywhere."

The Collector protests reflect widespread concern in rural communities where wind farms are being proposed.

The wind industry has dismissed concerns it is being self-interested and has research that shows 80 per cent of residents in areas where wind farms have been proposed support the developments. However, a survey of Collector residents who claim they will be immediately affected by the wind towers has produced the opposite result.

Community opposition to wind farms is a global issue. At a future energy conference in Abu Dhabi this week, Morten Albaek, senior vice-president of Denmark-based wind turbine maker Vestas, said the industry had underestimated the NIMBY syndrome. "The not-in-my-backyard syndrome is strong and driving the political decision-making," Mr Albaek said.

He said he believed the wind industry must provide more information to communities. "There are too many rumours and conspiracy theories about wind power plants and we as an industry are doing too little to fight them," he said.

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Judges too lenient on sentencing, say police

WA Police have little faith in the state's judiciary, with a landmark survey revealing an overwhelming 96 per cent of officers believe the sentences handed down by magistrates and judges are not tough enough.

And almost nine in 10 officers who responded to the survey claim the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions is under pressure and does not have adequate resources to secure convictions from evidence provided by police.

The findings are based on the responses of 625 WA police officers who took part in a comprehensive online questionnaire, organised by The Sunday Times and perthnow.com.au and supported by Channel 9, which canvassed the state's 5500 sworn police officers in December.

WA Police Union president Russell Armstrong said many officers felt disillusioned at the justice system, particularly with what they believed were lenient sentences handed out by the courts.

"The community of WA is sick and tired of people who are paid extremely well, handing out lenient sentences. The job of the judiciary is to hand out the penalties that are appropriate to the crime. In most cases they are very soft and very lenient," Mr Armstrong said.

He agreed the DPP needed to be better resourced. "There needs to be a lot more money put in to the DPP to retain and attract professional lawyers," he said. "Police officers are sick and tired of putting a case up and then dealing with offenders getting off on technicalities. "In a lot of cases, the DPP has outsourced to other lawyers because they don't have the resources within their own department to continue on."

Opposition police spokeswoman Margaret Quirk said: "It has been apparent for some time that prosecutions are suffering because of dysfunctional relationships between police and prosecutors". "Police feel frustrated when all their hard work counts for nothing when cases in court are lost on technicalities."

Director of Public Prosecutions Joe McGrath declined to comment on the findings. Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan and Police Minister Rob Johnson also refused to comment on the survey results.

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As the left sides with Muslims, Christians search for support

Martin Place is the symbolic centre, the point zero, of Australia's existence as a sophisticated economy. Last Wednesday it looked medieval. A forest of crucifixes sprouted among a sea of earnest faces that would look comfortable on ancient coins. The talk was of murder and persecution. The threat was real. Hyperbole was unnecessary.

As Martin Place, between Pitt and Castlereagh streets, became crammed with people, many of them young, real politics was made, and real news. Observing this rally, in oppressive humidity and under a dark sky that occasionally showered the crowd, was to observe another example of grassroots support for the ALP falling away.

Not long ago this crowd, drawn from a broader Middle Eastern Christian diaspora, would have voted like the rest of Australia. Demographics would have been the key driver. Labor would have got its share. Not any more.

When Julia Gillard's name was mentioned, it was greeted by a stony silence from the crowd of between 1000 and 2000 people. When the name of Tony Abbott was mentioned, there was a burst of spontaneous applause. Abbott had sent a personal emissary from his shadow ministry, Senator Connie Fierravanti-Wells, who would deliver some telling news.

Most at the rally were Coptic Orthodox Christians, the Egyptian branch of Christianity. They increasingly find common purpose with the expatriate communities of Assyrian Christians from Iraq and Maronite Christians from Lebanon. All three groups, who collectively number about 200,000, are heavily represented in western Sydney. All three are feeling the pressure of the religious cleansing of Christians in the Middle East.

These communities are tilting away from Labor, perceiving it as the party of appeasement of Muslim belligerence, and the party which has turned Australia's refugee program into a Muslim immigration program, while Christian communities are bludgeoned in Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon. These countries have seen a Christian exodus. The American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 proved to be a disaster for the estimated two million Assyrian Christians. Roughly half have fled the country.

The trigger for the rally at Martin Place was a cascade of events which began late last year when a list was circulated via an extremist Islamic website pledging attacks against 64 specific Coptic Orthodox churches. Four of the churches are in Sydney, where the majority of Australia's 80,000 Copts live.

At the top of the hit list was the Saints Church in Alexandria, Egypt. On New Year's Eve, as Christians left a midnight prayer service at the Saints Church, a car bomb exploded. Twenty-three Copts died and at least 95 others were wounded in the attack. Hours before, Muslim fundamentalists had gathered outside a major mosque in Alexandria chanting threats against the Coptic church. After the attack, men ran around the city shouting "Allah Akbah!", the battle cry of jihad.

Violent attacks against the more than 10 million Coptic Christians in Egypt have been continuing for almost 40 years. The violence coincided with the rise of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the prototype of modern Islamic fascism. Violent incidents continue. On January 12, an off-duty police officer shot six Copts on a train in Egypt after identifying them as Christians.

Australia's most contentious mainstream Muslim cleric, Sheikh Taj el-Din al Hilaly, the former grand mufti of Australia, is an import from Egypt. He was installed as a permanent resident by the Keating Labor government, over the objections of the security service. His Labor connections are well known and self-advertised.

The Labor Party, locked into a political alliance with Muslim leaders in western Sydney, has said little of consequence about the problem of religious cleansing of Christians by Muslims. It has done even less.

On January 1, the acting Minister for Foreign Affairs, Martin Ferguson, issued a six-line reaction to the Alexandria bombing, stating "the Australian government utterly condemns the attack". Condemnations were issued by President Barack Obama, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, among other leaders.

No statement was issued by Julia Gillard. Nor has there been any policy change in Labor's policy of indifference to Coptic refugees from Egypt. The Australian embassy in Cairo has long been a point of contention. It is difficult for Egyptian Copts to immigrate to Australia or seek refugee status. The blocking agents include the Egyptian government, which discriminates against Christians as official policy, and the local embassy, which acts as a de facto extension of state discrimination against non-Muslims.

At the rally in Martin Place, Senator Fierravanti-Wells announced that a Coalition government would reintroduce a program for Coptic refugees from religious persecution in Egypt, a program discarded by the Rudd government.

She was one of three Liberal MPs who spoke, while Labor was entirely absent until the last minute, when a Labor member of the NSW upper house, Greg Donnelly, was dropped in to represent the Premier, Kristina Keneally. Such is the desperation of NSW Labor that Donnelly could not resist noting: "There are no representatives from the Greens today, which is interesting."

The absence of the Greens was not interesting. It was predictable. Throughout Western Europe and Australia, the left has consistently made common cause with political Islam, an embrace of reactionary intolerance made without a shred of irony. Also absent was the broadcast arm of the Greens, the ABC, whose two 24-hour news networks could see no value in attending.

Meanwhile, outside the world of the public sector unions, while religious intolerance remains endemic across the Muslim world and Australia's refugee and asylum-seeker process remains a debacle, support for Labor is showing signs of disintegrating among Australians who take discrimination against Christians seriously.

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More obnoxious behaviour from the Queensland Health bureaucracy

Heartless Queensland Health bureaucrats demanded staff explain why they were not at work during Brisbane's devastating floods and to provide photos proving they were victims. While Premier Anna Bligh was calling on businesses to show compassion, Queensland Health was ordering staff to justify their absence.

The directive was the latest kick in the teeth for thousands of hard-working Queensland Health staff, many of whom were underpaid during the bungled pay system rollout last year.

Health Minister Paul Lucas yesterday said the memo was an insult, and the bureaucrat who issued it had been disciplined. "This is one of the most insensitive and stupid emails to be sent to staff that I have seen in my ministerial career," he said. "It is just so offensive to Queensland Health staff who go above and beyond the call."

The memo, sent on January 10, reminded workers to provide firm evidence - including photos - to substantiate "flood leave". "What attempts were made to use any other route to work, what attempts were made for the staff member to work at another Government location (as per the policy). "If a photo can be supplied this will help to simplify the approval process."

Thousands of Queensland Health employees could have been forced to submit paperwork for paid leave while they were trying to save themselves and their homes. The memo remained in place while residents were being warned to prepare for a flood "bigger than 1974" and while the community rallied to help victims.

On January 14, Premier Anna Bligh urged the community to work together and insurers to have a heart. "I'd call on all of our insurance companies to act with compassion in the face of this event," she said. "It is not in the interest of any of our community, including those companies, for us to stall and delay the recovery and a bit of flexibility and compassion would be a very useful contribution to this event by those companies."

When contacted by The Sunday Mail, Queensland Health's deputy director-general of human resource services, John Cairns, admitted the memo went too far. "The memo referred to was not appropriate, and was retracted by its author on direction of the acting DCEO earlier this week," he said. "Unfortunately, the memo had been sent despite being contrary to the position taken by the director-general and district management.

"QH would like to thank its hardworking staff - those who were personally directly affected by the flood, as well as those staff members who have gone above the call of duty serving Queenslanders in their time of greatest need."

While many employees were reluctant to speak out openly about their individual situations in fear of retribution, highly-placed sources said Queensland Health had set ridiculous standards for staff affected by the flood.

However, The Sunday Mail understands Queensland Health management has been disappointed by the attitude of some staff who were on holidays and had demanded their leave be credited because some other employees rostered on did not have to go to work.

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NSW electorate to punish Labor party

An exclusive Galaxy poll for The Sunday Telegraph reveals that not only are voters fed up with NSW Labor, they are preparing to punish the party in devastating fashion on March 26.And if the Galaxy poll result is replicated on election day, Labor would lose 37 seats and be left with just 13 MPs in the 93-seat NSW parliament.

The poll - taken just two months out from election day - shows Labor's primary vote has plummeted to just 20 per cent, compared to 51 per cent for the Coalition.

Once preferences have been allocated, the two-party preferred breakdown has Labor on just 34 per cent and the Coalition on 66 per cent.

Although Kristina Keneally is viewed as considerably more "likeable" than Barry O'Farrell, voters overwhelmingly believe - by 54 per cent to 32 per cent - the Liberal leader will make a better premier than Ms Keneally. This is a complete reversal of the result a year ago.

Although 83 per cent of voters are demanding that Mr O'Farrell do more to explain his policies, it is a powerful endorsement of the Liberal leader. Mr O'Farrell is seen as more trustworthy and a stronger leader with a vision for NSW.

His satisfaction rating has improved markedly to 53 per cent - compared with 30 per cent for Ms Keneally, whose dissatisfaction rating now stands at 62 per cent. Short of a miracle for Labor on March 26, the 51-year-old Victorian-born former party official from Sydney's northern suburbs will become the first Liberal premier in 16 years, commanding a massive majority in parliament.

The result shows that the first 12 months of Ms Keneally's leadership have been personally devastating. Just after she was installed as leader, 53 per cent of voters were satisfied with Ms Keneally. That figure now stands at 30 per cent, and 62 per cent of voters are dissatisfied.

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A refuge from NSW government schools getting ever more expensive

The state's richest schools are more out of reach than ever to ordinary families. In the 10 years since the Howard government introduced a funding system to make private schools more affordable, the most expensive schools' fees have risen by about 100 per cent - against inflation of 37 per cent.

At Trinity Grammar, a private school for boys in primary and high school, year 12 fees have increased from $10,020 in 2001 to $25,330 this year - a rise of 153 per cent.

Scots College, at Bellevue Hill, will charge as much as $28,296 for year 12 day students this year. Scots' headmaster Ian Lambert said this was all-inclusive, unlike schools that charged for additional expenses.

The Howard government made assurances that its socio-economic status funding model, introduced in 2001, would keep a lid on fee rises. The model aims to allocate funding to schools based on the socio-economic status of the families of their students. But it uses census data to measure the average wealth of families in the areas where they live.

This has drawn criticism of the funding for schools such as Kings, which draws some of its students from wealthy farming families, even if they live in relatively poor areas.

Under its "no losers" policy, the Howard government refused to cut funding to schools, even if they were entitled to less under the new funding arrangement. This has meant that more than half the schools funded under the system have received more than their strict entitlement.

The Rudd and Gillard governments have maintained the $27 billion four-year funding arrangement, despite a federal Department of Education review finding it delivered $2.7 billion in overpayments. The inflated payments will grow to at least $3 billion by the end of 2016 if the current system continues.

The Gillard government has commissioned a panel of eminent Australians, headed by Sydney businessman David Gonski, to review schools funding. Mr Gonski told a recent meeting of the Australian Education Union that the charge for his panel was to address disadvantage. He said a direct measure of parents' income or occupation might be a more effective measure for funding needs than census data.

"The panel believes that the focus on equity should be ensuring that differences in educational outcomes are not the result of differences in wealth, income, power or possession," he said. The funding system should be "transparent, fair, equitable and financially sustainable".

Of NSW's 20 most expensive schools, the 17 that provided full details lifted fees by an average of 102 per cent between 2001 and 2011. Cranbrook, at Bellevue Hill, managed a surplus $8.4 million while receiving a Commonwealth subsidy of $3.5 million. Malek Fahd Islamic school, at Greenacre, got one of the biggest subsidies - $15.46 million.

The Sydney Anglican Schools Corporation, which oversees 16 schools including Roseville College, received $88 million in government revenue in 2009, when it also posted a $20.7 million surplus. In 2004 the corporation received $45.4 million and posted a $13.95 million surplus. Laurie Scandrett, chief executive of the corporation, said enrolments had increased by 28 per cent between 2004 to 2009.

Funding for independent schools is tied to the average recurrent cost of funding government secondary schools, which rose by 24 per cent between 2004 and 2009. "Multiply these together and that will explain the increase in the government revenue," Dr Scandrett said.

In 2009, he said, parents had paid $85 million in addition to the $88 million in government subsidies.

Some of the "accounting surplus" included capital grants, such as those awarded under the Building the Education Revolution. Of the $20.7 million surplus, $12 million was used to pay loans on school land and buildings; the rest went to capital works. "Any surplus earnings, after day-to-day operating expenses are deducted, are retained for SASC's self-preservation, expansion and future plans," he said.

The chief executive of the Association of Independent Schools NSW, Geoff Newcombe, said education costs had increased by about 8 per cent last year and on average about 6 per cent a year since 2001.

"Independent school fees have to take into account both recurrent and capital costs, so it is not surprising that fees have had to increase at or above these average figures over the years," Dr Newcombe said.

Trevor Cobold, from Save Our Schools, a public school advocacy group, said the wealthiest schools had become more exclusive. "The fee increase is more than double the cost increases in private schools. The wage price index for private education and training increased by only 44 per cent between 2001 and 2010 …

The school funding review has to put a stop to this appalling waste of taxpayer funds."

A Greens NSW MP John Kaye said: "There are grave concerns that Julia Gillard's schools funding review panel will not understand the frustration felt by public sector teachers and parents after 11 years of watching ever greater amounts of government money flooding into wealthy private schools."

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Fad food policy 'will hurt beef industry'

Coles has defended its "no added hormones" beef campaign, which critics say could damage Australia's $7.6 billion beef industry and add to the environmental damage caused by meat production.

Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA), which represents 47,000 cattle, sheep and goat producers, accused Coles of shocking consumers into thinking beef from cattle raised on growth-promoting hormones was unsafe, despite years of scientific testing showing the meat posed no risk to humans.

The group said it was too early to tell if the Coles policy, introduced on January 1, had convinced shoppers to abandon other retailers. "It is crucial that consumers maintain their trust in the product - that the safety of Australian beef is not brought into doubt unnecessarily," MLA said.

Human growth promotants are used widely in beef production but were banned in Europe in 1988 over concerns about links to diseases including cancer. The World Health Organisation and the federal Department of Health, however, found no scientific evidence to support the ban.

Woolworths said the Coles campaign, which features celebrity chef Curtis Stone, was a "gimmick that will be bad for the environment and bad for Australian farmers". Woolworths stocks hormone-free meat in its organic range but has no plans to extend the policy.

"Removing technology means you need more cattle, eating more food, on more land, producing more methane over more time to produce the same beef," spokesman Simon Berger said. "Someone will pay for that - either farmers or customers, as well as the environment."

Coles spokesman Jim Cooper said that Coles was not saying beef raised with hormones was unsafe, but that hormone-free beef was of a higher quality. The initiative would cost the company millions because Coles would have to pay its suppliers more to farm a greater number of animals to produce the same amount of meat.

MLA said increasing the cattle herd would raise water and feed costs, placing greater strain on farmers.

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Aussie expat suing UK employer over 'racist' comments

I can well imagine that the comments would be tiresome but any reaction beyond that seems excessive. He must be unaware that the English are bigoted towards one-another too. Just ask a Yorkshire man about Lancastrians if you doubt that. I would tend to hit back with derogatory remarks like: "Well at least I haven't got a working-class accent". That would cause ire but would also stop the aspersions. The English are deeply embarrassed by any mention of social class and would not risk further mention of it

An AUSTRALIAN working in the UK is suing his employer over his colleagues' allegedly racist comments mocking his nationality, the Daily Mail reported.

Geoff Stephens, a community warden, has lived in Britain for 26 years, yet the 48-year-old claimed his colleagues regularly make jokes about kangaroos, greet him with “G’day, sport” and ask, “Is your girlfriend called Sheila?”

The Adelaide native said he has been taking a “cocktail of antidepressants” to deal with the constant abuse from his coworkers in Dymchurch, a Kent County village about 112 km southeast of London.

“I’ve only been able to sleep for three hours a night since August, and the physical and mental exhaustion will eventually kill me,” he said, according to the Daily Mail.

“I feel like my life has been ripped apart. I loved my job with a passion and I did a lot of good work in Dymchurch,” he added. Wardens work closely with police in the UK, alerting them of anti-social behavior, littering and graffiti as well as helping them organize community outreach programs.

Dymchurch locals said they were aware of the teasing, but did not realize how upset Stephens was.

“He’s got an Australian accent and people rib him about it, but nobody knew quite how much it was affecting him,” one resident reportedly said, asking not to be named.

“I think he doesn’t mind the kids having a laugh about ‘putting another shrimp on the barbie’ or saying ‘G’day, sport,’ but it’s the constant references to Australia from his colleagues that is obviously getting him down.”

Stephens is suing the Kent County Council, which refused to comment on personnel issues.

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More asinine "justice"

SENTENCING reformers say they are stunned a convicted drug dealer danced his way free from court today, after being released on a bond. The student drug dealer who imported and sold a large quantity of the deadly party drug 'meow meow' literally danced from court today after a judge released him on a bond.

Malich Coory [Khouri?], 20, laughed, joked and clowned around with his arm around a friend as he walked from the County Court and posed for waiting media cameras.

In her sentence Judge Jane Patrick said that in a report to the court a psychologist said Coory was suffering from depression and deeply regretted his drug dependence and involvement in importing the drug.

"I accept the seriousness of the offence has been brought home to you and this has served as a wake up call," Judge Patrick said.

Coory showed little sign of his depression as he fooled around with his mates and lit up a cigarette.

But People Against Lenient Sentencing spokesman Steve Medcraft said he would be seeking an immediate appeal, describing the decision as “an insult to law-abiding citizens".

He also believed the sentence sent the wrong message, with the dangers of “meow meow” becoming increasingly known. “This bloke is peddling misery and gets a sympathetic hearing from a judge. He said Coory had demonstrated that many criminals viewed the court as "a circus and a game".

“The thing that is wearing very thin … how many barristers have found that post-traumatic syndrome and depression are the greatest assets to use in a defence trial.

“A lot of people have depression, but they don’t deal in drugs. They don’t deal drugs to get over their depression. “He’s obviously played the game. "Claim depression and you can still deal in death and misery.”

“I think the average person on the street would have to be shaking their heads. “It’s given a green light to drug dealers,” Mr Medcraft said.

Mr Medcraft called on Premier Ted Baillieu to take a stand on the issue, given his stated policy to toughen sentencing laws before the election. “I can’t wait for Parliament to resume, because this is exactly the legacy of the last eleven years, in which judges are either being hoodwinked or believe in the tooth fairy.

“I know Ted Ballieu and them said they are going to review it (sentencing), but I would certainly hope they pull that forward. “I think the State of Victoria or the prosecutor should appeal that sentence. That is manifestly inadequate.

The judge sentenced Coory to 22 months in custody but released him immediately on a recognisance release order of $500, effectively a bond, and he was ordered to be of good behaviour for 22 months.

Coory of Greenvale, had previously pleaded guilty to single counts of importing 753 grams and possessing 1.57 kilograms of 'meow meow' or 4-MMC. The drug also known as 'bubbles', 'drone' and 'meth' has been linked to 25 deaths, including suicides, in the UK and in one reported case a teenager ripped off his scrotum because he believed centipedes were crawling over his body.

Judge Patrick said 4-MMC had a similarity to ecstasy and because it only emerged in 2007 in France in was not listed in the Victorian Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act.

She said it is believed that Coory is the first person in Victoria to be prosecuted for importation and possession of 4-MMC under Commonwealth law. "Young people should be very wary of taking this drug for health and legal reasons," the judge said.

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Both sides of the climate controversy recently heard on Australia's public broadcaster

And was the Warmist a picture of illogic! All he could point to was the undisputed rise in CO2, as if that proved his case. Since the rise in CO2 was, by his own admission, accompanied by FLAT temperatures (1998, 2005 and 2010 all the same), it does the exact opposite. He assumed what he had to prove (that CO2 causes warming) and then failed to see that the evidence contradicted his assumption!

And the guy is a big cheese among Warmists too. Being a "secretary-general" sure sounds like hot sh*t

TONY EASTLEY: The United Nations weather organisation has confirmed that 2010 was one of the three hottest years on record.

The World Meteorological Organization says that last year was as hot as 2005 and 1998 and that Arctic Sea ice cover was the lowest in recorded history.

The Organisation says last year was also marked by extreme weather events in Europe, Russia, Asia and South America.

Meredith Griffiths reports.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: After a wet and cool few months in parts of Australia and those paralysing snowstorms in the northern hemisphere, this news may come as a surprise to some.

MICHEL JARRAUD: We can indeed report that 2010 is now going to rank as the warmest year on record, at the same level as 2005 and 1998.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Michel Jarraud is the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.

It says those three years recorded the highest temperatures since 1850, about half a degree warmer than average.

MICHEL JARRAUD: The latest decade is the warmest on record. So year after year this trend is confirmed, actually it's being strengthened year after year.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Last year also saw Arctic Sea ice recede to its lowest level.

Mr Jarraud says these new statistics should silence those who don't believe that greenhouse gases are changing the world's climate.

MICHEL JARRAUD: The sceptical position, it's untenable. You cannot escape the fact the concentration of greenhouse gases have reached record levels and this is not hypothesis these are facts, they can be measured with great accuracy.

The laws of physics are also very solid, greenhouse gases cannot contribute to cool the atmosphere, more greenhouse gases can only do one thing: warm.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: He also noted that last year was characterised by a number of extreme weather events like the heatwave in Russia and the floods in Pakistan.

MICHEL JARRAUD: With the global warming, some of these events will become more frequent, or more intense. So let me take for example, the Russian heat wave. You cannot say uniquely it's due to global warming, but what you can say is that what is right now totally exceptional will happen more frequently in the future.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Geologist Bob Carter from James Cook University says Mr Jerraud has no evidence for that.

BOB CARTER: Lots of scientists have been looking for that evidence but to date there is nothing in the scientific literature which says we have more climatic emergency events at the moment than in the past or that these are more frequent or more dangerous. There is no scientific evidence for that.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Professor Carter says it's not surprising that last year was one of the warmest, but says that doesn't mean greenhouse gases are the blame.

BOB CARTER: The question is not whether it causes warming, the question is how much warming? Since 1998 we've had three warm years - 1998, 2005 and 2010 - and each of those years is associated with an El Nino event which causes or is related to the warming. Okay, but there's no trend, 2010 is not significantly warmer in any way than 1998.

So we have a warm period over a period of 12 years. Over those same 12 years we have a five per cent increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide is supposed to cause more warming. Well this data that we've just discussed tells you that human carbon dioxide emissions are not causing dangerous global warming, indeed they're not causing any warming at all at the moment.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Professor Carter says the last 150 years have been among the coolest in the past 10,000 years of the Earth's history.

TONY EASTLEY: Meredith Griffiths reporting.

Two leading US agencies, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, recently reported too that 2010 was also the wettest year on record.

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Gillard repeating indigenous policy errors

Freely available welfare payments corrupt people

Gary Johns

KEATING government minister Gary Johns has castigated the Gillard government for relying on old policies that stop indigenous Australians from being part of the mainstream economy in its draft Aboriginal economic development strategy.

Professor Johns, who is associate professor of public policy at the Australian Catholic University's Public Policy Institute, has submitted a paper to the government's review of its indigenous economic strategy in which he argues that the government should not be delivering goods and services to indigenous people where they presently live. "Too much of the old paradigm remains in the paper," Professor Johns writes.

"These legacies of former ineffective policies will continue to inhibit transition of indigenous Australians to the real economy."

Professor Johns argues that having indigenous people waiting for opportunities to be delivered to their door is not what they need.

"This has been occurring, especially in northern Australia, without success or benefit for the last 40 years," he writes.

Professor Johns says any policy that seeks to artificially create an economy without skills and habits of work or genuine local economic activity being present, will fail.

"And yet the government has decided, through its National Partnership on Remote Indigenous Housing, to develop 26 communities. The two salient characteristics of these communities are that they were former mission stations and, with some minor exceptions, have no economic base."

Professor Johns argues the government still struggles to apply to indigenous Australians the rules it applies to others. He argues the biggest problem in employment services is the weakened jobseeker compliance system.

"Centrelink rarely upholds a participation report for non-compliance in remote areas," he writes. "This is leading to a passive welfare environment."

He also disagrees with the government's statement that indigenous people have extensive knowledge of land management, arguing it is "certainly not of the kind that would be useful in a modern economy".

"Perpetuation of these myths is harmful," Professor Johns says. "They direct indigenous people to place-based activity; the experience of the last 40 years demonstrates that it is doomed to failure".

He attacks the government's evidence to argue that Aborigines are going to university in greater numbers. "People now being recruited to university as indigenous are frankly embarrassing," he writes. "Many of these students would not have suffered any prejudice whatsoever and are generations apart from traditional society. "They are heralded as part of the success of a 'program' purely to keep up the numbers. The harm this sort of activity does is to undermine the work of those who actually have to change people's behaviour, not simply recruit those who would have made it regardless. The net impact of such programs is near zero."

Professor Johns calls for all arms of government policy to work in tandem to change the culture. "Governments must stop pretending they have the answers," he says.

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Gillard digs in her heels over NBN boondoggle despite flood costs

In good Leftist style, she wants a new tax instead of reduced spending

TONY Abbott says the federal budget could be "easily" reined in to pay for the Queensland floods recovery, as the political brawl over a possible disaster levy intensifies.

The Opposition Leader went on the attack this morning after Julia Gillard admitted last night that a one-off flood levy could be imposed to fund the multi-billion dollar reconstruction effort. “I'm opposed to unnecessary new taxes and that's what this is,” Mr Abbott told ABC radio.

“There will have to be very substantial commonwealth government spending as part of the recovery and reconstruction phase, but there's a right way and a wrong way to find that money.”

The Prime Minister has refused to deviate from the government's 2013 return-to-surplus deadline, warning of tough choices ahead as it works out how to pay for the recovery. “There will be spending cutbacks and there might also be a levy,” she told the ABC's 7.30 Report last night. “We are obviously working on those decisions now, as we work with our Queensland colleagues to clarify the bill for infrastructure rebuilding.”

The Howard government imposed a series of one-off levies to pay for a gun buyback scheme, to pay out former Ansett staff and to restructure the sugar and dairy industries.

But Mr Abbott ruled out opposition support for a similar approach on floods reconstruction. “The Howard government ran a tight budget and a strong economy in a way that this government never will,” he said. “Second, you don't need a levy here because there is out-of-control government spending which can easily be reined back and reprioritised.”

Mr Abbott wants the $37 billion National Broadband Network to be abandoned to help fund the recovery.

And opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb wants Medibank Private to be sold, saying it would raise up to $4.5 billion and free up $660 million in recurrent budget spending over a four-year period.

Ms Gillard said the timetable for the NBN rollout would not be altered.

Estimates of the flood recovery bill range from $6 billion to $20 billion. A cautious Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said she wants to see more detail on a possible flood levy before she decides whether to support it. “But I think when we have major events like this that disrupt not just one state, but we're seeing it Victoria as well, and we're seeing that disrupt the entire national economy,” she told ABC radio. “I think we do have to ask ourselves whether there is a better way of doing it, so I'm certainly interested in seeing more details.”

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Greens starting to show true political colours

Says an old-time Labor Party man

SLOWLY but surely the Australian Greens' carefully cultivated facade is crumbling. On Monday, Greens leader Bob Brown was roundly condemned for his demand that coal mining companies be forced to pay a super profits style tax in order to fund the Queensland floods recovery effort.

According to Brown, coal barons were responsible for the climate change-induced natural disaster and soon-to-materialise "severe and more frequent floods, droughts and bushfires in coming decades". Presumably Gaia herself will collect the new levy.

One day we might discover that climate change indeed played a role, but Brown's ill-advised attempt to extract political capital out of a still-unfolding disaster is signal evidence that the Greens are simply another political party scoring cheap partisan points for electoral gain.

Of course, all parliamentary parties are born into original sin: compromise, pragmatism and sometimes sheer opportunism inexorably result as a party, whether Left or Right, is cast out of its ideological Garden of Eden.

The only real surprise is how long the Greens have managed to portray themselves as non-political, and thus above criticism, all the while playing politics with a ruthlessness to make the most battle-hardened Laborite or Liberal blush.

And yet Brown's cynical rhetorical overreach should come as no surprise. During the previous parliamentary term the Greens, whose raison d'etre is to tackle anthropogenically caused environmental damage, refused to support Labor's ETS legislation; thus preventing Australia taking necessary, prudent action to tackle climate change.

Greens opposition ostensibly arose because of Labor's allegedly meagre carbon reduction target. However, a more cynical motivation could be discerned: stealing votes from Labor's left wing at the next election.

Further alarm bells ought to have rung when in the election's immediate aftermath, where they indeed won over many disaffected Labor supporters, senator Sarah Hanson-Young unsuccessfully challenged Christine Milne for the party's deputy leadership.

Hanson-Young should be applauded: ambition is the defining feature of any politician worth their salt. But the secrecy surrounding the vote suggested a party desperate to peddle the myth that it wasn't really a political party.

If further evidence were required to prove the Greens are themselves capable of political bastardry, then witness billionaire Wotif founder Graeme Wood's $1.6 million donation to party coffers, the largest single political donation by an individual in Australian history, despite Brown's previous denunciations of such largesse.

Perhaps these events might finally shatter the mythology surrounding the Greens' Pocahontas brand of politics and force progressive Australians to examine their policy prescriptions more seriously.

Particular attention should be directed towards the NSW Greens. At its December State Delegates Council, the party decided to officially support the anti-Israel boycott, sanctions and divestment movement. The Greens-controlled Marrickville council, in Sydney's inner west, quickly moved to implement party policy by officially backing the counterproductive and potentially anti-Semitic boycott in its entirety.

The good burghers of the inner west are now compelled to boycott Israel. Will the homes of Marrickville Jews be searched for illegal products? We shall await with bated breath the council's replacement of Israeli-designed Google search engines, Intel processors and other technology. Perhaps carbon-neutral homing pigeons will be recruited to fill the communications void.

The behaviour of the adjoining Greens-run Leichhardt Council also verges on the absurd. For instance, a proposal to build a Thomas Dux outlet (a scaled-down Woolworths supermarket) in Annandale was recently rejected, no matter that the venture would have created hundreds of jobs and produced an environmentally friendly option for residents who typically drive to Broadway or Leichhardt shops.

Even more farcically, late last year the council shut down a community sausage sizzle ($1 from each sale was being donated to local schools) run by an Annandale delicatessen because smoke was allegedly drifting into nearby shops. The council then graciously allowed the sizzle to continue on a six-month trial basis providing the meat was pre-cooked on an electric barbecue inside the delicatessen.

The man responsible for this policy adventurism is Greens mayor Jamie Parker. Using his mayoral credentials, he has also intervened in the Barangaroo development controversy despite Leichhardt bearing no geographic proximity to the area in question. Parker is the Greens candidate for the seat of Balmain at the March NSW state election and has faced allegations that his council spent $50,000 on a slush fund to pay for "major issues"; code for advertising Greens-friendly protest meetings.

The actions of the NSW Greens are of course hardly unique. Indeed, to this observer of Labor politics there are strong historical parallels with Bill Hartley's Victorian ALP of the pre-1970s. At times "Baghdad" Hartley's extremist grouping resembled more a Trotsky-ite cult than a mainstream political party, favouring militantly leftist policies, including a rabid anti-Israel strategy of forging close links with Arab dictatorships.

Not only did the Hartleyites make state Labor unelectable, their actions repeatedly cruelled federal Labor's electoral hopes. Following a close-run 1969 poll, ultimately lost because of a poor Victorian showing, Gough Whitlam finally convinced the ALP national executive to move against the recalcitrant branch, clearing the way for his famous 1972 triumph.

The Greens are unlikely to govern in their own right any time soon, yet political crunch time is looming. It is one thing for the party to secure the ballots of a narrow band of far-leftist anti-Israelis, Newtown vegans and Julian Assange supporters but the mainstream centre-left electorate is not likely to warm to such an extremist message.

For all its imperfections, the forbidden fruits of social democratic Laborism are likely to remain a continued source of temptation.

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Remarkable Australian retailers

Woolworths and Wesfarmers [Coles, Target, Bunnings] have made the grade in a list of the 25 top global retailers, putting them in a similar league to US giants Wal-Mart and Costco.

The Aussie supermarket powerhouses are the only local retailers to make Deloitte's Global Powers of Retailing 2011 Top 25, which measures international sales performance for the year ending June 31, 2010.

Woolworths' $US44 billion group sales put it in 20th place, up from 26 in 2010, and Wesfarmers moved up five spots from to 23rd position with sales of $US40 billion.

Wal-Mart was the list's big hitter after posting a massive $US400 billion in sales last year, followed by Carrefour in France and Germany's Metro.

Deloitte's Andrew Griffiths said the Australian representation was particularly impressive given the difference in populations compared with the US, France, Japan and Germany.

"The other companies in the top 25 originate mainly from heavily populated countries such as the United States, Germany, UK, Japan and France," Mr Griffiths said. "If you add the fact that most of those also operate in multiple countries, unlike Woolworths and Wesfarmers, you get a far better appreciation of the relative strengths of Australian retailers."

The Australian companies might not be in the same financial stratosphere as some of their bigger European and US rivals but they strutted their stuff with flair in the Asia-Pacific region where they came in third and fourth behind 7- Eleven's Japanese owner, Seven & I Holdings.

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Melbourne water users slapped with 'desal tax' despite recent floods

The Herald Sun revealed this morning the $100 tax had been slapped on Melbourne water users to pay for the plant despite recent floods guaranteeing city supplies for at least five years.

Mr Kennett told the Herald Sun Melburnians had a right to be angry about the tax. "I would make sure that for the length of the project that that tax is represented on our water bill and it is called either the Brumby tax or the Labor tax so everyone is reminded every year that this is a charge that we are paying because of the incompetence of a former Government,’’ Mr Kennett said.

"It's just unfortunate that Mr Baillieu and his Government will have to impose it to honour the contract that, I suspect, is watertight and therefore the money will have to be paid."

With dams approaching 54 per cent and rising, Melbourne has enough water to last more than five years - even if there were a drought. Some experts say it could be 30 years before a drop is needed from Wonthaggi's $5.7 billion desalination plant.

The Baillieu Government is searching the contract to find its full cost, and also loopholes that may minimise the annual $570 million payments it has inherited.

The Essential Services Commission has approved water price rises of up to 64 per cent to pay for major projects, including the desalination plant, in the four years to 2012-13. Industry sources believe about a quarter of the price rise imposed on 1.5 million City West, South East and Yarra Valley residential water customers is financing the plant's building costs. Barwon and Western Water households are also feeling the pain.

A Baillieu Government spokesman said last night there were fears the Government had been locked into an "unprecedented burden on every family".

University of Melbourne water expert Prof Hector Malano urged the Government to do all it could to walk away from the project. The maximum 150GL it could produce each year would be cheaply delivered by diverting 10 per cent of the irrigation water from northern Victoria through the north-south pipeline. "I really believe we could go 20-30 years without resorting to a desalination plant. And by then we may have better options anyway," he said.

Once it was switched on, the plant would have to continue operating to remain viable, whether water was needed or not. Because of this, the Brumby government made a deal with the AquaSure consortium building the plant to pay $570 million a year for 30 years.

The director of Monash University's Institute for Sustainable Water Resources, Assoc Prof Tim Fletcher, criticised the size and cost of the project. "If they had built a plant a third of the size it would have been sufficient to mitigate that risk," he said.

Consumer Utilities Advocacy Centre chief Jo Benvenuti said many customers were struggling to pay water bills. "We are paying a lot more despite using a lot less - that's what's perverse about it," she said.

Prof Tony Wong, director of Monash University's Centre for Water Sensitive Cities, said water supplies would last about five years if the drought returned. It was an important insurance plan but should be used only to buy time while water recycling technology and acceptance improve.

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A rather surprising victory for free speech

If conspiracy theories were to be used as grounds to discriminate against someone, the 50 million (or thereabouts) Americans who believe that the 9/11/2001 attacks were a hoax could also be discriminated against. And making someone's political opinions grounds for an adverse psychiatric diagnosis would be to go the way of the old Soviet union. And Christians -- who believe in an invisible entity -- would be at risk too. So kudos to the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal



A man declared a white supremacist by police and ruled a possible risk to public safety by a psychiatrist has been granted the right to possess a handgun.

Darryl Potts, who believes there is a Jewish conspiracy to destroy other races, had his AB firearms and probationary pistol licences revoked by police after he expressed "white supremacy views" to officers during an incident involving domestic violence.

But, in a landmark case, the Administrative Decisions Tribunal has ruled that, even though Mr Potts might hold extreme and offensive views, that does not mean he is mentally impaired and he is legally entitled to a firearm licence. The decision was at odds with the opinion of police, the Firearms Registry and a psychiatrist's clinical assessment that Mr Potts had the potential "to put public safety at risk".

Mr Potts, an elevator technician at Federal Parliament, pursued the case because he believed having a revoked firearm licence could affect his security clearance to work in government buildings. He said he wanted to take a stand against the trend of removing people's firearms.

Both during the case and in extensive interviews with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Potts made a series of bizarre claims about Jewish people. He told the tribunal he did not believe six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. "I say the six million is a load of hogwash," he said.

After having his licences reinstated, he said he believed Jews were plotting to dilute other races by encouraging mixed-race children and he had unwittingly played into their hands by having children with his Korean-born wife - from whom he has separated. "If I had've known this information I would not have participated in mixed-race marriage," he said.

He also said Jewish spies, posing as "Israeli art peddlers" were visiting his house because he was "a person of interest" to them.

After the 2009 domestic dispute at his estranged wife's house, the Firearms Registry referred Mr Potts to a psychiatrist on the basis that he "has expressed white supremacy [sic] ... views that have raised concerns regarding his mental health".

After Mr Potts stated, "I am a very angry man", the psychiatrist diagnosed him as having a personality disorder.

ADT member Peter Molony rejected the psychiatrist's opinion and ruled, "Mr Potts is an intelligent, manipulative and calculating man".

"The fact that he holds political and religious views and opinions that are offensive is not, in my opinion, sufficient to find that the public interest requires that he no longer hold a firearms licence," Mr Molony found. "To do so would be to embark on a slippery slope ... to totalitarianism."

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Some things never change: Welfare money meant for blacks pours into the pockets of white bureaucrats

And the bit that gets to blacks is useless to them anyway. The bureaucracy is clueless as well as being a leech. Giving Aborigines one-bedroom brick houses is a towering absurdity if you know anything about Aborigines: A total lack of cultural sensitivity. Aborigines in remote areas live communally. Leftists talk the talk about cultural sensitivity but they don't walk the walk

Half the funds set aside to construct and renovate houses in the remote Aboriginal community of Wadeye are going towards administration and company costs. A leaked draft budget, prepared by the company contracted under the federal government's Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program to perform the work at Wadeye, allocates $20.642 million for administrative and establishment costs.

According to the government's published budget for SIHIP, the Wadeye package, which consists of 105 new dwellings, 167 refurbishments and 28 rebuilds, will cost $65.375m, putting the administration and establishment costs at 31.6 per cent of the total budget.

The Coalition's indigenous affairs spokesman, Nigel Scullion, said this was before the guaranteed profit for the company of up to 20 per cent that was written into the contract and the project management fees of 8 per cent were deducted from the program budget.

New Future Alliance was awarded the contract to perform the work at Wadeye. It is doing the refurbishments and rebuilds but has subcontracted most of the work on the new houses to Thamarrurr Development Corporation. Ninety out of the 105 houses planned for Wadeye are either completed or under construction.

The budget obtained by The Australian is a New Future Alliance budget. It details the appointment of 14 supervisors and managers including one salary of $894,700 for less than two years' work. There is provision for a vacation student to be paid $25,500 for three months' work experience.

"SIHIP is intended to build or renovate houses for Aboriginal people and not to provide high-paid jobs and work experience for construction companies," Senator Scullion said. "When you include the budget allocation of $18,000 for tea and coffee for the managers and supervisors it is no longer a mystery as to why only one-bedroom houses and limited maintenance is all that can be delivered to the residents of Wadeye."

A spokeswoman for Acting Indigenous Affairs Minister Mark Arbib said the government disputed the interpretation of the costings.

"The budget for Wadeye includes costs which are an essential part of building houses," the spokeswoman said. "You cannot build a house without proper planning, or a workforce to deliver the project. This includes essentials such as project design and scoping, site cleaning and waste disposal, site management, compliance with building and planning regulations, transitional accommodation for residents whose houses are being replaced or refurbished, and the costs of establishing and operating camps for the workforce."

The spokeswoman said the site manager and other positions carried a high level of responsibility for managing a major construction project in a very remote location. "Alliances are competing with the mining industry and other major construction projects to attract the right people to these jobs," she said.

"The employee costs include provision for annual leave, long-service leave, public holidays, payroll tax, workers compensation, superannuation and training. They are not simply the salary an employee receives. As with other employers, the total cost of the employee is greater than the salary in the wage packet."

SIHIP was announced in April 2008, but became bogged down soon after amid claims of poor administration and wastage.

After The Australian revealed the difficulties, Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin ordered a review that led to administrative changes. SIHIP is one element of the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing, which is delivering $5.5 billion over 10 years to tackle the housing backlog in remote Australia.

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Grantham flood survivor threatened with arrest

Disturbing authoritarianism designed to protect the politicians from bad publicity, it seems. Also disturbing that this was reported on far-Leftist sites only. It seems that the media are in the pocket of Gillard and Bligh

Queensland police threatened Grantham service station owner Martin Warburton, 41, with arrest on Thursday if he attempted to speak with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Queensland Premier Anna Bligh about the failure of their governments to provide timely and adequate assistance to the flood-ravage community. Warburton, who is chairman of the Grantham relief committee and a former councillor, was told by the local police sergeant he could be arrested and charged for "inciting fear and anger in the community".

The threat was issued a day before Gillard and Bligh were scheduled to visit a local evacuation centre and followed warnings to the media by Queensland Flood Recovery Taskforce head, Major-General Mick Slater, that any reportage of community "divisiveness" would hamper the "success" of the recovery operation. These developments further highlight the political reality that the principal concerns of the Flood Recovery Taskforce is not the plight of ordinary people but protecting the state and federal governments and corporate interests.

Grantham, a small town of 370 people in the Lockyer Valley about 100 kilometres west of Brisbane, is regarded as the "epicentre" of flash-flooding that hit Toowoomba and Lockyer Valley communities in south-east Queensland.

The town was devastated by a massive wall of water that swept through the town on January 10, destroying all in its path-houses, cars and small businesses. More than 30 people have been killed in the Queensland floods. Eighteen of those are from the Lockyer Valley and Toowoomba areas, with 10 people still listed as missing, feared dead. Residents were given no official warnings of the impending disaster but fought heroically to save those caught in the raging torrent.

Martin Warburton spoke with the World Socialist Web Site yesterday about the police threat and the physical and psychological impact of the flood on the small community. He said Grantham residents were outraged by lack of flood warnings, inadequate support and lack of night-time security in the town following the disaster.

Martin Warburton: I spent a whole day in Gatton [a nearby town] trying to get answers or an ear that would listen to our concerns after the flood wiped us off the map. Admittedly I wasn't dressed for the occasion-I had my old clothes on and was ready to go back home and begin cleaning up-but a mongrel dog in a pound would have been treated better. By sundown that afternoon I realised I wasn't getting anywhere.

We'd been locked out of the town, which is now classified as a crime scene, and told there had to be a complete search and recovery through the whole area. We agreed with that but wanted our town secured at night.

People in Grantham have been through the worst experience of their life and the last thing they should be worrying about is whether their possessions would be there when they returned. I'd guarantee if this happened in Anna Bligh's or the prime minister's neighbourhoods there'd be round the clock security.

But it didn't matter what we said they wouldn't listen and the authorities kept falsely accusing us of wanting people taken off search and rescue. I finally reached the mayor and we went to the media. I told the press we'd been diplomatic but we were getting nowhere and they should listen to what we had to say about the lack of support from our governments.

Prime Minister Gillard and Anna Bligh were coming out here on Friday but instead of being able to raise these issues I was told in no uncertain terms by the local police sergeant that if I approached either of them, or made a scene in front of the media, I'd taken away and charged with inciting fear and anger in the community. I have witnesses-the local mayor Steve Jones heard it.

Richard Phillips: What was your reaction?

MW: I was shocked and tried explaining the situation to the local sergeant. You'd think there'd be a bit of compassion or sensitivity, but he wasn't interested. I don't know whether he was being directed or where his orders came from but he made it quite clear that they-the politicians-didn't want any bad press.

In the last few days things have changed and the government and private individuals have started to give us some real assistance, which we really appreciate. But why did it take five days, including two days of smacking our heads up against the wall, before someone started to listen to us. None of this would have happened if we hadn't raised our voices.

I can understand some things take time but why so long? There are children that saw their own family members and neighbours die. Why did the government wait five days to get counsellors to those kids? It's wrong. And the evacuation centres in this area-they were set up by ordinary people, not the government. Without this community spirit we would have had nothing.

RP: Could anything have been done to prevent the flash-flooding?

WM: I don't think so, but we should have been alerted. The Toowoomba flooding happened an hour before it hit us and yet we weren't warned. Why not, don't the powers that be know that water flows down hill?

I started getting phone calls from friends and relatives about the wall of water and to get out of town. They told me about water levels at bridges that didn't seem possible but I knew they wouldn't lie to me and so I had time to run down the street telling people to get out.

The wall of water didn't come along the creek but rushed down the main road and it was at least six metres high. If we'd been warned much earlier the death toll wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad as it is.

RP: Has there been any discussion about rebuilding?

MW: We don't know where we are with that yet because some people don't even know whether their homes are still standing, and some say they won't be coming back.

Our concerns were not directed against the foot soldiers on the ground or the two police officers at each end of the town but against those higher up, the bureaucrats and powers-that-be who left us for dead.

We're determined to get our community back on its feet again, but why did it take two days of us banging our heads against the wall and being threatened with arrest by the authorities for things to finally start happen?

RP: And the psychological impact of the disaster?

MW: This has scarred me for life. There's no doubt in my mind that once things settle down I'm going to need an awful lot of help to deal with the things I've seen. I'm not blowing wind up my own skirt but I'm a pretty tough sort of fellow and this is something I'll never forget. Hopefully I'll learn to manage these issues.

I know people living on the hill in Grantham who are going to need counselling and other assistance. Their homes weren't directly affected by the water but they saw all the devastation unfold. Many of them were on the railway bridge trying to save people from the roofs of their cars and then unfortunately saw them being swept away, never to be seen again.

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A racist Greenie

But Greenies don't like anyone much so a bit of xenophobia should be no surprise

With the fires still underway and the death toll rising, Senator Bob Brown commented at the time that the extent and ferocity of the fires was a pointer to the reality of global warming. Maybe so - not being a scientist I couldn't say - but the more pressing issue was one of time and place. On both counts, Bob Brown failed the taste test, and quite spectacularly.

With the flood crisis now turning to Victoria, and the death toll expected to increase in Queensland as the recovery continues, Senator Brown has now decided to use this latest national tragedy to launch an attack on the coal industry. Unlike the bushfires, it's difficult to identify any precise link between burning coal and the re-occurrence of a flood pattern which has been with Australia since well before white settlement, but the Greens Leader clearly didn't want to let the opportunity pass him by. As Queensland Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce pointed out in a moment of lucidity, in 1893 the Brisbane River flood gauge reached 8.35m. "Was the coal industry responsible for that as well?" Joyce asked.

Brown's overstatements are such that they test the patience of those of us who believe in climate change. Global warming aside, there was one aspect to his comments about the coal industry which exposed the strange jingoism which underpins his world view and that of many on his flank of politics. It's the kind of sentiment which has been heard most commonly from supporters of Pauline Hanson's old One Nation Party, and it exposes how on both the far left and far right of politics there's this quaint "Stop the world I want to get off" nonsense which sees globalisation as the root cause of all known social evil.

When such views are expressed by Hansonites they'll face accusations of racism, which is something which you would think Bob Brown abhors, but this is what he had to say anyway:

"Burning coal is a major cause of global warming. This industry, which is 75 per cent owned outside Australia, should help pay the cost of the predicted more severe and more frequent floods, droughts and bushfires in the coming decades. It is unfair that the cost is put on all taxpayers, not the culprits."

Setting aside the fact that this flood is less severe than others which have occurred in the past in terms of its size, Brown's comments could so easily have emanated from the mouth of someone such as Hanson. The fact that we are now living in a global economy is presented not as the basis of our increased national prosperity, but the source of our apparent ruination.

This is a recurring theme in public life in Australia. Groups and individuals often cloak their arguments in this absurdly retro dinki-di rhetoric to capitalise on a misplaced sense of national sentiment.

Dick Smith built a company out of it, the big retailers tried it on last month when they attacked our right to shop online, ignoring the fact that it's their own pricing policies, and their support for protectionist racketeering such as parallel import restrictions which artificially inflates the cost of products such as books. Those factors play as big a part as the fluctuation of the dollar in encouraging consumers to buy offshore, but it doesn't sit with the Buy Aussie sentiment they're using to bolster their self-interested arguments.

One of the best expos‚s of this protectionist nonsense came on the floor of the NSW Labor State Conference in 2007 when the rambunctious former treasurer Michael Costa took on the labour movement and the parliamentary left over electricity privatisation.

The unions and their backers in Caucus had done a very passable impersonation of Hanson by peddling the line that if NSW sold its power industry it could end up being bought by the Chinese. No evidence for that, but invoking the prospect of those inscrutable Orientals buying Energy Australia was too good a PR opportunity to ignore. In a passionate and ranting speech at the conference, which was so abusive that it probably helped ensure the failure of the power sale, Costa pointed out that the bright yellow protest T-shirts being worn by the anti-privatisation delegates had themselves been made in China.

Surely if the delegates were consistent and pure they would have paid five times as much to get them from a local manufacturer.

The simple economic reality is that for everything we now import there are plenty of locally grown or locally made products and services which are now able to enter markets overseas which have also reduced protections as world trade becomes freer.

The irony with Brown's attack on the coal industry is exposed by the estimated damages bill from the floods themselves. Canberra is putting the cost at between $5 billion and $8 billion but the Reserve Bank believes it could top $15 billion. Much of the cost would come from the fact that large sections of the coal industry have been shut down by the floods, or the roads which are used to transport coal are now inoperable. Which means fewer exports to China. Which means less money to Treasury.

Which means less money for public schools, bike lanes and community arts grants, all the things which people such as Bob Brown apparently adore.

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Floating restaurant rescued -- with a lot of help from its friends

Along with The Islander, Riverwalk, and the `Little tug that could’, Drift was probably one of the most talked about river events, in the Brisbane City floods, as it’s pontoon ripped away and floated down stream, while the rest of it sank below the waters. Owner David Moore was devastated to have to make the decision to smash the floor to ceiling windows and let the place sink, so it wouldn’t be a dangerous floating missile in the river. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have to do that.

We all thought that was the end of Drift- but it seems the river is not to have her. She has been refloated, retrieved from the sticky black mud at the bottom of the river.

I went down there yesterday, to unbelievable scenes. Wires poked out from studds where walls once were; workers were up in the ceiling, shovelling mud into plastic bags which were then dropped through the manhole. The kitchen was gutted and a grand piano sat sadly on it’s side. There were hundreds of plates, cups, baking dishes and cutlery that had to have the sticky blackness removed before they could be professionally cleaned and put into storage.

Volunteers of all ages squatted beside buckets, cleaning off hundreds of bottles of wine and beer. The stench was terrible- mud and rotting food, but the amazing volunteers didn’t shirk at doing anything and the huge pile of unsalvageable material grew on the riverside walk.

I saw a lot of faces I recognised from hospitality- Marilyn Domenech of Baguette sitting on a bucket washing plates. Others I recognised as wait-staff from other restaurants but didn’t know their names. Then there were just the regular people, people who popped in and out giving help where they could, whether an hour or all day. Fantastic to see so many young people too-obviously genYers get a bad rap sometimes; they were all so incredibly selfless.

David had no flood insurance, as he wasn’t able to get any-being on the river has it’s disadvantages, but he seems optimistic that Drift will live again. I hate to see people’s dreams washed away like that but looking at the damage, I just can’t imagine how it can happen without a massive amount of money.

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Herod to investigate deaths of first-born

If you don't understand the heading, read Matthew chap. 2 -- JR

A report on the flood disaster and climate change will be undertaken by an expert on the federal government's multi-party committee which is investigating ways to price carbon. Professor Will Steffen, a member of the climate change committee set up by the Gillard government in September last year, told AAP he was working on a report covering the floods.

This is the man who already believes that "climate change" made the floods worse. Just the man to do a nice, impartial report.

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Sculptor Sergio Redegalli defies 'bullies' and refuses to take down anti-burka mural



A SYDNEY artist whose anti-burka mural has infuriated left-wing and Islamic activists is vowing that the provocative artwork will stay in place despite death threats, abuse, a string of vandalism attacks, a violent weekend protest and a police request to remove it.

Newtown glass sculptor Sergio Redegalli has this week restored the mural painted outside his studio for more than the 40th time after dozens of graffiti and paint-bomb attacks by protesters who say it is racist and inflammatory.

In the latest incident last Sunday, a crowd of 50 activists hurled paint at the mural and then turned on police who had to call in reinforcements to restore order.

Seven men were arrested and charged with offences including resisting police, assaulting police and destroying or damaging property.

The charges will be heard in Newtown Local Court next month. Redegalli blames local left-wing groups, rather than Muslim activists, for the incident.

The sculptor, who is a well-known figure in inner-suburban Newtown, says he has since been visited by local police who asked him to take down the mural after learning of a threat to fire-bomb it.

He refuses to do so in the interests of free speech and public debate. "I'm not going to let the bullies win," Redegalli told The Australian yesterday. "I'm not doing it for pride (but because) I don't believe bullies have the right to stand over people and deny us our freedoms."

Redegalli painted the mural and slogan "Say no to burqas" on an exterior wall of his glassworks last September, after a local fashion designer received death threats over a plan to feature models wearing the traditional Islamic garment in a fashion parade.

The artist says his objective is to promote debate about the Islamic face veil, which he sees as a symbol of repression and violent extremism.

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Now we know what NSW Premier Keneally wanted to hide

TAXPAYERS could reap less than $1 billion from the power sale despite being promised an electricity sell-off worth $25 billion a decade ago.

In sensational evidence before the power sale inquiry yesterday, Treasury secretary Michael Schur revealed $1.2 billion of the $5.3 billion the Government claimed it would reap for the sale would go on debt alone to bail out two privatised power companies, Delta and Eraring.

He told the parliamentary inquiry, which Premier Kristina Keneally tried for weeks to shut down, that taxpayers would also be forced to spend $1.5 billion on a coal mine.

The Government will use the Cobbora mine near Dubbo in the state's Central West to supply cheap coal.

Another $600 million will be wiped from the state's coffers over the next four years in lost dividends and tax equivalents, Mr Schur told the inquiry. And the state's top Treasury official said taxpayers would also be liable to pay compensation to the private operators and hundreds of millions would be spent on project costs - wiping off another $300 million and leaving just $1.7 billion.

The Opposition Treasury spokesman Mike Baird claimed the Government could end up with as little as $400 million once all subsidies and costs were taken into account.

And there will be little relief from painful power bills. Professor Hugh Outhred of the University of NSW told the inquiry the sale would "at best put a minor downward pressure on prices."

Mr Shur had recommended a sell-off of the entire industry, not just the retailers, Energy Australia, Integral and Country Energy and the gentraders Eraring and Delta.

"The gentrader option is the next-best option available to the state for exactly the reason that we are having this discussion ... it does leave the state with residual risks," he told the inquiry.

Mr Schur said Treasury had envisaged Cobbora would be run by the private sector but he said their coal prices were too high. Without the Government agreeing to mine the coal more cheaply, the sale would have fallen short of the $5.3 billion it received.

"The high cost of coal would have a significant impact on the value," he said.

The mine would turn a profit and would eventually be sold, he said. Treasurer Eric Roozendaal's office was unable to say how much profit would be generated from the coal, which is of such inferior quality it can't be exported.

Mr Baird said it had become clear why eight Labor-aligned directors on the Eraring and Delta boards had walked out before the midnight sale, adding: "It is very clear ... that the deal is so bad that it is no wonder the directors resigned. We feared it was a charity give away but it is much, much worse."

Documents on the sale would be sought from Treasury. The Premier prorogued Parliament two months early and it was unclear if Treasury would be forced to supply documents. The inquiry will summons those directors who resigned to appear on Monday and call those still on boards of former state-owned power companies to appear on Friday.

Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell and Mr Baird will give evidence on Monday.

Mr Roozendaal last night defended the sale, saying by retiring debt and escaping future costs of new power plants the state was better off.

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Save or spill conflict for Wivenhoe Dam bosses

The dam expert who will help preside over the judicial inquiry into the southeast Queensland flood disaster has warned of a potential conflict of interest in the operator of Wivenhoe Dam's dual objectives of maintaining a water supply and releasing water in times of flood.

Phil Cummins told The Australian that the newly appointed commission would investigate whether SEQWater, operator of the dam, was compromised by its joint responsibility for water supply and flood mitigation.

Mr Cummins, one of the inquiry's two deputy commissioners who will assist judge Cate Holmes, said "every aspect" of the operation of the dam would be examined closely over the next couple of months. "I will keep an open mind about whether this is a good way to do it," he said of SEQWater's dual objectives. "I suspect it will be one of the inquiries that we will make."

His comments came as The Australian uncovered a 2004 report to the organisation Mr Cummins formerly headed, the Australian National Committee on Large Dams, warning that Wivenhoe Dam did not satisfy safety guidelines and had to be upgraded, with the addition of a new spillway on the dam wall.

However, SEQWater opted for a phased approach to the work. This meant that the first of two spillways was constructed in 2006 at a cost of $70 million and the remainder of the work postponed for "15 to 20 years".

The report said this was partly due to cost. "The staged upgrading allows flexibility to cater for increases to the flood estimates or freeboard requirements and cost savings to SEQWater over a single upgrade option," it said.

Questions have been raised about whether SEQWater held on to water for too long in the flood compartment of Wivenhoe Dam instead of releasing it prior to last week's flooding of Brisbane.

More than 80 per cent of the flood in the Brisbane River at its peak last Thursday was the direct result of a massive release of water from Wivenhoe on Tuesday at a peak rate of 645,000 megalitres a day, according to official data obtained by The Australian. The data shows that, without the unprecedented release, the flooding in Brisbane would have been minimal.

One of the most critical tasks for the commission will be to examine whether the operators at Wivenhoe retained water in the dam's flood compartment for too long, forcing the drastic release last Tuesday.

Wivenhoe Dam - built 80km out of the city after the 1974 floods - has a storage capacity of 1.165 million megalitres for drinking water, with space for a further two million megalitres for temporary floodwater storage.

Mr Cummins said it was "normal" for dams to have dual purposes of water storage and flood mitigation as this was the case in many locations around the world.

SEQWater was told in 2000 that the dam needed to increase its capacity in the face of dramatically revised rainfall predictions and heightened flood risk in the region.

According to the 2004 report to ANCOLD, completed by dam engineers including those still working at SEQWater, a completed two-stage upgrade would have reduced the possibility of flood by "five times the existing risk".

"Further investigations lead to the conclusion that it would be cost effective for SEQWater to adopt a two-stage upgrade to achieve full PMF (probable maximum flood) capacity," the report said.

The revelation will fuel concern about the management of the huge dam ahead of the disaster that has claimed 20 lives in southeast Queensland and caused massive destruction.

The political truce in Queensland over the response to the ongoing emergency shattered yesterday when the state opposition demanded that Premier Anna Bligh widen the terms of the judicial inquiry.

State Opposition Leader John-Paul Langbroek called on Ms Bligh to adopt the "catch-all" terms of reference of the royal commission into the 2009 Victorian bushfires, to allow the flood inquiry to pursue all possible lines.

Mr Langbroek, reversing the praise he had heaped on Ms Bligh only 24 hours earlier for keeping the public up to date about the flooding and relief efforts, said the Liberal National Party could no longer support the Premier because she had snubbed the opposition when framing the terms of reference to the inquiry.

Writing in The Australian today, Andrew Dragun, adjunct professor of economics at the Australian Rivers Institute of Griffith University, says the management of Wivenhoe ahead of the flooding in Brisbane was "dangerously inadequate".

The incomplete, two-stage upgrade of the Wivenhoe Dam is expected to be among the issues canvassed in the commission of inquiry. The upgrade was first mooted in 2000 and then again in 2003 after reports showed that, in a worst-case scenario, Wivenhoe could get twice the volume of water from its catchment than its existing spillway could handle. Modelling showed it could cause the dam wall to collapse under the pressure.

The first stage of the project, involving the construction of a $70m, 165m-wide spillway, was finished in 2006.

It was predicted to be able to manage a one-in-100,000-year flood, with the second stage increasing capacity even further and bringing the dam in line with Australian safety standards. The report said the staged upgrade would also allow for flexibility for increases to flood estimates and "cost savings to SEQWater over a single upgrade option".

"The two-staged upgrading will provide a significant reduction in flood risk (a reduction of five times the existing risk)," the report said.

As construction began on the first stage of the project, SEQWater said that once the new spillway was completed, further study would begin on when to start the second stage of the upgrade. It has yet to begin.

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Labour laws can hurt the weak

ONE of Julia Gillard's most substantial achievements under the Rudd Labor government was a significant re-regulation of the Australian labour market.

The anti-Work Choices campaign made much of the vulnerability of individual workers to unreasonable work demands by their employers. A perceived imbalance of power between employer and employee lay at the heart of the campaign. The answer has been to re-regulate workplaces so that strengthened representatives of workers (unions, in practice) and independent work tribunals can ensure that workers are treated fairly under amended workplace and industrial relations laws.

It is clearly true that individual workers are relatively powerless at work compared with their employers and that this can lead to exploitation and unfair treatment. But in the large majority of cases, this imbalance of power does not lead to bad outcomes for workers. The reason is that employers have a stake in their employees liking their conditions of work. Liked conditions lead to reduced turnover, easier recruitment, higher returns from the provision of training, greater willingness to be flexible in meeting variations in work needs, higher productivity and lower costs.

Since all workplaces differ from each other to some extent by virtue of the different people involved (as well as differences in technology, customers, suppliers, location and so on), imposing uniform standards is bound to reduce the capacity of each employer to tailor their work conditions in ways that best meets the needs of their businesses, including the needs of their employees.

Imposing uniform workplace rules reduces the scope for each enterprise to work out more effective arrangements for all the people involved.

Regulation is bound, through time, to reduce the productivity and competitiveness of businesses and their capacity to produce output, pay wages, earn profits, invest and expand, creating more job opportunities in the process.

A classic example of an outcome of socially regulated workplaces used to occur under the socialist system of worker-owned enterprises in former Yugoslavia. An unintended consequence of worker ownership and control was that existing staff were reluctant to set aside profits to expand their enterprise and employ more people, because their immediate wages would be less and they feared their future wages might be less if the expansion plans were unsuccessful. Laws had to be passed to compel enterprises to employ extra people from time to time.

A similar incentive arises under Australia's unfair dismissal laws. The more costly it is to dismiss an employee, the greater will be the costs that an employer will pay to vet the quality of people before they are hired, the fewer the people that will be hired (as well as being let go, of course), and the lower will be the pay that is affordable by the business if labour costs are to remain as before.

The members of the population who are particularly disadvantaged by unfair dismissal laws are those with the least qualifications, least skills and least work experience. These include school-leavers, women returning to work after a spell of child rearing, the long-term unemployed, refugees, and migrants who enter Australia without a firm offer of employment.

In western Europe, the degree of job protection enjoyed by long-established employees in an enterprise is so great that new entrants to the labour force (young people and migrants, in particular) and the unemployed face long periods of precarious, temporary employment at very low rates of pay before they can enter (or re-enter) reasonable career paths. European-style job protection leads to low rates of economic and employment growth, high unemployment rates, and very high youth and migrant unemployment rates. Fairness for insiders (the large majority of workers in long-term employment attachments with their particular employer) is promoted at the expense of the minority of outsiders seeking to gain such jobs.

Has the labour market really become fairer overall as a result?

The ageing of the Australian population in future decades is likely to be associated with substantial increases in dependency in the society (too many retirees and not enough workers to support them). An important contribution to solving this problem can be made if older people are willing to continue in work, at least part time.

A reasonable income can now be received by a retiree who works fewer hours but also receives a part pension. A business able to construct packages for older workers that reduce the business's labour costs, on the one hand, but that are also attractive to retirees, will prosper, helping society to solve what may otherwise be a substantial problem.

Is it fair if a business pays retirees at a lower hourly rate of pay (matching the lower productivity that results from their old age) if this benefits the firm, the retirees and the community as a whole?

The truth is fairness is a very difficult concept to apply to regulating the labour market without resulting in bad unintended consequences. The alternative to regulation is to rely on the fact that businesses have to pay the market rate to their workers if they are to stay in business.

Further, because people compare the net advantages of different sorts of jobs, a sensible business will try to tailor its conditions of work to suit the preferences of the people it wishes to employ. A sensible business will wish to remove conditions of work that are costly to it and on which the people it wishes to hire place little value. By doing so, it will be able to pay higher wages, if warranted.

Regulations to protect individual workers from unfair treatment may have adverse unintended consequences for working Australians more broadly. A balance must be struck that does not cost the broader community heavily. Excessive labour market regulation has cost Australians heavily in the past.

As Gary Banks, chairman of the Productivity Commission, recently said: "If we are to secure Australia's productivity potential into the future, the regulation of labour markets cannot remain a no-go area for evidence-based policy making".

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