Juliar Says That A Carbon Tax Will Make The Ski Season Longer

We read:

"Julia Gillard has told Labor MPs to warn voters that a failure to back a carbon tax will lead to more bushfires and droughts as well as coastal inundation and shorter skiing seasons.

Source

After she broke her promise not to legislate for a carbon tax, it became customary for many Australian conservatives to call Julia Gillard "Juliar". I refrained from doing that on the grounds that a broken promise is not quite a lie. Now, however, she has done it: A barefaced lie that is not even plausible.

Even if we accept as gospel every word that the Warmists say, there is no way any conceivable Australian legislation would have any perceptible effect on the world climate -- simply because Australia's carbon emissions are such a small fraction of the world total.

Those who have done the math generally come up with one hundredth of one degree or thereabouts as the effect on world temperature of the proposed legislation. And that microscopic change would have NO effect on the ski season or anything else

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is very dismissive of "Earth Hour"




Arrogant female bureaucrats cost the taxpayer another $67m

They thought that they could get away with destroying hundreds of businesses and creating huge financial losses on the basis of mere speculation: One of the grosser examples of bureaucratic irresponsibility and abuse of power. They are all the more hateful because they paid $120 million years ago to the "big" guy whom they hurt but thought that they could stiff all the the little guys by insisting on long drawn out and expensive court action. Luckily, a legal firm came to the rescue on a contingency basis. Their costs will be a pretty penny too.

I have commented on the scum previously. Note that I am no fan of "alternative" medicine. As you can see here I think that there is too much quackery even in conventional medicine. But my attachment to the importance of evidence is obviously not shared by the TGA and the bitches who seem to run it -- depite scrutiny of evidence being their brief

And the two devious feminazis at the heart of the TGA action -- Fiona Cumming and Rita Maclachlan -- are apparently still in their jobs! Their involvement in the destruction of records should in fact lead to criminal charges being laid against them

CUSTOMERS of Pan Pharmaceuticals who sued the Federal Government after the company was shut down have been awarded $67.5 million in compensation.

The settlement, approved by Federal Court Justice Flick today, was negotiated without admissions of wrongdoing by the Federal Government, said Andrew Thorpe, legal adviser to the class of 170 former customers of Pan whose businesses suffered losses as a result of the company's closure.

"However, it does end an eight-year saga that commenced on 28 April 2003, when the Government shut down Pan Pharmaceuticals without notice," he said outside court.

"On that day, hundreds of people lost their jobs, $350 million was wiped off the Sydney stock exchange and scores of business, customers and service providers of Pan were very badly affected."

In March 2003, the Government's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) suspended Pan's licence after excessive amounts of some ingredients were found in its Travacalm tablets.

In 2008, the 170 sponsors, customers and creditors of Pan, as well as distributors and retailers of its products, filed the class action.

SOURCE





The Leftist approach to school discipline triumphs again

The ostrich model

SHE should be too young to know what fear is, especially at that place where little girls should expect to feel safe. School. Yet this nine-year-old, who used to skip to school and drag her mum out of the door to get there on time, has needed her mum sitting next to her in class after a series of alleged horrific sexual assaults by a classmate and his gang of friends, reported The Daily Telegraph.

One attack occurred in the school toilets. Both the girl and her attacker were just seven at the time.

The regional Sydney school has not expelled or suspended the boy, he has received no professional help and his only punishment was to be kept out of the playground for a time.

The lack of action has angered other parents whose own children have allegedly been bullied, intimidated and punched by him.

The little girl's mother, 39, has found it almost impossible to get her into another school because she has special needs. After a two-year fight with the school and education authorities, she said she was now desperate. "I am trying so hard to be a good mum and fight for my daughter but I need help," she said yesterday.

Her daughter had struggled to tell her mum what had happened because she suffers from learning difficulties.

Her mother said that, within a couple of weeks of term starting in 2009, her daughter's enthusiasm for school had ended. "She would come home from school and cry. This was not normal so I asked her what was going on. She would just shake her head and say 'I got no friends'," her mother said. Her daughter would beg her: "Please mummy, I just want to go home, please mummy."

When the mother asked the headmistress what was going on, she was told they were "just crocodile tears".

Then one of the girl's young friends grabbed his own mother outside school one day and, clearly distressed, said: "I saw something." That evening, the little girl reluctantly told her mum what had happened. "[He] hurts my bottom but I'm not allowed to tell you because he will kill me," the girl said. "He hurts me right here mum and he shows the boys."

Her mother discovered that her daughter had been lured to secluded areas within the playground, including the toilets, where she was violently sexually assaulted more than once by the boy, who got his young mates to watch and laugh at her. She was also punched, teased and choked. "He had her so fearful and he manipulated her. He told her she was not allowed to have any friends and that she had to wait for him," the mother said. "[My daughter], in her simple, fragile mind, listened to him because she feared him."

The school notified the police and what was then the Department of Community Services. The police could do nothing as the boy was under the age of criminal responsibility, which is 10. DOCS removed the boy from his mother and he now lives with other relatives.

While he went to school every day, the little girl's mother paid for her to attend a private school last year.

One day her teacher gave the class a task after talking to them about what "no" meant. They were asked to write about when they should get a "no" feeling. The girl drew a harrowing picture, which shocked the teacher who spoke to her mother about it. That picture tells a thousand words. It shows the boy with his "evil eyes" dragging a crying girl to the toilet block as other boys watch.

SOURCE





Experts undermine government's climate policy

APART from settling on a carbon tax for five years as an interim measure before introducing a flexibly priced emissions trading scheme, the other big changes the Gillard government has sought to make to Kevin Rudd's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme have been to reframe climate change politics and rhetoric.

Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and Greg Combet have recast their own position and logic after deciding the former prime minister's advocacy of action on climate change as the "greatest moral and economic challenge of our time" relied too heavily on the moral and not enough on the economic.

As a result, much of the positive debate from the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Climate Change Minister has been framed in economic terms. The negative, emotional side of climate change politics is no longer just to run scare campaigns about rising water levels and killer storms but also to portray Tony Abbott as a climate change denier, an extremist and scaremonger.

Although Labor MPs are still being urged in their "talking points" to talk about the potential damage to the Great Barrier Reef, the Labor leaders are concentrating on economic arguments, compensation and the Opposition Leader's denial of a Liberal free-market tradition.

This approach is designed to appear reasonable in the face of "oddball" extremist opposition to a carbon tax to fight global warming and to reassure households and business that compensation will be financial and not just a warm feeling of self-satisfaction about saving the planet.

In the past week, Gillard, Swan and Combet have talked about generous tax cuts for middle and low-income earners, the Opposition's plan to rip away these tax cuts and a fundamental market-based reform to reduce carbon pollution.

Swan said on many occasions the Coalition did "not believe in the power of free markets any more" and Gillard accused Abbott of giving up the Liberal tradition of assisting good economic reform from opposition, while arguing Australia had to act on a carbon price or lose out to countries that were reforming their economies.

Yet three of the government's most senior advisers on the issue - economics professor Ross Garnaut, productivity commissioner Gary Banks and Climate Change Department chief Blair Comley - have expressed views that undermine the government's new argument on free markets, compensation share and international competitiveness.

Garnaut, whose suggestion of adopting the income tax cuts to compensate for carbon tax price rises as part of the Henry tax reforms was promoted by Gillard for days before Swan knocked it on the head yesterday, has suggested in his latest discussion paper that a greater part of the carbon tax revenue be used to develop renewable energy sources.

Garnaut's suggestion was pursued even more enthusiastically by the Greens, who suggested funding for renewables be increased four or fivefold. Given the cost of the Henry tax cuts for middle income earners and potential blowout in renewable energy funding from a finite revenue source, Swan killed off the tax cuts.

Although the government allowed Garnaut's tax-cut suggestion to run, it knew all along the cuts were unsustainable and actually pushed up the taxes of some middle-income earners.

As Swan said yesterday: "The two-tiered rate that was put forward in the Henry report . . . actually causes increases in taxation for some middle-income groups and some low-income earners. So I said that is not necessarily ideally the way to go." Thus, the bursting of the Garnaut thought bubble on Henry's tax cuts.

The Productivity Commission chief, who has been tasked to work out where Australia stands on a global scale as far as carbon reduction, trade competitiveness and economic efficiency are concerned, dealt an even harsher blow to government hopes of economic justification for a carbon tax.

As well, Banks undermined Gillard's claims about China's efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions by pointing out that countries took steps for economic efficiency that had the welcome by-product of reducing greenhouse gas emissions but that should not necessarily be counted towards a nation's efforts to cut carbon output. After an initial stumble on China's closing of coal-fired power stations, Gillard recovered to admit they were replacing them with more efficient coal-fired power stations but Banks's point undercuts the logic that Australia has to act to match China's actions.

More seriously for the government, Banks declared: "Crucially - and this point seems not to be widely understood - it will not be efficient from a global perspective (let alone a domestic one) for a carbon-intensive economy, such as ours, to abate as much as other countries that are less reliant on cheap, high-emission sources.

"It's common sense that achieving any given level of abatement is likely to be costlier in a country with a comparative advantage in fossil fuels," Banks said.

"An appropriate carbon price for Australia cannot be readily inferred from cross-country estimates of the abatement costs of existing schemes," he said. Banks has signalled his report is not going to be easy to complete nor will it contain the information and justifications many may hope.

And as Swan and Combet cited various sources backing their economic judgment on a carbon price as a free-market mechanism there was a sobering assessment from the head of the Climate Change Department sitting on the department's website.

In June last year, three weeks before Kevin Rudd was dumped - after dumping his own emissions trading scheme - the then deputy secretary of the department declared that "the key point I want to make is that carbon markets are regulatory interventions".

"At one level this is so obvious that it need not be said," the former senior Treasury official said, but he was struck by some comments about carbon markets that he wanted to correct. "The first is that carbon markets must be the right answer as it is a 'market' solution, often said in such a way as to imply that markets are naturally occurring beasts.

"Carbon markets may be the right answer, primarily due to the way in which they harness information and utilise decentralised processes, but they only continue to exist supported by institutions," Comley said.

The government may have given up on Rudd's moral imperative on a carbon price and embarked on an economic campaign, but the finite revenue from the carbon price and the huge and growing demands for a share, plus the increasingly wobbly arguments about overseas action and "free markets" suggests there's just as many hard yards ahead.

SOURCE





Ferguson calls Greens basket-weavers and labels leader 'soapbox' Bob

RESOURCES Minister Martin Ferguson has attacked Labor's minority government partner the Greens as "basket-weavers" and taken a personal swipe at leader Bob Brown.

Mr Ferguson described the Greens leader as "soapbox Bob Brown" and hit out at his politics over the minerals resource rent tax and the government's proposed carbon pricing regime.

The minister said Senator Brown's push for a more punitive tax regime on the resources sector was a short-term solution, and accused him of setting aside economic realities in a pitch for votes on carbon pricing.

The Gillard government has granted mining companies major concessions in its revamped mining tax, the details of which were finalised yesterday. But with the Coalition opposing the deal, Labor must win crossbench support to get it through parliament.

Mr Ferguson said the Greens' push for a tougher policy position on the mining tax would cripple investment and force it offshore.

"Of course we're going to have people jumping up and down and soapbox Bob Brown, in terms of (saying) it's never enough in terms of taxation," he told ABC radio.

"Do you put in place a taxation system which means for a short term period you get a huge jump in taxation, but you stifle investment because capital is footloose and (there are) plenty of opportunities in places such as Africa? They're the choices companies make."

Mr Ferguson said if the government's mining tax was not supported in the parliament then "Bob Brown better start explaining to the Australian community, as should Tony Abbott, how you're going to actually get the revenue to cut company taxation, how you're going to get the revenue to assist small business".

He also attacked the Greens for engaging in populism over the government's proposed carbon tax, suggesting they were living in a fantasy land where people had no jobs and weaved baskets under trees.

"It's easier again to play to the gallery and say we should have $60, $70, $80 per tonne, pull something out of the air and suggest it without actually modelling the potential implications on the Australian community, and the standard of living that we expect," he said.

"We can all sit under the tree and weave baskets with no jobs, if that's what some people in the NGOs and the Greens want."

He played down the government's political concession to credit mining companies for increases in state royalty payments under the MRRT, saying state leaders knew there were upper limits on how much royalties could be raised.

"I think (WA Premier) Colin Barnett understands, there is an absolute limit to how much he can take in terms of royalties. Yes, you can beat the drum and play to the gallery. He's done well in terms of the recent grants commission process," he said.

Mr Ferguson said the MRRT was a crucial reform to address the impacts of the nation's two-speed economy, which were evident even in Western Australia, where the state's tourism sector was unable to get sufficient workers because of the high wages on offer from the mining industry.

SOURCE





Hospital was too busy to treat Glenn's earache and he died

WHEN Glenn Rubbo, 40, arrived at Lismore Base Hospital he thought he was suffering from a bad earache. Six hours later he was found lying motionless in the hospital carpark. Within 24 hours, he was brain dead.

Police are investigating the case after details emerged that the hospital's emergency department was over-run with patients on March 1.

Glenn's aunt Rosie said she had sat with her nephew for two hours on the night he died. He was numb down the left side of his body and dizzy when he arrived by ambulance about 8.30pm. "The emergency department was very busy," she said. "I remember he couldn't hear properly out of his ear so he was yelling and asking for a drink of water but he couldn't even get that."

Before Rosie left the hospital about 10.30pm, she asked hospital staff when her nephew was going to be treated and was told there were 11 people before him.

The hospital informed the family in the early morning that Glenn had suffered a stroke in the carpark.

Glenn's dad Ernie, who lives in Wollongong, arrived too late to speak with his son, who suffered from a muscle disorder. "The specialist said if Glenn had been seen in the first two hours he might be with us today," Ernie Rubbo said.

Late last year, Lismore Base Hospital emergency department staff told a public meeting they had been forced to "shuffle" patients around beds because of over-crowding. The department allegedly crammed 31,000 patients into its 14 beds last year. Both major parties have refused to fund an $80 million upgrade of the hospital in far northern NSW.

SOURCE






Note: I have two other blogs covering Australian news. They are more specialized so are not updated daily but there are updates on both most weeks. See QANTAS/Jetstar for news on Qantas failings and Australian police news for news on police misbehaviour

A public service broadcaster propagates some strange economics

On the ABC "Green" site, unsurprisingly. The writer obviously has some grasp of economics but makes some elementary blunders. Take the first sentence in the excerpt below: If that were true, why are forests and stands of trees bought and sold?

And take the last paragraph reproduced below, the claim that burning down cities would benefit the GNP. It is an old fallacy. The writer has obviously never read Bastiat. In summary, the available economic energies (labour etc.) would not change. It would produce much the same in sum with or without a conflagration. Instead of building new houses (say), it would have to rebuild old ones. There would be no necessary impact on GNP at all -- but there would of course be a great loss of assets. See also here for a another refutation of this old fallacy

I suspect that the writer just liked the idea of burning down houses. Greenie forest management policies frequently accomplish just that -- via their opposition to bushfire prevention

A tree growing in a forest has no standing in economics. As far as conventional economics is concerned, it has no "economic" role. Of course, it provides a vital role in the earth's life support system, but this is of interest to scientists and not economists.

As soon as the tree is cut down, it acquires status in economics. Its significance grows as the tree is broken up into smaller components, such as paper or match sticks. The more it is destroyed, the more important it becomes to economic calculations.

Gross National Product (GNP)

Economic and political life revolves around the GNP or Gross National Product. GNP is the measure of financial transactions within a country's economy - the total flow of goods and services produced by the economy over a specified time (usually a year) - and it is derived from calculating the total income of a country's residents, whether the incomes come from production in that country or from production abroad. There is also a calculation of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but this distinction is not very important for the main argument here: the inadequacy of conventional economics to take the environment into account.

The GNP is simply a measure of financial transactions; it makes no value judgment on whether the transactions were socially useful or what impact there may have been on the environment.

Crime and car accidents increase the GNP because of the increased work for police, ambulances and prisons. A reduction in crime reduces the GNP. Similarly, a good way to increase Australian GNP would be to burn down Sydney and Melbourne each year. GNP would grow because of the extra work for fire brigades, undertakers, architects, builders, and plumbers. There would be little to show for all this annual effort - but there would be a higher GNP.

More HERE





Thousands of angry ordinary Australian​s turn up to an anti-tax rally -- and the usual Green/Left smears begin

Jo Nova

In Canberra YESTERDAY over 3,000 people went out of their way, coming in on 30 buses from more than 1000 km away, to let Julia Gillard know that Australians do not want her Carbon Tax. The news made every major broadcast for several minutes. Protesters were referred to as “climate skeptics” (mostly).

Other rallies around Australia got hundreds of people even though they were organized in a hurry, with no advertising, and with no pre-formed coalition of networked groups. There was a very good crowd at the Perth rally on a hot day during business hours, and one heckler (John Brookes). The mood was striking.

This is random shoe-string grassroots action at the last minute and look what it can achieve. It’s just beginning.

The photo gallery at the Australian makes it clear how decidedly normal most people were and what their main messages are. This is mainstream Australia rising up, yet already the Big-Green-PR machine is at work, doing all it can to deny the undeniable.

As I drove home in Perth after our rally, ABC news-radio didn’t mention that 3,000 people had gathered, nor that protests had happened all over the country, they may have said that earlier, but all I heard was how Tony Abbot was under a “cloud” for having spoken at a rally with “extremists” — The Telegraph headlined it too.

Labor MP Nick Champion, Labor Party backbencher, gets press time for his free shot at calling them “extremists“. It’s just another form of name-calling, and if the media had any standards they would not propagate the namecalling without demanding he substantiate it. (Do write and tell me if any journalist asked Champion to explain why it’s extreme to ask for major policies to be put to an election first, or why we ought to expect some achievable outcome when we pay billions — other than earning brownie-points for the UN). Does the word “extreme” mean anything?

Fans of the big scare campaign are masters at avoiding the substantive issues, and filling the available media time with trivialities and name calling. The protesters are obviously angry ordinary Australians. That there are a few odd people or marginal hanger-on-ers among thousands is predictable, and green rally’s have their own variety.

The “witch” and “bitch” signs were unfortunate. The unstatesmanlike anger expressed in those messages is a byproduct of the long suppression of these voices. That anger needs better direction. That will come.

But as much as Labor might wish that today’s rally was a minority group of extremists, this is the start of the pendulum swinging. I stopped to shop at a butchers on the way home inadvertently wearing a No Carbon Tax shirt, and the business-man’s eyes lit up “Were you at the protest?” He’s angry and he’s one of tens of thousands who couldn’t be there today.

Many people I spoke to after the rally were keen to help. We need to start networking, with lists. The message was that many people wanted to put posters up and spread the word.

On another front, many businesses are still afraid to speak out against the Carbon Tax (what business — apart from solar and wind — would benefit from it?) But Bluescope Steel’s Graham Kraehe is pulling no punches. Finally, at least some businesses are stepping forward. If they all said the obvious, the carbon tax would be dead tomorrow.

SOURCE





Leftist group attacks broadcaster over climate

How much of the CO2 in the atmosphere is the product of human activity is moot. Molecules don't have fingerprints on them. There have been much higher levels of CO2 in prehistoric times so the best guess is that human activities are unimportant.

ACTIVIST group GetUp is taking on Sydney shock jock Alan Jones, demanding the broadcaster withdraw comments disputing the science of human-induced climate change.

The organisation is launching proceedings with the broadcast watchdog, demanding Jones publicly and immediately revoke what it calls fabricated statements.

"It's wrong for ultra-conservative shock-jocks like Mr Jones to deliberately mislead their audience," GetUp's acting national director Sam Mclean said today. "We have standards in this country which demand the truth from our broadcasters."

Action is also planned against another Macquarie Radio broadcaster, Chris Smith, organiser of today's anti-carbon tax rally in Canberra.

Under the Australian Communications and Media Authority's (ACMA) code of practice, broadcasters are required to make reasonable efforts to ensure that current affairs material, presented as factual, is reasonably supportable and to correct errors of fact at the earliest opportunity.

GetUp has set its sights on Jones over his comments that nature produces nearly all of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Jones has said that human beings produce .001 per cent of the carbon dioxide in the air.

GetUp argues that statement is factually inaccurate and prominent climate scientists have agreed that humans have contributed at least 28 per cent of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

"Alan Jones' complete disregard for providing a balanced view of climate change on his show is unacceptable," Mr Mclean said, adding that his organisation's research indicated the broadcaster had not interviewed any climate scientists who believe in the concept of human-induced climate change. "This is completely unhealthy for public discourse and a perfect example of why the ACMA code was created in the first place."

SOURCE




Australia tops index ranking for maintaining strong fiscal balance

Among other things, Australia doesn't print great gobs of new money, unlike Britain and the USA

A NEW study names Australia and New Zealand the leaders in "fiscal responsibility" among top industrial nations, while the United States plumbs the lower rankings at number 28.

The Sovereign Fiscal Responsibility Index, developed at Stanford University, said mounting indebtedness and budget deficits put the United States in a class with troubled economies like Ireland (number 29) and Italy (27).

But Australia and New Zealand, followed closely by Estonia, Sweden, and China, stand at the top for their capacity to maintain strong fiscal balances decades into the future.

"There is great potential for a fiscal crisis in many countries, including the United States, if they don't start addressing the structural deficit challenges that lie ahead," said David Walker, the former chief US government auditor who oversaw the creation of the index.

"The index also shows that countries that engage in dramatic and comprehensive reforms can dramatically improve their fiscal prospects," said Mr Walker. "New Zealand ranks number two after engaging in such reforms in the early 1990s when it faced a currency crisis."

The SFRI weighed 34 members of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development and the four rising "BRIC" economies - Brazil, Russia, India and China - on a mix of current fiscal strength, fiscal sustainability over the next 40 years, and transparency in fiscal governance.

Unsurprisingly, countries with high reserves, low debt and balanced budgets generally ranked high. Powerful economies with high sovereign debt levels like the US, Japan, Germany, and France were all in the bottom third. Britain, which has slashed spending to work its way out of fiscal crisis, was ninth.

Supported by Mr Walker, who was US comptroller general from 1998-2008, the study is likely to feed into pressures on the Barack Obama administration to cut spending in order to move toward a balanced budget.

Indeed, Mr Walker cited the conclusions of a recent high-level panel, the National Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Commission, to highlight the low US rank in the index. In January, the commission recommended a mix of budget cuts, tax increases, and deep reforms to programs like social security to address the government's troubling long-term deficit outlook.

If the commission's conclusions were calculated into the US outlook, it would rank eighth on the index, Walker said. "The US needs to engage in comprehensive and timely reforms to restore fiscal responsibility and sustainability and to avoid a debt crisis that would be felt around the world," the study said.

"Countries such as Australia and New Zealand that have implemented strong fiscal rules have seen declining debt levels and reasonable government spending." "They reveal the power of good fiscal governance."

SOURCE





ALP goes to water as boats threaten sovereignty

THE Gillard government has made a spectacular mess of policy towards illegal immigrants and is now in danger of forfeiting a key element of Australian national sovereignty.

The key to the boatpeople phenomenon is to realise that it is not about refugees. It is instead a determined illegal immigration. Piece by piece, the illegal immigrant industry is bending back the Gillard government, breaking its will and breaking its policies.

It was the Rudd government that changed policy decisively in August 2008. It closed the offshore processing centre in Nauru and abolished temporary protection visas.

As a result, people-smuggling to Australia got back into business big time. In the 2 1/2 years since the government changed policy, nearly 11,000 boatpeople have arrived. Last year, asylum applications to Australia increased by 76 per cent. Among industrialised countries overall there was a decline. In 2009, while the global number of applications was static, they increased in Australia by 30 per cent. With the end of the monsoon season, there have been some six boats this month alone, carrying more than 330 people in total.

The government deals with this matter in a consistently dishonest fashion, giving up morsels of information only under pressure. Here are some facts. In the year to August 2010, some 45 per cent of illegal immigrant boatpeople had spent more than three months outside their country of origin. Of this 45 per cent, some 88 per cent had spent more than a year outside their country of origin.

In other words, they were not fleeing directly from persecution. Many Afghans who have come to Australia have never lived in Afghanistan, or at least not for a very long time. Life in Australia is infinitely preferable to Pakistan, but deciding to migrate to Australia is not the same as being a refugee.

The vast majority of the world's refugees will never achieve permanent resettlement in a foreign country. Nor does the refugee convention envisage that they should. Rather, they should be protected as near to home as possible until they can safely return.

Everything the government tells you about this matter is likely to be a wrinkle on the facts, a spin, an angle, and it is likely to contain much less than meets the eye.

For example, Julia Gillard went to the election promising to turn back the boats and set up a regional refugee processing centre in East Timor. There is little prospect of that centre ever coming into existence and no prospect of it ever having an effect on the illegal immigrant trade.

Recently, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen trumpeted an agreement with Afghanistan that would allow failed asylum applicants to be returned. The problem was the Afghan government thought it meant no such thing.

So, how many failed Afghan asylum-seekers have been returned against their will since 2007? Absolutely none. How many Afghans have gone back voluntarily? The answer is five.

More than 80 per cent of illegal immigrants arriving by boat come with no documents, yet nearly all need documents to get to the country they take the boat from. This naturally makes security checks extremely difficult. It also underlines what everyone in the field knows already, that the entire process of granting someone refugee status is almost completely subjective and easily scammed. There is a whole industry based on learning the right answers to questions Australian officials ask. In the first nine months of last year, more than 40 per cent of Afghans were rejected as refugees in their primary assessment but after all appeals were exhausted 96 per cent were accepted. Yet in the same period, some 9577 Afghans applied offshore to come to Australia as refugees and only 951 were accepted and given visas.

What is happening on Christmas Island exactly parallels what has happened in Europe in the past couple of decades. A determined illegal immigration presented itself as an asylum issue and gradually beat back the will of European governments to enforce control of their borders. This determined illegal immigration often used extravagant protest and even self-harm techniques to engage European compassion.

And it worked, just as it is working on Christmas Island. Bowen fatuously declaims that no one engaging in riots and breakouts will benefit from their actions.

Exactly the reverse is true. The government has effectively surrendered its policy and moved hundreds of people to mainland Australia. The Age newspaper obediently called for the end of mandatory detention.

Here are three other lies from the government. It says mandatory detention is not meant as a deterrent. Yet when, in April last year, it suspended asylum applications by Sri Lankans and Afghans, it was precisely to achieve a deterrent effect. Since the government now will not send any Afghans home, this is the only deterrent. The illegal immigrants know this and are whittling it away.

Second, Bowen, who recites cliches like a metronome, keeps talking about "an international solution for an international problem", by which he means the Bali process. But we have had co-operation, often expensively bought, on this issue from our neighbours for many years.

What changed is that Australia put the ultimate prize of permanent immigration to this country back on the table for people-smugglers to sell. It is an Australian problem and the only solution is in Australia's hands: no permanent resettlement in Australia for those who arrive illegally.

Finally, Bowen actually slanders the Howard government for its compassion. John Howard stopped the boats with his Nauru processing centre because illegal immigrants came to believe that going to Nauru would not get them to Australia. Once the trade in boats stopped, Howard then generously let the remaining people on Nauru come here. That is not remotely like Christmas Island where everyone knows if they get there they get to stay in Australia.

Once the government caves in on mandatory detention, as it surely will soon enough (if by no other means than speeding the process up), the numbers coming to Australia illegally will increase by the thousands.

With chain family migration this will be tens of thousands of people self-selecting to come here, not being selected by our program (which I have always argued should be bigger).

That is a catastrophic loss of Australian sovereignty and a comprehensive failure by the Gillard government.

SOURCE

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG comments on the "No Carbon Tax" rally and is amazed that Leftists call for civility -- in the light of their own appalling track record in that department





Freedom of speech risks being silenced by NSW Crime Commission

They are after people who have blown the whistle on their improper practices

Should journalists be free to write articles critical of government agencies and keep confidential their sources? The highly secretive NSW Crime Commission thinks not. It is fighting an investigation by the Police Integrity Commission into its operations.

Two journalists at The Sydney Morning Herald, Linton Besser and Dylan Welch, wrote articles critical of the Crime Commission and its dealing with criminals, which the paper published. The commission wants to seize the reporters' mobile phones and SIM cards, presumably to discover their sources and to deter further disclosure. If they fail to co-operate, the reporters face being in contempt of court and run the risk of going to prison.

Freedom of speech has no meaning if governments and their agencies are above public criticism and being accountable. To be credible, criticisms must be soundly based. This involves journalists investigating the matter, speaking to a range of people, collecting information, cross-checking the information, drawing reasonable inferences and forming an experienced view, often within a short space of time. No self-respecting journalist or media organisation wants to publish anything that is not soundly based.

In the real world, few can afford to be disclosed as whistleblowers. For most the toll on their lives, careers and family is too great. But off-the-record conversations with journalists, which are not in breach of the law, may lead to a line of inquiry that reveals or confirms the truth. Such sources need to be kept confidential, otherwise they will dry up.

The recently enacted Federal Evidence Amendment (Journalists Privilege) Act provides for disclosure of a source if a court is satisfied that having regard to the issues to be determined in the proceedings before it, the public interest in the disclosure of the identity of the source outweighs:

(a) any likely adverse effect on the source and anyone else; and

(b) the public interest in the communication of facts and opinion to the public by the media and the ability of the media to access the sources of facts.

The act is totally unsatisfactory. The disclosure exception is too broadly based and lacks any certainty. A source gets no comfort from knowing that disclosure depends upon a court ultimately deciding whether disclosure is in the public interest. The source is not even a party to the court proceedings - how can he or she be effectively represented (and who pays for that)?

The act should be amended immediately to provide that disclosure should only be ordered where national security is at stake.

At the end of the day journalists write an article which may be published in part or whole by the media. The article is in the public domain and everyone is able to examine every sentence, every word and every comma. Then, under our freedom of speech, everyone is free to state publicly whether the article is inaccurate, misleading or unfair.

It is no mean feat to criticise publicly government agencies, such as the NSW Crime Commission which probably, as a result, has a secret dossier on the journalists concerned. The commission is immensely powerful with extraordinary powers, including phone-tapping, collecting information and searching your home without you ever knowing. It wants to know everything about anyone it selects, including their family and friends.

While the commission wants to investigate and know everything about everyone else, it wants the public to know little or nothing about it. Justifying its secretive position and extraordinary powers as necessary to protect us from "them", it takes only a short time before there is an apprehension that we need protection from it.

In addressing accountability of such government agencies, the first question is whether its extraordinary powers are necessary, and to the extent any is, what conditions should be met before being exercised (unless this is addressed first, any form of accountability is frequently too limited and too late). Having first contained any problems in this way, it is necessary to address the culture of the agency and to get that right on an ongoing basis. Once those two things are done, you can address the most meaningful form of accountability for the agency concerned.

The media is and will remain a most effective means of accountability. Journalists play an essential role in the freedom of speech. If you silence them by silencing their sources, you silence freedom of speech, and thereby seriously jeopardise the rule of law in Australia.

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'Real' surgery waiting lists may grow worse

Barry O'Farrell warned yesterday that the waiting lists for elective surgery in hospitals are likely to be much longer under a Coalition government because of the "dishonest" benchmarks the Labor government uses.

The Opposition Leader promised to reveal the true number of people on the waiting lists and provide an extra 13,000 operations over four years if the Coalition is elected on Saturday. He said a Coalition government would axe the directive that stops doctors listing people who will wait more than a year for treatment but, in the short-term, that was likely to mean the waiting lists are longer.

"We want to ensure that we have certainty about the numbers, certainty about how long they're waiting, so that we can ensure that every taxpayer dollar going into the health system is spent wisely," Mr O'Farrell said.

The opposition health spokeswoman, Jillian Skinner, said she had "no idea" of the real waiting list figures. "Labor doesn't even count everybody," she said.

Mrs Skinner said the Coalition could be provide figures that were worse than expected. "In the short-term, yes [the list] may go up if we uncover lies that have been perpetrated to the public by Labor because they pretended those people don't exist," Mrs Skinner said.

She said the waiting lists for elective surgery tended to be the longest at major tertiary hospitals. Westmead experienced the longest wait, although the situation was not confined to the city. "The current [official] list is around 66,000," she said.

Mrs Skinner said waiting lists were important planning tools to help hospitals meet demand.

"By publishing the real waiting lists and real waiting times, hospital managers and clinicians will be able to more effectively plan how often operating theatres need to be available, how many theatre staff are needed and how many intensive-care and ward beds are required," Mrs Skinner said.

Prominent surgeon Denis King said the method of calculating waiting lists needed to be more transparent. "I think, in a number of instances, we should be better assessing waiting times," Dr King said.

Mr O'Farrell and Mrs Skinner were at St George Private Hospital where they promised $72 million in funding to allow 13,000 extra operations to be performed.

Later, Mr O'Farrell addressed Italian senior citizens at a concert in Burwood. Using Italian words for police, schools and trains, Mr O'Farrell received a rousing reception after his attempts to converse in Italian with the compere, who congratulating him on an improvement on last year's attempt.

SOURCE

Stalinist hospital statistics in NSW

Completely unreliable

MASSIVE discrepancies in how public hospitals account for patients needing less urgent elective surgery have prompted a review of the rules for allocating people to politically sensitive waiting lists.

Half of all patients having less urgent surgery at Campbelltown Hospital receive their operation the same day they join the waiting list, according to official figures that critics say undermine the integrity of hospital performance statistics.

At Royal Prince Alfred and Concord hospitals, which until January fell under the same administration as Campbelltown, 28 per cent of the so-called category 3 patients - who may safely wait up to a year for their operation according to government guidelines - spent less than 24 hours on the waiting list, dramatically reducing the hospitals' average wait time.

But the proportion was negligible at comparable large hospitals, with 2 per cent or less of category 3 patients being admitted within a day at St George, Westmead, Nepean and John Hunter hospitals.

A deputy director-general of NSW Health, Tim Smyth, said the difference was attributable to operations performed in multiple stages - such as cataract treatment, in vitro fertilisation or the insertion and removal of bone pins - where the patient needs to recover from the first surgery before having the second.

Dr Smyth said there were inconsistencies between hospitals in whether such patients rejoined the waiting list. At Campbelltown, Royal Prince Alfred and Concord, Dr Smyth said, a software default meant many patients were not relisted until the day of their subsequent surgery. As well, Dr Smyth said, individual hospitals and surgeons varied in how soon they deemed a patient ready for their next procedure.

The effect of the variations is evident in average wait times for category 3 patients, which range from just 14 days at Royal Prince Alfred to 184 days at Nepean and 205 at John Hunter.

Dr Smyth said he was satisfied "it's not manipulation of the statistics in order to reduce median wait times, though it does have the effect of doing that". He said the department would now develop a new waiting list policy for staged operations.

Diane Watson, the chief executive of the Bureau of Health Information, which analysed the figures, said they represented "an evolving story, and we're still trying to understand it". Dr Watson said she had insisted on a detailed explanation from NSW Health, "given their history on waiting times", and in future would publish staged surgery figures separately, so they did not distort overall category 3 waiting times.

But Brian Owler, the chairman of the hospital practice committee of the Australian Medical Association's NSW branch, said staged surgery alone could not explain the discrepancies.

Associate Professor Owler said there was a risk funding decisions could be based on spurious performance data. "It doesn't give us a good idea of how resources should be allocated and it's unfair to other hospitals that do the right thing," he said. "We should not be rewarding people for gaming the system rather than doing the procedures efficiently."

SOURCE





Sperm donors worried over identity law change

MICHAEL LINDEN was a 26-year-old student in the spring of 1977 when he walked into a fertility clinic in Melbourne and donated his sperm. A friend had told him about the process, but he had not put any serious thought into it.

"I should have known better, really," the 59-year-old retiree said. "It was just a bit of a lark … They paid you $10, which was a little bit of money in those days." He thought little of it until 2001, when he was contacted by what he calls his "donor daughter".

Anxious men who donated sperm anonymously many years ago began contacting fertility clinics yesterday, sources said, after a Herald story on a legislative amendment by the state government allowing it to request identifying information about donors.

Furious doctors have called on whichever party wins the state election this week to rescind the amendment to ensure the privacy of the donors.

A spokeswoman for the Health Minister, Carmel Tebbutt, said the amendment would remain, as it did not violate the privacy of anonymous sperm donors. "The privacy of donors and offspring is not compromised by the amendment because the director-general [of the Health Department] cannot release or disclose the information except with the consent of the person whom the information identifies," the spokeswoman said.

The Greens MP David Shoebridge said anonymous donors would feel threatened by the department forcibly obtaining their details. "The fact that this happened without any consultation … remains a real concern," Mr Shoebridge said.

The law should be rescinded, he said. "People need to have some certainty in their lives when they make important personal decisions like becoming a donor, and this certainty is lost if governments later decide to change the law retrospectively".

The Opposition spokeswoman on health, Jillian Skinner, did not provide the Herald with her position on the law.

After the contact with his donor daughter, Mr Linden discovered he had fathered five children. Three of them remain unknown to him - one to a couple in north-east Melbourne, another to a family in the inner suburbs, and a third to family from NSW. "My three lost daughters," he calls them.

But despite a positive relationship with one of his donor children, and the belief that donor data should be freely available, Mr Linden believes sperm donation should be illegal. "It's still a very fraught situation. You've had kids who have met their donor and the whole thing has gone sour," he said. "Even in the increasingly open climate that we've got now, it's still not an ideal way to bring children into the world."

SOURCE





Council foreign forays face axe

A NSW Coalition government plans to take action against councils on Sydney's "inner west bank" that dabble in foreign policy by pursuing boycotts against Israel.

Opposition local government spokesman Chris Hartcher told The Australian yesterday that, if the Coalition won government, he would use his discretionary powers to "call councils to account" over the issue.

His comments came as a storm of controversy developed around Greens candidate Fiona Byrne, who is favoured to oust NSW Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt from the inner-west Sydney seat of Marrickville on Saturday.

In January, Ms Byrne, as Mayor of Marrickville, supported a wide-ranging boycott of Israel. She has been unable to explain the discrepancy between recorded comments in February, in which she said she intended to push for a statewide boycott, and her statement last week on the Greens website denying she vowed to introduce the ban.

Ms Byrne said in February: "I would suggest that the NSW Greens would be looking to bring (a boycott) forward at state parliament if we were elected."

Federal Greens leader Bob Brown stood by Ms Byrne yesterday, as she faced mounting criticism from supporters of Ms Tebbutt and voters on the streets of Marrickville.

Senator Brown dismissed the controversy as "a bit of a spat between a journalist and a candidate for the state parliament who's doing extremely well".

Ms Byrne did not retract her accusations that The Australian's original report on the story was "misleading", "factually incorrect" and a "misrepresentation". "I did not say I would introduce the boycott and divestment strategy," she said yesterday. "The meaning of my statement at the press conference in February was unclear, and has been misinterpreted."

Asked in a farcical ABC radio interview yesterday why she had changed her position, Ms Byrne replied five times: "I have no plan or intention to introduce the global boycott and divestment strategy in state parliament."

Mr Hartcher said the role of local councils was to deliver services to ratepayers. "Australia's foreign policy is a matter for the federal government and not a matter upon which local councils should be spending ratepayers' money," he said.

"We will not tolerate it. Our estimates are that Marrickville council spent up to $40,000 in officers' time in developing this anti-Israel policy and we regard that as outside their statutory function. "If we are elected on Saturday, Marrickville council can expect close scrutiny."

Mr Hartcher's views reflected those of voters on the streets of Marrickville. "It's not the council's territory," said Avril Rimes, a Labor voter who is considering voting Green. "It can only be divisive here in the local community."

NSW Jewish Board of Deputies President Yair Miller said that if Green MPs pushed for a boycott across the state they would have to explain to taxpayers "why NSW would not be getting access to cost-effective . . . Israeli-made products currently used in NSW".

SOURCE






Student stabs teacher in class at Nightcliff Middle School in Darwin

This is where the Leftist hatred of discipline has got us

A RELIEF teacher was taken to hospital after a 14-year-old Darwin student allegedly stabbed him a number of times in front of his class. The 60-year-old Nightcliff Middle School teacher was taken to Royal Darwin Hospital about midday after a classroom altercation ended in the boy allegedly pulling a knife, the NT News said.

It is understood the relief teacher's name is Michael Bell, and that he was in his first week at the school. School management was tight-lipped - principal Sarah May refused to talk about it.

But the NT education union boss Matthew Cranitch is concerned and says it reflects an increase in behavioural problems across Northern Territory schools.

A number of Nightcliff Middle School sources said the student had heated words with Mr Bell during class, then went back to his desk and pulled the knife. Police said the boy punched Mr Bell in the face before stabbing him in the arm and once in the leg.

Sources said the boy had a history of "concerning" behaviour at Nightcliff Middle School.

One upset parent said the kid "lost the plot" in front of the class. "It all happened pretty much in front of their faces," she said. "The kid was attempting to stab the teacher in the stomach but got him in the arm instead." "It isn't the first incident that he's been involved in ... he's apparently smashed windows and thrown chairs around the room before."

It's understood Mr Bell received stitches for his wounds at hospital.

SOURCE






Note: I have two other blogs covering Australian news. They are more specialized so are not updated daily but there are updates on both most weeks. See QANTAS/Jetstar for news on Qantas failings and Australian police news for news on police misbehaviour. New posts on both today

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG thinks Julia is gutless not to face the anti-carbon-tax protesters.





Abbott questions why PM is going to royal wedding

TONY ABBOTT has mocked Julia Gillard's decision to attend next month's royal wedding, saying she does not believe in God, the monarchy or marriage.

Mr Abbott, a staunch Catholic and monarchist who is married with children, questioned Ms Gillard's bona fides to attend the wedding during yesterday's joint party room meeting. He was seeking to explain a boost for the government and a slump for the Coalition in the latest Newspoll.

Labor's primary vote rose six percentage points in a fortnight, the Coalition's fell five points and Mr Abbott's personal ratings plunged.

Urging Coalition MPs and senators to never underestimate the power of incumbency, Mr Abbott attributed the government's boost to Ms Gillard "hobnobbing" over the past fortnight with the US President, Barack Obama, in Washington, and with Prince William in Australia.

Ms Gillard and her partner, Tim Mathieson, have accepted an invitation to attend next month's wedding in London between Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey. Mr Abbott predicted Ms Gillard would receive another poll bounce from this venture. "She may not believe in God, the monarchy or marriage but there will be a royal wedding bounce," he said.

Labor sources said they were growing tired of Mr Abbott targeting Ms Gillard's atheism and marital status [But it is OK for Leftists to call Abbott "the mad monk", of course], and argued that if she ribbed him for being religious, she would be widely attacked.

The Deputy Opposition Leader, Julie Bishop, also used her party room address to mock Ms Gillard. Ms Bishop targeted the Prime Minister's increasing embrace of a conservative agenda, including her acknowledgment at the weekend that she opposed gay marriage.

Ms Bishop said Ms Gillard entered Parliament as a "self-declared socialist, feminist and atheist". Now, Ms Bishop joked, Ms Gillard was about to launch the "parliamentary friends of Christian atheists", declare she was inspired by Sir Robert Menzies, and become the leader of One Nation.

Mr Abbott likened the period between now and the next election to "trench warfare" but predicted a Coalition victory. He said it would be a narrow victory, like that in Victoria recently by the Liberal leader Ted Baillieu, rather than a "Barry O'Farrell experience", the expected Coalition landslide in NSW this weekend.

SOURCE





Leftist "homophobia"

THE ABC has apologised today after it broadcast an anti-gay jibe against a Liberal MP. A hailstorm of criticism erupted today after a Q&A panel session with federal member Christopher Pyne last night ran a viewer's tweet: "Does Pyne really light up when he's talking about men in uniform?"

Victorian Gay & Lesbian Rights Lobby co-convenor Sarah Rogan said the ABC should know better. "It is a cheap shot," she said. "It is not one of the worst levels of discrimination but it is stereotyping and playing on gay men in particular."

Q&A publicist Rachel Baugh rejected accusations of homophobia and said the national broadcaster was sorry for the tweet. "Q&A has a complex moderation process that deals with over 19,000 tweets during the course of the live program," she said. "This tweet was one that unfortunately went to air and shouldn't have. "The program agreed it was inappropriate and has contacted Christopher Pyne's office to apologise."

Though he is married with children, Mr Pyne has been dogged for years by sideswipes over his sexuality. In 2009, Kevin Rudd referred to him as "the member for skirt that is, the member for Sturt".

When Mr Pyne was appointed manager of Opposition business, Julia Gillard expressed surprise that the then Coalition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, hadn't given the job to Tony Abbott instead. Faced with a choice between a doberman and a poodle, she said, Mr Turnbull had opted for the poodle.

SOURCE







So: "Violence never solved anything"?

It's solved some very bad human relationships here

A 12-YEAR-OLD bully who hit international headlines after being slam-dunked by his victim has written a personal apology. Ritchard Gale yesterday left a note on the doorstep of Casey Heynes' home, which said: "Sorry for hitting you ... Hopefully all this trouble will stop after I say sorry to you and shake your hand," reported the Herald Sun.

In the letter Ritchard also said he should not have taken things into his own hands: "should of went to the office instead", "I just want to say sorry", he wrote.

Casey become an internet sensation after turning the tables on Ritchard in a clip that showed him being bullied before he snapped and retaliated, the result he said of years of cruel taunts about his weight.

The families of the two boys have reportedly made about $40,000 each for TV interviews following the incident. Casey said he has been bullied nearly every day at his school, Chifley College in Sydney's west, but could take no more when Year 7 student Ritchard tormented and attacked him last Monday.

"All I was doing was defending myself. I've never had so much support," he said during an interview with A Current Affair.

Casey reveals he'd been targeted by a new group of Year 7 boys who had started picking on him and teasing him about two weeks prior to the fight.

The Year 10 student said he found himself surrounded by the students when he went to get a school timetable before class.

As Ritchard backed him against the wall and started throwing punches, Casey said he felt scared and worried that others in the group would also start hitting him.

Eventually, he snapped, picking Ritchard up over his shoulder and throwing him to the ground.

The brawl was recorded on the mobile phone of another student who later posted the video online where he has earned "hero" status.

SOURCE






GREENIE ROUNDUP

Three articles below

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott addresses rally of climate change sceptics

TONY Abbott will address a rally of climate sceptics in Canberra today as the Opposition tries to defend Labor accusations that it is a party of climate change deniers.

Strongly supported by right-wing shock jocks, the rally is expected to hear from a range of voices questioning the scientific evidence for climate change. Scores of buses, filled with opponents of the planned tax, are heading to Canberra for a rally outside Parliament House this morning.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard plans to introduce a tax on carbon emitters from July 2012 but Mr Abbott has said under the coalition the best tax cut Australians can get is no carbon tax.

The rally will be seen as a key step for Mr Abbott and members of the Coailtion, who have been forced to defend themselves against accusations that they are a party of climate change deniers.

An alliance of conservative bodies is planning rallies across the country today against the Gillard Government's carbon tax with one of the largest expected outside Parliament House in Canberra.

The Opposition Leader is expected to address the Canberra rally and yesterday renewed his attack on the Prime Minister's pre-election promise not to introduce the tax. He told parliament the PM suffers from truth deficit disorder and is clocking up frequent liar miles.

But trade unions are attempting to hijack the protest by delivering a petition in support of the measure to Climate Change Minister Greg Combet. A coalition of climate change advocates - including the ACTU, activist organisation GetUp, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Greenpeace and others [i.e. the Grem/Left] - also plans to take on the protesters. ACTU president Ged Kearney and other union figures have already arrived to personally deliver a petition to Mr Combet prior to the 10.30am rally

The rally comes as manager of Opposition Business Christopher Pyne yesterday asked Ms Gillard during Question Time to withdraw the term "climate change denier". Mr Pyne argued the term was used by Labor as a weapon to paint the Opposition as climate change extremists, The Australian reported.

Just days ago, Mr Abbott declared climate change was real after being attacked for telling a community forum that the science wasn't settled. Mr Abbott said "whether carbon dioxide is quite the environmental villain that some people make it out to be is not yet proven". He infamously declared in 2009 the science was "crap" but has since stated he accepts humans are contributing to global warming.

Meanwhile, steel boss Graham Kraehe warned that business has lost trust in the Gillard Government and that any proposed compensation scheme for emissions trading was like "putting a bandaid on a bullet wound." Mr Kraehe, who is Bluescope Steel Chairman, said the carbon tax was ill considered and wouldn't give businesses enough time for consultation. He called for a sector-by-sector approach to carbon pricing or carbon tariffs.

However, the warning is unlikely to be acknowledged by the Government with Julia Gillard boosted by a strong recovery in the latest Newspoll which put her ahead of Mr Abbott as preferred Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister is aggressively pushing the case for a carbon tax both in the media and parliament, despite being hampered by a lack of detail on the controversial tax.

SOURCE

Huge cost to make power "greener:

ENERGY producers would need to spend at least $30.5 billion on power stations that use gas and other clean technologies over the next decade to comply with even a modest emissions reduction target.

New modelling reveals that the scale of the spending could rival the rapid electrification across the nation that took place after World War II.

The modelling, to be released at a business forum in Canberra today, also finds that a modest target of reducing greenhouse emissions by 5 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020 would slash the earnings of coal-fired power stations by $11bn and force the shutdown of 10 per cent of the nation's electricity generating capacity.

Details of the modelling came as Julia Gillard branded Tony Abbott a climate change "denier" who was trying to appeal to sceptics as she sought to capitalise on an improvement in the government's Newspoll standing.

The attack in a fiery question time yesterday came as the Opposition Leader questioned the Prime Minister's truthfulness over her decision to break her pre-election pledge not to impose a carbon tax.

And at the National Press Club, BlueScope Steel chairman Graham Kraehe warned that the proposed compensation for emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries, which would be forced to compete with imports from countries that did not have a carbon tax, would be like putting "a Band-Aid on a bullet wound".

Mr Kraehe, who is also a member of the Reserve Bank board, said business had lost trust in the Gillard government and the consultation process for the current carbon tax negotiations had been "appalling".

The warning came as The Australian learned that senior industry figures believe Climate Change Minister Greg Combet has ruled out taking a sectoral approach to the introduction of a carbon pricing scheme, which means it would be introduced on a widespread basis across the economy.

And, despite climate change adviser Ross Garnaut's support for using Kevin Rudd's carbon pollution reduction scheme as a starting point for transitional industry assistance, independent MP Tony Windsor is understood to have doubts. He is believed to have told industry figures he does not support a "rehash" of the CPRS assistance.

The debate rages as Mr Combet and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson prepare to begin negotiations on the shape of the compensation package with some of the nation's most powerful company executives tomorrow. They include: Paul O'Malley from BlueScope Steel; Don Voelte from Woodside; David Peever from Rio Tinto; Anne Pickard from Shell; and Hubie Van Dalsen from BHP Billiton.

A forum in Canberra today organised by the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network and the Business Council of Australia will be told that the reliability of Australia's energy system could be under threat over the period to 2020, as coal-fired power stations close before enough replacements are built and maintenance work is reduced or even stopped.

Even a carbon price of $20 a tonne of emissions was likely to lead to some coal power stations defaulting on their debts and handing the assets over to their financiers. AIGN chief executive Michael Hitchens said that if some investors in power stations made big losses they would not invest in new capacity and new investors would invest only if there were higher returns.

"This would lead to even higher electricity prices than are needed," Mr Hitchens said.

The findings will put pressure on the Prime Minister to stare down the Greens, who are opposed to compensating electricity generators for putting a price on carbon.

Ms Gillard plans to introduce a fixed price on each tonne of carbon emissions from July 1 next year, but the level of compensation for industry and households remains a key sticking point between Labor and the Greens.

Under Mr Rudd's CPRS, the power generators were set to receive compensation of $7.3bn over 10 years, but the energy industry complained this fell well short of being sufficient.

The modelling by consultancy ACIL Tasman estimates that about $10.5bn in spending would be needed for gas-fired generating plant under an emissions pricing regime.

A further $20bn would be needed to comply with the government's renewable energy target.

Further spending still would be needed for gas pipelines and electrical transmission systems.

Rod Sims, an expert adviser to the multi-party climate change committee will use today's forum to call for the carbon price to be substituted for generous subsidies for solar panels and other high-cost greenhouse reduction measures.

Mr Sims, also a director of Port Jackson Partners, will argue that while measures such as solar panels are appealing they are very expensive, are insufficient to meet emissions reductions targets and offer no compensation.

The ACIL Tasman paper argues that compensation would not necessarily overcome the potential for electricity market disruption. But it could be used to provide incentives to overcome risks to the reliability of energy supplies, such as tying compensation to requirements that provide sufficient warning that power plants will be shut down.

"While ultimately government must make the decision as to whether compensation is warranted to support the ongoing effective and efficient operation of electricity markets, in doing so they must be cognisant of the central role that electricity plays in the everyday lives of all Australians," the paper says.

It warns that any policy must also take account of "the potential disruption to those everyday lives if electricity supplies are subject to increased price volatility and in the worst case disrupted."

ACIL Tasman chief executive Paul Hyslop, who will present the paper, said the modelling was based on the CPRS because, to get a 5 per cent reduction by 2020, Labor's stated target, would require similar carbon pricing to that proposed in Mr Rudd's model.

The firm's projections also estimate that wholesale electricity prices would rise by about $30 a megawatt hour by 2020 to meet a 5 per cent cut in emissions.

This would translate into higher retail electricity prices for households, particularly for off-peak power.

Because big industrial energy users use a lot of off-peak power, they face a "significantly" higher cost base.

SOURCE

Make mill deal or lose, Bill Kelty tells Greens

FORESTRY peace broker Bill Kelty has warned that green groups must strike a deal on the Gunns Tamar Valley pulp mill - or miss out on the permanent protection of 565,000 hectares of native forests.

The former union leader, appointed to "facilitate" a negotiated peace between loggers and green groups, also yesterday warned that Gunns should submit to a new, independent mill assessment.

Stepping up pressure for a compromise, Mr Kelty said there had to be agreement on a plantation-fed mill to allow Gunns to exit native-forest logging and free up enough wood to allow an industry transition out of old forests. "That is almost the biggest game in town in terms of getting an industry settlement together with an environmental settlement," he said. "A proposal by Gunns to have a pulp mill at Bell Bay in the Tamar Valley is the only essential proposition that is on the table."

However, he revealed all sides to the historic talks - unions, industry and green groups - now backed the appointment of an independent person to assess whether the mill met environmental guidelines.

Gunns has been strongly resisting the move, arguing it has already secured full state and federal approvals, but managing director Greg L'Estrange yesterday began a round of further talks with Mr Kelty.

Mr Kelty said it was "easy to conclude that there will be no agreement" due to ongoing differences on the $2.3 billion pulp mill. However, his interim report, to be passed to state and federal governments by week's end, would recommend that the talks to find a solution to 30 years of conflict continue.

The two substantive issues to be decided were a logging moratorium with agreed security of wood supply - and the pulp mill.

The moratorium was agreed earlier this month, temporarily protecting 565,000ha of high conservation value forests from logging, while allowing up to 12,000ha to be harvested. Only the mill remained unresolved, he said. However, peak group, Environment Tasmania, yesterday said that while green groups had an "open mind" about a new independent assessment, they remained opposed to the mill.

ET director Phill Pullinger said conservationists also wanted to see state and federal governments respond to Mr Kelty's report by acting to fully implement the agreed moratorium.

ET and other green groups involved it the talks - The Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation- have welcomed improvements to the mill to reduce chlorine emissions and guarantee a 100% plantation feed-stock.

However, they have been holding out against endorsing the project because of ongoing hostility to it in the Tamar Valley, north of Launceston, and what Mr Kelty agreed was "considerable cynicism" about its state fast-track approval.

However, it is still possible the groups could agree to a form of words on the mill that would satisfy Gunns' needs to reassure joint venture partners and financiers that it has environmental support.

Mr Kelty expressed "uncertainty" about Gunns' "economic position" and confirmed he had held talks with potential joint venture partners for the project.

SOURCE





Note: I have two other blogs covering Australian news. They are more specialized so are not updated daily but there are updates on both most weeks. See QANTAS/Jetstar for news on Qantas failings and Australian police news for news on police misbehaviour

Immigration support plummets in Victoria, survey finds

There is a lot of crime from African refugees in Melbourne

SUPPORT for immigration has plummeted in Victoria, a survey shows. With the nation marking Harmony Day today, the Monash University study has revealed that 52 per cent of Victorians believe the migrant intake is too high.

This compared with only 30 per cent in 2007, according to the Mapping Social Cohesion 2010 survey.

Rampant population growth was a major federal election issue last year, and state Opposition leader Daniel Andrews admitted last week that the Brumby Government's mishandling of it was a key reason for Labor's state election loss.

More than half of all Victorians rated the Federal Government's record in providing roads, rail and housing needed for future growth as poor or very poor, the survey found. Just under a quarter thought it had a good or very good record while a similar percentage believed it was neither good nor poor.

The national survey, conducted in June last year, revealed that 47.3 per cent of Australians agreed immigration was too high, compared with 36.3 per cent three years earlier. But it also found that 64 per cent of Victorians agreed with the statement that “accepting migrants from many different countries makes Australia stronger". This was down from 70 per cent in 2007.

Report author Prof Andrew Markus, from Monash's Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, said there was surprising support for immigration given the extent of public debate over the issue last year. “On past record, the level of negative sentiment may well have reached the range 55-60 per cent," he said.

The survey also found that a small majority of Australians, 53 per cent, thought it was important that Christianity stay as the main religion. About 40 per cent believed it was unimportant while 7 per cent said it was neither important or unimportant.

The survey was sponsored by the Scanlon Foundation, a charitable organisation created by Melbourne businessman Peter Scanlon to promote “a larger cohesive Australian society".

SOURCE





Victoria's welfare binge

More than one in four Victorians now rely on welfare, prompting renewed calls for an overhaul of the system of handouts. A Herald Sun investigation has found at least 1.3 million men, women and children received federal payments in the past year. And about half of those were handed more than one benefit.

The payments are part of the nation's $84.2 billion annual welfare bill, administered by Centrelink at a further cost of $3 billion a year.

For the first time the Herald Sun can reveal the full extent of welfare after being given access to Centrelink data for every postcode in the state. More than 2.6 million "clients" are recorded in Victoria receiving some of 27 benefits administered by Centrelink.

Broadly they fall into three groups: 1.2 million who receive working-age income support, 830,000 who receive family benefits, and 540,000 aged pensioners. In addition, 1.4 million Victorians have health care and concession cards.

In two-thirds of communities, more than half the population received some form of federal help in the past year. In one in 14 communities, welfare payments outnumbered residents.

The findings have spurred fresh debate about Australia's welfare system. "The sheer number of payments being made, and the number of Victorians receiving them, is astonishing," Jessica Brown, a policy analyst from the Centre for Independent Studies, said. "We need to ask ourselves what more we can do to get people off welfare and into work."

Ms Brown said the system had become too complex and it needed to be simplified to ensure payments were going to those most in need of them.

Victorian Council of Social Service chief executive Cath Smith said the geographic distribution of payments was stark. "This data presents decision-makers with an opportunity to focus economic development and investment in new services in the areas that are seriously disadvantaged - where people currently have less access to education, jobs and services than (those in) more affluent locations," she said.

"The fact that so many Victorians can rely on our social safety net is reassuring, yet (we) see the human faces behind these numbers every day. And we know that life is tough when you are poor or chronically ill."

Eight in 10 families nationally receive Family Tax Benefit payments, despite their being designed to focus on lower income groups. These payments alone will cost taxpayers nearly $18 billion this year. Nearly $2 billion more will go to pay for parental leave and the baby bonus.

Treasury secretary Ken Henry last year recommended a major welfare shake-up. Among the Henry Review's suggestions was a reduction in the number of welfare payments to fewer than a dozen, better means-testing of people's true wealth, and more encouragement of single parents to go back to work.

Since then, the Federal Government has extended the welfare system, introducing 18 weeks' paid parental leave on January 1, extending Family Tax Benefits to cover children aged 16-18 at school or in training with payments of up to $4000, and providing up to $6000 for unemployed people to move for work.

The Federal Government has also promised tougher penalties for job-seekers who miss Centrelink appointments.

And middle-class welfare is expected to come under the microscope in the coming federal Budget.

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Some small businesses CAN compete with the big boys

Small local hardware stores have been dying like flies since hardware megastores started popping up -- but it is still possible for little guys to find a niche



WITH a major battle looming between Bunnings and Woolworths for the $36 billion home improvement market, it may seem like Helen Morton's independent hardware store has the odds stacked against it. But Morton's Hardware at Wynnum is enjoying a brisk trade with access to 45,000 lines of stock, customers on a first-name basis, and not a single bargain bin or sausage sizzle in sight.

"The stock is predominantly brand names and from middle to top-quality," she said. "There are no $5 or $10 bins. One reason is because there is no room and secondly I cannot tolerate customers whingeing and returning rubbish goods."

In fact, just about everything the 43-year-old Morton's Hardware business does goes against the grain of conventional mega-store wisdom. It is in an out-of-the-way residential position, is not computerised, does not have a website, has a small yard, highly stacked shelves, narrow aisles and does not advertise.

Yet, according to the Mortons, the business has grown by about 19 per cent every year for the past decade, and when you see them in action, it is not hard to see why.

On Friday morning the shop floor was chock-a-block with customers none of whom seemed to spend more than a few minutes there before leaving with exactly what they were after. Morton's business mix is 70 per cent trade and 30 per cent retail most of which comes from the Wynnum-Tingalpa-Manly area.

Manly plumber Peter Lamb has been going to the store since before it became Morton's when it specialised in plumbing. "I started coming here with my dad when I was 15. It's got whatever you need and really great service. I wouldn't go anywhere else," the 59-year-old said.

Rose Dallas, of Hemmant, accompanied her trucker husband to the store to pick up supplies. "Here it's very personal, very helpful. At a place like Bunnings you find lots of staff, but you never find what you're looking for," she said.

In the next aisle, Wynnum man Ken Fuller said despite the illusion of size, bigger stores had limited stock. "They always start off saying they have what tradesmen need, but they only have their own brands. At Morton's they know things and have a great variety of stuff."

Despite the threat of a hardware battle in the community, most customers believed independents like Morton's would survive on its "excellent reputation and great service".

The Mortons said it was not always like that, with the turning point coming about eight years ago, when they signed on as members of the Hardware & Building Traders (HBT) buying group, whose membership consists of 312 independently owned stores.

Through HBT, Morton's accesses more than 260 suppliers a supply chain it will need to remain competitive in the months to come. It is that sort of supply chain certainty that led Woolworths in a joint venture agreement with American home improvement giant Lowes with whom it plans to roll out its Masters hardware megastore concept. Lowes will own one-third of that enterprise.

Both companies bought out a major industry buyer Danks which services about 600 independent members of Home Timber & Hardware, Thrifty-Link Hardware and Plants Plus Garden Centres, and more than 1200 non-affiliated stores. Danks provides about 25,000 product lines from more than 600 suppliers.

Woolworths community relations manager Simon Berger told The Courier-Mail they were already halfway towards a 150-site target for the hardware stores, including Tingalpa, Morayfield, Nerang and Springfield.

"We have 11 stores under construction, four of which are in Queensland. We can't nominate a precise number of Queensland stores into the future; suffice to say we are looking to provide a great new home improvement offer in cities and towns right across Australia," he said.

Each store was expected to generate about 130 to 150 retail jobs, with many more created in construction and other flow-on benefits to the economy. "Our stores will have approximately 40,000 products, which include home improvement, not just hardware," he said. "For example, you'll be able to get the things you need to renovate your kitchen, along with appliances for the kitchen."

Woolworths would not be drawn on the ramping up of activity by the Wesfarmers-owned Bunnings hardware group, which last week announced a $385 million spend over three years to open a dozen stores and two trade centres in Queensland.

"What Bunnings does is a matter for them," Mr Berger said. "Our focus is on raising the bar in terms of range, service and value, which will deliver more choice for customers and competition in the home improvement market."

With Woolworths already in heavy competition with Coles a subsidiary of Bunnings' owner Wesfarmers it's no surprise that, almost two years after first announcing its hardware push, Woolworths still prefers not to reveal too much. "We are deliberately maintaining an element of surprise," Mr Berger said.

Bunnings last week preferred to stay away from Woolworths' references, with managing director John Gillam adamant that his Queensland push was not driven by the upcoming rival.

"We've been growing our business in Queensland for a long time now," he said. "What we announced is the next three years. There will be more. It's our intention to continue to grow our presence."

For "fiercely independent" smaller players such as Helen Morton in Wynnum, there is no doubt there's a big fight ahead. But, she's prepared to hold the line for the little guys. "They might be able to kick the guts out of some of our prices, but they'll never be able to match the service we can give."

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Fed-up doctors lift the lid on Melbourne's emergency departments

A dying newborn had to be taken from her distressed grandparents' arms and resuscitated on a chair because nowhere else was available in an overcrowded emergency department. The horror case is just one of dozens of incidents in which patients' lives are being needlessly put at risk because of a lack of resources, emergency doctors claim.

Fed-up doctors have decided to lift the lid on the issues in Melbourne's emergency departments, saying shocking ambulance bypass figures released by the Victorian Government last week barely scratched the surface of the crisis.

Cases highlighted by the Victorian Emergency Physicians Association show a wider risk to public safety because of bed shortages. Last March, a heartbroken doctor had to ask a grandparent holding an infant to leave so they could treat her on a bedside chair - no other space was available and all resuscitation cubicles at the hospital in Melbourne's southeast had patients on life support.

"Although baby survived, the incredulous looks between the grandparent, the infant's family, myself and staff are unforgettable," the doctor said.

Melbourne's busiest emergency departments turned away ambulances for more than 4300 hours in just six months last year. But VEPA president Dr Con Georgakas said the situation was even worse, with hospital administrators blocking physician requests to go on bypass when it was in the interests of patient safety.

"If we were able to get those patients who need to stay in hospital overnight up to the hospital wards promptly, then new patients arriving by ambulance would go straight to a bed in the emergency department," he said.

"The real problem here is a lack of capacity in our hospital system. "VEPA is calling on the State Government to fulfil its promise of more beds before this situation deteriorates further. We need those beds available 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

Health Minister David Davis said "the Government is determined to turn around Labor's 11 years of mismanagement".

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Note: I have two other blogs covering Australian news. They are more specialized so are not updated daily but there are updates on both most weeks. See QANTAS/Jetstar for news on Qantas failings and Australian police news for news on police misbehaviour

Eat your heart out, Libya and Japan

The top story in Queensland's largest paper today is about the Royal visit. The story below. Being a Queen's man in Queensland (as I am) is perfectly mainstream -- despite the derision with which the Leftist "intelligentsia" view Monarchists and the Monarchy. The Monarchy plays an irreplaceable role in places where the Queen reigns. You can read something of that below

IT WAS one of the most heart-warming moments of the Prince's trip to Grantham yesterday. Derelle Linneth, who has Down syndrome, has idolised Prince William for years, so when he entered the tent full of Grantham locals, she saw her chance to say hello.

"She just went, 'Yes!' and she grabbed him," sister Marilyn Hilan said. "She looked at him and said, 'I love you, William' and he said, 'You get another cuddle then'."

Ms Hilan said his visit meant a lot to the flood-ravaged town. "I'm 61 and I run a farm on my own," she said. "I felt like, 'Should I keep going or just stop?' After today, I think I will keep going."

Last night, at a dinner at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, the Prince praised the efforts of rescuers and "stalwart Queenslanders" who helped neighbours and risked "life and limb" to save others.

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Julia Gillard makes a stand as a social conservative

Given her unorthodox personal arrangements with her male hairdresser, cynicism about this has to be expected. But she is taking stances that have real political meaning and legislative implications. Regardless of the motive, cultural conservatives must applaud what appears to be her legislative agenda or non-agenda. Rather amusing that the very Leftist "Green" party have pushed her to the Right, however

Julia Gillard has revealed herself to be a cultural traditionalist, indicating she will oppose moves by the Greens for euthanasia and gay marriage laws and that she believes it is important for people to understand the Bible- despite the fact she is an atheist.

Appearing on Sky News's Australian Agenda yesterday, the Prime Minister again distanced herself from the Greens, arguing they did not have an economic philosophy about "reform or about growth" and had voted against Kevin Rudd's carbon pollution reduction scheme because they "didn't sufficiently care about jobs", The Australian reports.

Ms Gillard's comments came as her deputy, Wayne Swan, announced the government's long-awaited tax summit would be held in early October. Ms Gillard said tax cuts were "a live option" from the revenue from the carbon tax and gave her strongest signal yet that petrol would be offset to ease cost-of-living pressures.

Her comments came as Trade Minister Craig Emerson attacked Tony Abbott's vow to repeal the carbon tax as a plan to repeal tax cuts and lower pensions.

But the Opposition Leader said no serious government would advocate introducing a new tax ahead of the October tax summit, which should consider the plan. He labelled the tax-cut recommendation "a tax bribe". "Real tax reform does not rob Peter to pay Paul," Mr Abbott said. "Real tax reform is not taking money out of one pocket to put it in the other pocket."

Ms Gillard, taking aim at the Greens for the second time in a week, described as "a load of old cobblers" commentary suggesting she had only recently discovered a difference between Labor and the minor party.

Asked about her attitudes on social issues, Ms Gillard harked back to her upbringing in Adelaide and agreed that she was a "cultural traditionalist". "I had a pro-union, pro-Labor upbringing in a quite conservative family, in a sense of personal values. I mean we believed in lots of things that are old fashioned in the modern age," she said. "We believed in politeness and thrift and fortitude and doing duty and diligence. These are things that were part of my upbringing. They're part of who I am."

On euthanasia, Ms Gillard said while she could personally understand that people in the end stage of life might want that choice, she had never been satisfied that policy proposals from pro-euthanasia advocates had enough safeguards. On gay marriage, Ms Gillard said: "I do find myself on the conservative side in this question."

Declaring there were "some important things from our past that need to continue to be part of our present and part of our future", Ms Gillard said her view was that the Marriage Act - and marriage being between a man and woman - "has a special status".

Ms Gillard said it was important for people to understand their Bible stories "not because I'm an advocate of religion - clearly I'm not - but once again, what comes from the Bible has formed such an important part of our culture".

"It's impossible to understand Western literature without having that key of understanding the Bible stories and how Western literature builds on them and reflects them and deconstructs them and brings them back together," she said.

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What planet is Dr. Hyphen on?

Self-defense is bad for you??? And the fact that the kid concerned is feeling the opposite of what Dr Hyphen predicts is no problem, apparently. It is Dr. Hyphen and his ilk who are the real problem. It is their sickly policies that encourage bullying

JUDGING from his face, you could not possibly guess at the trauma of these past eight years. He has a child's eyes; a broad smile, filled out by the gaps between his teeth.

But this is the same boy, 16, who last week retaliated as a schoolyard bully punched at his face; who hurled the smaller boy into the ground, and in doing so became an internet phenomenon. He had been picked on since year two, he said, but he had finally cracked.

The teasing was fairly basic: other children calling him "fatty", telling him to lose weight, tripping him, slapping at the back of his head. At one point, he was pelted with waterbombs. At another he was duct-taped to a pole. "They put duct tape over my eyes first, dropped me down and then duct-taped me to a pole."

At his worst, about a year ago, he said he contemplated suicide. "I just started putting myself down, putting myself down to that level. And then all the crap just kept on piling on."

Michael Carr-Gregg, an adolescent psychologist and founding member of the National Centre Against Bullying, called the interview reprehensible. "All this is going to do is put more focus on this kid. I can't see this as a positive - he'll just be further victimised and his life made more difficult," Dr Carr-Gregg, who is also the Queensland government's adviser on bullying, said. "Should this kid deteriorate and possibly harm himself, doesn't that sit squarely on the shoulders of Channel Nine?" [What a twit!]

The boy, who this website has chosen not to name, said the support he received online had made him feel "pretty good". He did not regret lashing out, even after being suspended. "All I wanted was it just to stop. So … I just did it."

His father thought similarly. "I don't condone the violence - it was a horrific thing to see, two boys fighting in a schoolyard and it ending like that. It is nothing to be proud of, but I'm glad that he stood up for himself."

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Why Australians should be afraid -- very afraid -- of Prime Minister Gillard's carbon fantasies

Terry McCrann

WE were given two highly instructive insights during the week into Julia Gillard's thinking on her carbon dioxide tax. It proved an extremely disturbing revelation.

The first came on the ABC's Q&A program on Monday. The second was her speech to the Don Dunstan Foundation in Adelaide. The combination was particularly valuable. For while she might have "mispoke" on Q&A, the spontaneity better captured what she felt on the emotional level, genuinely or otherwise.

While the prepared speech gave us the considered, for want of a better word, substance on which the greatest change in the entire economic structure of Australia, bar none other in our 223 years of European settlement, was based, we were left with two alternatives.

If she actually believes the nonsense she spouted, spontaneously first and then with consideration aforethought, we have a leader with all the save-the-world enthusiasm and profound ignorance of a junior high school student.

And what would that say about the battalions of advisers on which she presumably relied? Or indeed, as in the joke about Maggie Thatcher, the sheep otherwise known as her cabinet colleagues?

If she doesn't believe the nonsense, we have a leader who is setting out to impose real pain on every Australian and cause serious damage to the national economy, for utterly no positive purpose.

I would suggest it is an inchoate mix of the two. That she actually believes we have to cut our emissions of carbon dioxide to save the planet. She knows it can make absolutely no difference. And she has a sort of vague expectation that we will emerge into some, literally, sunlit prosperous carbon-free future. All this was captured in her comments on China.

On Q&A she asserted that it was simply not true that we were the only ones moving to attack carbon pollution (sic). China was closing down a dirty coal-fired power-generation facility at the rate of every one to two weeks, she asserted. And it was putting up a wind turbine at the rate of one every hour, she added.

The picture she set out to paint was of China replacing dirty coal with clean wind. The truth is, as we've noted through the week, that China is not simply replacing coal with coal but dramatically increasing coal-fired generation.

Yes, it is closing really dirty coal-fired stations: the ones that pump out those little bits of grit that used to blanket our cities and which Gillard & Co are deliberately seeking to inject into the community's consciousness with their references to carbon pollution.

Real pollution has long since been banished from our coal-fired power stations and our cities. Smog no longer kills thousands of Londoners every year. But it is still killing thousands in Chinese cities. And not just in China. A World Health Organisation report in 2005 noted that more than half the world's population relied on dung, wood, crop waste or coal to meet their most basic energy needs. Cooking and heating with such solid fuels on open fires or stoves without chimneys led to indoor air pollution, including small soot or dust particles that were able to penetrate deep into the lungs.

Every year, this sort of real carbon pollution was responsible for the death of 1.6 million people, WHO wrote in 2005. If anything it would be worse today.

That is the real carbon pollution. Not the carbon dioxide that is the target (the only target) of her tax; the real pollution that is precisely avoided by our centralised existing clean, yes clean, coal-fired power stations. The building of similar power stations in the developing world would be the quickest, cheapest and most effective way of reducing and eliminating those deaths.

So does Gillard actually believe her carbon pollution nonsense?

Depressingly, you would have to conclude that at some level she does. Like so many who say or at least think, even if they understand, that this is all and only about reducing emissions of carbon dioxide; that yes, it's good to get rid of the bits of grit as well.

Witness our down under prophet Ross Garnaut, taking time off from dispensing his weekly profundities ex cathedra, to echo on the ABC's Lateline this same confused but deliberately dishonest mish-mash about China closing "environmentally very unfriendly" power stations and replacing them with new coal ones that had "very low emissions".

The facts on China are simple and irrefutable. It has a coal-fired system equal to more than 13 times our entire electricity generation. Between now and 2020, it is going to add between 400GW and 500GW to its existing 670GW of coal-fired power generation.

That's its projections. And that's net. So if they close, say, 200GW of really dirty old stations, they will be building 600GW to 700GW of new ones, all pumping out carbon dioxide, if hopefully not also grit. Total power generation in Australia is about 50GW.

Yes, China might be aiming for 150GW of wind and 20GW of solar by 2020. But that's installed capacity. When the wind don't . . . and the sun don't . . . Real capacity of the two combined will be closer to 50GW by 2020, as against an extra 400GW at least of additional coal-fired generation.

Despite those clean coal-fired stations that exist only in the deeper and increasingly darker recesses of Garnaut's mind, by 2020 China will be emitting something like 25 times the entire emissions of Australia today. Rendering utterly ineffective the 5 per cent cut we will purport to achieve at such huge and permanent cost.

The Prime Minister launched into pure fantasy in her speech in Adelaide about all the jobs that would flow in her brave new (sunlit) world. We'll become the world's supplier of electric and hybrid cars. Welders and steel workers will build and maintain large-scale solar plants. On and on she went, climaxing with this re-assuring statement of certainty. "And there will be new jobs too."

In both forums she claimed we had an abundance of solar, wind and geothermal. Interestingly in Adelaide she added natural gas, which emits what I wonder?

If we have these "in abundance", why don't we embark now on an accelerated program of closing our coal-fired stations and just plugging in the community power cord to all that sun and wind? As I started: does she really believe the nonsense she spouts? Should we be afraid? Or really afraid?

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Capitalism saves the day

CHEAP fresh fruit and vegetables might be just around the corner. In a quirky turn-around, southern growers hearing sustained media reports of floods and cyclones in Queensland have planted extra crops of leafy vegetables such as lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower. Queensland growers outside flooded areas also have planted big crops in an attempt to capitalise on shortages. These vegetables are expected to hit the market next month, dropping prices.

Growcom chairman and farmer John Bishop said yesterday damage was not as widespread as many people thought. And the floods had arrived at a fortunate, between-season time for small crops, meaning many operations were hampered but the crops were not necessarily lost.

Stones Corner Fruit Market proprietor Spiro Poulimas agreed with Mr Bishop, saying it was rare that bargains could not be found. But Mr Poulimas said sourcing bananas at a reasonable price had been an issue since Cyclone Yasi.

He had sold Coffs Harbour produce at $7.99/kg as opposed to supermarkets at $13.99/kg but prices have varied and at times he was able to obtain cheaper, ready-to-eat fruit. Before the floods, he had sourced mixed salad leaves at $8/kg but these had since jumped to $26/kg.

Good deals yesterday included sweet potatoes at 29 cents/kg, Granny Smith apples $1.99, Gala apples $1.99, zucchinis 99 cents, Packham pears 99 cents and tomatoes $1.99. However, hard-to-come-by cauliflowers were $7.99 each.

Mr Bishop said only 15 per cent of the prime Laidley farming region west of Brisbane was affected by the January floods. "People on the higher country were planting the day after the floods. About 85 per cent of Laidley is OK. Some people near the (Burnett) river at Bundaberg were affected but the rest were all right."

Planting particular lines to gain an advantage when crops failed elsewhere was a long-held farm practice. "We'll probably get an overlap of southern and local crops next month," Mr Bishop said. "The amount of lettuce and broccoli planted up here (Laidley) is unbelievable."

Even north Queensland banana growers were not as badly hit by Cyclone Yasi as they were by Cyclone Larry in 2006. "Growers had about 10 days warning of Yasi, so they took off all the crop they could before it hit," Mr Bishop said. "They also cut leaves from trees to reduce wind damage."

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