"Peaceful" rally from which 14 people were removed for breaching the peace

Logic flies out the window where Muslims are concerned

Hundreds of people have gathered at a rally in Sydney's west in protest over negative coverage of Islam and treatment of the prophet Mohammad.

While police said more than a dozen people were moved on from the rally for breaching the peace, the event was peaceful.

Among the 800-strong crowd in the Muslim enclave of Lakemba, placards were held up with the slogan: "Je Suis Muslim" or "I am Muslim", evoking the same sentiment that became a touchstone for many in the wake of attacks in Paris.

Organisers of the Our Prophet, Our Honour rally said it was intended to be "a peaceful and respectful event" to counter negative coverage of Islam and the lampooning of the Prophet by French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Speaking at the rally, outside the Lakemba train station, local Muslim leader Sufyan Badar told the crowd it was also in response to the waves of protests in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack.

Mr Badar said the protests in the name of free speech had nothing to do with freedom. "We also gather to place the politics of the events in France in the correct context," he said.

"Freedom is the smokescreen with which Western politicians and media conceal the underlying issues.  "In reality free speech is one of the many political tools that are used to maintain dominance over the Muslims."

Earlier, Prime Minister Tony Abbott warned against the rally being used to incite terrorism, saying he hoped few people would attend.

Mr Abbott said called on more Muslim leaders to distance themselves from "evil things that are done in the name of Islam".

Hamzah Qureshi, a spokesman for the controversial group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which helped organise the event, questioned the prime minister's comments and the suggestion the event could incite violence.

"No one should be asked to apologise for or distance themselves from something they are not responsible for," Mr Qureshi said.

"I would, however, mention that it's interesting that the question of whether a Muslim event will be peaceful or violent consistently seems to come up."

Police later said in a statement that the event had been concluded peacefully, although 14 people were removed for breaching the peace. No charges were laid.

SOURCE





Suppressed evidence got aggressive South Australian cop off the hook

The case was largely one man's word against another so the credibility of the cop was central.  We appear to have evidence, however, that he perjured himself.  Subsequent to his acquittal, he obtained a legal order to suppress the report below of that evidence -- so he himself knows how crucial the extra evidence is.  The case should go to appeal

JURORS in the Norman Hoy trial were never told that, in the moments after Yasser Shahin drove away, the police constable was recorded calling the millionaire businessman "a dick" who "made it big".

The Advertiser can now reveal prosecutors unsuccessfully tried to have another section of Const Hoy's audio recording played to the jury, saying it ran contrary to the evidence he gave under oath.

The legal stoush over the recording - parts of which were listened to by more than 27,000 people on advertiser.com.au - can be reported following Const Hoy's acquittal yesterday.

In his evidence, Const Hoy said he did not know who Mr Shahin was during their abrasive September 2010 encounter, and the businessman's identity only "sunk in" 15 minutes later.

That testimony, on January 19, prompted prosecutor Nick Healy to ask the jury be sent out of court so he could raise an issue with Judge Paul Rice.

He said his concern centred on the extended version of the audio recording Const Hoy had made of the alleged incident, which had been played for the jury numerous times.

"As Your Honour may or may not be aware, the audio that was recorded by Const Hoy was considerably longer," he said after jurors left court.  "There is a considerable amount of audio there and, indeed, a conversation with his sergeant that appears to be at the scene immediately after Mr Shahin leaves.

"It's actually Const Hoy who advises his sergeant `it's the Shahin family', the sergeant says `who are they?' and Const Hoy says `they made it big on Smokemart and all this'.

"Then there is considerable conversation talking about `they've got all these houses in Burnside and they want to build a mansion up there'."

Mr Healy asked the jury be played the section but Marie Shaw, QC, for Const Hoy, objected. She said counsel had agreed, prior to the trial, that only the section recounting the incident itself would be played.

Mr Healy said the situation had changed.  "That evidence was not to be led on the basis this witness would not get in the box and start denying, if you like, any contemporaneous knowledge of who Mr Shahin is," he said.

"There's a fair bit of evidence to the contrary, and a subsequent conversation with his sergeant includes when Const Hoy says Mr Shahin was `being a dick'."

Ms Shaw insisted that conversation occurred 15 minutes after Mr Shahin left the scene, which Mr Healy said was "news to me". Ms Shaw accused the prosecution of "ambushing" her client.

"What is the Crown seeking to do with this evidence? Pluck out bits and pieces of this conversation to attack Const Hoy on the way he discussed it with his sergeant?" she asked.

Judge Rice upheld Ms Shaw's objection, saying he did not "think it was proper" the additional section of the recording be played to jurors.

Original report here





Will Annastacia Palaszczuk be an Anna Bligh Mark II?

Comment on the upcoming Queensland State election.  Bligh was the previous ALP Premier. Palaszczuk is the aspiring one.  There is no doubt Bligh was out of her depth

The blunt reality is that Bligh’s government was one of the worst in Queensland history. Neither the Premier Bligh nor her government was up to the job. Its defeat last election was primarily because of its incompetence. It is little wonder that eight key members of the Bligh team, including six former Ministers, retired at the state election. They simply gave up on Bligh and Queensland Labor.

The theft of $16 million of public funds under Labor’s noses by a Queensland Health employee was the last straw in a history of incompetence that ranges from the health payroll debacle to poor financial mismanagement that led to the loss of Queensland’s cherished AAA credit rating. There was 16 million reasons for Queenslanders to vote against Bligh.

Many senior Labor figures found the Bligh government so embarrassing that they distanced themselves from it at an alarming rate.

When former premier Peter Beattie handed over to his deputy, Bligh, in September 2007, the popular Labor government enjoyed a two-party preferred vote of 59 per cent and a primary vote of 50 per cent. The transition followed years of Beattie promoting Bligh over other ministers into tough portfolios to enhance her experience.

At the time it was regarded as an ideal transition. Bligh enjoyed strong public support until her policies and performance showed a rapid decline. It was a serious error of judgment on Beattie’s part to promote Bligh when there were more talented choices available, including John Mickel and Rod Welford. It seemed Beattie was more interested in putting Queensland’s first female premier into office than promoting the best candidate.

State Labor’s problems started when Bligh became more focused on image than on performance. Her promotion of inexperienced supporters like Kate Jones into cabinet at the expense of senior colleagues (such as Mickel, who is now Speaker; former police minister Judy Spence; former attorney-general Kerry Shine; and former ministers Lindy Nelson-Carr, Robert Schwarten and Margaret Keech) was designed to make her government look good but took its toll in poor administration in transport, health, infrastructure delivery and water, and in the cost of electricity.

Bligh’s failure to sack former health minister and close friend Paul Lucas over the health department’s payroll fiasco showed personal loyalty had precedence over performance.

There also was not enough focus on detail. Instead, Bligh concentrated on managing the latest political disaster. The damage from this crisis management soon became irreparable. Also, many members of Bligh’s cabinet were bone lazy. Government ministers were rarely seen at business events in Brisbane or in key regional centres and LNP frontbenchers were being openly courted as future ministers.

The Bligh government lost the links with business vigorously developed by Wayne Goss and Beattie. It was a pale imitation of past Labor governments. The fat bureaucratic structure of super departments was so cumbersome that one director-general was responsible to several ministers, making the public service process-driven rather than outcome-focused.

Besides, the quality of directors-general slipped as Bligh appointed favourites or ideological fellow travellers over quality candidates. This resulted in a failure to properly oversee projects such as the desalination plant on the Gold Coast and the water grid; cost overruns on infrastructure; the protection of farmland from the expansion of the gas industry until it was too late; failure to build cyclone-proof infrastructure along the coast before last summer’s cyclone season; and accepting without question the recommended electricity price hikes from the regulator.

The government also blindly followed Treasury’s line to abolish the fuel subsidy, which means Queenslanders now pay more for fuel.

The Bligh government ran away from tough decisions on matters such as the 10 per cent mandatory level of ethanol in fuel; taking the fight to Kevin Rudd’s federal government over the building of the Traveston dam; and the use of recycled water.

Crucially, it caved in to union demands for budget-breaking enterprise bargaining deals that helped drive the state over the financial brink. This was the underlying reason for the state’s loss of its AAA credit rating.

The only tough decision the Bligh government made was on the sale of government assets such as railways to fund the budget shortfall. But even here Bligh made a hash of its implementation by not putting the issue to the people in the 2009 state election, thus costing her valuable credibility. The deal also meant Bligh sold off Queensland’s most profitable parts of Queensland Rail and kept the unprofitable parts.

On last election night, Labor seats fell to the LNP throughout the regions because of how the QR sale was handled. The Bligh government was guilty of 4 1/2 years of dysfunctional administration and Queenslanders knew it. Deputies were often promoted beyond their abilities into the top job.

Bligh was such a deputy and state Labor paid the price and would do so again as they are not ready to govern in Queensland just yet.

SOURCE





Massive review into workplace laws to examine penalty rates and the minimum wage

Penalty rates, the minimum wage and the workplace flexibility of 11.5 million Australian workers will come under the microscope in a sweeping review of the industrial relations system.

In an interview to mark the launch of five issues papers that set out the key areas the inquiry will put under the microscope, Productivity Commission chief Peter Harris has promised the review of Australia's workplace laws will "bust myths" in the broadest review of IR laws in a generation.

The long-awaited review of Australia's workplace laws will examine the effect of the minimum wage on employment, how penalty rates are set and what economic effect the loadings have on business and employees.

The issues papers were accidentally published online on Thursday ahead of the embargo being lifted.

The review was meant to be published on the Commission's website at midnight but went live on the homepage on Thursday morning and was seized on by at least two Labor MPs who tweeted a link to it, breaking the embargo.

Enterprise bargaining, individual agreements between employers and employees, unfair dismissal, anti-bullying laws and public sector employment issues will all be examined too.

Mr Harris stressed the "human dimension" of the labour market would be considered by the economically dry Commission and that "no nation aspires to be a low wage economy. This is not a review aimed at cutting wages or removing conditions".

"When we look at the minimum wage for example, we won't be looking at the minimum wage in isolation, we will be asking questions, what can we demonstrate in Australia about its impact on employment?"      

"Whether or not there is an impact from the minimum wage on employment  - we will try and prove up that, or determine it is a myth."

Mr Harris predicted lots of submissions from employer groups calling for more flexibility in the workplace but cautioned "it's worth bearing in mind that employers also want certainty" and that the "flexibility to do what" was something that needed to be better defined.

"We'll be considering this from the perspective that almost all of us have a stake in this system, those of us aged between 15 and 64, roughly speaking, either want to participate in the system and are training to do so or are participating in the system."

The findings of the review, which are due in November 2015, are expected to help frame the Coalition's second term IR policy. The review, a pre-election promise from Prime Minister Tony Abbott, is launched against a backdrop of a push from the backbench and business groups for cuts to penalty rates and greater workplace flexibility.

The paper states that the inquiry is not "intended to maximise the benefits to any particular group" and that the Commission will consider the social and economic aspects of the workplace system.

The paper also notes there is "little consensus on the effects of modern changes in minimum wages on employment and equity," and promises to attempt to "unravel this contested area of economics".

It notes Australia has a high minimum wage rate relative to median earnings when compared to other OECD countries  – though this is declining – and points out significant variations from state to state in the minimum wage relative to average weekly wages.

The current minimum wage in Australia is about $33,000 a year, or $16.87 an hour.

On penalty rates, the paper notes that 116 of 122 modern awards specify penalty rates, albeit at different levels and that "while there are relatively few contentions about additional payments for overtime and shift work, there are polarised views about the appropriateness of weekend penalty rates in some sectors".

Submissions are invited on how penalty rates are determined, what changes could be made to the system and on whether wages would fall if penalty rates were deregulated.

The situation in the UK, New Zealand and the US, where penalty rates are generally not required on the weekend, are also to be taken into account by the review.

The National Employment Standards, which govern entitlements such as long service leave – the conditions of which vary from state to state – will also be examined.

The release of the issues paper will help frame a political fight between the Coalition, business, the opposition and unions over workplace policy.

Labor employment spokesman Brendan O'Connor called on the government to "immediately rule out attacking Australian workers' penalty rates, allowances, the minimum wage and other working conditions".

"Earlier this year I said WorkChoices was merely sedated, not cremated as the Prime Minister had promised. Well, the sedative has worn off," he said.

"The last 'review' that examined workplace laws was the Abbott government's Commission of Audit and that recommended a reduction of the minimum wage by 1 per cent a year for a decade in real terms."

But Employment Minister Eric Abetz has repeatedly stressed the government has no plans to make changes to penalty rates, which are set by the Fair Work Commission.

The focus of the issues papers accords with the draft terms of reference for the review, leaked to Fairfax last year, which made clear pay and conditions and penalty rates would be examined.

In September last year, Senator Abetz told Fairfax Media he had neutralised a potential political campaign from Labor and the union movement over a possible return to WorkChoices – an assertion that is contested by organised labour.

SOURCE

Is a $500,000 private school education really worth it?

A point overlooked below is that in choosing your son's school, you are choosing his friends for life.  Except for the army, men rarely make new friends far into adulthood, and even if they do, their old school friends will still usually predominate in their friendship circle.  So choosing a school is choosing a lot for a son.  What sort of friends do you want  your son to have?  He will tend to have smarter and more socially competent friends if you send him to a private school.  And if you send him to a sink school ....

All parents know that having children is like firing up a backyard bonfire but you substitute wads of cash for kindling and wood, but this week's study about the cost of private schooling would give anyone pause.

The Australian Scholarship's Group's research showed that a baby born in 2015 would cost over half a million dollars to be educated in Sydney's private schools.

Forget the six-million-dollar man, we have the half-million dollar kid – and we two of them!

But you are only going to get sticker shock if you insist on putting your kids into a private school and I don't plan on doing that. There are a number of factors at play here, not least the cost of the schooling and my inability to pay for it.

One problem is that "private schools" often seem to come under an umbrella brand that brings with it a belief of quality when, just like public schools or even hospitals or restaurants, quality varies quite significantly. For some private schools you may be getting top quality, out-of-the-box education, but at others you are just paying a lot more for a fairly standard education.

Many people send their kids to private school in the belief it comes with more advantages than the quality of teaching, that it can help one muscle in on the old boys' network.

There is little doubt that this network can be of some assistance. As an inexperienced twentysomething my friend, a former Geelong Grammarian, got us a face-to-face meeting with a member of the Fairfax family to discuss our fledgling men's magazine and there was little doubt that his school contacts were instrumental in getting that meeting. It certainly wasn't our business plan for the magazine, because we didn't have one.

But it is not the shortcut to nepotism many in the Comments section of school news stories like to believe, our would-be patron was polite but firm about our need to go and get our shit together before bothering to sit down with him or anyone else again (and quite rightly so).

There is also a fairly irrational fear of public schools. Just like the private equivalent these vary greatly and you need to do your research but we are lucky in Australia to not have to worry about our kids having to pass through metal detectors.

After spending the past two years in Singapore, paying a private school fee for a public school level of schooling I am readily embracing the amazing offering that is a virtually free education in this country and more of us should do the same. If more of the families that wanted their kids well educated put their efforts into the public system it would surely improve. Perhaps this huge hike in private schools fees is actually a boost to the public system, making their elite nature even clearer and sending the upper middles back into the arms of the state.

Other downsides for me include the fact many private school kids have to travel further to get to school (we know one mum with a nearly two hour school run between two far-flung male and female private schools) and the fact that you often have to select these school so far in advance that you can't know they are a good fit for your kids.

The question of what school to go to is more than a Naplan score or a natty blazer, it is the people, the community, the proximity to friends and after-school play. There are so many variables that you can't be sure you will achieve the desired result you had pictured when they were an infant – no matter how much you pay.

And what about the opportunity cost to a $500k education? Few of us will be able to pay such bills without forgoing certain things, things like the mind-opening world of international travel. I would not trade my kids Cambodian road trip for private schooling, if you can have both knock yourself out but at these projected rates that will not be a large slice of the population.

Far too many assumptions are made about schooling choices. We recently met a family from the US on a trip through Indonesia. When they said their kids – four of them 17 through to 11 – were home schooled our first instinct was to inch slowly away from them on our tiny boat. But spending a few days with these caring, erudite kids was a great reminder or our inbuilt prejudice as they were some of the most calm, well-rounded young people we had ever come across.

Now home schooling is not for us. And it's not the cost that is putting us off, it's the fact that we might have to reintroduce the cane for it to work. But private school is something I know is not the right fit for us either. I want my kids to have diverse range of fellow pupils, of races, of backgrounds. I do not want the common unifying factor to be the almighty dollar.

This is a very emotive debate but it is often framed in the reductive cry of wanting "the best" for our kids. We all want to give our kids a great start and, with some budgetary axing and a second job, I could probably send my kids through the private school system, but like a lot of things – as a not-particularly wealthy parent – it comes down to value for money.

And, at a half-million-dollar price tag, I do not see the clear and overwhelming benefits of a private school education.

SOURCE






'Strong welfare cop': Scott Morrison's new self-proclaimed title

He stopped the boats, now he's going to stop the rorts. New Social Services Minister Scott Morrison has issued a warning to would-be dole bludgers, Disability Support Pension rorters and terrorists who want to wage war while on government benefits: a tough new welfare cop is on the beat.

In one of his first broadcast interviews in his new portfolio, the former immigration minister told Sky News' Graham Richardson that Australians "generally are quite happy to have a system that helps people who are genuinely in need and deserve our support".

"But what they won't cop, just like they won't cop people coming on boats, is they're not going to cop people who are going to rort that system," he said. "So there does need to be strong welfare cop on the beat...I will be doing that because I want to make sure this system helps the people who most need it."

It's a marked change of tone from his predecessor Kevin Andrews, who always seemed happier handing out relationship counselling vouchers than cracking down on welfare recipients.

Cutting back on welfare spending, Morrison explained, is needed to pay for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. "I see achieving the NDIS as one of the worthy goals of going through the hard tasks of reforming the welfare system to make sure we can accommodate this," he said.

Labor announced the scheme, which is all well and good, Morrison said. Now the Coalition must deliver and fund it.

While Richardson ostensibly hails from the opposite side of politics (he's a former Labor social security minister, no less), this was not blowtorch-on-the-belly stuff. For anyone fed up with the adversarial style of interviewing served up on 7.30, Lateline or even Today, Richo's your guy.

"You're the tough guy of the place, you also know which way is up, I think you know the electorate pretty well, I don't think you live in some on-high castle, I think you've been pretty good at what you do," purred Richo.

Morrison's face beamed brighter than the MCG floodlights.  It was just the beginning.

"You and Julie Bishop have been the standout successes of a government that hasn't gone all that well in its first 15 months, 16 months," Richo continued. "Whether you want to admit that or not everyone knows it ... that's a fact."

Morrison responded in turn, prefacing his answers with "you make a good point" and "that's a good question".

A rare and welcome ray of bipartisanship in these politically polarised times.

SOURCE






Why private health insurance is getting so expensive, and what can be done about it

For private health insurance customers who cannot understand why their premiums are set to rise at triple the rate of inflation, the experience of CUA Health may shed some light.

The fast-growing health fund just paid out its biggest claim ever. A patient receiving end of life care in an intensive care unit just cost the fund $270,000 over a few months. "That was unique," chief executive Philip Fraser told Fairfax Media. "But utilisation across the board is rising."

In line with other insurers CUA Health, which has 50,000 members and premium revenue of about $118 million, is facing a rise in the cost it pays hospitals and healthcare providers of "about 6.5 to 7 per cent", he said.

"Australians are living longer and they're using their health funds more."

Fairfax Media has revealed that insurance bosses expect new Health Minister Sussan Ley to approve an average industry premium rise of between 6 and 7 per cent, which is triple the rate of inflation.

The reason for the hefty rise, which is scheduled to come in on April 1, is because of rising use of health services, increasing care costs and more expensive medical technology, the executives said. This results in what the industry describes as high claims inflation.

The rise will come after an average boost to premiums of 6.2 per cent was approved by former Health Minister Peter Dutton in 2014, and rises of between 5.1 and 5.8 per cent in the four prior years were approved by Labor ministers.

Executives have mixed views on how the rising cost of cover will impact the $19 billion industry, with some, but not all, warning affordability is becoming an issue.

But they all agree that left alone claims inflation will continue to rise. So what is the answer?

The chief executive of listed fund nib, Mark Fitzgibbon, proposed three solutions to ease the pain: encouraging greater take-up of insurance by young people; increasing collaboration between insurers and healthcare providers; and reconsidering risk equalisation - the policy that shares the costs of the industry's most expensive customers among all funds.

Mr Fitzgibbon said because young policyholders do not require the same level or frequency of care, they can reduce costs on a per policy basis. "The younger the insured population the lower the rate of [claims] growth," he said. "[Insurance] depends on having a lot of good risk to support the poorer risk."

Healthcare collaboration

Health insurers want to play a greater role in determining where and how their members are treated, as well as in preventative care. Mr Fitzgibbon said greater collaboration between insurers and health professionals is needed to "avoid unnecessary hospitalisations".

The holy grail for insurers - and a subject which they lobby heavily on - is to collaborate with general practitioners, but by law they are prohibited from playing a role in primary health care. Mr Dutton made comments about potentially reviewing these rules, but it is unclear what path Ms Ley will take.

Risk equalisation

This scheme partially compensates health funds for the hospital costs of high risk patients. It supports "community rating", which means funds can't price their policies based on risks such as age and pre-existing conditions. Equalisation shares a proportion of costs for members aged 55 years and older on a sliding scale with the industry. Funds pay a share based on the size of their membership.

However Mr Fitzgibbon argued it drives up prices, discourages young people from signing up and creates little incentive for funds with an older population to behave in a way that improves their members' health and reduces the need for care.

SOURCE






Amusing: Foreign backpackers recoil after trying new Vegemite crust pizza... but Australians love it so much they'd 'have it for breakfast'



I'm a bit surprised the Poms didn't like it as their Marmite has a similar taste.  But Marmite doesn't have the big following in Britain that Vegemite has in Australia

They say there's a fine line between genius and insanity and Pizza Hut will have the country divided on which category their new Vegemite crust pizza falls in to.

Just in time for the Australia Day weekend, Pizza Hut has launched the quintessential Aussie pizza, combining two of the country's most loved foods - cheese and Vegemite.

In a promo for the new pizza, the fast-food chain took to Noah's Backpackers at Bondi Beach to carry out a taste test on non Australians, in a quest to prove the pizza is 'Made for Australians'.

Not surprisingly, travellers from Spain, The Netherlands, France and Chile were appalled at Pizza Hut's latest crust-stuffer, with some describing it as 'disgusting' and 'horrible'.

The 'Mitey Stuffed Crust Pizza' takes a regular cheese-filled crust of molten mozzarella and fills it with Australia's favourite breakfast spread, but judging by this video, the Vegemite pizza craze won't be going any further than our shores.

The video, which has been viewed over 82,000 times since it was uploaded on Monday, begins with a booming didgeridoo playing in the background, as the Vegemite spread is squeezed onto the pizza crust.

The taste testers seem genuinely pleased that they are about to receive free pizza until they see the black crust.

'Is that a Yorkshire pudding?' a girl from the UK asks, insisting that the pizza doesn't smell that bad. 'What's the black thing' a girl from Germany asks, later questioning the cameraman on whether or not there's 'sh**' in the pizza crust.

A range of wild guesses are thrown around as the astounded backpackers try to distinguish exactly what they've eaten.   'Medicine? Petrol? Fish jam?' the men of the group say as they appear to be resisting the urge to vomit.

Two men from Chile are persistent that the Vegemite is fish jam, claiming that the substance is 'horrible'.

One man looks defeated as he realises that this is one of the most-loved foods in Australia. 'But if females in Australia like this I don't know, they're very crazy people,' he says as he relaxes with a beer.

Cementing the fact that this pizza has been created solely for Australians, two Aussie men take to the couch a the end of the promo, and devour the controversial treat.

'That's nice, I'd have it for breakfast I reckon,' one of the men says. 'Yep, full of Vegemite keeping Aussies strong' the man in the blue hoodie says.

Pizza Hut has more than 14,000 restaurants around the world but the Vegemite crust is only available in Australia. It will cost $3 extra to add to any pizza.

SOURCE

An Open letter to Anthony Chisholm, State Secretary  of the Qld. ALP

Dear Anthony,

I’m writing with respect to the ALP advertisements on privatisation currently running on TV, which can be viewed by clicking on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wptJMNV_qsY and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWfWaUWqpfs.

These advertisements contain a number of untruths.

As the Australian Institute for Progress stated at the beginning of this campaign, “Repetition of untrue slogans on the basis that the more frequently and loudly they are repeated the more likely voters are to believe them to be true is not a democratic practice, and we call on the political parties to avoid it”.

Our institute favours full privatisation of the assets that the government is leasing and we are happy to have that argument in the context of an election, and to support all parties that support that position. However the argument should be had on a factual basis.

The untrue assertions in these advertisements are:

That the government is proposing to sell these assets for 99 years
That electricity prices will be higher as proven by privatisation of electricity assets in Victoria

The government is not proposing to sell these assets, and that is plain from the Strong Choices Final Plan. They are leasing rather than selling the assets. On this point the ads also imply that the arrangement is for 99 years, when it is for 50 years with an option for a further 49 years. A lease is not a sale, neither economically nor legally.

Furthermore the facts do not bear out the assertions in the first ad that when they have “sold” the assets “[j]ust like they did in Victoria” that electricity bills will increase because “…electricity bills in Victoria have skyrocketed”. Or the assertion in the second ad that “The only reason someone buys an asset is to make money from it, so you’ll pay more.”

The most recent study into electricity pricing, by Ernst Young, clearly shows that not to be true, as per the table below. Electricity bills in Victoria are lower than in Queensland, and have increased less since privatisation occurred some 19 years ago.



I have enjoyed our chats about campaigning in the past, but this is no way to run an election in a modern democracy.

I look forward to your response and the ALP withdrawing these ads and entering into some serious debate about the merits, or otherwise, of the issues.

Regards,
Graham Young
Executive Director
Australian Institute for Progress

SOURCE







As former Vic. Premier Jeff Kennett sees it

IT’S an inescapable fact that the past seven years have been the most abysmal and wasteful period of federal leadership since World War II.

We have experienced a political famine in which personality politics, a failure of vision, a lack of preparedness by incoming governments and a total absence of consistent messages have left the public confused and lacking trust in our federal leaders.

If there were to be a federal election tomorrow, I dare say the Coalition would be defeated easily, as it should be — not only has opportunity been wasted but there has been no consistency in domestic policy.

Tony Abbott said last year he was going to clean the barnacles off the hull of the ship of state. But the change in health policy over the doctors co-payment fee suggests the barnacles are very quickly devouring the ship itself.

Last week was a public relations disaster for a Government without direction. And if it is true, as it was reported, that the Prime Minister rejected advice from Treasurer Joe Hockey and then health minister Peter Dutton over the co-payment, you have to wonder who the PM is listening to.

If they are junior staff, they should be sacked as they are clearly living on another planet. If the PM made the decision himself then he is leader in name only and out of touch with the community.

That is not to say those who can afford to be paying more for our healthcare shouldn’t be doing so. I do not mind a payment being levied to reduce bad practices and unnecessary demand. But the groundwork hasn’t been done for any price adjustment.

We all wear increases in cigarette prices, petrol taxes, council rates and utility charges. Surely being able to better fund a health service is more important. Yes, we know costs have gone up and, yes, we know the Medicare charge is now covering less than 50 per cent of the cost of health services. We know we are going to have to pay more to maintain our excellent health service.

So explain the situation better and hold the line. Keep it simple, stupid.

So there’s not much support for the Government.

The Opposition? No support there either. Most of us know they created the financial mess the Government is trying, but failing, to address. Yet Labor under Bill Shorten simply opposes every measure put up by the Government to tackle the situation.

The Greens? Mere opportunists without any economic credibility. They promise the world knowing they will never be held to account as a government. They have no sense of what is in the Australian interest and use their numbers in the Senate irresponsibly.

But given the loss of confidence in the two major parties, the fairies at the bottom of the hill would probably maintain their vote if an election were held today.

The Palmer United Party? I think it is always a problem when a person names something after himself. It’s an example of another great opportunity missed. Commercial core principles have been bypassed for short-term popularity. The PUPs have popped and will never be any stronger than they are today.

The independents are many, but of varying talent and experience. One I know and respect is Senator Nick Xenophon. But he has announced he is going to stand candidates at the next election, threatening his strength and independence. The Xenophon United Party? XUP?

Nick must not be distracted from using his influence to make things happen in Canberra.

Australia’s future must belong to the brave and the bold. Unless those in Canberra break the mould that has existed for the past seven years, I suspect an election in two years would result in more independents standing and winning seats, simply because the public are disillusioned by the federal class — because no one will actually lead.

The states have a much better leadership. NSW’s Mike Baird is showing strength and boldness of policy, consistency and compassion.

Campbell Newman in Queensland has had the toughest gig in town having inherited an $80 billion debt. An election there in 10 days will decide whether Queenslanders have the balls to see the job through, or will risk the gains made to date.

Victoria, of course, has a new Government under Daniel Andrews. Let’s hope Labor does a good job for all our sakes.

In South Australia, Jay Weatherill played a deft hand to win the last election. Time will tell whether his policies are changing to reflect the new challenges in his state.

WA’s Colin Barnett is being buffeted by the downturn in mining revenue and a lowering of investment in new developments but is an experienced set of hands.

In Tasmania, a new Government under Will Hodgman has started well, but needs to pedal hard and fast to rebuild Tasmania’s economy. But Tassie is a place of opportunities and could yet surprise us all.

So the states are better led than is the country, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some standout performers in Canberra.

Andrew Robb in Trade is securing opportunities for Australia that are generational. Julie Bishop is doing a great job in Foreign Affairs. But it’s a pity their good work is being lost in a sea of mediocrity.

Yet, there is always hope. And I live for tomorrow.

So I challenge our federal politicians to prove me wrong. In a year I shall revisit this subject and it would be gratifying to be able to report substantial improvement. It is in your hands.

Have a good day.

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Qld. Labor very vague about the economy

Some vague assertions about TAFE seems to be all she can think of.  So what will they spend and how will they fund it?

OPPOSITION Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk insists she is offering Queenslanders a viable alternative economic plan.

"Absolutely,"Ms Palaszczuk said.

"When I talk about jobs I am talking about growing the ecomony. You talk to anyone walking down the street. The measure of how the economy is going is whether or not you have a job.

"I outlined our plans to grow the economy and get people into jobs, and it starts with TAFE.

"Our Advance Queensland policy is about growing innovation and getting the best and brightest minds here in Queensland and attracting them from overseas. "That will then flow on to create jobs."

Ms Palaszczuk also denied she was devoting too much time talking about Premier Campbell Newman plan and not enough time outlining hers.

"Campbell Newman’s track record is not jobs. "He has cut frontline services. When you cut frontline services and you rip 24,000 jobs out of the economy, it slows the economy right down. We are passionate about jobs.  "I will continue to talk about jobs because jobs are good for the economy."

She also rejected suggestions she had not done enough to differentiate herself from the previous Bligh Government.

Earlier, The Courier-Mail reported Annastacia Palaszczuk has continued her policy-lite approach during the election, skipping the key issue of the economy to attack Campbell Newman during Labor’s official campaign launch.

Speaking to a packed audience of party faithful in Ipswich, the Labor leader yesterday accused Premier Campbell Newman of "arrogance", "mismanagement" and "twisted priorities".

Ms Palaszczuk claimed the LNP had brought back the corrupt "brown paper bag" era, prompting criticism from Mr Newman that Labor was resorting to the same "personal attacks" as the 2012 election.

"We have seen the LNP open the door again to those carrying brown paper bags,’’ she said. "We also see the undermining of the state’s corruption watchdog and the trashing of Fitzgerald inquiry recommendations."

Mr Newman said Ms Palaszczuk was using the same tactic as her predecessor Anna Bligh because she was out of ideas.  "We saw this from Anna Bligh last time," he said.

"Last time, they ran a campaign about negativity and personality politics.

"This time, they’re doing the same thing. Why? Because they have no plan for Queensland. They don’t have the leadership, they don’t have the ticker to sort out the financial problems that we inherited. They certainly don’t know how to create jobs and so they engage in this sort of thing."

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God needs to start smiting these idiots
 
Piers Akerman

ABOUT now, God must surely be considering sacking his senior management and public ­relations people and wondering how to get his business back to basics.

Globally, the major religions seem to have been placed in the hands of consultants – the usual practice of managements which don’t have a clue – with predictably regrettable results.
Management of the Muslim brand has gone to the dogs with every other certifiable idiot calling himself an imam or an ayatollah and issuing fatwahs that make the mark a mockery in the modern world.

Just last week a prominent religious scholar in Saudi ­Arabia issued a fatwa against building snowmen in the ­kingdom, stating the practice was not acceptable to Islam. According to a Gulf News ­report, which has so far been unchallenged, Mohammad Saleh Al Minjed said people must not build any snowmen or snow models of animals.

As snow fell across the desert, the scholar set out guidelines for children and others who wanted to play outdoors. Making snow models of lifeless things, such as ships, fruit and buildings, was apparently acceptable in Islam, he said, but “it is not permitted to make a statue out of snow, even by way of play and fun”.

Clearly, this is one member of Team Islam who poses a threat to the brand and should lose his franchise. But his chuckleheaded humbug currently falls at the lower end of the lunatic ladder.

Sitting a few rungs up are the hashtag heroes who have abandoned Australia at the urging of some fairly adept manipulators who appeal to their teenage fantasies with offers of slave girls, virgin brides and the opportunity to use the sort of firearms they might normally only drool over when playing video games.

Unfortunately, they are also eroding the Muslim brand they claim to be defending because as everyone has been told ­repeatedly, Islam is the religion of peace. God clearly has his work cut out bringing these barbaric oafs to heel.

Christianity can’t escape criticism either, and God must wonder how so many of his followers of that faith permitted various strands to be intellectually hollowed out to the point of meaninglessness.

It was a lot simpler in the old days when God spoke ­directly to franchisees and gave instructions carved in stone. Now messages are workshopped by a racially and sexually diverse committee of guitar-strummers and delivered in a gender-neutral tone.

At least we can be grateful that He has not descended into the utterly ridiculous realm of ­ineffectual hashtaggery, bumper bar or button protestations and ribbon waving as a substitute for action.

US President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron held their joint press conference on Friday at which Mr Obama announced that the US, UK and its allies were “working seamlessly to prevent attacks and defeat these terrorist networks”.

It was impossible not to ­recall Michelle Obama’s press conference last May at which she lambasted the truly evil ­Islamist Boko Haram terrorists who had kidnapped 276 girls from a secondary school in north-eastern Nigeria weeks earlier. Mrs Obama brandished a hand-written placard which read #Bring Back Our Girls. The girls, all Christian, haven’t been brought back.

In its most recent atrocity, Boko Haram’s Islamist butchers murdered as many as 2000 in brutal attacks earlier this month.   Another rogue action by a recalcitrant franchisee but at least Mr Cameron acknowledged the difficulties faced when he told the joint press conference that the world faced “a poisonous and fanatical ideology”.

But whether he or Mr Obama can actually “confront it wherever it appears” is a very open question.

Mr Obama has shown himself to be dangerously weak in the war against terrorism and US foreign policy is in free fall.

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard was ­remarkably prescient when he warned eight years ago that an Obama presidency would be a boon to terrorists.

God must have his hands so full at the moment with wannabe martyrs queuing up for their suicide suits that it seems selfish to contemplate sending a prayer in His direction. Maybe an email, in the cyber Cloud, to be opened at leisure, perhaps?

Realistically though, I’d rather He concentrated on sorting out the assorted franchisees who have brought the whole religion business into such disfavour.

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Abbott not fond of sharks

And the Greenies are furious.  A Greenie is a type of shark, after all.  They're just as anti-people

The Abbot government has been accused of backing away from its international obligations on animal conservation after it declared it would opt out of protecting five shark species.

Australia is submitting a "reservation" to ensure a recent international listing granting protection status to three species of thresher shark and two species of hammerhead does not take effect in Australian waters.

Humane Society International has described the move as an "unprecedented act of domestic and international environmental vandalism".

The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals gave new protection status to 31 migratory species at a conference in November.

The listings were agreed to by consensus, with Australia among the countries present for the talks.

But the government has had a change of heart and is seeking to opt out of co-operating with other countries to protect five of the shark species, arguing that Australia already has sufficient protections in place and the listing would have unintended consequences for fishers.

Alexia Wellbelove, senior program manager at Humane Society International, said the government was responding to complaints from recreational fishers who catch and release the sharks, and commercial fishers who can accidentally trap them while hunting for other fish.

If the five shark species were given international protection status, Australian laws would kick in, making it an offence to kill, injure, take or move the species in Australian waters.

The listings were due to take effect next month.

"We just think it's really unbelievably disappointing because Australia has always led the way on shark conservation and this is really a step backward," Ms Wellbelove said.

"It's a very sad day for protection of the marine environment if we take the easy road and opt of these things, rather than taking steps to protect our domestic waters."

In a letter to Human Society International, Environment Minister Greg Hunt said Australia already had "strong domestic measures in place" for the five shark species in question but this did "not negate our support for international action related to these species, or for shark conservation more broadly".

Nine other migratory species given listings at the convention can be found in Australia and the protection status will apply.

Mr Hunt said Australia was seeking a reservation for the five shark species because a listing would have unintended consequences for fishers as a result of Australia's laws being tougher than required by the convention.

"Not doing so could see recreational fishers being fined up to $170,000 and face 2 years in jail, even when fishing in accordance with their permits," he said.

"There are still strong measures in place to protect thresher and hammerhead sharks in Australia and these will continue.

"The Australian government will continue to actively participate in shark conservation under the convention as a signatory of the Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation of Migratory Sharks, and through $4.6 million funding for shark research and conservation activities."

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Our great stories need a place in the classroom

By Brian Johns, the former managing director of the ABC, SBS and publishing director of Penguin Books Australia

As a child I was not given "children's" books. During our weekly visit to the local School of Arts Library in Cairns, my mother steered me to the "serious" adult section.

It wasn't until later that I discovered the delight and joy of gems like Mem Fox's Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, Pamela Allen's Who Sank the Boat and Libby Gleeson's Amy & Louis.

These books resonate with our children (and us) because they are surprising and engaging reads written by superb storytellers and brought to life by talented illustrators.

These books and many more have been given a new lease of life through the ambitious new website, Reading Australia, which was started when it became obvious to me and others that Australia's great books were barely getting a look-in at schools. Somehow our books had dropped off the reading lists of most teachers.

I couldn't fathom that a child could go through school without walking hand-in-hand with our literary treasures. After all, if a love of literature hasn't started at home with the bedside story, then the classroom is surely the next touch point. That's not to say schools aren't doing a great job, but our homegrown stories reflect our natural surroundings, and what makes us who we are.

So a few heads got together to find out what was missing. As it turns out, many books were out of print, but more urgent than that was the availability of resources for teachers.

To solve the problem, the not-for-profits Copyright Agency, the Australian Society of Authors and the major English and literacy educator associations have all worked hard to create resources for teachers to bring Australian stories back into the classroom.

As teachers are preparing to return to school, they can now source 62 curriculum-linked resources for books, plays and poems for kindergarten to year 12 at Reading Australia. Essays responding to the works from writers such as Germaine Greer, Malcolm Knox and Geordie Williamson bring deeper perspectives to the texts for young adults.

Some of the books teachers and students are rediscovering include new classics, such as Oscar-winner Shaun Tan's The Arrival and Jeannie Baker's Mirror, as well as old favourites such as Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career and Ruth Park's Playing Beatie Bow.

President of the Australian Literacy Educators Association, Robyn Ewing, reviewed all of the junior primary resources and praises the fact they are written by teachers from across Australia. This geographic spread recognises the knowledge and insight teachers have about what will switch children on to reading.

She says: "Quality literature can and should be a centrepiece from which teachers can build students' reading, writing and language skills".

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They're killing off Tom!

But he's not going away



Tomwaterhouse.com, the sports betting brand headed by a fourth generation Aussie bookie in a slick suit and a smile, is about to become a piece of history.

The move has been on the cards for a while. British betting giant William Hill bought tomwaterhouse.com in 2013 for a reported $34 million. But the business has continued to trade under the tomwaterhouse.com name, with the son of leading horse trainer Gai Waterhouse continuing to front the business for promotional purposes.

William Hill has also since acquired major Australian sports bookie Sportingbet, and the iconic Centrebet, the Alice Springs-based agency which in the 1990s was the first global betting agency to dream up the idea of betting on elections and reality TV shows.

William Hill announced today that it will launch its global betting brand in Australia, replacing its three existing brands, Sportingbet, TomWaterhouse.com and Centrebet.

Sportingbet will be the first to be rebranded, changing to William Hill ahead of the upcoming Autumn Racing Carnival and the 2015 NRL and AFL seasons. The rebranding of Centrebet and TomWaterhouse.com to William Hill will follow in “due course”, a company spokesman said.

But young Tommy won’t be left out in the cold. Since last year he has been CEO of William Hill Australia and will continue in that role.

“The change to William Hill will give us a recognised and respected international brand with which to compete at the highest level in Australia’s competitive market,” he said today.

“It will also allow us to work much more closely with global racing and sporting bodies and provide our Australian customers with more diverse betting opportunities,” he added.

Founded in 1934, William Hill brands itself as “The Home of Betting” and is the UK’s biggest bookie.

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Vast waste by Victoria's Labor government

Spending a billion to get nothing

Andrews Government faces massive compensation bill to axe East West Link. Mr Andrews said the consortium contracted to build the 6.6km road would be refunded for any work it had done on the project before it was cancelled by Labor.

But he would not say what further compensation would be paid to the East West Connect consortium, saying negotiations were ongoing.  “There are issues around costs that have been incurred, and we were very clear about, it’s appropriate to refund people costs that have been incurred,” he said.

“That’s a usual practice, whether you are building a house worth two or three hundred thousand dollars or a much bigger project.”

Mr Andrews said he couldn’t say how much taxpayers would have to pay in total to scrap the contract for the project.

“It would be inappropriate for me to put a number on it. We are going to work through these issues responsibly, carefully... I am not going to run a commentary on it.”
.
Mr Andrews was asked whether the government would consider legislating to invalidate the contract and avoid compensation. “I wouldn’t rule that out,” he said.

He said the previous government had left Labor a “mess” to deal with, and should “hang their head in shame”.

“Having said that we need to work through, and we are, the mess that has been left to us.”

The premier said he had a clear choice on whether to break his promise on scrapping the “dud” East West Link or deal with the contract signed by Premier Denis Napthine.

“I will not break the commitment I made before November 29th,” he said.  “We are not building this project, it is a dud project.”

Deputy Premier James Merlino told 3AW today: “There will be a settlement reached with the consortium, there was always going to have to be.”

But he refused to reveal more details including possible financial costs, saying: “I’m not going to conduct negotiations over the airwaves.”

The Herald Sun can reveal that key members of the consortium that signed the contract to build the Link want at least $1.2 billion to walk away from the dumped project.

Banks and superannuation funds that financed the deal are leading the hardline push.  But they are at odds with partner and construction giant Lend Lease, which is understood to be taking a more cautious approach for fear a fracas may dent its chances for future government jobs in Victoria.

It’s understood that Lend Lease favours a settlement amount in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Herald Sun can confirm that, in the wake of weeks of frantic negotiations with the consortium, there is a dawning acceptance within the Labor Government that it will have to write a taxpayer-funded cheque to rip up the contract for the 6.6km road.

The Government has engaged businessman and former MCG Trust chairman John Wylie and gun Arnold Bloch Leibler lawyer Leon Zwier to help it argue its case.

Mr Wylie was heavily involved in complex government business cases such as the privatisation of Qantas and of the state’s power industry.

Uncertainty about the looming cost to taxpayers of compensation poses problems for Budget planning.

It could also embarrass Mr Andrews, who repeatedly said the contracts — signed by the Napthine Government in September — were worthless.

Four days before the election, he said: “Be very clear about this: there will be no compensation paid.”

Mr Andrews revealed in September that he planned to dump the $6.8 billion toll road and said then he expected “some modest compensation”.

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy said Labor only had itself to blame for the scale of the compensation payout.

“Labor knew their claim that (East West Link) had no binding contract was wrong. It will now cost $1 billion to scrap a roadway that Melbourne needs,” Mr Guy said on Twitter today.

The consortium that won the contract for the $6.8 billion toll road includes Lend Lease, French group Bouygues, and Spanish company Acciona.

A complex network of institutions, including local and international banks and super funds, financed the deal.

A source said CEOs of the major partners, including from overseas, came to Melbourne before Christmas, and “made clear they would be pursuing their legal rights as contained in the contracts’’.

This was understood to relate to the sum the group believed it would be owed.

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Local gas prices set to soar as exports to Asia get under way

While most of us were on holidays, something happened off the coast of Gladstone in Queensland that will have hip-pocket implications for consumers across the eastern states.

In late December, British energy giant BG Group sent the first ever shipment of liquefied natural gas from Australia's east coast, using gas from the state's booming coal seam gas industry.

Granted, it sounds far removed from everyday life for most of us. But this cargo load is the start of a trend that will dramatically increase how much households pay for gas used for hot water, cooking, or heating.

It is predicted to push up many households' utility bills by a similar amount to the carbon tax, but there are no plans for compensation. And as you'd expect with a jump in the cost of living of this size, this one is producing some seriously flimsy economics.

First though, back to that shipment. Not only was it the first time that CSG has been converted into LNG, the exportable form of gas. More importantly for consumers, it was the first time gas has been exported from the east coast of Australia at all, and there is much more to come.

Origin Energy and Santos this year also hope to start pumping cargo loads full of the stuff, to be sold to buyers across China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and other Asian nations.

Economists are keeping an eye on these projects – and others in WA – as there are predictions they could make Australia the world's biggest exporter of LNG by 2018, overtaking Qatar. LNG looks set to become our second biggest export behind iron ore.

But what will affect households directly is how this massive new industry transforms the domestic gas market.

Now that the east coast is able to export gas (WA has been doing it since 1989) producers have the option of selling to buyers in Asia, who are willing to pay much, much more for it than we have been.

Historically, the east coast gas market was insulated from the rest of the world, and the domestic wholesale price was stable at about $3 to $4 a gigajoule. Now, there are buyers across Asia prepared to pay $12 or $13, even when energy markets are in turmoil as they are at the moment.

That translates to much higher domestic prices. When you account for the costs of converting the gas into LNG and shipping, it still suggests a domestic gas price of $6 to $8 in the wholesale market. That is, a 100 per cent increase from the long-term average.

So far, the NSW regulator has approved a 17.8 per cent rise in retail gas prices between 2014 and 2016, partly in response to the new export boom.  Victorians face a similar jump over the next few years because its producers can also sell their gas to the north.

And these increases are just the beginning, with further significant price rises expected for the next few years.

As this extra cost is passed on to users, it will push up utility bills significantly. A report by the Grattan Institute's Tony Wood last year estimated the average Melbourne household gas bill would jump $300 a year because of the changes over the next few years, while the average Sydney bill would rise by more than $100.

That compares with the extra $270 a year that Treasury estimated we'd be spending on gas and electricity because of the carbon price.

Cost increases like this are understandably causing plenty of concerns for the more vulnerable consumers and affected businesses. Governments in NSW and Victoria are investigating the issue now.

And it is in this heated environment that business groups are mounting a campaign based on flawed economics.

In submissions to a NSW parliamentary inquiry, industry groups and AGL have repeatedly claimed that increasing the supply of gas in NSW would be one way to limit the impact of the gas price shock.

More specifically, they argue, the government should stop getting in the way of the industry's plans to dramatically expand the extraction of coal seam gas, despite all the environmental and community concerns.

It's economics 101, right? Lifting supply should push down the price. Except in this case, the claim is a furphy.

As the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) says in its submission, the amount of coal seam gas being extracted in NSW has a minimal impact on what the state's residents pay for gas. That price is now being set in the international market.

"As domestic gas prices are set largely by international gas prices, the development of coal seam gas reserves in NSW would impact domestic gas prices to the extent it impacts the international market," IPART says.

When you consider that NSW's gas reserves only meet 5 per cent of its own needs, the state's industry is clearly nowhere near the scale to affect global prices in any plausible scenario. To imply that it could is misleading.

The bottom line is that gas prices are set to soar because the long-sheltered domestic market is being linked to global prices via exports.

When utility bills are already such a sensitive issue, the industry does itself no favours making self-serving and misleading claims about how to these price pressures might be curbed.

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PNG government speaks out on claims of violence at Manus Island detention centre

The Papua New Guinea government have denied that local police stormed the Manus Island detention centre as the number of asylum seekers staging a hunger strike grows and water has been reportedly cut off in parts of the facility.

Two-thirds of the population of the Manus Island centre are now refusing food as detainees grow increasingly desperate to avoid the Australian government's plan to resettle them in PNG, which is expected to begin this week.

Refugee advocates say that the water in the Delta compound has now been completely cut off, forcing asylum seekers to drink from drains. It is believed a number of asylum seekers have barricaded themselves inside their compounds as part of the protest.

On Monday morning, PNG's Immigration Minister, Rimbink Pato, confirmed that protesting asylum seekers on the island had sewn their lips together, swallowed razor blades and had also started swallowing washing powder.

But Mr Pato said reports that the local police had entered the facility at the weekend were false.

"Despite claims by agitator groups in Australia, at no time have police been called upon to enter the facility," the minister said in a statement.

"Each case of self-harm is being investigated by medical personnel and appropriate action is being offered to the individuals concerned."

Refugee advocates claimed that PNG police had entered the centre in riot gear over the weekend, but Fairfax Media understands it was the emergency response team from Wilson security.

Fairfax Media has also confirmed a number of protesting asylum seekers were taken to the Chauka compound over the weekend, which is a smaller compound used to discipline asylum seekers acting aggressively.

In a letter obtained by Fairfax Media, asylum seekers from the Foxtrot compound wrote to Federal Immigration Minister Peter Dutton saying: "If you do not wish us to come to Australia, then that's ok. It's your country. But it does not mean you have the right to settle us in PNG."

Many of them have been imprisoned in the centre for more than 18 months, the letter said.

"We are not toys for you to play with and not animals to imprison us here. "If you send us back to where you found us, it is better for us to live with sharks and sea whales than to stay one more day with inhumane people.  "We can say that when we woke up today, we are resolved to die here in order to bring back our dignity and our freedom."

The Immigration Department and Mr Dutton's office have been contacted for comment.

On Saturday, Mr Dutton said the escalating hunger strike would not change the government's resolve to resettle the men found to be refugees in the PNG community. He also denied security guards had "violently engaged" with the asylum seekers at the weekend.

"I reiterate that while people have the right to protest peacefully, the government will not waver on its successful border protection policies which have saved lives and restored integrity to our humanitarian programme," Mr Dutton said.

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Free speech and the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo

The debate about reform of Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act has bubbled up again in the wake of the slaughter at the Charlie Hebdo office, and has been met with predictable outrage over political point-scoring from opponents of reform who argue debate should not be re-opened.

For what it's worth, I agree. The debate should have never been closed in the first place.

It is a strange defence of freedom of expression that simultaneously condemns the killing of people for drawing cartoons and implicitly affirms that Australian law should nevertheless have a chilling effect on those who might produce similar words or images.

Implicit in the exhortation to restrict speech are the ideas that free speech is a zero-sum game where the 'loser' is almost always a minority community; that minorities gain little from freedom of expression and that they do not lose much from restrictions on speech.

The reality is that, across the globe, people fight for liberal democratic ideals and for free speech in particular. Just this week, Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes for calling himself a liberal. Anti-blasphemy laws - part of India's strange tradition of secularism - undermine free speech in that country in the name of unity. Free speech is no less important in the Western world, and the same conviction that defends it abroad should defend it here.

Minorities of all stripes - Muslims included - can and do defend the liberal democratic values that underpin our society, and this includes the right to free expression. The solidarity expressed in #JeSuisCharlie was complemented by #JeSuisAhmed, in honour of the French Muslim police officer Ahmed Merabet who was gunned down outside the Charlie Hebdo office. The Muslim mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, alsoused rather colourful language when defending the centrality of a free press to Dutch society.

While it's obvious that some speech does offend and hurt particular minority communities, it does not follow that restrictions on speech are therefore necessary. Free speech is just as important to minority communities as it is to society as a whole. British author Kenan Malik argued in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre that "once we give up on the right to offend in the name of 'tolerance' or 'respect', we constrain our ability to challenge those in power, and therefore to challenge injustice". It is patronising to suggest otherwise.

Jonathan Rauch wrote "the open society is sometimes a cross we bear, but it is also a sword we wield, and we are defenceless without it". He was writing specifically about one particular minority community, but it's a lesson we could all bear to learn.

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The silly season GST debate

A public debate about the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is something we have to have, but considering some of the recent contributions, the silly season wasn't a good time to start it. Consider the following examples.

The 10% GST rate has been described as merely an 'introductory' rate (like a teaser home loan interest rate) which was never meant to remain. That would be news to a lot of people.

Related to that is the notion that Australia's rate is well below the OECD average (19%), and therefore there is plenty of scope to increase it.  The OECD countries that have such high GST (VAT) rates also have much higher levels of government spending and overall tax burdens. It is not obvious why we should follow their tax policy examples, considering the economic strife many of them are in.

Much of the commentary has focused on broadening the GST to cover items such as uncooked food. One claim was that the Abbott government already has a mandate to broaden the coverage because the Howard government won the 1998 election proposing to include all food in the GST base! Whatever there is to the mandate theory, it doesn't stretch back 16 years and six elections.

Another suggestion is that the GST should be broadened to cover private school fees and health insurance premiums because these are mainly paid by rich households.  This would make the GST more selective and distorting, not less. If the tax is to be extended to education and health (a contentious issue that raises more complexities than food), it should be to all education and health services, not just ones picked out for 'tax the rich' reasons.

If the GST is ever increased or broadened, it is likely to lead to a higher overall tax burden. A trade-off between (say) a broader GST at a 15% rate and a top income tax rate of (say) 33% as in New Zealand is nice to contemplate but unlikely to be achieved.

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No wonder 40% of Australians have private health insurance

See for example the disastrous situation described below -- where a "free" service is just not good enough by any criterion. 

Private health insurance is affordable in Australia.  Many people on relatively low incomes have it.  It is a significant budget item for many, however, so the majority would rather spend their money on beer and cigarettes than on insurance.  So they rely on the taxpayer for "free" health care.  They rely on bureaucratic healthcare provision.

And the ineffectiveness of that gets steadily worse.  Bureaucracies do not die overnight.  They are like cancer, slowly growing but they will kill you eventually. They gradually choke themselves to death.  And what we read below shows that process to be in an advanced state in Australia  -- the State health services all go back many decades.  And the services will get even worse in future.

So the present situation is in fact mostly fair.  If you put your money into beer and cigarettes instead of health insurance you deserve only third-rate care and that is what you get. You are mainly raiding people who have already paid for their own care and asking them to pay for your care too.

The solution to the problem posed by the situation below then is to get the beer and cigarettes money redirected into private health insurance -- so that the government system is left to care for the few who cannot afford even beer and cigarettes.  If that were done, much of the demand would be taken off the government service and the genuinely poor would get better service. 

So if you see the situation described below as a problem, your rational response would be to mandate private health insurance for all but the very poor.  If you don't like the compulsion in that you can console yourself that the existing system may be rather horrible for many but it is at least fair for the great majority.  Most of those being poorly treated could have chosen otherwise

I have a fairly average health insurance policy so my treatment in a recent health emergency is instructive.  I had an attack of kidney stones.  So I went straight to the Wesley private hospital here in Brisbane -- a church-run hospital named after two great Christians. Within less than two hours of the pain developing, I was given morphine as pain relief and within 6 hours I was on the operating table.  The ideal is possible and readily available in Australia.  It just isn't free


A Sydney hospital left a patient in its emergency department for almost six days, prompting condemnation from an expert in emergency medicine.

Details about the incident are scarce. But a hospital source said the patient was  admitted to Blacktown Hospital's emergency department on Wednesday evening the week before last.

The hospital confirmed the patient had been sitting in a recliner chair in its emergency department and was discharged at some time on Tuesday last week.

"This is absolutely extreme," said Clinical Associate Professor Paul Middleton from Sydney University. "In 25 years working in hospital emergency departments I've never seen anybody stay for that long.

"The lights are on all the time. It's noisy. There are wailing children, mental health patients, people pissed off with waiting and shouting; there's trauma; there's blood and there's vomiting. It's not a place to spend a long time. Patients don't do well [in emergency]."

The hospital, citing patient confidentiality, declined to provide details about the patient's illness. It said they had been treated while in the emergency department and been referred to hospital specialists.

Danny O'Connor, the CEO of the western Sydney local health district, said the patient was discharged after the hospital was satisfied with their progress.

Mr O'Connor also said the case "presented many social complexities" and that the hospital continued to care for patients who were unable to leave for "family or social reasons".

But Professor Middleton said a ward was the only place for a patient in hospital that long.

"There are also alternatives to staying in hospital [such as refuges]," he added.

The Health Minister, Jillian Skinner, declined to comment.

"Our members are sick of being abused by patients who are facing major delays," said Judith Kiedja from the nurses' and midwives' union.

The union advocates the government impose a ratio of one nurse for every three patients to maintain standards of care. Blacktown's emergency department has often run at twice that ratio of nurses this fortnight.

Tanya Whitehouse, from the Macarthur Domestic and Family Violence Service, said she found the case baffling.

"If the patient was facing domestic violence or homelessness, they should have seen a social worker and been found a refuge," she said.

A spokesman for the Family and Community Services Minister, Gabrielle Upton, said over the next three years the government would "invest a record half billion dollars to tackle homelessness across the state".

This latest case comes after a fortnight of major delays at Blacktown Hospital, where between 40 and 60 beds have been closed for the holidays.

A dozen patients, half aged over 80, were waiting more than two days in emergency two weeks ago.

There were further delays last week. Paramedics waited for 17 hours to hand one patient over to the care of the hospital.

"If they're closing that many beds it's a potential for disaster," Professor Middleton said.

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The no-compromise Greenies

Wilderness areas must not be made accessible to visitors

THE Tasmanian government is on course to "trash" the state's wilderness world heritage area if proposed tourist development goes ahead in the region, former Greens leader Bob Brown says.

"TASMANIA'S unique status in having the only world heritage area on Earth actually labelled 'wilderness' should be thrown out if this selfish land-grab goes ahead," Dr Brown said in a statement on Sunday.  "This will trash decades of community commitment to Tasmania's wilderness pre-eminence.  "The brigade backing the government ... has dollar signs in its eyes."

The comments come as the Hodgman government is said to be pushing ahead with moves to allow tourist development in the previously off-limits World Heritage wilderness.

Large swathes of the 1.58 million hectare Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area will reportedly be opened to development under a new draft management plan released last week.

The tourism industry is backing the changes, but conservationists say the plan has the potential to allow damaging large projects.

Dr Brown said the area would have to change its name if the plan went ahead.

"Wilderness fame, more than anything, is the factor raising Tasmania's visitor numbers and tourism jobs by 10 per cent per annum," Dr Brown said.  "Let our beautiful island at least retain its integrity. It could be renamed the Tasmanian Once-Was-Wilderness World Heritage Area."

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Libertarian Senator returns as good as he got

I personally would have ignored the abusive Leftist.  On rare occasions I do give some abuse back but I never stoop to foul language in doing so.  I do not wish to sink to their level.  I am pretty good at pointing out personal faults and weaknesses of the abusers, though

Senator David Leyonhjelm is unrepentant after calling an abusive correspondent a “communist turd”.  The libertarian Senator has confirmed he also told a constituent to go away - in graphic terms - in an expletive-filled rant on his taxpayer-funded email account.

Senator Leyonhjelm’s correspondence was then published on a blog by the target of his abuse, who suggested his suggestion that he “go f--- yourself’’ represented a suggestion that he “self harm”.

The row erupted after anti-discrimination campaigner and gay activist Gary Burns emailed NSW Senator Leyonhjelm and South Australian Senator Cory Bernardi.

In the email, Mr Burns opening salvo was to describe the MPs as “you two unAustralian pathetic little turds”.  He warned that if they allowed anyone to publish images ridiculing Jews or Muslims they would be in contempt of the anti-discrimination laws.

Senator Leyonhjelm returned fire, observing he was a “communist turd”, prompting some support from libertarians on Twitter.

But Mr Burns said: “This is the same imbecile calling for Australians to carry guns.” “This boofhead is not a fit or proper person to represent the good people of NSW. I’ve been called many things in life but never a communist,” he said.

“When I received the offensive email from the Senator I was so shocked I clutched my pearls and reached for the smelling salts.”

Mr Burns has previously sued broadcaster John Laws under the Anti-Discrimination Act for calling gay men “pillow biters”.

“Senator Leyonhjelm’s credibility as a Member of the Australian Parliament wouldn’t be capable of buttering a plate of parsnips for the dinner table. The idiot should go and live on Gobo Island with a pet sheep,” he said.

In response, the NSW Senator fired off a second email to Mr Burns encouraging him to take the action he suggested earlier.

“Dear Gary. It appears you have not yet acted on my advice. Please do so. Go f--- yourself as soon as possible. The world will be a better place,” it said.

A spokesman for Senator Leyonhjelm confirmed the emails were written by him

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Queensland election 2015: parties launch campaigns

This campaign is an excellent example of how Leftists live in an eternal and unprincipled present.  The Left is attacking the ruling conservatives over the sell-offs of government property that the conservatives are doing.  Yet the last Leftist government also did big sell-offs, including the government freight railroad.  What is good for the goose is evidently not good for the gander.  What makes a policy right when Leftists do it but wrong when others do it?

4.24pm: Queensland Premier Campbell Newman acknowledged used part of his keynote speech at his re-election relaunch today to address polls that show both major parties will head into the final two weeks of the campaign neck and neck.

“Polls confirm that a hung parliament here is a very real possibility,” Mr Newman told about 1000 party faithful.

“Palmer, Katter and the Greens political party have done a deal to try and deliver a Labor government that will be at the mercy of their every whim and that is a recipe for chaos.” Mr Newman urged voters to abandon their right to preference all candidates and simply vote one for the LNP.

“Only by voting one for the LNP in local electorates right across this state can you ensure we stay on course for a brighter future and a stronger Queensland,” he said.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott was noticeably absent from the launch, with Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss and Senator George Brandis the only members of the coalition’s federal leadership team in attendance.

Mr Newman and other speakers focused on the LNP’s Strong Choices campaign throughout the launch, with Mr Newman even mentioning the word “strong” or one of its variants 34 times during his 24-minute keynote address.

2.51pm: Queensland Premier Campbell Newman pitched funding for schools at his re-election launch today.

1.48pm: Clive Palmer has missed his own party’s Queensland election campaign launch. His minders cited the flu as the reason Mr Palmer failed to attend the PUP launch on the Sunshine Coast earlier today.

But Palmer United Party state leader John Bjelke-Petersen was on hand to do the honours. He promised the party would abolish payroll tax to revive Queensland’s economy.

“Companies will move their offices and their activities from Sydney and Melbourne and Queensland will boom,” he told the crowd at Mr Palmer’s Coolum resort.

“There is no better way to create employment in Queensland than to offer real incentive for people to do business right here in Queensland,” he said.

The move would allow the “real serious problems” of a high cost of living to be addressed - a problem which “has been brought about primarily by poor government decisions and policy”, Mr Bjelke-Petersen said.

Queensland’s current payroll tax imposes a 4.75 per cent levy on businesses that pay more than $1.1 million a year in wages.

Premier Campbell Newman on Friday recommitted to a previous target of increasing the threshold to $1.4 million in three years. PUP proposes that levy be dropped to zero to attract more business to Queensland.

Payroll tax was “highly inefficient and damaging to the economy”, Mr Bjelke-Petersen said.

The party also vowed to support the development of the Maroochydore Airport into an international airport and restore the maintenance of main roads to the Department of Main Roads, claiming that contractors are given most of the work.

Mr Bjelke-Petersen is running for the Queensland seat of Callide against deputy premier Jeff Seeney.

1.18pm: Campbell Newman has pitched the launch of his re-election campaign today with new funding for schools and sweeteners for the young and Brisbane voters as he again warned Labor could take government in a hung parliament, Michael McKenna reports.

In a slick launch ahead of the January 31 poll, the Premier announced a suite of new funding targeted at seats and voters wavering from their support for the LNP in 2012. Southeast Queensland residents were offered $50 cuts to their water bills and $118 savings for young drivers about to get an open licence.

Mr Newman also announced a LNP government will set aside $1 billion from its proposed privatisation plan to build 23 new schools. The funding is the most expensive commitment of the campaign. The LNP government has already committed almost half the $8.6 billion — set aside for infrastructure fund from the proposed $36 billion of port and electricity assets — in new initiatives, particularly around marginal seats in North Queensland and the Sunshine Coast.

1.12pm: The Labor campaign has jetted from Cairns to Townsville, making it the third visit to the blisteringly hot north Queensland city in the first 13 days of the state election campaign, Sarah Elks reports.

Annastacia Palaszczuk’s repeated visits reveal just how keen Labor is to win back the six marginal north and far north Queensland electorates it lost in the 2012 landslide to Campbell Newman’s Liberal National Party. The LNP’s launch is on in Brisbane today, so Ms Palaszczuk’s strategy appears to be focused on keeping her policy powder dry. There were no new policies announced either yesterday or today.

The first stop in Cairns was Barron Gorge hydro power station — owned by Stanwell, one of the government-owned corporations slated for privatisation under the Newman government. And in Townsville, Ms Palaszczuk will continue her anti-privatisation message, attending a rally in the north Queensland capital The policy difference is the key contrast between the ALP and the LNP ahead of the January 31 poll.

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Job snobs: Aussie dole bludgers too lazy to pick up $250 a day picking fruit

YOUNG, jobless Aussies are lazy and unwilling to break their welfare dependence, ­according to leading wine producers and citrus growers who are becoming ever more reliant on backpackers to stay in operation.

Despite an urgent need for unskilled workers, regional Australia is struggling to ­attract young people from the city despite youth unemployment in Western Sydney peaking at 17 per cent, forcing growers in the nation’s food bowls to look overseas.

Wine growers in the Hunter Valley who still rely heavily on fruit pickers, claim there has been no interest from ­unemployed youth in Sydney to earn easy cash — up to $250 a day — picking grapes, as the region prepares for today’s official start of the 2015 harvest.

So it is backpackers or bust, with several operators claiming without the injection of foreign workers, many wine producers in the Hunter Valley would cease to exist.

‘‘We would probably be stuffed without them. The problem is, our unemployed don’t have to work, it’s too easy for them, plus a lot of them come with baggage; real problems,’’ winemaker and former chairman of the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Association’s viticulture committee Ken Bray said.

‘‘They are too reliant on welfare and don’t want to go where the jobs are.’’

While most of Drayton Wines grapes are picked by a mechanical harvester, manager John Drayton said the winery still uses backpackers to pick from older vines.

He, like Andrew Pengilly from Tyrrells Wines, rarely gets ­interest from locals or those struggling to find work two hours away in Sydney.

Wine growers in the Hunter Valley who still rely heavily on fruit pickers, claim there has been no interest from ­unemployed youth in Sydney

Across the state’s Riverina, the food bowl of NSW, the need for unskilled workers continues undiminished, despite it qualifying for the Howard government initiative to give foreigners an ­extension to their working visa if they work three months in rural Australia.

While the need for workers grows, the appeal for ­unemployed city residents appears non-existent.  ‘‘There are definitely a lot of opportunities in rural Australia, but it seems people think the change would be too stressful. 

“We don’t have fast food joints open 24 hours a day, or big shopping centres,’’ Griffith orange grower Vito Mancini said.  ‘‘Just come out for a month, try it out. Don’t say there is no work about, because there is plenty.’’

Fellow Griffith farmer David Dissegna said: ‘‘The unemployed don’t want to do this kind of work. We would be in dire straits without foreign workers.’’

Fruit growers are not the only business owners lobbying the government to relax 417 visa restrictions, ahead of the tabling of the Northern Australia Development whitepaper next month.

In regional Queensland backpackers are keeping towns afloat. ‘‘We’ll give a job to anyone who’ll pull on a pair of work boots and have a go,’’ McKinley roadhouse owner Aidan Day, 65, said.

The number of working holiday visas has grown by a third since 2008 and visas for 18-to-30-year-olds are being fast-tracked to 48 hours.

IN Germany Denny Spaeth sits ­behind a desk working in a car manufacturing plant, but in ­Australia he is a man of the land, driving a forklift and heaving ­pumpkins out of the ground.

Mr Spaeth and girlfriend Jennifer Herde, a kindergarten teacher, are among the flood of European backpackers who earn travelling money working as fruitpickers. They are not afraid of a hard day’s work.

The couple arrived in Australia in August and worked for two months in Ayr, near Townsville, picking pumpkins, watermelons and squash. Mr Spaeth was able to earn $23 an hour driving a forklift.

The couple will spend the next month pricking grapes in the ­Hunter Valley. Mr Spaeth said they had loved their time Down Under and working on farms was hard but satisfying work.

“It’s life experience. You learn a lot about yourself and it would not be bad for young people,” he said.

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Newman vows to cut payroll tax

A tax on jobs is always obnoxious

QUEENSLAND Premier Campbell Newman denies he broke a 2012 election promise after he committed to a reduced target of payroll tax cuts.

MR Newman on Friday visited the electorate of Chatsworth, in Brisbane's east, to pledge the Liberal National Party (LNP) will progressively raise the payroll tax exemption to $1.4 million by 2017.

"It means that thousands of companies will not need to pay payroll tax," he said at an engineering facility.  "Indeed, companies with a payroll of up to $5.5 million will see significant reductions."

The move would constitute $100 million of foregone revenue.

But it was a theme familiar from the 2012 campaign. Prior to the LNP's landslide win at the last election, the LNP had pledged to raise the threshold to $1.6 million over six years.

The government delayed the promise for two years in 2013, citing the impact from natural disasters, and it was due to commence mid-2015.  "When we were first elected, we found in the Commission of Audit that the picture was very, very bleak," Mr Newman said.

He denied it was broken promise.  "It represents us delivering what we said we'd deliver on. We're delivering it in a financially responsible manner," he said.  "We're going to get there. We did reduce taxes and charges. We wanted to do more.  "This is proof going forward because we've budgeted in these reductions that we will deliver them for business."

Mr Newman also promised that a re-elected LNP government would not introduce any new taxes in its next term.

He said Queensland would lead the nation with an economic growth rate of 5.75 per cent in 2015-16. "We will go into a surplus position for the first time in 10 years and we have budgeted for these initiatives because we have a plan," he said.

The premier pointed to Thursday's job figures, which showed Queensland's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate drop from 6.8 to 6.1 per cent in December, as vindication of the government's economic strategy.  "There is no better place in Australia than Queensland to set up a business and grow a business."

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Terrible politics in Queensland but there’s no denying the economics

IT must take world-class political ineptitude to engineer the possibility of electoral defeat less than three years after winning office in one of the biggest landslides in parliamentary history.

Yet this is what the Campbell Newman-led Liberal National Party appears to have wrought in Queensland, with polls giving Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk an outside chance of becoming the state’s 39th premier following the snap January 31 poll.

But bad politics doesn’t necessarily mean bad economics, which is what ultimately matters for the prosperity of Australia’s third- biggest state. The Newman government has at least recognised the need to rein in spending and officious regulation, deflate a public sector bloated after 14 years of profligate Labor government and revitalise the state’s ageing infrastructure.

Labor, meanwhile, can have no meaningful plan while it remains wedded to public ownership of electricity provision. Thanks to its own prior recklessness, there aren’t the funds.

Since its March 2012 election, the LNP has cut annual expense growth from 9 per cent a year under premiers Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh over the decade to 2012 to 1.2 per cent.

Despite the political cost, the Newman government has trimmed the public sector — which swelled by more than 30 per cent between 2004 and 2011 to 207,000 — to a more reasonable 195,000.

It has also freed more than 9000 small businesses from onerous compliance with environmental regulations as part of a campaign to cut green tape by 20 per cent.

The LNP’s plan to spend $9 billion updating and expanding the state’s infrastructure from the mooted $37bn proceeds from selling the state’s electricity distribution network will help bolster economic growth and jobs at a time when the resource sector is suffering.

The global price of coal, the state’s biggest export, has plummeted more than 35 per cent. Meanwhile, the oil price has sunk to a five-year low, dragging down with it the revenue potential of the state’s massive liquefied natural gas reserves (whose price is linked to oil) for government and private sector alike.

While Australia’s economy grew by 2.7 per cent over the year to September, Queensland’s shrank by 1.8 per cent. The state’s unemployment rate has risen from 5.5 per cent in March 2012 to almost 7 per cent, compared with 6.3 per cent across Australia.

Indeed, if re-elected, the Newman government might want to consider spending even more of the privatisation proceeds on infrastructure. That, at least, is what the NSW Liberals are doing. They, by contrast, are poised to romp back to victory despite courting their own share of political embarrassments.

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CALL ME A WOG DAGO - PLEASE

By Australian cartoonist Paul Zanetti

I may not like being called a bloody wog, dago, Itie bastard but I will fight for your right to call me one. Or anything else you like.

In return I’ll call you a dumb, hick redneck skippy, draw a cartoon of you, put it on Facebook and then we’ll have a drink. Your shout. Well, you started it.

You see, my fragile, sensitive feelings come second to my freedoms, and yours for that matter.

I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s when life was more rough and tumble. We called a spade a bloody spade. It wasn’t about intolerance because Australia opened its arms to people from all races, cultures and faiths. I’m a product of that openness and warmth, and this friendliness continues to this day, as long as it’s mutual.

When I grew up, political correctness was a futuristic nightmare, best described today as ‘A doctrine…which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.’

Today, freedoms we once enjoyed have been eroded and in some cases destroyed by the PC brigade, all too quick to take ‘offence’ at the drop of a hat, but quick to condemn or vilify anybody who doesn’t subscribe to their wooly world view.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about free speech after the attack on the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Everyone became ‘Charlie’, a symbol of uncompromising free speech, everyone including the hypocrites responsible for shackling free speech.

In Australia the lightning rod for free speech is Section 18C of The Racial Discrimination Act.

Simply put, that part of the Act says you can’t offend someone (other than in private) based on race, colour or national or ethnic origin. In other words, it’s illegal to hurt someone’s feelings.

The next part of the Act, Section 18D, makes exceptions. You can hurt someone’s feelings publicly if it’s in cartoons, in opinion columns (fair comment), artistic works or in the public interest or if what you say is factual, or scientific, or if you believe it.

But, someone can argue that you didn’t really believe what you said publicly, and haul you in front of the courts. That’s how ludicrous it all is.

As someone who was a regular target of idiots who picked on me because of my last name, and heritage, I’m proud to live in a country where you are free enough to call me whatever you like. As a kid, I didn’t run to the teacher or school principal each time it happened. Section 18C is a legal version of crying to the teacher. I handled it my own way. I drew very compromising cartoons of the idiots and stuck them up around the school corridors. Didn’t take long before they were my ‘friends’.

The Liberal party went to the last election promising to repeal this muzzle on free speech, but Abbott decided to not keep this promise, too. He cowered to ‘community groups’ such as the Jewish and Islamic groups (and the self-titled ‘progressive’ left) who united to pressure the Abbott government to go weak at the knees. They did.

The irony is, that religion isnt covered in The Racial Discrimination Act, so anybody can still criticise Muslims or Islam without any legal consequence, but the Jews (a race) cannot be vilified by any Muslim, or other. Let’s just take a look at what’s written in the Qur’an while we’re at it. Who’s feeling like a winnable legal stoush?

In the US free speech is protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of The United States. We don’t have any such safeguard here.

Larry Flynt is a grub, a pornographer and somewhat of a hero to defenders of free speech, including me.  More than just about anybody, he has defended the protection of every American’s right to say what they think.

Flynt is the publisher of Hustler magazine, the third biggest selling porn magazine in the ‘70s and ‘80s after Penthouse and Playboy. It was the trashier of the three and lived most of its printed life in the sewer (I can say that without fear of Flynt suing me, thanks to the free speech laws Flynt championed). In one of the editions of the mag, Flynt lampooned loud mouth Christian evangelist, Jerry Falwell.

What Flynt said about Falwell in print was crude, involving incest with Falwell’s mother in an outhouse, in a satirical full page ad. Hustler had a long record of parody ads of famous people and ‘their first time’.

The Falwell satire was typically ludicrous. The page included the disclaimer in small print at the bottom of the page, reading "ad parody—not to be taken seriously.”  Falwell sued, anyway.

In a long running case, Flynt eventually won under The First Amendment. His right to take the piss, poke fun at public figures is protected.

Flynt summed it up best himself: "If the First Amendment will protect a scumbag like me, then it will protect all of you. Because I'm the worst.”

Yes, Flynt was defending himself in legal action, but it was in his act of pushing the boundaries that sparked the fight. He went to extremes to fight for and protect the right of every American to be free in what they say. He paved the way.

Flynt was imprisoned 9 times fighting for the right to say and publish what he thought. He was also shot at outside a courtroom and remains in a wheelchair to this day.

In protecting his First Amendment rights Flynt says, “Fighting those battles wasn’t easy. I’ve been shot and paralysed as a result of it. But freedom of speech is not freedom for the thought you love, it’s freedom for the thought you hate the most. You have to get your head around that.”

As far as expanding the First Amendment rights, Flynt says the less governmental interference, the better.

“The greatest right that any nation can afford its people is the right to be left alone. Every American feels that way. Unless they’re breaking the law, they want to be left alone.”

Charlie Hebdo carried the flame in France. Every cartoonist and journalist who died at work by the spray of bullets from cowardly, medieval ideologues brandishing Kalishnakovs were martyrs for free speech. They pushed the boundaries regardless of the consequences.

In Australia we have very few prepared to defend free speech.

One is cartoonist Larry Pickering. He did so in the 1980s with his famed ‘politically candid’ calendars where he depicted our politicians warts and all in the nuddy. As funny as they were, they pushed the limits of satire and free speech.

Joh Bjelke Petersen wanted them banned in Queensland, where they were sold under the counter in a cover, yet displayed hanging over the front counter in all their glory in most other states. It could have been the way Larry drew Joh.

Gough Whitlam tried to sue Pickering for his depiction of a post-sacked wounded Whitlam with band-aids all over him, including on his dick. Whitlam contrived some silly argument that Pickering was inferring that he had syphilis and was wearing a band aid to cover it up. He wasn’t of course, but Gough being a QC thought he had Pickering.

Larry said, “Well how do we know you don’t? You’ll have to drop your strides in court and prove it.”  Gough dropped the case instead.

In the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo atrocity, Pickering chose to again push the boundaries for free speech by drawing a cartoon of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.

Soon after, he was visited by counter terror police, late last Sunday night, telling Pickering he would have to be placed under surveillance because he’d ‘upset a few people’.

But whatever they believe, that’s their right and freedom to believe, just so long as they don’t want to force their beliefs on us, which they seem to be very keen to do, most often at the point of a gun or a sword.

In a free society, we should be free to ‘upset a few people’ without fear of legal or personal reprisals. As Pickering said in many of his TV and radio interviews over the past 48 hours, “If we don’t have our freedom of speech, we aren’t truly free.”

Today in Australia, it’s the self-titled, so-called ‘progressives’ (the left) who are fighting for the removal of free speech in Australia. They are fighting to keep the muzzling Section 18C of The Racial Discrimination Act.

Ironic, huh? Progressing us all backwards.

There are many other examples of the ‘progressives’ reversing hard won freedoms by the real progressives, those who fought in actual life-risking battles for our freedoms - our military.

Progressives are those who stand up and fight for our freedoms on the front line, not those who fight to erode our rights.

In this country a good start for true and total free speech would be the repeal of the repressive Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Free speech is 100% free, not sort of free-ish. And that’s coming from a wog, dago Itie.

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