ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG says Labor Party shadow treasurer Chris Bowen is a boofhead

Australia susceptible to cyber terrorist attacks

Australia remains susceptible to the threat of cyber terrorist attacks, according to the head of the country's first ever Cyber Security Centre.

Australia's inaugural cyber security coordinator, Stephen Day, revealed that as terrorist organizations become more tech-savvy, the risk of a cyber attack on the country becomes more likely, reported Xinhua.

Although Prime Minister Tony Abbott has called for a review of Australia's cyber security strategy, a move that Day described as "sensible", he did suggest that more still needs to be done to make citizens aware of the risks of online crime.

"We are in an arm-wrestle between those who are trying to defend and those who are trying to get around us and at the moment, because there is a general lack of awareness, those who would do us harm are at an advantage," he told News Ltd. "But we are going to catch them."

The last significant cyber terrorist attack occurred in August 2013, when the web sites of media companies such as the New York Times, the Huffington Post and Twitter were allegedly hacked by a Syrian group known as the "Syrian Electronic Army".

During that specific attack, users who clicked onto those respective web sites were redirected to a server controlled by the Syrian group.

According to Day, the Australian government is at risk of similar attacks if it does not improve its online security.

"Some terrorist groups are very well resourced and it is an absolute possibility that they could create significant troubles for national security or economic prosperity," he said.

"We have been working for some years now on improving the defences of the government, but there is a lot of work to be done, there is no doubt about that."

Day also revealed that Australia is at a specific risk of foreign espionage, particularly from industries, rather than international governments.

"There is a troubling increase in nation states stealing intellectual property from not only government, but also from industry," Day said.

"I don't know if all countries are doing it, but an increasing number of nation states are playing in this space.

"The risk has always been there, espionage has been around for a long time ... but the level of activity going into the stealing of intellectual property from big corporations is at a greater level than we have seen before."

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Bureaucrat gets a roasting over Hep A in berries

Today show host Karl Stefanovic has accused the head of Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) of trying to dodge responsibility for the hepatitis A outbreak linked to imported frozen berries.

In a tense interview on Thursday morning, Stefanovic told FSANZ chief Steve McCutcheon he had 'seriously dropped the ball' for failing to strengthen food safety checks in Australia after similar outbreaks overseas of hepatitis A overseas.

The Today host asked Mr McCutcheon 'Do you feel responsible?' over the scandal, which has so far seen 13 cases of hepatitis A in Australia linked to berries imported from China, with more expected to be confirmed in coming weeks.

'Well the system as a whole is responsible for ensuring the safety is there, so everyone within that system - be it government, be it industry - has a role to play in delivering safe food to Australian consumers,' Mr McCutcheon replied.

'As I said, we've got a very good system in this country.'

Stefanovic retorted: 'Well, according to you it might be a good system.'

He then asked what changes had been made to improve screening of frozen berries since the hepatitis A scare was revealed and product recalls had been issued for Nanna's and Creative Gourmet berries.

'Often people say testing should be increased. I think it's widely understood that in the case of testing for viruses in food it's a very difficult thing to do.'

Stefanovic interrupted him and accused Mr McCutcheon of dodging the question.

'Here's the thing though, and you're well-versed in answering these kinds of questions and layering it and also fobbing off some of the responsibility,' Stefanovic said.

'Despite outbreaks of hepatitis A across the world as a result of contaminated frozen berries you didn't consider them high risk at any point.'

Mr McCutcheon said: 'Well, berries themselves are not what we would consider a high-risk food… but there are a range of things that contribute to safety and clearly some products such as meat and cheese...'

The Food Standards boss was again interrupted by Stefanovic.

'But you're not answering the question Steve, you're not answering the question,' he said.

'There were outbreaks overseas. Steve, I'm sorry to keep interrupting you but there were hepatitis A outbreaks overseas and you still didn't consider them high risk.

'And now we have literally dozens of people with hepatitis A in this country.'

Mr McCutcheon said FSANZ had looked at similar outbreaks in North America and found that there was no need to impose new safety measures in Australia.

Later in the interview Stefanovic said: 'It happened again and it's happened in Australia now.

'Despite it happening in North America you were confident that the systems were all checked and fixed and yet it happened again, you have seriously dropped the ball.

'How can you even sit here this morning on our show and guarantee that the supply of these things is going to be fixed now when you know it hasn't been fixed, when this is just a repeat of what happened in North America? You can't guarantee it.'

At the end of the tense interview, Stefanovic apologised for repeatedly cutting Mr McCutcheon off.

It has emerged that thousands of children are being monitored for hepatitis A symptoms after the now-recalled berries were served at schools and childcare centres around Australia.

Students at 34 Victorian schools, nine South Australian primary schools and child care centres and three Queensland schools may have consumed the diseased berries, The Australian reported.

Berry eaters face up to seven more weeks of uncertainty to see if they have hepatitis A.

Australia's chief medical officer Chris Baggoley estimates one in 100 people who ate the contaminated, imported frozen berries will contract the disease.

But the extent to which they're affected could vary from showing no symptoms to being ill for several weeks.

The average incubation period for hepatitis A is four weeks but it could take as long as seven weeks to show up.

'If someone has consumed the berries and they are well, seven weeks after that consumption they'll certainly be fine,' Professor Baggoley told reporters in Canberra.

By Wednesday afternoon, 13 people in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Western Australia had the virus after eating the Nanna's and Creative Gourmet brands of imported frozen mixed berries.

Parent company Patties Foods has recalled four products.

WA health authorities expect to see more hepatitis A infections after the state's first case was confirmed on Wednesday.

Three Wests Tigers NRL players are reportedly having tests after eating the fruit.

WA communicable disease control director Paul Armstrong said there was no need for people who ate the berries and remained well to be tested.

Professor Baggoley said a definitive link between all the cases should be confirmed via special blood tests later this week.

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Too expensive, not enough supply and too much regulation: Why you CAN'T buy Australian-grown frozen berries... and it's not about to change

Consumers wanting to make the switch to Australian grown and packed frozen berries in the wake of a Hepatitis A contamination scandal will struggle to find any on the market.

On Wednesday, Federal Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce urged shoppers to buy Australian produce following the recall of Chinese-grown frozen berries linked to at least 13 cases of the disease across Australia.

But Australian frozen berry suppliers say they can't get local farmers to supply berries for freezing because they can't compete with overseas importers on price.

Avrom Gamaroff, director of frozen berry supplier Harvestime Australia, said he is forced to import berries from places such as the U.S., Canada and Europe.

'We would love to buy locally, if there were guys in Australia who had commercial quantities of berries we would love to support them,' Mr Gamaroff said.  'But farmers are not prepared to make the investment because they cannot compete.

'We've had to go offshore as much as we would prefer not to, and we've gone to Canada or the U.S. where they've got comparable, if not better, regulatory services.'

Mr Gamaroff said the Harvestime 1kg Mixed Berry pack, which contains berries from Europe and sells for $7.90, would have to be sold at almost double the price if the berries were sourced in Australia.

He said the company could afford to bring the price down to $5.50-$6 if they used berries from China.

Mr Gamaroff said he had seen 'isolated lots' for Australian-grown frozen berries on the market.  'But I have not seen a continuous supply of Australian-grown frozen berries,' he said.

'It all goes back to the fact the farmers don't want to freeze their product because it becomes a commodity and then they have to go up against global supply.'

Australian Blueberry Growers Association president Greg McCulloch, who owns a farm south of Hobart, said Australian-grown berries were mainly used to supply the fresh fruit market.

'Basically we don't have to compete with imports in the frozen berry product because we actually don't produce enough to fill the market,' Mr McCulloch said.  'But even if we did we could never ever match the prices they bring the stuff in for.'

In the wake of the Hepatitis A scandal, Mr McCulloch criticised the Australian government for reacting to the problem too late.

'It happened last year – an outbreak in Scandinavia, same product, frozen berries - no one did anything about it as usual,' he said.

'We can't do anything to upset China – it's OK if we don't upset them but poison our own people.  'That's the attitude.'

Mr McCulloch added that local farmers had to deal with a number of regulatory issues across local and state governments, as well as strict industry compliance measures.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott says the government is considering toughening up import screening procedures following the food contamination scare.

Companies also have to lift their game, Mr Abbott says, after numerous people who had eaten imported frozen berries tested positive to hepatitis A.  'The bottom line is that companies shouldn't be poisoning their customers,' the prime minister told ABC radio on Wednesday.  'Businesses have an obligation to their customers.'

However Mr Abbott was cool on calls for changes to labelling following the recall of the Chinese-grown berries.

More red-tape and regulation of the private sector could lead to soaring food costs, he said. 'We want safe products but we want safe products at a fair price. Some price is worth paying, but it's got to be a careful balancing act.'

Mr Abbott said he had to respect consumers' 'financial health as well as other aspects of their health'.

Farmers have called for an overhaul of labelling to help people identify Australian grown and packaged food.

On Wednesday morning, Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce said the safest food was 'domestic food'.  'That is why you pay a premium for Australian product. It is clean, green and healthy,' he said.

On Tuesday, Victorian company Patties Foods extended its national recall to include Nanna's Raspberries 1kg packs.  Raspberries appear to be a potential common link in the imported fruit contamination that has left 10 Australians diagnosed with Hepatitis A.

Mr Joyce said health ministers were considering an import review.  'All the health ministers are now basically getting together and if they want to review it, and move the level of screening up ... we are only too happy to test,' he said.

He also backed stricter screening and labelling for imported food, saying labels were needed 'that clearly identifies unambiguously, as soon as you pick up a package, whether it is from our country with our strong ... sanitary requirements'.

'That is making sure that faecal contamination, which is a very polite word for poo, is not anywhere near your food, not going to be put in your mouth,' he added.

Other products on the nationwide recall list are Nanna's Frozen Mixed Berries 1kg packs, and 300g and 500g packs of Creative Gourmet Mixed Berries.

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Abbott government senators prepared to cross floor for free speech

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is facing a rebellion in the Senate, with up to half a dozen of his own senators indicating they could cross the floor in favour of changing race hate laws.

In a sign of Mr Abbott's diminishing authority, West Australian senator Chris Back and Queensland Liberal National Party senator Ian Macdonald have told Fairfax Media they will vote in favour of a bill designed to water down the Racial Discrimination Act.

South Australian senator Sean Edwards has given a strong indication he could join them, arguing the act in its current form suppresses free speech.

Mr Abbott pledged before the 2013 election to repeal section 18C of the act after conservative commentator Andrew Bolt was found to have breached the act for his articles about "fair-skinned" Aboriginal people. But the Prime Minister abandoned his pledge last year after a fierce backlash from religious leaders and many Liberal MPs.

This week, Parliament's bipartisan human rights committee found changes to the act would not contravene Australia's international obligations.

Family First senator Bob Day has now proposed removing the words "insult" and "offend" from the act, meaning it would no longer be a prosecutable offence to insult or offend someone based on their race.

Liberal senators Cory Bernardi and Dean Smith have previously pledged their support and have co-sponsored Senator Day's bill. It is also being co-sponsored by Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm.

Supporters for the change renewed their push in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack, in defiance of Mr Abbott's decision.

Liberal senator Linda Reynolds has called for a review of the government's approach to section 18C, saying current laws have overreached.

Senator Reynolds said the Paris attack and the Lindt cafe siege in Sydney had confirmed the threat the West faces from extremists trying to undermine democratic values, including free speech.

"I do not believe in Australia we are Charlie," Senator Reynolds said, a reference to the #JeSuisCharlie campaign that went viral in support of free speech.

"Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act is a key contributor to this.

"I believe the Australian community must rediscover a way to accept hearing things we do not personally believe in. I don't believe insulting or offending someone should give rise to legal liability and it is my personal view that these laws have overreached and require amendment."

But the West Australian cautioned against rushing any change and called on the government to review its position on Senator Day's bill.

Fairfax Media has contacted every government backbencher in the Senate to sound out their view. Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie will consider her position once a vote is imminent. Senators John Williams and Zed Seselja did not have a position. Senators James McGrath, Bill Heffernan, David Johnston and Matt Canavan did not return calls, while Arthur Sinodinos will vote along government lines.

There is a strong possibility more government backbenchers will cross the floor to support Senator Day's bill.

Frontbenchers are unlikely to cross the floor because they would have to give up their positions. Deputy Whip Anne Ruston said she accepted the Prime Minister's decision to abandon repealing section 18C but believed it could be revisited "when national security is not at such a heightened state".

Labor opposes any changes to the Racial Discrimination Act or section 18C, which was introduced by the Keating government in 1995. The opposition's position means Senator Day's bill will almost certainly fail and make any government senators' support purely symbolic.

Changing the act is regarded as a totemic issue for conservative Liberals. The matter is expected to be raised in upcoming Liberal preselections for Senate seats in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland.

 A spokesman for Attorney-General George Brandis said the government would not revive plans to amend the act.

"As the Prime Minister has indicated, changes to section 18C are off the table," the spokesman said.

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Murder in Denmark shows what happens when you create an immigrant underclass

In an address to the Australian Christian Lobby on October 25 last year, Labor's leader, Bill Shorten, advocated a dramatic increase in Australia's intake of refugees from the Middle East:

"As a generous, prosperous nation – made great in part by migration – Labor believes Australia can play a greater role in the international effort to provide refuge to the persecuted. Nearly two million Iraqis have fled their homes in the face of the ISIL advance – and millions more have been displaced by the conflict in Syria ...

"In government, Labor increased Australia's refugee intake under the Humanitarian Program to 20,000 places a year. Upon coming to office, the Coalition reduced that to 13,750 …"

Actually, the federal government is committed to increasing the humanitarian intake to 21,000 over four years.

Shorten continued: "Given the scope and scale of the current crisis gripping the region, Labor believes that, as a starting point, those seeking refuge from the current crisis in Iraq and Syria should be taken in addition to the existing allocation – and we hope that the government arrives at that view."

The words "those seeking refuge from the current crisis should be taken in addition to the existing allocation" quite clearly do not mean 20,000. It means much more. This is far broader policy than Labor's National Platform, which states: "Labor aspires to progressively increase Australia's humanitarian intake to 20,000 places per year."

Shorten's proposal is basically the same open-ended policy as that of the Greens. He opened the door to a radically large intervention in the enormous social upheaval in the Middle East, which has deep and bloody roots in sectarianism and tribalism, with no end in sight.

The morality of Shorten's rhetoric is glorious. The practicality is not. There is a super-abundance of evidence that a large-scale humanitarian intake creates a corresponding increase in social problems. The most recent evidence comes from socially conscious, socially inclusive and socially wealthy Denmark.

The Danes have methodically built an underclass, a polyglot immigrant, welfare-dependent, high-unemployment, crime-afflicted subculture. This subculture has become a petri dish for incubating social alienation expressed as radical Islam.

As a result of large-scale and poorly defined immigration and refugee intakes, in a country of 5.6 million people 4 per cent of Denmark's population is now Muslim and the Muslim population is significantly over-represented in crime and welfare dependence.

Denmark's policy-makers will never admit they created an underclass through naive, complacent, ideological utopianism. They can't even admit that Muslim terrorism has been incubated in Denmark, let alone admit that it is a byproduct of government stupidity.

This week Copenhagen is paying the price. It is reeling not just from the murders carried out by a Danish citizen, Omar Abdel Hamid al-Hussein, whose Palestinian family arrived in Denmark as refugees, but at the homage to al-Hussein by a group who have embraced radical Islam as an expression of their alienation from the Christian/secular mainstream.

"Allahu akbar" was the now familiar chant of defiance that came from dozens of men who attended al-Hussein's funeral in Copenhagen on Tuesday.

It echoed the menace of the violent cartoons controversy that rocked Denmark in 2005.

More than a 100 young Danish Muslims have left Denmark to take up the cause of Islamic jihad. The pattern has repeated itself across Western Europe, where thousands of Muslims have chosen to join the cause of Islamic State, now dominated by foreign fighters.

In Australia, the last federal government that decided to act as a safety valve for turmoil in the Middle East was Malcolm Fraser's Coalition government, which allowed a poorly monitored refugee stream from Lebanon in the 1970s. As a result, Australia imported, in addition to a stream of constructive arrivals, a self-marginalising, self-perpetuating Muslim underclass that still exists after 40 years.

Something radically more sinister has been incubating within the Muslim community in Australia. Its worst manifestation has been a spate of public murders, or planned public executions, by Muslims who came to this country as asylum seekers. There have been four such attacks, or planned attacks, in just seven months – in Parramatta, Melbourne, the Sydney CBD and southwest Sydney.

It is concerning that three times as many Muslims in Australia have been identified by the government as actively supporting jihad than are enlisted in the Australian Defence Force – more than 300 jihadists compared with only 100 Muslims in the ADF.

All this is why the majority of Australians do not believe that those who destroy their documents and seek to bypass immigration checks should ever be allowed to stay in the country. Rigorous checks have never been more important.

While I admire the generosity of spirit of those who advocate an open-hearted approach to asylum seekers, I rarely see the moral seriousness, the reciprocal acknowledgment, from refugee advocates that policies without limits, as advocated by the Greens, the churches, and in Bill Shorten's October 25 speech, will have serious financial costs and serious social problems attached.

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Australian jihadi Khaled Sharrouf beheads a victim while his mate Mohamed Elomar watches on

Two of Australia’s most wanted jihadis are suspected of starring in a sickening new Islamic State beheading video.  In the execution clip, Sydney man Khaled Sharrouf - heavily bearded, dressed in khaki and holding a knife - appears to stand behind a man in black who IS claims is a ‘spy’.  Watching on is a gang of men, one of whom appears to be Sharrouf’s friend and fellow terrorist Mohamed Elomar.

The man who looks like Elomar holds a large rifle as he stands to the left of the man who resembles Sharrouf in the death cult's propaganda video, titled Harvest of the Apostates.

The clip, in which the man on his knees is labelled an ‘infiltrator’, is being investigated by authorities, The Daily Telegraph reports.

Sharrouf and Elomar both fled Australia to join the Islamic State insurgents fighting in Syria and Iraq in 2013 and in July 2014 the Australian Federal Police issued arrest warrants for the disturbed pair.

Sharrouf flew out of Sydney in December 2013 using his brother’s passport and was soon followed by his convert wife Tara Nettleton who brought their five children to the Middle East with her.

The men gained notoriety as part of the more than 100 Australians who have joined Islamic State after they posted disturbing photos of themselves holding up decapitated heads of Syrian soldiers last year.

Sharrouf even got his seven-year-old son to hold up the severed head of a soldier in the Syrian city of Raqqa, accompanied with the caption 'that's my boy', in an image that shocked the world.

A man with Syrian relatives who was contact by Elomar told the paper: ‘He was saying things like “you should repent” and that by joining (ISIS) “you could make up for bad deeds”. He even offered to pay for me to travel over there.’

In January this year, four Iraqi women came forward to accuse Sharrouf and Elomar of kidnapping and enslaving them for two months.  The women, who belong to the religious Yazidi minority, told ABC's 7.30 they were taken from Iraq to Syria by force, and were among thousands of others who were targeted because of their beliefs.

When Islamic State stormed northern Iraq in 2014, they targeted the Yazidis, an ancient Kurdish religious group which IS believes to be infidels. Since 2014, reports of the kidnapping, rape, and forced marriage of Yazidi women has been widely circulated, but the testimonies have been almost impossible to corroborate.

The four Yazidi women, who asked for their names to be changed out of fear of reprisals, identified their captors from mug shots presented to them by an ABC journalist.

The women kidnapped by Sharrouf and Elomar are believed to have been held on the second floor of a building on Newbridge Road, on the outskirts of Raqqa, in Syria.

One of the women, Layla, who claims to have been taken captive said that Sharrouf, who was jailed in Australia for his involvement in a terror plot, threatened to sell the women if they cried.

'He threatened to sell us if we did. He said, 'Why are you sad? Forget about your home and family. This is your home and we are your family now,' she told 7.30. 'Forget about your gods, for good, because we have killed them all,' she said.

Sharrouf told the women that he had been beaten while in jail in Australia, and that when he got angry, he could kill someone because he had 'no mercy in [his] heart'.

Another of the women, Ghazala, said that Sharrouf's five children, who are believed to be with him and his wife, participated in their terrifying ordeal.  'His children were treating us badly,' Ghazala said.  'They had knives and cell phones saying that they will take videos while cutting off our heads because we follow a different religion.'

Ten out of the thirteen members of Ghazala's family are still missing, along with tens of thousands of other Yazidi men, women and children.

Another woman claimed that Elomar would take girls for the night, beat them and sell them on.

'At night he was taking a girl downstairs, and when the girl returned she’d tell us, ‘he told me you have to marry me or else I will sell you, and if you say anything to my wife I will sell you or kill you’,' said one of the women.

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Back to basics! Student teachers will have to pass literacy and maths tests before they are allowed to graduate

All student teachers will have to pass a reading, writing and maths test before they can graduate.

The new rule will come into force across Australia in 2016 as part of an overhaul of teacher training.

The government has pledged 'swift and decisive action' to improve the education of teachers, as it releases a report on Friday about how to do just that.

The review, led by Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Greg Craven, found some courses were not up to scratch and said the standard across the board had to be lifted.

In response, the government will beef up regulator Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership.

All universities offering teaching courses face tougher accreditation to make sure standards are high and kept that way.

As part of that new accreditation process, universities will have to prove they have strong partnerships with schools.

This should ensure student teachers get to spend more time in real classrooms instead of university lecture halls and make sure what they are learning matches the skills they will need in the real world.

Professor Craven said having close partnerships between universities and schools was 'the single most important action to be pursued'.

The review found there were many concerns about how 'classroom-ready' beginner teachers were under the current system.

And there isn't enough professional support for new teachers, which can lead to them leaving the job altogether.

The review recommended every new teacher be paired with a highly skilled mentor.

It also said universities must take personal attributes into account when recruiting people into teaching courses, and that trainees should get classroom time early in their study so they can decide if teaching is really for them.

Education Minister Christopher Pyne said the review set high expectations for everyone involved in initial teacher education including universities.

'It also makes a clear case that providers be held accountable for the quality of the teaching graduates they produce,' he said.

Mr Pyne hopes the majority of the review's five key proposals and 38 recommendations will be implemented within two years.

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ABC review finds 7.30 interview was ‘potential breach’ of bias guidelines

IT WAS a fiery exchange that won the interviewer a nomination for journalism’s highest honour.

But now a review into the ABC’s Federal Budget coverage has raised the question of whether an interview on current affairs program 7.30 went too far and breached the national broadcaster’s bias guidelines.

An internally commissioned review by former Australian Financial Review editor Colleen Ryan has found that host Sarah Ferguson failed to pay Joe Hockey due respect during an interview on Budget night last year.

The tough interrogation won Ferguson a Walkley nomination, but Ryan took exception to Ferguson’s first question to Mr Hockey: “It’s a Budget with a new tax, with levies, with co-payments: Is it liberating to for a politician to decide that election promises don’t matter?”

Is this proof the ABC is biased?

Ryan said the question was unnecessarily “emotive” and that Mr Hockey was “rattled” for the rest of the interview and performed poorly.

“I also believe that the average viewer would consider that the Treasurer was not treated with sufficient respect by the interviewer,” Ryan said.

“I felt that the tone of the questioning in this particular interview could have been interpreted by some viewers to be a potential breach of the ABC’s impartiality guidelines … It was the tone of the question … that resulted in the Treasurer appearing to be under attack.

“Personally, I thought Sarah Ferguson’s opening question was a great television moment — but there was an element of disrespect during the interview that could potentially impinge on the question of impartiality.”

Former 7.30 host Kerry O’Brien has also leapt to Ferguson’s defence, dismissing Ryan’s criticisms as “opinion”.

“Ferguson’s job was to keep Hockey honest and cut through to the core issue at the outset,” O’Brien wrote on Crikey.

“In this case, it was clearly the government’s credibility at the most fundamental level, and the subsequent public backlash over many months … shows that Ferguson’s questions were absolutely spot on.”

ABC News director Kate Torney rejected the idea that Ferguson was “aggressive” or biased.  “As a political interviewer, Ms Ferguson is tough but demonstrates a consistently civil and objective approach,” she said.

“She is insistent that those she interviews do not evade important questions and often focuses on contradictions either within policy positions or in the responses of interviewees. The fact that this may make interviewees ‘uncomfortable’ does not necessarily mean that the interviewer is either aggressive or is failing to demonstrate due impartiality.”

Ryan’s review was designed to test the quality, thoroughness and impartiality of the overall Budget coverage on the ABC’s main channel.  While Ryan took issue with a few segments, she concluded that the “overall quality of the Budget coverage was excellent”.

She said a diversity of views were presented, and that parties were not misrepresented or unduly favoured.

“I found no hint in any of the coverage that either stated or implied that any perspective was the editorial opinion of the ABC,” Ryan said.

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Tony Abbott trying to save Australia, nation trying to destroy him

FOR crying out loud, can we give this bloke a break? As an Australian, I am sickened by how over the past two weeks the media, the Liberal Party and any number of “commentators” have piled in on top of the Prime Minister like a bunch of drunken schoolies on a wild rampage through Surfers Paradise.

You can imagine the scene. A dude in red speedos moves into a new apartment on the Gold Coast, only to find that the mob of vandals who were in charge of the joint before him have completely trashed it.

A bloke called Kevin deliberately smashed the apartment block’s security system so that anybody could wander into the apartment from wherever they felt like whenever they wanted.

His bogan mate Wayno who liked to sit around all day playing Bruce Springsteen records then ran up billions of dollars in debt – and even though he kept promising to pay it all back, by the time they got chucked out of the block there was a backlog of bills crammed under the doorway that add up to around a hundred million dollars a day.

So Tony and Joe have now moved in and are determined to try to clean up the mess.

What happens? Rather than helping fix it up, the same mob who were responsible for the destruction stand around jeering from the sidelines, refusing to help.

Then a blustering buffoon called Clive wanders past and although he could easily help, he does the complete opposite – stands in the way to stop anything getting done.

Finally, a crowd of journos gathers round. They laugh, they snigger, they boo at every effort Tony and Joe make to try to sort it all out.

Then the mob move in for the kill, sticking the boot in one after the other, loving every minute of it, determined to make sure that whatever happens Tony and his mate will fail.

OK, it’s not a perfect analogy, but it gets the point across. Certainly Tony Abbott as Prime Minister has made some real clangers, not least of which was the oddball (but totally harmless) decision on Prince Philip’s knighthood. There have been some awkward backflips, too – although again, essentially harmless – on cuts to the ABC and so on.

And yes, there will need to be measures to increase government revenue as well as cut spending. But the bottom line remains inescapable: Government expenditure must be reduced dramatically in order to remain affordable into the future, and the three main areas are welfare, education and health. If we continue spending the same vast sums on those three areas that we have become accustomed to, and keep promising ourselves more and more of, we are robbing the next generation of the standard of living that we
now enjoy.

In fact, all of us today are actually Time Bandits – every single day we are reaching into the future and stealing the lifestyle, jobs, businesses, health, education and opportunities that should belong to our kids and grandkids. And we are actively sabotaging the only bloke in town who is not only trying to come to grips with it, but even admits there is a problem.

Australians pride themselves on giving each other a fair go but there is nothing “fair” in the current media treatment of the Prime Minister.

One respected commentator last week based his widely read column predicting the imminent demise of Abbott on – wait for it – two other columnists in the same newspaper predicting the end of Abbott based on – wait for it – gossip and backroom tattle from a couple of anonymous sources. Hello? Sniffing blood in the water, “experts” from all sides are desperate to predict the end of Abbott in what may well become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Much of the backbench “revolt” was fuelled by individuals panicking not at actual decisions, but at the fact that so-called conservatives were now actively joining in with the ABC/Fairfax lynch mob.

Abbott and Hockey’s survival now depends on two things – both of which appear mutually incompatible.

A sound budget strategy and an uplift in the opinion polls. Almost certainly, as things stand in the current Australian mindset, success in either one of them will only come at the expense of the other.

A responsible, intelligent, carefully constructed reduction in excessive expenditure (yes, that means cuts) in the current frenzied climate will be howled down as “unfair”, “excessive” etc etc.

And the polls will plummet; and with them the best hope we have of avoiding heading down the euro-route to ever higher youth unemployment will disappear for many years (By which time the problem will be a whole lot worse).

The sad irony is that it’s not just Tony Abbott we are desperately trying to consign to oblivion. It is ourselves

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Abbott streets ahead on good policy

By Terry McCrann, financial commentator

TONY Abbott has been a very good Prime Minister, leading a competent and indeed effective Government, where it really counts — delivering good policy and good outcomes in the best interests of Australia overall and of individual Australians.

He has been an ordinary and indeed arguably very poor PM in areas where it doesn’t really count, either for the nation or for individuals — the peripheral policy areas and in the winning of popularity contests.

Now obviously, the second of those really does count for the PM, any PM, personally. If you don’t win the key “popularity contest”, the next election, you will cease to be PM. The same goes, as some other recent examples have demonstrated, also for less-exalted premiers.

And as we’ve seen with both Abbott and his two predecessors, you can no longer get away with dismissing “lost” popularity contests — those awful opinion polls and in particular our stablemate The Australian’s Newspoll — with the claim that the only opinion poll that matters is the one on (hopefully, distant) election day.

No, in our hyperventilating 24/7 accelerated social-media world, all the other polls matter very much and brutally for even an incumbent PM who had won a very recent “big one”.

As our old friend Will could better have written for the 21st century: uneasy lies the unpopular head that wears a crown.

It is important to keep stating, because the ABC and the Fairfax media won’t, that PM Abbott, his ministers and his Government, have delivered — fully delivered — on two of the three big and critically important policies taken to the voters at the last election.

They were the promise to abolish Julia Gillard’s carbon tax; thank you PM and environment minister Greg Hunt. And the promise to stop Gillard’s and Kevin Rudd’s boats; thank you Scott Morrison.

There are two very important points to be made about those successes.

The first and obvious one is of a PM and a government delivering on election promises; and not just any old election promises, but absolutely core promises.

Secondly, perhaps less obviously, but far more importantly, they were promises of good policy. The boats went to absolutely core issues of our national sovereignty.

The carbon tax was the single most destructive policy ever visited on our economy.

It is mind-boggling that not just a government, but a supposedly competent Treasury were both so completely unable to understand this.

The PM, Treasurer Joe Hockey and the Government have failed on the third big promise — fixing the Budget.

Hockey was predictably verballed by the Fairfax press last week; he did not tell the party room that we might never get back to surplus, but rather that would be the outcome if steps were not taken to cut the deficit.

That’s the first of a number of important points to be made about this promise. Critically, that government hasn’t “chosen” to not deliver it. It tried to bring the Budget back to surplus — in the process, arguably breaking other, much lesser election promises, but was prevented from delivering by the Senate.

Let me try to explain the difference between a “deliberately broken promise” and an “imposed broken promise” to the logic-challenged journalists at the ABC and Fairfax, by way of Gillard’s infamous “there will be no carbon tax….”

She specifically legislated for the tax. She deliberately broke her promise.

Imagine if instead the three Independents back then in the Lower House had joined with the Coalition Opposition to legislate a carbon tax against the explicit oppositionof the then Gillard government trying to keep its no-tax promise, and this was passed by a Coalition-Green majority in the Senate. That would have been an “imposed broken promise” on Gillard.

The “fixing the Budget” promise was always the least important of the three. It was also debatable in a way the other two weren’t.

How quickly do you seek to cut the deficits? Where do you cut? Revenue or spending? And which revenue and which spending? Do you break specific no-cut promises to deliver on the bigger, overriding promise?

As they say, no other lesser promises had to be or were broken in delivering on the boats and the carbon tax promises; that was never going to be possible with the Budget to fix. On a broader policy level, arguably aggressive fiscal action should have been postponed anyway until the economy was stronger.

Beyond the big three, the Government has been extraordinarily effective across a whole range of policy fronts; in terms of delivering substantive and good outcomes both for the nation and for individual Australians.

Abbott and his trade minister, Andrew Robb, sealed big trade agreements with our three biggest trade partners — China, Japan and South Korea.

It was seriously impressive to see Chinese President Xi Jinping standing patiently in our Parliament House for some hours through signing ceremony after signing ceremony.

Abbott and indeed Hockey had a triumphant G20 (as these things go), despite the sneaky — and failed — attempt by President Obama to impose a “climate agenda” for narrow domestic US party political purposes.

The failures of Abbott, his ministers and his Government, such as they have been, have been broken — more accurately, attempted broken — peripheral promises and gaffes; some real but mostly imagined or created by Fairfax and the ABC, and including such absolutely incidental matters like Prince Philip’s knighthood.

The furore over Abbott’s holocaust reference best captures all this: the deliberately dishonest frenzy that erupted which was at core just plain stupid and showed such a stunning lack of self-awareness on the part of Fairfax and ABC journalists and political opponents.

Abbott did NOT compare job losses to THE Holocaust as Fairfax falsely claimed. Green Senator Scott Ludlum seethed over Abbott’s use of the word which he, Ludlum, had used himself in a very similar context!

Bottom line: by any objective — that is to say non-Fairfax, non-ABC — assessment, this Abbott Government has delivered on its biggest promises. It has also provided effective and competent government.

It and the PM in particular have lost the popularity contest and the “support” of the Fairfax press and the ABC and their leading commentators (sic).

The first is of little real import to ordinary Australians — remember, Kevin Rudd was as great a winner of such popularity contests as he was delivering devastatingly bad governance.

The second is a badge of honour.

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Human Rights Commission inquiry’s bias fails detainees


The disgusting old Leftist herself

GILLIAN Triggs says it’s “distressing” that Australia has some children of boat people in detention.  But what should really distress her is that she has just betrayed them.

The best she could now do for them is resign as president of the taxpayer-funded Australian Human Rights Commission and hand over to someone not so obviously an activist.

Thanks to Triggs, the commission’s report she hoped would force the Federal Government to instantly release all children has become impossible to trust.  Any good in it has been destroyed by justified suspicions that it is politically motivated, unfair, inaccurate and one-eyed.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott last week said Triggs’ commission “should be ashamed of itself”, and no wonder.

The commission last held an inquiry into children in detention in 2004, when — surprise — the Howard government was successfully stopping the boats.  But there was no inquiry when Labor’s Rudd and Gillard governments ruled. There was no inquiry when Labor then destroyed our border defences, lured more than 50,000 boat people and filled detention centres to bursting.

A record 2000 children were in detention under Labor, and scores more drowned. But no inquiry.

True, Triggs says she had “serious concerns” about the children by August of 2012, the year Labor made her the commission’s president.

Indeed, by February 2013 she’d decided to hold her inquiry, yet she waited another year before announcing it. To be specific, she waited until the Abbott Government was voted in.

Triggs said she’d waited because it would have been “very dangerous politically” to have held her inquiry during the 2013 election campaign.

But you can imagine why Abbott suspected from the start Triggs was playing politics.  After all, she didn’t call her inquiry until he’d actually stopped the boats, stopped the drownings and started to empty the detention centres Labor had filled.

Indeed, there are today fewer than 200 detained children, compared to Labor’s 2000.

But only now does the Government realise how much of a setup this inquiry really was.  A real inquiry does not operate like a kangaroo court, deciding its preferred conclusions before it hears a word of evidence.

But the commission in 2013 had a draft plan that assumed “Australia’s immigration system fails to comply with Australia’s obligations”, and which discussed producing a report that by “focusing on children allows the best opportunity to engage the general public” and force “legal changes to the system of mandatory and indefin­ite detention”.

A real inquiry does not have the chairman make false and emotive statements during her inquiry, particularly ones that suggest bias.

But Triggs claimed she’d discovered “almost all the children at Christmas Island were coughing, were sick” and “not being treated”.

In fact, her report last week cited official medical records stating children in detention actually had “a lower rate of respiratory illness ... compared to those in the Australian community” and all “are up to date with their checks and vaccinations”.

A real inquiry does not have its chairman tell the accused they are guilty before they’ve defended themselves.

But when Immigration Minister Scott Morrison fronted Triggs’ inquiry last year, she protested: “How can you justify detaining children in these conditions for more than a year when there is no evidence that this is the policy that is stopping the boats?”

A real inquiry does not have its chairman then verbal the witness to make it seem he agrees with her.

But Triggs’ report last week claims Morrison “agreed on oath ... that holding children in detention does not deter either asylum seekers or people smugglers”.

In fact, Morrison had said the “policy of offshore processing combined with all the others I have mentioned has produced the results collectively” of stopping the boats, and without them “the children get back on the boats, they die again”.

Of course, the commission has been up to this kind of stuff for years.  In 1997 it produced its infamous Bringing Them Home report into the “stolen generations” — the 100,000 children, it claimed, who had been stolen from their parents only because they were Aboriginal.

In fact, no one has been able to identify even 10 such children, and the top “stolen generations” ideologue, Professor Robert Manne, admitted the report “greatly exaggerated the numbers of children involved’’ and its victims’ anecdotes were “unreliable’’.

Enough. We don’t pay the commission $25 million a year to trick us and tell tall tales, even in a supposedly good cause. That eventually shatters trust.

And while Triggs is in charge, the commission will be regarded by many Australians with the deepest scepticism.

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Climate of cherry-picking

I pointed out yesterday a fatal flaw in the latest Warmist nonsense from Australia but Garth Paltridge (below) has found some glaring faults too.  He is  a former CSIRO chief research scientist and director of the Antarctic ­ Co-operative Research Centre

THE Australian Academy of Science has released a new document, The Science of Climate Change, aimed at the man and woman in the street. It was prepared on behalf of the academy by leading lights of the global warming establishment. Some day the academy may come to regret the arrangement.

The problem is that, after several decades of refining their story, the international gurus of climate change have become very good at having their cake and eating it too. On the one hand they pay enough lip service to the uncertainties of global warming to justify continued funding for their research. On the other, they peddle a belief — this with religious zeal, and a sort of subconscious blindness to overstatement and the cherry-picking of data — that the science is settled and the world is well on its way to climatic disaster. The academy document fits neatly into the pattern. It is a sophisticated production that tells only one side of the story.

For instance, it does not say, or illustrate with a diagram, that all the mainstream climate models have overestimated the general upward trend of global temperature for the past 30 or more years by a factor (on average) of at least two. Nothing is said about the distinct possibility that the models include feedback processes that amplify far too much the effect of increased atmospheric carbon ­dioxide.

Instead, the document talks about an apparent pause in global warming since 2001. It attributes the pause to some temporary fluctuation in the internal behaviour of the ocean. It does not mention that for many years climate scientists have deliberately played down the contribution of natural oceanic fluctuations to the rise or fall of global temperature. The possibility of naturally induced rises seriously weakens the overall story of human influence.

The document makes much of the belief that climate models can correctly replicate 20th-century global warming only if they include human influences. It fails to make the point that this says very little for the skill of the models or the modellers.

Recent research on the Roman and ­medieval warm periods indicates that both had temperatures and temperature changes very similar to those of the present. Both periods came and went without the benefit of significant human ­emissions of carbon dioxide. The document mentions that ­long-term regional rainfall predictions are uncertain. It doesn’t say that they are probably nonsense. The various model forecasts of the average Australian rainfall for the end of the century range from a doubling to a halving of the ­present 450mm a year. It smacks of cherry-picking to display a map of the output from one particular model that indicates a future ­reduction in rainfall for most of Australia of the order of 20 per cent.

There has been a goodly amount of arbitrary selection (of data, statistical technique and display) in an illustration of the distribution of the change in observed rainfall over Australia in the past 100 years. The southeast and southwest of the continent are shown as a sea of red, suggesting there has been a frightening decrease across the period. No mention is made that a more traditional presentation of the data gives an entirely different picture.

In the southwest, the recent annual average rainfall has simply returned to something close to its value for the 15 or so years before about 1905. In most of the southeast, there has been no statistically significant change at any time.

And so on it goes. Basically the academy has fallen into the trap of being no more than a conduit for a massive international political campaign seeking to persuade a sceptical public of the need for drastic action on climate change. There are more than enough org­anisations already doing that.

Perhaps instead the academy could be persuaded to spend its considerable intellectual capital on problems relevant to the ­general conduct of research — ­problems that the climate issue has brought well into the open. Among them are a peer-review system that is arguably corrupted by groupthink; a deliberate banishment of contrary opinion to the internet; and a publish-or-perish syndrome that is ­completely out of hand.

Maybe the academy could use the resource of its overall fellowship to identify those situations where scientists have too much skin in a political game. US President Dwight Eisenhower foresaw that problem many years ago in his retirement speech to the nation: “The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded. Yet … we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could ­itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

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You couldn't make this up

The Australian Academy of Science has just issued an updated "explanation" of global warming.  They note that "Most available material ... usually omits some of the basics, such as how scientists know humans are causing global warming and what future projections are based on".  So in their latest "explanation", what did they do to remedy that deficiency?   Below is their full "explanation" of how human activities enhance the ‘greenhouse effect’:

"Today, human activities are directly increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide, plus some chemically manufactured greenhouse gases such as halocarbons. These human-generated gases enhance the natural greenhouse effect and further warm the surface. In addition to the direct effect, the warming that results from increased concentrations of long-lived greenhouse gases can be amplified by other processes. Human activities are also increasing aerosols in the atmosphere, which reflect some incoming sunlight. This human-induced change offsets some of the warming from greenhouse gases"

In short, they have done NOTHING to fill the gap they identified.  Their screed is all just assertion and in any case completely ignores the key question of climate sensitivity -- i.e. even if we accept everything they say above about the greenhouse effect, how do we know HOW BIG the effect will be?  Most skeptics do believe that there is some human effect but can see neither theoretical nor empirical grounds for expecting it to be anything but trivial.  It is the Warmists who shriek about it not being trivial but what is their evidence for that?  There is none.  It is all just poorly founded speculation

If that's the best that the scientific establishment can do to explain Warmist beliefs, then the explanation is an utter failure. One wonders if they really believe in Warmism themselves.


Australia's leading science body has reissued its climate change booklet in a bid to improve public understanding of the contentious subject.

The Australian Academy of Science was prompted to update the information based on new research and public questions since its original release in 2010.

Most available material is either too technical for the lay reader and usually omits some of the basics, such as how scientists know humans are causing global warming and what future projections are based on, said Steven Sherwood, a climate scientist at the University of NSW.

"There is so much misinformation or confusing information out there, that we thought it would be nice to gather in one place an accessible explanation," Professor Sherwood said.

About 97 per cent of scientists who study the climate accept that humans are having an impact, with carbon dioxide – mostly emitted from humans burning fossil fuels – the primary driver.

"Even though carbon dioxide is not the only influence on climate, over the long term it will have such a large effect, it has to be brought under control no matter what else we do," Professor Sherwood said.

The academy report notes global carbon dioxide emissions rose at an average annual rate of 3.2 per cent between 2000 and 2012, at the top end of previous projections. These emissions, though, will have to start falling at a pace between 5.5 and 8 per cent for the planet to have a 50-50 chance of keeping temperature increases to within 2 degrees of pre-industrial levels.

World leaders will gather in Paris in December to thrash out a global climate treaty aimed at reducing carbon emissions beyond 2020. Countries, including Australia, are expected to announce their targets by the end of next month.

The heads of Britain's three main political parties agreed at the weekend to phase out all coal-fired power plants unless their emissions can be captured.

The academy report notes average surface warming had slowed since 2001 despite rising carbon emissions but said decadal variability in how oceans and the atmosphere exchange heat meant extra warmth had been absorbed by the seas. Other changes such as the increasing incidence of heat extremes, shrinking Arctic sea ice – its thickness dropping 30 per cent in 30 years – and rising sea levels had all continued unabated.

It is well known that the greenhouse effect is important for sustaining life on Earth – temperatures would be 33 degrees cooler without it. Perhaps less well known is the role rising temperatures have on concentrations of water vapour, a key greenhouse gas.

"When global average atmospheric temperatures rise, global water vapour concentrations increase, amplifying the initial warming through an enhanced greenhouse effect," the report says. "[T]his feedback approximately doubles the sensitivity of climate to human activities."

"For Australia, a warmer future will likely mean that extreme precipitation is more intense and more frequent, interspersed with longer dry spells," the report says.

By the end of the century, a high temperature event that would now occur only once in every 20 years would be occurring annually or once every two years on our current emissions trajectory, the academy says.

While societies and nations will face varying challenges to cope with climate change, many natural ecosystems are likely to face extinction.

Native animals that depend on cooler mountain habitats, for instance, will be particularly vulnerable. Scientists examining the fate of 50 species in the Wet Tropics bioregion in north Queensland found they would be all but wiped out with a 5-degree temperature increase.

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Aspiring teachers abandoning HSC maths

One in six aspiring teachers did not do any maths for the HSC, with new research showing the proportion of students starting teaching degrees in NSW without maths beyond year 10 has tripled in the past decade.

The serious decline in maths participation means an increasing number of primary and high school teachers in NSW are in the classroom with only the most basic level of maths.

Researcher Rachel Wilson, a senior education academic at the University of Sydney, warned that the findings had serious ramifications for school students as well as industry and the national economy.

"Not only are we seeing declines in math and science participation among high school students in general, we are seeing a steeper decline among those students going on to study to be teachers," Dr Wilson said.

The research found between 2001 and 2013, the proportion of students who received university offers to study teaching but did not do HSC maths tripled, and those studying 2 unit maths dropped from 30.6 per cent  to 14.2 per cent. The only rise was in elementary-level general maths.

The study also found that the proportion of all students going on to do the HSC without any maths tripled between 2001 and 2013, while there was a small increase in general maths but a decline in 2 unit maths.

Dr Wilson said the big concern was the increasing number of students applying to study teaching who had dropped maths before the HSC.

"Together, these analyses raise serious concerns for maths and numeracy standards and for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education and industry," Dr Wilson said.

"In particular, the declining participation rates among prospective teachers are deeply concerning, with the potential to create a vicious cycle of declining engagement with maths in NSW schools."

Dr Wilson said the last external assessment for maths in NSW was year 9 NAPLAN.

"There is a message going to students that maths is not important."

The research comes as federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne released on Friday the long-awaited review into teacher training, which found that too many teaching degrees were not equipping new teachers with the skills to teach students maths and science.

Dr Wilson, who co-authored the report with Honorary Associate Professor John Mack for the International Journal of Innovation in Science and Mathematics Education, said Australia lagged behind much of the developed world.

She said the redesigned HSC introduced in 2001 removed the long-standing requirement for students in NSW to study at least one maths or science subject.

Dr Wilson said this was at odds with the rest of world, where 45 of the US's 50 states required maths to be studied to the end of secondary school, and   Japan, Korea and China had similar requirements.

"The removal of this requirement and the increase in alternative subject choices over the 10-year period must be seen as contributing factors in the declining rates of math and science study," Dr Wilson's paper said.

A spokesman for NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli said the state had the highest standards in Australia, with school leavers entering teaching degrees with the HSC required to have three band five results.

"From 2016, before they graduate, education students wanting to work in NSW schools will have to pass a literacy and numeracy test to demonstrate that their numeracy skills are strong enough to teach mathematics," he said.

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Melbourne beats Sydney in American students' Google searches for overseas universities

Melbourne ranks fifth in the world for United States students searching for destinations to study abroad, two places higher than Sydney, data from search giant Google shows.

Sydney is often thought of by Australians as our most internationally visible city, but the search data tells a different story.

For US students planning to study overseas, the most searched-for destination is London, followed by Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh.

Melbourne is next on the list at No 5, two places above Sydney, and ahead of Hong Kong, Seoul, Glasgow and Amsterdam.       

Google has also collected data on US students' searches for specific universities, and again Melbourne does well, with the University of Melbourne ranked 13th in the world, one place behind the University of Sydney.

At 33, the University of Melbourne is Australia's top-ranked institution according to the Times World University Rankings, ahead of the Australian National University (45) and the University of Sydney (60).

"We're pleased to be recognised in these rankings, and it reaffirms Melbourne as great destination for university", a University of Melbourne spokesman said.

"It's a testament to the hard work of many staff across the uni, as well as collaboration with various state and national bodies.

"Lots of factors contribute to how Google perceives the university, and we certainly try to optimise for those that we can."

Interestingly, despite its reputation for dullness within Australia, Canberra does very well in the search rankings.

The Australian National University is the most searched-for of Australia's universities, and Canberra itself ranks 10th in the list of searched-for cities.

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Bright flight

Most affluent Australian parents send their kids to private schools -- at least for their High School years.  So ....

When I became a father at a frighteningly young age it was a mixture of ideology and lack of money that had me choosing the state system for my daughter. It didn't even occur to me that the state high school where I lived, in Sydney's prestigious eastern suburbs, could be bad.

It was worse than bad. "Bright Flight" had left only the poorest, roughest kids in the area. Girls in micro-minis and with texta drawings all over their thighs smoked cigarettes with slouching, morbid looking boys at bus stops around the neighbourhood.

At a school performance where parents were invited, screaming children ran down the aisles, prompting neither disapproval nor intervention by the seated teachers. At parent-teacher nights, teachers gave glowing descriptions of my kid's performances despite obvious flaws in essay techniques, in general knowledge and grammar.

Eventually, I sent her to a Catholic girl's school. Ten grand a year… ouch!… and I had to pretend I believed in The Almighty, but at least there was a modicum of discipline.

Later in life, when I was better equipped to afford a good school, I put my two little boys into the French system. I figured, I could spend a million bucks putting them through the elite private system and they might make a contact that could get them into the banking system or at least a few stock tips that might set them up for life. Or, I could choose a system that values philosophy, language, history and civil values and all bound in the most secular of educational frameworks.

Hours, days, months, spent on verb conjugation, on learning the poems of Hugo and Rimbaud by rote (and performed in front of their classmates), of complex forays into European history. And they come out of it able to speak, read and write at a high level in two languages.

I figure, I spend the money, I want something concrete. What a party trick...say something in French, kid!

"Bright Flight" is real. The state system, in whichever state you live, is too slack, too willing to let bad behaviour slide. A great student will be a great student anywhere. But an average kid, someone prone to slipping into bad behaviour, what most of us have, will at least have a shot at a decent future if he gets schooled privately.

It shouldn't be this way.

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Tony Abbott signals crackdown on borders amid terror threat

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott has condemned a “brutal” shooting in Denmark as an affront to free speech, and flagged further efforts aimed at securing Australia’s borders amid growing concerns about the threat of terrorism attacks on home soil.

Twin attacks shook Copenhagen over the weekend. One man killed when a cafe hosting an event where a cartoonist who had caricatured the Prophet Mohammed was speaking was sprayed with bullets, and another fatally shot in the head just hours later at the city’s main synagogue. Three police officers were hurt in the cafe shooting, and another two wounded in the second attack.

Danish police have confirmed a man was later killed after he opened fire on police at a train station in the northern part of the city amid a massive man-hunt.

The shootings come in the wake of the attacks in Paris in January at the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, as well as a Jewish supermarket elsewhere in the French capital.

Mr Abbott, in a statement issued today, said the thoughts of all Australians were with the Danish people. “As with the Charlie Hebdo atrocity in Paris, the Copenhagen attack is an affront to one of our most fundamental values — freedom of speech,” Mr Abbott said.

“We stand with the people and government of Denmark in confronting this cynical attempt to undermine that fundamental right.”

Earlier, the prime minister signalled security at Australia’s borders would be ramped up.

Mr Abbott, who will deliver a national security statement on Monday week, said the rise of Daesh, or Islamic State, had seen new threats emerge, “where any extremist can grab a knife, a flag, a camera phone and a victim and carry out a terror attack”.

Authorities on Friday confirmed police and a prayer hall were among targets uncovered by investigations into two alleged terrorists arrested in western Sydney last week.

A number of items were allegedly seized from the home of Omar Al-Kutobi, 24, and Mohammad Kiad, 25, including a machete, hunting knife and homemade Islamic State flag, as well as a video which allegedly shows one of the men vowing to launch an attack in the name of IS.

Al-Kutobi, from Iraq, is believed to have arrived in Australia in 2009 using another person’s passport, and was given a protection visa before being granted citizenship in 2013.

“It’s clear to me, that for too long, we have given those who might be a threat to our country the benefit of the doubt,” Mr Abbott said in a statement broadcast today via his official YouTube channel.

“There’s been the benefit of the doubt at our borders, the benefit of the doubt for residency, the benefit of the doubt for citizenship and the benefit of the doubt at Centrelink. And in the courts, there has been bail, when clearly there should have been jail.”

Mr Abbott also hit out at the Grand Mufti of Australia for speaking against a possible ban on the controversial Muslim organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, saying comments attributed to Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed were “wrong-headed” and “unhelpful”.

Dr Ibrahim, the spiritual leader of Muslims in Australia, last week said it would be a “political mistake” to ban the group. The government is seeking advice from security agencies on options for taking action against Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is banned in other countries including Britain.

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Industry Group calls for national strategy to address crippling STEM skill shortages

“A lack of critical Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) skills among the current and emerging workforce is holding back Australian employers in their quest to be more innovative, productive and competitive;” Australian Industry Group Chief Executive, Innes Willox, said today.

The negative implications for our economy were highlighted in an Ai Group report released today - Progressing STEM Skills in Australia – which included survey results from more than 300 businesses across the economy.  The survey found that businesses are having difficulty recruiting employees with STEM skills including technicians and trade workers (44 per cent), professionals (21 per cent) and managers (19 per cent).

"This report demonstrates the significant challenges facing Australia's educators and employers to adequately skill the workforce required to build a competitive economy for the future,” Mr Willox said

"Over 36 per cent of the employers surveyed reported their greatest barrier to recruitment of staff with STEM skills to be a lack of qualifications relevant to their business.  Other key barriers included a lack of workplace experience and employability skills (34 per cent) and a lack of applicants with STEM skills (29 per cent).

"STEM skills are essential for the future economic and social well-being of the nation and employment in this area grew about 1.5 times the rate of other jobs in recent years.  Despite this, enrolments and the number of graduates with STEM qualifications continue to decline and secondary school enrolments in mathematics and science are also decreasing. Accordingly the pipeline of STEM skills to the workforce remains perilous.

"There is an urgent need to develop a national STEM skills strategy to lift the level of STEM qualified employees in the workforce to enable the Australian economy to be more competitive and prosperous” Mr Willox said.

Key findings:

*                STEM skills are increasingly important for the workforce and the competitiveness of the Australian economy.

*                Australia is underperforming internationally compared to STEM strong countries.

*                Participation by school students in STEM related subjects is decreasing and our performance in international comparisons is below many other countries.

*                Participation by university students in STEM related disciplines is not keeping pace with the needs of the economy and is low compared to other similar economies.

*                Employers continue to experience difficulties recruiting STEM qualified staff, especially as technicians and trade workers.

*                Australia lacks a national STEM skills strategy and is the only country in the OECD without a science or technology strategy.

*                Australian Government financial assistance to STEM is thinly dispersed, non-systemic and does not contribute to a national approach.

*                School – industry STEM initiatives are characterised by un-coordinated and non-systemic activity.

*                University – industry collaboration, including in STEM fields, is low by international comparisons.

*                There is a need to develop more engaging school curriculum and pedagogy to attract students to STEM and a need to increase the STEM qualified teaching workforce.

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Doctors slam NSW Labor's plan for nurse-run clinics

Australia's peak medical body has slammed the NSW opposition's key health policy to establish four nurse-led walk-in treatment centres as a "waste of money".

The Australian Medical Association said the proposed $40 million clinics, modelled on nurse-led clinics introduced in the ACT in 2010, were not supported by evidence and would fragment patient care in the public health system.

"The proposal shows a lack of understanding of the operation of the NSW public hospital system and goes against established evidence of promoting good quality care," AMA (NSW) president Saxon Smith said.

"There is actually evidence suggesting nurse-led clinics can make the quality of healthcare worse."

Lauching the policy on Sunday, Opposition Leader Luke Foley said the proposed clinics would be a "new frontier in NSW health" and would "take pressure off emergency departments".

He dismissed the AMA's criticism as doctors "protecting their patch" and said he was "not interested in turf wars over work practices".

"Go to any emergency department and the hard-working nurses will tell you the people who work there are stressed," Mr Foley said.

Under the proposal, 45 nurses would be employed across the four clinics and would treat minor injuries and illnesses. Two clinics would be opened in western Sydney, one on the NSW Central Coast and one in the Illawarra region, Mr Foley said.

But Dr Smith said the policy was based on a flawed understanding of pressures on NSW hospital's emergency wards, which had had a decline in the least urgent "triage 5" cases over the past few years.

"Our emergency departments are under significant pressure but this pressure is coming from sicker patients. So obviously our push and pull factors are different from the ACT."

Dr Smith also said a 2013 independent evaluation of the nurse-led clinics showed they either increased attendance in hospital emergency departments or had no impact.

But former ACT chief minister Katy Gallagher, who appeared beside Mr Foley at the launch, said a decision to relocate the clinics in the community, rather than within hospital grounds, had addressed this issue.

NSW Premier Mike Baird backed the AMA's attack on the policy.

"They said [Labor's plan is] a complete waste of money, trials have been done and it doesn't work and I think it shows the depth of policy analysis being done by the opposition. The other thing they haven't told us is where the money is coming from," he said.

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Fair Work Commission fritters away taxpayers’ funds

LET’S face it, government departments and agencies waste money left, right and centre.

If public servants aren’t sipping espressos made from newly purchased up-market machines, they are attending workshops on positive thinking and resilience. I’m not convinced that years of efficienc­y dividends have really made much difference.

When it comes to squandering taxpayer money, the Fair Work Commission is right at the top of the league ladder.

It has embarked on an expensive and dubious research program, even though there is not a single person employed at the FWC who can credibly judge a piece of research. That also applies to the vast majority of commission members, from the president down.

What is even more concerning is the probity and procedural fairness of the FWC commissioning and funding its own internal research. This never occurred under the previous leaders of the FWC and its antecedent bodies. In part, the legislation was not accommodative, but in any case there was never any funding.

When the FWC commissions its own research and it is presented in a case, does this research rank above other research that may be presented by other parties? What happened to the arrangement that parties to a case could commission their own expert­ witnesses to undertake research­ and these expert witnesses would be subject to cross-examination?

But if this is not bad enough, the quality of the research that the FWC undertakes in-house or commissions is laughable. You only have to read through the completely predictable and undergraduate-quality overview of economic conditions contained in the national minimum wage decis­ions to see what I mean.

But it gets even worse when the FWC wanders off the reservation by asking research questions that it should know cannot be answered­ using available reliable empirical evidence.

Take the study on the impact of changes on the national minimum wage and award rates of pay on employment and hours worked.

We know from employer surveys that about 16 per cent to 18 per cent of workers are paid the award rate only. But because there is no matched sample of employees attache­d to that survey, we can only infer the characteristics of award-paid workers.

We know, for instance, that they are disproportionately employe­d in accommodation and food services, administration and support services and retail trade. We also know that award-paid workers are almost unknown in the public sector.

So when calling for tenders, the FWC should have known that the question being posed was essen­­tially unanswerable. But dangle money in front of the research community and researchers will do their best to grapple with the question as set out.

Because of a need for a comparator group, some researchers thought to look at the highly reput­able longitudinal Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey undertaken by the Melbourne Institu­te at the University of Melbourne.

The trouble is that the key question — how are you paid? — is the most inaccurately answered question in the entire survey.

More than 30 per cent of public-sector workers claim to be paid the award rate only, even though we know that nearly 100 per cent are paid according to agreements. To proceed any further using HILDA data is just plain ridiculous.

But the FWC research project that really takes the cake is the Australian Workplace Relations Study, an expensive, survey-based project that is trying to emulate a large-scale survey undertaken within the federal bureaucracy 20 years ago — the Australian Workplace and Industrial Relations Survey.

The key idea is to assemble a matched data set of employers and employees.

Questions are then asked about employment and workforce management practices, wages and wage-setting, employee engagement practices, use of individual flexibility arrangements and the like. Employers are asked to provide information about their businesses, including ownership, age and financial performance.

But here’s the thing: the response­ rates of the survey are so low that there should be no analysis of the results undertaken becaus­e of the complete lack of reliability of the data.

Indeed, it was very clear as the survey progressed that real trouble was brewing. Not surprisingly, many employers simply refused to fill in the hard-copy booklets and, in desperation on the part of the FWC, employers were offered a shrunk-down online version instead­. This would take only five minutes to fill out.

Even so, the overall response rate was less than 18 per cent. Indeed, of the more than 17,000 employers contacted, only 1500 filled out all four employer questionnaires. This is a response rate of less than 9 per cent. Joke as a descriptor does not even come close.

(My guess is that quite a lot of employers were none too impressed about filling out a survey from the FWC, an organisation that keeps them waiting on the phone for hours and then suggests they access the non-binding inform­ation on its appallingly designed website.)

And the employee response rate was even lower than employers’. It is not possible to determine from the information provided the matched response rate of employers and employees at the same workplace. Less than 10 per cent would be a reasonable guess.

Any sensible researcher would call it quits at this stage. An expensive survey has been attempted but, for various reasons, the response rate is totally inadequate, giving rise to unrepresentative and biased responses.

But because no one in the FWC really understands the first thing about research, it has gone to the next stage of undertaking some preliminary analysis of the survey results. This surely must be some sort of prank, although it was not released on April 1.

But wait, there’s even more. There is going to be a conference based on the survey — readers, please stop that guffawing — with draft papers required by April 10.

You will also be pleased to know that there is to be a pre-conference data workshop on June 24 and the full AWRS conference during the following two days.

Surely there is someone sensible in the FWC — the president, the general manager? — who will pull the plug on these expensive events now that the survey has failed so dismally.

I also pose the question to the employer groups that are represented on the FWC research committee: what do you think you are doing, apart from providing a convenient veil of respectability to this nonsense?

So here’s a tip for Joe Hockey: the FWC is clearly significantly overfunded. So when you are hunting around for budget savings­, think mega-efficiency dividend extracted from the FWC.

For probity and procedural reasons, there is a case for including in the Fair Work Act a specific prohibition of research being undertaken or funded by the FWC.

In the meantime, Employment Minister Eric Abetz needs to get on with the task of making some sensible appointments to the FWC and these appointees can then politely suggest that the internal researc­h folly be dumped.

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Palaszczuk sworn in as Qld premier

GOVERNOR Paul de Jersey swore in the Labor leader and her interim cabinet at Government House on Saturday morning. Jackie Trad has been sworn in as deputy premier and Curtis Pitt as Treasurer.

It was a closed door ceremony as the Labor government was handed power while a media pack watched through windows.

Ms Palaszczuk has also taken on the portfolios of education, training, employment, justice and the attorney-general.

Health, state development, infrastructure, transport, environment portfolios will be held by Ms Trad.

Mr Pitt will hold the trade, police and emergency services, resources, housing and public works and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander portfolios.

The trio will take control of those ministries until Labor caucus convenes to vote on other ministers.

The new premier rushed from the swearing-in to the funeral of former Labor minister Anita Cunningham, but said the ceremony was good.  "Very good thank you, I have to now attend to funeral in Bundaberg, so thank you everyone, thank you very much," she said.

Ms Trad said the swearing-in of the Labor government was a tremendous honour and the culmination of three years of hard work.  She said the Palaszczuk government's number one priority would be boosting jobs and getting major projects going.

"(The premier) will be absolutely driving jobs growth in this state because Queenslanders need jobs, working Queensland families need that income so that they can live decent lives," Ms Trad said. "I know that Annastacia's passionate about it, we all are."

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Palaszczuk letter spells out Labor’s none-too-palatable policy plans for the state

Unions once again to rule the roost

I BELIEVE I have cracked the secret code. The Labor Party’s missing policy agenda for Queensland is revealed – in some gory detail – in a letter that has been under our noses for more than a week.  It’s signed by Annastacia Palaszczuk and provides a window into the socialist thinking that will dominate the Labor Government.

The letter points to profound changes in everything from health, transport and local government, to planning and education.

It also outlines Labor’s blinkered approach to accountability and integrity. And it shows plans to welcome back unions by inviting them to dominate the public service.

I’m afraid it means the speedy surgeries promised by the outgoing LNP government will almost certainly end. In a bid to appease unions, Labor will stop the outsourcing of surgeries to private hospitals.

Contestability will also be banned across government, so expect public service numbers to soar to take up the slack. If that happens, the state wages bill will skyrocket.

As outsourcing comes to a close, it is inevitable that union power will be strengthened in the public service, especially in the massive health, transport and works departments.

Meanwhile, Labor’s pledge for an investigation into political donations will not include an examination of funding from the party’s most generous benefactors – the unions.

It would be laughable to have an official inquiry into donations without including the unions, which bankrolled Labor candidates, as well as providing cars, signs and manpower. The unions clearly have a vested interest and must be included in any inquiry.

Next we see solicitors and barristers will be invited to help frame new gang laws. That’s fine, in theory. However, I’m told some of those involved still represent the criminals the existing laws were designed to catch.  A potential conflict-of-interest minefield awaits the unwary. Some new members who are lawyers will be scurrying to the integrity commissioner for advice.

Labor’s total ban on asset sales will give Palaszczuk a most perplexing problem. The State Government will not be able to sell the defunct Executive Building, or any other obsolete or redundant assets.

The letter, from Palaszczuk to Nicklin independent Peter Wellington, is Labor’s lifeline to power and is historic. It also contains errors.  In the opening paragraph, Palaszczuk writes, lawyer to lawyer, to Wellington: “I also wish to highlight that Labor, which has won the majority of seats in the 55th parliament …”

Wrong.  Labor, of course, does not have a majority. It’s a major gaffe in such an important agreement. And if Labor did have a majority, it certainly wouldn’t pander to the likes of Wellington.

“Labor’s opposition to asset sales remains resolute,” Palaszczuk writes. She included government-owned corporations. Even Labor folk are wondering what will happen to the superfluous staff and assets when Energex, Ergon Energy and Powerlink are rolled into one company and Stanwell and CS Energy into another.

There is a very real risk that many people will be paid to do nothing, just as they were in the Beattie era when railway stations closed.

The letter also says Labor “remains committed to the Fitzgerald principles”.  “This includes a commitment to … make public service appointments in the public interest, without regard to personal, party political or other immaterial considerations.”  Really? I’ll be watching the appointment of the directors-general with much interest.

The letter seems to sound the death knell for hospital boards. “Labor will review all contestability processes within Queensland Health and the hospital and health services,” it says.  “Previously in government, Labor had a policy of employment security and no contracting-out provisions. Labor will restore this policy.”

How it will restore the policy is not spelled out. Will we see a return to the Bligh era and hire an office tower full of bureaucrats? And who will pay for them?

In return for his vote, Wellington has negotiated some tasty little sweeteners for himself.  He has been guaranteed “proper resources for independent members of parliament in minority governments”.  “This includes an extra staff member in an independent MP’s electorate office, and a policy adviser based at Parliament House in Brisbane.”

Wellington also wants the developers of the massive Caloundra South residential project to pay extra infrastructure charges, placing the project in jeopardy.

At the same time, Wellington won a pledge for a Palaszczuk government to stop the associated Halls Creek development known as Caloundra South South.

Neither of these developments is in Wellington’s electorate, so why is he imposing his will over that of the elected members?

Remember that Wellington and Palaszczuk railed against the LNP for interfering with approvals. Now they are happy to interfere, as the letter clearly confirms.

Pot, kettle, black.

Wellington has also won Palaszczuk’s support to sack Crime and Corruption Commission acting chairman Ken Levy, who was referred to police by Labor in Opposition.  Is it right and proper for any government to demand Levy be turfed out before the investigation is complete? Where is the presumption of innocence?

Imagine the outcry from the Labor Party and its friends in the judiciary if the LNP had terminated a statutory official without a skerrick of evidence of any wrongdoing.

Palaszczuk’s letter might leave historians pondering all sorts of questions.

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Revealed: Gillian Triggs’s agenda

THE Human Rights Commission’s report into child detention was engineered as an “advocacy tool” for policy change and focused­ on children for political effect, internal documents ­reveal.

The commission documents were released last night as ­Attorney-General George Brandis refused to deny claims he ­had offered commission president Gillian Triggs an inducement to stand down a fortnight before her report, The Forgotten Children, was released on Wednesday.

Professor Triggs, when she ­advised former immigration minister Scott Morrison of the inquiry in January last year, wrote that it “will assess whether the laws, policies and practices relating to children in immigration detention meet Australia’s international human rights obligations”.

But a draft project plan, dated April 2013, assumes “Australia’s immigration system fails to comply with Australia’s obligations” under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

It anticipates a “report is used by Commission and NGOs as an advocacy tool in meetings with key government decision-makers and in relevant national and international forums to build momentum for change”.

“The underlying assumption of this project (and our broader work in this area) is that faced with enough domestic and international criticism and pressure regarding its practices relating to children in immigration detention, the Australian government will reform those practices.”

A draft workplan, also from April 2013, reveals that the commis­sion focused on children for political ­effect.

“Focusing on children allows the best opportunity to engage the general public, and to reach bipart­isan political agreement on making policy and legal changes to the system of mandatory and indefin­ite detention,” it reads.

The Coalition will seize on these documents, released by a Senate committee examining Professor Triggs’s motivations for the inquiry, as evidence of a conspir­acy to discredit Australia’s bipart­isan child-detention policies.

Social justice groups — including Amnesty International, Caritas, World Vision, UNICEF, Save the Children and Plan — have called on the government to implement the commission’s recommendations, including a royal commission and releasing all detained children within four weeks.

The Coalition has rejected those recommendations, with Tony Abbott branding the report a “transparent stitch-up” and a ­“blatantly partisan politicised ­exercise” of which the commission should be “ashamed”.

Many MPs, some of whom have spent months privately ­agitating for Professor Triggs’s ­removal or the abolition of the commission, are now saying openly that her position is “untenable”.

Senator Brandis’s office would not deny yesterday a report that a representative of the Attorney-General made Professor Triggs an offer last month of “some other opport­unity” if she stood down.

Labor’s legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus said last night that the government “cannot hear criticism”, and its attacks on the commission “show all the signs of a government in meltdown”.

“The reports of inducements offered by the Attorney-General to the president of the Human Rights Commission to resign are even more concerning,” he said of the Fairfax Media report.

Professor Triggs, who declined to comment, has more than two years remaining in the role and can be removed only for reasons such as bankruptcy or misconduct.

Giving evidence to the Senate inquiry on November 20, she admitte­d to discussing the idea with then Labor ministers Tony Burke and Chris Bowen, including a meeting with Mr Burke during the election caretaker period.

Professor Triggs later retracted this after being told that the meeting would have been “entirely inappropriate”.

The documents contain no evidence that she discussed the inquiry with either minister.

However, they show she did meet Mr Burke during the caretaker period “as a consequence of his invitation to brief the president on the newly announced regional resettlement arrangement” with Papua New Guinea.

In her testimony, Professor Triggs said the inquiry was ­delayed to coincide with the 10-year anniversary of a previous inquiry into the detention system, and it would have damaged the commission if the hearings were held during an election campaign.

In the foreword to her report published this week, Professor Triggs claimed that she made the decision in February last year because­ there were then more than 1000 children detained “for longer periods than in the past, with no pathway to resettlement”.

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Fair Work Commission relaunches civil case against former MP Craig Thomson

Former federal MP Craig Thomson will be hauled back before a court after the national industrial umpire reopened a civil lawsuit alleging rampant union credit card misuse.

The Fair Work Commission will pursue the ex-secretary of the Health Services Union on multiple charges that collapsed during his criminal trial due to incorrect wording by the prosecution.

The commission's general manager, Bernadette O'Neill, announced she has filed documents in the Federal Court seeking to "re-enliven" parts of the case against him for allegedly swindling union money on fine dining and sex with prostitutes.

Mr Thomson was convicted of several charges but spared a jail term last year when a County Court judge imposed a $25,000 fine for using union money on "self-indulgent" spending.

The former Labor member for the NSW seat of Dobell was found guilty of 13 counts of theft, related to the withdrawals of $5650 from ATMs while using HSU credit cards, money he was not authorised to use on himself.

He was found not guilty of 49 fraud charges because Judge Carolyn Douglas found the prosecution had worded the charges incorrectly.

In the re-launched civil case, which was put on hold during the criminal trial, the Fair Work Commission is now chasing Mr Thomson for $243,000 in compensation plus penalties for breaches of federal law and union rules.

"In Mr Thomson's recent criminal trial it was not found that he did not engage in this conduct, rather, it was found that the framing of these charges did not support a conviction," Ms O'Neill said.

"It is in the public interest for Mr Thomson to be held to account for his alleged conduct."

Mr Thomson's lawyer, Chris McArdle, said on Wednesday the previous charges against his client had failed due to a "lack of substance because they are not true".

"The only incorrect wording in the charges was that 'he did it'," Mr McArdle said.

"We were looking forward to this being out of Mr Thomson's life sooner rather than later ... This matter will have to be assessed all over again. And all the rude bits will be addressed and will be found wanting in this jurisdiction as they were in the other."

Mr McArdle said he had "utter confidence" in the Federal Court of Australia.

Ms O'Neill said she believed her agency had "good prospects of success" in the proceedings. The Federal Court trial is scheduled to start on March 30.

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