GREENIE ROUNDUP

Four current articles below

Response to BOM whitewash from good ol' boy, Ron Sandland



Remarks below by Dr Jennifer Marohasy

FOLLOWING  are my initial comments in response to the release of the report by the Technical Advisory Forum on the Australian Climate Observations Reference Network (ACORN-SAT):

Dr Sandland chairs 'The Forum' that has so far refused to hold an open forum.

I NOTE that The Forum, chaired by Dr Ron Sandland formerly of the CSIRO, concurs with the Bureau that:

“There is a need to adjust the historical temperature record to account for site changes, changes in measurement practices and identifiable errors in measurement…  To this end, the Forum supports the need for the Bureau’s homogenisation process to incorporate both metadata-based adjustments and adjustments based on the statistical detection of atypical observations. In the opinion of the Forum members, unsolicited submissions received from the public did not offer a justification for contesting the overall need for homogenisation or the scientific integrity of the Bureau’s climate records.”

As a member of the public who made an unsolicited submission, I would like to clarify that at no time did I suggest there was no need for adjustments, rather I have queried why there are adjustments made when, in fact, there are no documented site changes, no changes in measurement practices, and no identifiable errors.  Yet adjustments are still made.

The Forum appears to have overlooked many examples of this provided in the public submissions, and published by The Australian newspaper late in 2014.  For example, the Forum has completely ignored the notorious example of Rutherglen, where a slight cooling trend was converted into a warming trend, despite an absence of any metadata providing justification.

The Forum has also made no comment on the actual choice of stations for inclusion in ACORN-SAT, nor how the selection of stations has changed in recent years.  For example, in his submission to the panel, retired chartered accountant Merrick Thomson showed how the choice of ACORN-SAT stations changed from 2012 to 2013 and, how this could generate a large increase in global warming.

The Forum has suggested that the Bureau consider pre-1910 data in its analysis of climatic trends.

“Recommendation 5: Further, the possible availability of pre-1910 data at south-eastern sites may allow for a comparative analysis to be performed for south-eastern Australia to assess whether the inclusion of pre-1910 data is worthwhile in attempting to understand current temperature patterns.”

This is currently listed as a low priority by The Forum, but its inclusion is nevertheless welcome, and was a key recommendation in my submission.  I also recommended that all temperature series start at the same date.  For example, I provided the example, in my submission, of the Bureau adding in the very hot town of Wilcannia only from 1957, when there is data available from the late 1800s.

I also welcome the recommendation that the Bureau:

“Address two key aspects of ACORN-SAT, namely: a) improving the clarity and accessibility of information provision—in particular, explaining the uncertainty that is inherent to both raw and homogenised datasets, and b) refining some of the Bureau’s data handling and statistical methods through appropriate statistical standardisation procedures, sensitivity analyses, and alternative data fitting approaches.”

I note that The Forum state in their report that:   “It is not currently possible to determine whether the improvements recommended by the Forum will result in an increased or decreased warming trend as reflected in the ACORN-SAT dataset.”

I would suggest that if the committee’s recommendations were properly implemented, and the Bureau abandoned some of its more creative accounting practices (e.g. adding in particularly hot locations for later years in the time series), then it would become apparent that there has been an overall trend of cooling over much of central and eastern Australia from 1880 to 1960, more dramatic warming than previously documented from 1960 through to about 2002, while more recently temperatures have plateaued, with some evidence of a cooling trend establishing in north eastern Australia since 2002.

I note The Forum intends to operate for another two years, and urge them to be honest to their title of “The Forum” and actually meet with some of those who have so far provided unsolicited public submissions.  Indeed, I urge Dr Sandland to immediately set up an open and transparent Forum process whereby these submissions can be presented allowing any accusations of scientific misconduct by the Bureau to be both defended and contested before the Australian public, and media.

The committee makes five recommendations, but puts emphasis on the importance of the first two components of the first recommendation.

I applaud the first component of the first recommendation of the committee that in full states:

“Expediting the Bureau’s current work on developing uncertainty measures in closer consultation with the statistical community. The Forum recommends the Bureau seek to better understand the sources of uncertainty and to include estimates of statistical variation such as standard errors in reporting estimated and predicted outcomes, including: quantifying the uncertainty for both raw and adjusted data; prioritising the provision of explicit standard errors or confidence intervals, which should further inform the Bureau’s understanding and reporting of trends in all temperature series maintained by the Bureau; examining the robustness of analyses to spatial variation; and articulating the effect of correcting for systematic errors on the standard error of resulting estimates.”

Of course, that such basic statistical information is not currently available is impossible to reconcile with the overall conclusion in the report that, “the analyses conducted by the Bureau reflect good practice in addressing the problem of how to adjust the raw temperature series for systematic errors.”   Then again, the executive summary of The Forum’s report appears to have been written by someone straight out of the BBC television series ‘Yes Minister’.

The second component of the first recommendation is also applauded, which reads in full:

“Developing a clearer articulation of the purpose for the ACORN-SAT exercise to enhance public understanding of the program, and communicating processes for developing and using ACORN-SAT in a way that is appropriately clear, broad and supported by graphics and data summaries. In particular, the central focus on the Australian annual mean temperature anomaly as the primary end point of the ACORN-SAT exercise should be reconsidered and a broader narrative around including regional effects should be developed.”

Indeed, it has become apparent over the years that the entire focus of the work of the small ACORN-SAT unit is not the provision of higher quality individual temperature series, but the remodeling of the raw data, and the compilation of a select few station, to suggest that it is getting hotter and hotter across the Australian landmass with such announcements made with great fanfare by the Bureau’s David Jones at the beginning of each year.

Recommendation No. 2, has several components including comment that:

“Releasing the Python computer code for ACORN-SAT as a downloadable link along with all supporting documentation and listing of the technical requirements for the software. The Bureau should also monitor and gather download statistics to gauge demand for this software.”

Of course, without access to this software it has been impossible to reproduce any of the adjustments made by the Bureau. Yet if the method is scientific, it should be reproducible.   For many years, the Bureau has erroneously claimed its methods are transparent.   It should be noted, however, that even with the provision of this software, it will be impossible to justify ACORN-SAT because it is unclear why the Bureau chooses some stations above others for its comparisons.  For example, despite endless requests for clarification, the Bureau has never explained why it uses the distant location of Hillston to make comparison, and then changes, to the raw temperature data for Rutherglen in north eastern Victoria.

Recommendation 2 also includes comment that:  “Publishing a brief, plain-language (as far as possible) description of the criteria for adjustment and the basis for adjustment itself.”    Of course this should have been available since the very first adjustment was made in the development of ACORN-SAT.  That such a document still does not exist is evidence that ACORN-SAT is poorly documented.  So, how could The Forum endorse the Bureau’s claims that it represents world’s best practice?

SOURCE

Pope's climate adviser lambasts Australia



If you think he looks like something that has recently emerged from the anus of a zoo animal, I will not contradict you, "ad hominem" though that is.  Apologies but the pompous fraud has certainly succeeded in irritating me.   More temperately, exactly what qualifies a theoretical physicist to pontificate on the Australian economy?  Also see today's issue of GREENIE WATCH for a comment on his "science"

A leading German climate change authority and adviser to the Pope on the effects of global warming has lambasted Australia over what he perceives as its failure to address an inevitable process of de-carbonisation.

Professor Hans Schellnhuber, head of the highly-regarded Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research outside Berlin, told reporters Australia's reliance on coal exports to China was a "suicide strategy".

"I don't think Australia can be sustained based simply on raw materials he says. "Just pursuing the carbon path is a red herring."

Professor Schellnhubner will be in Rome Thursday for the release of an eagerly awaited papal encyclical on the effects of climate change.

An adviser to both the Pope and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Prof Schellnhuber is one of Europe's leading climate change scientists in his capacity as Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Potsdam.

He was interviewed in his study where Albert Einstein developed his Theory of Relativity.

In good natured remarks about the challenges facing a country like Australia, Prof Schellnhuber said it was "not responsible to run a country like a lottery."

He compared Australia unfavorably with resource-rich Norway which is being run almost completely on renewable energy [mostly hydro, which Greenies hate] and was making use of its vast sovereign wealth fund to build new and innovative industries.

Australia, he says, was excellently-placed to make the most of its renewable potential in solar, wind-power and other forms of renewable energy.

Asked why Germany experienced a low level of climate skepticism compared with countries like Australia and the United States, Prof Schellnhuber says "Anglo-American" societies tended to be dominated by ideas of entrepeneurship and free market impulses.

The Anglo-American world believed technology and innovation would help it to overcome its challenges. Germany, with its "different history", was more "cautious."  [Germany has a cautious history?  You could have fooled me!]

"Australia and Canada suffered from the curse of bounty," he says. "We will be fine forever: why should we change?"

"In the end," he adds. "it [the curse of bounty] makes you complacent. Unfortunately paradise doesn't last forever".

Africa and South America also have bountiful natural resources, so how come they are not in "paradise"?  Schellnhuber hasn't even asked himself that question.  His economics and sociology are on a par with his climatology

SOURCE

Electric cars in Australia

Tesla may have ambitious plans for battery technology for the home but it is also looking to upgrade its electric vehicle batteries, which will allow them to travel twice the distance they currently do. So what will be the implications for Australia?

While Australia has generally been an early adopter of new technology, electric vehicles pose more of a problem. Anybody who has grown up in regional Australia knows that being the family taxi at weekends for children’s sporting events can regularly mean a round trip of more than 200km.

The current battery life of an electric vehicle is around 160km – the Nissan Leaf is quoting an average even lower at 135km – so they are still not an option as the primary vehicle for even the most die-hard regional environmentalist.

There has been some take-up of hybrid vehicles – and they are more suitable to Australian conditions – but what is needed for those who would love to move to a fully electric vehicle?

Electric is more suited to the major cities, where they can be used for the daily commute to work (and may provide an alternative for the second family vehicle).

But the uptake of new electric vehicles is slow according to one recent report, with limited sales in the first few months of the year, although BMW claimed the most with 70 of its i3 model. (It’s a similar story in other countries where sales are far less than predicted.)

One of the reasons for the slow take-up in Australia has been identified as a lack of infrastructure to keep electric vehicles powered, especially on the longer journeys that are typical here.

SOURCE

Greens do a deal over pension policy

Greens more pragmatic under their new leadership

Greens leader Richard Di Natale has dismissed claims by Labor frontbencher Jason Clare his party has “done a deal with the devil” backing the government on pension reform and said it was time for Bill Shorten to commit to a side in the debate.

Di Natale last week struck a deal with Social Services Minister Scott Morrison that will guarantee the safe passage of pension asset test changes through the Senate, a measure projected to save $2.4 billion.

The move would reduce pension payments for 235,756 seniors, cut 91,378 people from the part-pension and give 171,658 retirees more money.

“If Bill Shorten feels so strongly about the decision that the Greens have taken ... on pensions he must immediately rule out supporting those changes if he becomes the next prime minister of the country,” Di Natale said in Sydney.

“He’s at this stage criticizing that position but he has not committed to repealing if it become law – this is what Bill Shorten and the Labor party do too often, they try to walk two sides of the fence.

“I say ... if you don’t support these pension changes then you must immediately commit to repealing them if you become the prime minister of this country otherwise your words are hollow words – they mean nothing.”

Di Natale also said in attacking the Greens over pension reform, Mr Shorten and Mr Clare were attacking members of their own party. “We know now that inside the Labor caucus there’s many senior figures that supported the position the Greens have taken,” he said.

“We have the shadow treasurer, we have Tony Burke – it’s been supported by many members of the Labour party, so they’ve got to be careful with their criticism because in fact they’re attacking many people within their own party.”

Mr Clare had told Sky News on Sunday, “The Greens have done a deal with the devil”.

He said it will be interesting to see what the Greens base makes of that, remembering what happened to the Democrats after striking a deal with the former Howard government over the introduction of the GST.

Senator Di Natale said his focus wasn’t on Labor when making the agreement, it was on ensuring that people have a decent retirement income.

He said he has a “pretty simple philosophy”.  “It’s looking at each issue, look at the merits of the case that people put in front of you. If the policy’s a step in the right direction, you support it,” he told ABC television.

But Labor says the change is unfair and says it will hold Prime Minister Tony Abbott accountable for breaking an election promise that he wouldn’t make cuts to pensions.

“This is a matter of trust,” Mr Clare said.  “This is a broken promise and is unfair, it hurts people on relatively low incomes.”

Asked if Labor would reinstate the old pension assets test threshold, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten told ABC television: “We don’t believe we’ve lost yet”.

SOURCE







ALSO TODAY:

Qld cop charged over leaked bash footage

No room for honest cops in Qld.

A Gold Coast police officer has been stood down and charged with misconduct following allegations he leaked footage of colleagues assaulting a handcuffed man three years ago.

The Queensland Police Service said on Friday Rick Flori, a 44-year-old sergeant with 25 years' experience, was the subject of an investigation "concerning allegations he accessed and released confidential information".

The police service said in a statement Flori had been charged with one count of criminal misconduct in public office and issued with a notice to appear in the Southport Magistrates Court on July 15.

He has been stood down on full pay but could lose his job over the January 2012 incident.

The leaked video shows Noa Begic, 21, being slammed face first into a concrete floor before being hit by officers using their knees, elbows and fists.

It also shows Mr Begic being punched several times after being put in the back of a police van, and a senior officer throwing a bucket of water on the concrete to wash away the man's blood.

Speaking outside Queensland Police Service headquarters on Friday, Flori thanked his supporters.

"I thank my family," he told reporters. "I've had multiple phone calls and text messages. I'm very grateful and I thank you all."

Australian Council for Civil Liberties president Terry O'Gorman says the case goes to the heart of the risks whistleblowers take.

Mr O'Gorman called on Police Minister Jo-Ann Miller to take a personal interest in the case.

"Queenslanders will say what sort of a system have we got where a video shows a number of police belting the hell out of a bloke," he told the ABC.

"They don't get charged, but the officer who leaks the video to the media gets charged."

Mr Begic said at the time he was arrested after a night out in Surfers Paradise and was assaulted repeatedly on the drive to the local police station and then later in the basement.

"They were making racist comments about me and then when we ended up in that basement I knew there was more on the way," he said.

Public nuisance charges against Mr Begic were ultimately dropped after then-Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson intervened.

The officers filmed carrying out the assault were subject to an internal police investigation, with two facing disciplinary action. They should have been fired

SOURCE






The price of Australia's most common medicines could soon be halved

Australians could soon see the prices of some of its most common medicines halved under a new generic drug deal.

Pressure is mounting on the Senate to pass the legislation this week after Federal Health Minister, Sussan Ley, signed an $18.9 billion deal with the Pharmacy Guild and Generic Medicines Industry Association which could drop the prices of over 2,000 common prescription medicines.

Ley said that the focus should be on having “more affordable medicines for consumers” especially since “so many Australians now are suffering from chronic diseases”.

In particular, Ley pointed to medication for cholesterol and heart conditions which could drop to $10 per script for general patients.

The high costs prescription medicine has been under public debate in recent years, with reports showing that nearly one in 10 Australians don’t take medicines a doctor prescribes because of the cost.

Research by the Grattan Institute revealed that Australia’s drug prices were almost 16 times higher than the best price in the UK, New Zealand and Canada.

The price of packet of Atorvastatin, an anti-cholesterol medication, cost $19.32 with the same pills costing $A2.01 in New Zealand and $A2.84 in Britain.

“Overall within this package there is a very strong downward trend on the price of medicines, particularly the most common and popular medicines that people take,” Ley said.

SOURCE






Online universities helping students become the first in their family to obtain higher education

More than half of 41,000 students studying online are first in their family to go to university

Online education is giving a generation of Australians the opportunity to become the first in their families to pursue higher education, a new report has found.

Open Universities Australia (OUA) today released the findings of their June report on “first In family” students, revealing an estimated two out of three students enrolled in university courses online are the first person in their immediate family to pursue higher education.

According to the findings of the First in Family report, an estimated 67.7 per cent of online university students are the first in their family to study.

“First in family” students are more likely to be mature age students, with 37 per cent being over 35 years old. Similarly, 66 per cent of “first in family” students are women, compared to 58 per cent of OUA students overall.

Among “first in family” students, the most popular tertiary courses were in education (18 per cent), arts and humanities (35 per cent), business (22 per cent).

OUA together with the University of Wollongong and the University of Newcastle this year completed a nationwide research project called Breaking the Barriers to identify the challenges facing “first in family” students.

Dr Cathy Stone, who established Student Success services at OUA, was part of a project team led by the University of Wollongong, which conducted research during 2014-2015 with the support of the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching.

Dr Stone said university was no longer limited to an elite demographic. “More than half of OUA students are the first in their family to go to university, which shows online learning is removing barriers for people who would traditionally have not gone to university,” she said.

“They are investing in their own futures and their families’ future. Most of them are not school leavers but are older students, who work full time or part time as well as having family responsibilities. Through studying online, they have the flexibility to study at times that suit them, so that they can achieve their goals and gain their university degree.”

Following the release of the Breaking the Barriers report, the project team launched a First in Family initiative including a website and toolkit of resources to help support these students and their families. www.firstinfamily.com.au

Dr Stone said that OUA is recognising this emerging student trend and providing these students with specific and appropriate support.

“This is a demographic of Australians for which traditional face-to-face learning is often not possible, whereas online learning provides them with the opportunity to achieve university qualifications,” she said.

“A student who is the first in their family to study towards a university degree will face different challenges compared with those students who come from families where others have already been to university. Often, these first-in-family students don’t know what to expect and can feel at a disadvantage compared with those around them.”

The Breaking the Barriers report surveyed 173 and interviewed 102 “first in family” students across Australia, and found that many of these students felt out of place at university, lacked confidence in their ability and worried about the financial impact of their decision to study. OUA data also shows that  first-in-family students are more likely to be from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds and more likely to live in regional and rural areas.

The findings from the OUA First in Family report found that “first in family” students were slightly more likely than their peers to struggle academically, but were equally likely to complete their qualifications.

About the Open Universities Australia

Owned by seven of Australia’s premier universities, Open Universities Australia (OUA) is the national leader in quality online tertiary education. Enrolling more than 250,000 students since 1993, OUA provides access to over 1700 units and 180 qualifications taught by more than 20 leading Australian universities and tertiary education providers. Visit www.open.edu.au.

Press release via email

From justice campaigner Renee Eaves:

Have you had an experience with Police using excessive force in Qld ?

please email earthangelrenee@hotmail.com  before June 29 with your details.

Every email will be responded to. If you do not get a response please facebook

Renee Eaves.

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG thinks Bill Shorten is on the way out





Questions remain on official Australian meteorology records

"Fiddling" of the records to show warming not addressed

The results of an independent ­review of the Bureau of Mete­or­ology’s national temperature records should “ring alarm bells” for those who had believed the bureau’s methods were transparent, says a key critic, Jennifer ­Marohassy.

Dr Marohassy said the review panel, which recommended that better statistical methods and data handling be adopted, justified many of the concerns raised.

However, the failure to ­address specific issues, such as the exaggerated warming trend at Rutherglen in ­northeast Victoria after homogeni­sation, had left ­important questions ­unresolved, she said.

The review panel report said it had stayed strictly within its terms of reference.  Given the limited time available, the panel had focused on big-picture issues, chairman Ron Sandland said.

The panel was confident that “by addressing our recommend­ations, most of the issues raised on the submissions would be ­addressed”, Dr Sandland said.  The panel is scheduled to meet again early in the next year.

Dr Sandland said that, overall, the panel had found the Australian Climate Observations Reference Network — Surface Air Temperature was a “complex and well-maintained data set that has some scope for further improvements”.  It had made five recommend­ations that would boost transparency of the data set.

Although the panel reviewed 20 public submissions, Dr Marohassy said it had failed to address specific concerns.  “While the general tone of the report suggests everything is fine, many of the recommen­dations (are) repeat requests made by myself and others over the last few years,” Dr ­Marohassy said.

“Indeed, while on the one hand the (bureau’s technical ­advisory) forum reports claims that the bureau is using world’s best practice, on the other hand its many and specific recommend­ations evidence the absence of most basic quality controls in the many adjustments made to the raw data in the development of the homogenised temperature series.”

BoM said it welcomed the conclusion that homogenisation played an essential role in ­eliminating artificial non-clim­ate ­systematic errors in temperature observations, so that a meaningful and consistent set of records could be maintained over time.

SOURCE





Jim Crow Hill in Australia has name removed after it was deemed racially derogatory

The name "Jim Crow" is meaningful only in the USA.  There would not be one Australian in a thousand who was familiar with it

A VICTORIAN council has been ridiculed for removing the name of a hill called after an early stockman whose name was deemed racially ­derogatory.

The Office of Geographic Names ordered Mansfield Council to remove or change the name of Jim Crow Hill.

It said Jim Crow refers to an 1828 US minstrel show song Jump Jim Crow, where a white man blackened his face to ­resemble a poor Negro.

It claimed the term has been widely used in Australia to disparage black people.

But locals are angry at the decision, claiming Jim Crow was an early stockman who had a hut on the hill.

The council, located in the foothills of the Victorian Alps, contacted the local Taungurung Clans Aboriginal Corporation, who confirmed the name was offensive.

This was despite research by the council which found records of a man named Jim Crow with some connection to the Benalla and Mansfield district in the 1880s.

Landowner Philip Newton told the council he was not interested in a name change.  “It has always been called this and as far as I am concerned it is of no one else’s interest what it is called,” Mr Newton wrote.  “So no change under my ownership.”

“The whole exercise is pointless anyway because locals will still carry on calling it Jim Crow hill.”

Deputy Mayor Cr Paul Sladdin said the hill, near the Mansfield Woods Point Rd in Piries, was now nameless.  “Unfortunately we were obligated to follow the direction of the Office of Geographic Names,” Cr Sladdin said.

“I know the locals will still refer to it as Jim Crow hill so you could argue it’s a case of political correctness gone wrong, especially as there was some anecdotal evidence of an early stockman.”

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Permissiveness for a vile offender?

IT was the sort of crash that makes ambulance officers and firefighters rush home to hug their kids. Two cars head-on, late at night with a combined speed of 140km/h.

The impact left one dead, two with life-threatening injuries, two more badly hurt and the driver who caused it all, unscathed. Michael Craig Burvill was drunk behind the wheel of his Holden Commodore because he chose to chug about 12 beers. Police said he blew 0.096.

He was travelling on the wrong side of Karrinyup Road because he chose to drive.

He was speeding – 80 in a 60 zone – because he chose to.

He was on P plates, forbidden from drinking or speeding but that meant nothing to him.

He chose to ignore those laws completely.

His own, personal choices led him to kill another man who had chosen to obey the rules but that meant very little when it came to court.

Burvill was allowed to play the “stupid” card. It’s a popular one, usually sits just underneath the joker. But the judge allowed him to use it as an ace.

This is how it played out: prior to sentencing, Burvill says on the steps of court: “I just made a stupid mistake and I am going to face that now.”

Fast forward to sentencing four months later and Judge Audrey Braddock points out that “youth is recognised as a very powerful mitigating factor in the courts”, which is handy for Burvill as he’s 20 years old.

Further, she points out that the young have the capacity to “do stupid things … unexpected stupid things too”.

Her honour made no mention of how many times a stupid act is permissible which was good for Burvill because he has a PhD in stupid.

His first driver’s licence was forfeited on points after racking up “stupid” speeding infringements.

His second licence was taken away after a conviction for reckless driving – doing 129km/h in a 60 zone on the North West Highway. Speeding more than twice the legal limit probably qualifies as ultra-stupid but that’s a technicality.

The point is, how many times is one allowed to be stupid while dicing with death on our roads?

Judge Braddock thinks at least three because at just 20, Burvill was on his third licence when he exercised his right to be stupid again. And the judge was right, that next encore of stupidity was indeed unexpected.

So much so that Martin Roberts’ last words were “oh no” as his wife, Christina, held his leg and braced for the impact of Burvill’s car.

Mr Roberts’ Toyota Camry was crushed. He had the dubious honour of being the state’s first road fatality of 2015.

His close friend Gerard Brosnan fractured his spine in nine places and needed 60 stitches for a “gloved scalp”.

His wife Marguerite suffered broken arms, a shattered left knee, pelvis and nose. Their daughter Karen had fractured ribs and lacerations and a fourth passenger was also injured.

The Brosnans were holidaying from Ireland but hospitalisation and ongoing medical treatment has meant a five-month stay.

Mr Brosnan has been told he may never work as a carpenter again. His and his wife’s injuries will plague them for years to come.

As Judge Braddock observed: “Everybody in the car who was injured will never quite be the same again.”

Martin Roberts’ family’s cards have been marked – they will never be whole again either. The father of three and grandfather of one was a well-loved and popular bloke.

His daughters Catherine and Michelle have since put aside their own grief and helped this newspaper promote road safety campaigns aimed at the menace of drink driving. Trying to spread that crucial message so soon after losing their precious father was above and beyond. Quality, community-minded people making a superhuman effort to do good things.

Their compensation was to see the person responsible for the death of their Dad, rewarded. Burvill was handed a 25 per cent discount on his sentence for pleading guilty.

What else was he going to do?

Arrested at the scene, behind the wheel, I would have thought it was difficult for him to plead alien abduction? Nevertheless Judge Braddock also recognised him favourably for being cooperative with police and noted that, in going the wrong way down Karrinyup road, he “made a mistake” and “misread the road”.

As Catherine Roberts points out: “He didn’t make a mistake, he made a decision.”

And it’s difficult to think of a worse decision but for all the reasons already stated, his combined sentences were discounted, ameliorated and accumulated down tof four-and-a-half years.

Burvill was also afforded parole, which means all up, he’ll likely serve two-and-a-half years behind bars.

That’s 30 months for one death and four hospitalisations. It’s nothing short of pathetic.

On top of that, despite all the previous evidence of a total disregard for the responsibility of driving, he will still be given another chance at a licence, four years after he is released.

Michael Craig Burvill is a living reminder of why we will never change community attitudes to drink driving.

If it is not possible to draw a line in the sand for a case like this, what sort of scenario would demand the maximum penalty?

The Minister for Road Safety, Liza Harvey, is the one who cuts the cards. She needs to act decisively and formally request the State appeal against this sentence.

As it stands, the message is loud and clear: being young and stupid doesn’t deal you a losing hand even when you’ve ruined so many other lives.

SOURCE





Australia’s Worst Union and its grub ALP leader

Even the Marxist organ "Red Flag" does not like Bill Shorten, as we see below.  Some of their complaints seem legitimate

“If you want to know how Bill [Shorten] has got to where he is now, if you had to identify one thing, I think it is that he has been prepared to make decisions and to do things that almost anyone else would not.”

– Richard Marles MP, in a 2006 interview with the Sunday Age.

What kind of union would rip off its own members, save the bosses millions and then pocket a few hundred thousand from grateful companies to fund its officials’ political ambitions?

The Australian Workers Union, that’s who, previously led by the current leader of the ALP, Bill Shorten. He was secretary of the Victorian branch from 1998 to 2006 and national secretary from 2001 to 2007.

The AWU has played a predominant and destructive role, in both the union movement and the Labor Party. It is a business union known for sell-out deals and neglect of members. It has done this both to please the bosses and to bolster its factional weight in order to put its top officials aboard the parliamentary gravy train.

While it’s nauseating to listen to dedicated union-destroyers such as Coalition MP Christopher Pyne challenge the opposition leader to answer questions about his role in the AWU – and to see the royal commission’s $80m witch-hunt moving in for the kill – there is no denying that Shorten is a grub and the AWU is corrupt.

It’s telling that not one union is rushing to support the AWU. Instead, despite some hypocritical ranting from Abbott and others, the union’s up-front backing is from Labor parliamentarians, business spokespeople and employers. That’s not surprising; the ruling class has fostered the kind of “yellow unionism” provided by unions like the AWU.

Praised by the bosses, for decades the AWU has played a particularly pernicious role undermining wages and conditions in the construction industry. The current revelations about sell-out deals on Melbourne’s East Link project show that, as Ewin Hannan wrote in the Financial Review on 18 June, “[T]he AWU business model is based on being a safe haven for employers from the CFMEU”.

Tony Shepherd, former Business Council of Australia president, told Hannan: “Bill demonstrated that it could be done in Victoria … It was a great deal for us, it was a great deal for the boys, the safety record was great, there were no disputes, everybody was happy”.

Just what did this “model” agreement actually deliver in the CFMEU’s Victorian stronghold? On the $2.5bn East Link project, it saved the developer, Thiess-John Holland, an estimated $110m and cost it a tiny $300,000 “donation” to the AWU.AWU.

The 2005 deal, described by the CFMEU as “shocking”, offered much lower site allowances and a regime of working around the clock by reducing conditions around rostering and weekend work.

While the developers argue that the pay rates were good by industry standards, big developments such as East Link are usually a chance for the unions to make major advances in wages and conditions. This deal did the opposite, lowering the bar for future EBAs.

According to a Fairfax Media investigation, “The [Thiess-John Holland ] payment was part of more than $1 million of … employer cash flowing into the AWU's Victorian branch between January 2004 and late 2007, when Mr Shorten was either state or federal secretary.

“These include almost $200,000 from cardboard manufacturer Visy industries, which at the time was run by Shorten's billionaire friend Richard Pratt, almost $100,000 from aluminium giant Alcoa, and $300,000 from chemical giant Huntsman.”

At Huntsman, the company paid for an AWU steward to be a “workplace change facilitator” while it closed all its West Footscray plants. Others have described the actual job as “stopping trouble”, delivering no “industrial problems” during the factory closures.

No wonder it has long been known as “Australia’s Worst Union”.

These and other deals make a mockery of Shorten’s claim that he can “guarantee … that we always improved workers’ conditions, full stop” and that “every day … I’ve served the interests of workers”.

SOURCE

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG compares Donald Trump to Clive Palmer





'Coal and coral don't mix': Hollywood star Mark Ruffalo joins fight to save Australia's Great Barrier Reef

When you have got Hollywood actors saying something it must be true, I guess. That the reef undergoes cycles of change is not mentioned of course.  Both State and federal governments have extensive arrangements to prevent environmental degradation on the reef.  See for instance here on the dredging scare.

And a key point is that the reef does get heavily impacted by natural events such as the many cyclones that have hit North Queensland in recent years. Cyclones are very destructive of coral. HOWEVER, when we look at that storm destruction, we also  find that corals grow back rapidly. While that happens, the GBR is in no "danger". Any changes are temporary. See here and here, for instance.

Hollywood star Mark Ruffalo has thrown his weight behind the movement to save Queensland's Great Barrier Reef.

The Avengers actor tweeted his support along with a link to Greenpeace site, takeanotherlook.gp, which states that the reef is 'under threat from the coal industry'.

Greenpeace's campaign states that the sea bed is being dredged to make way for four 'mega ports' to be serviced by 7000 industrial ships that will cross the Reef every year.

'Coal & coral don't mix. Join the movement to save the Great Barrier Reef:' Ruffalo tweeted, alongside with a photograph of himself smiling and holding up a sign that read '#savethereef'.

US President Barack Obama had plans to ban fishing, energy exploration and other activities in a large swath of the central Pacific Ocean, with Australia's Great Barrier Reef given as an example of 'environmental devastation'.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, along with the Hollywood star and environmental activist appeared at the Our Ocean Conference in Washington DC, where a video message from the president was played.

'It's fantastic to start off the day by hearing President Obama commit to expanding marine reserves in US waters and taking serious steps to prevent illegally caught fish from entering the marketplace,' DiCaprio said at the time.

In 2013, DiCaprio announced a $US3 million ($A3.3 million) donation to help protect the oceans' habitats for marine species.

'Since my very first dive in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia 20 years ago to the dive I got to do in the very same location just two years ago, I've witnessed environmental devastation firsthand,' he said.

'What once had looked like an endless underwater utopia is now riddled with bleached coral reefs and massive dead zones.'

SOURCE






Young plumber claims he was repeatedly punched and kicked by police and called a 'Lebo' after being stopped at 1am

Apparently done in front of several witnesses

A plumber charged with assaulting police claims he was the one brutally attacked by officers who also called him a 'Lebo'.

Omar El Baba, 23, was driving down St Johns Road in Heckenberg, in Sydney's south-west, when he was stopped by Green Valley police on May 29 at 1am with a female passenger.

Police say he was stopped after he was involved in an earlier incident about 10.44pm on May 28 where he was pursued in his vehicle but did not pull over. 

According to a NSW police statement, officers asked El Baba to produce his licence when he stopped, but he refused and retreated to the front yard of his home.

It was there that police tried to arrest the 23-year-old and they allege he then became violence and assaulted officers by punching and kicking out.

But El Baba tells a different version of events, saying he was the one who was viciously beaten and denies he was in the alleged car chase, the ABC reported.

The plumber said 20 police officers descended on his home and wanted to come inside, but he refused because he was scared.

It was at this point that he claims police 'rushed in and attacked' him, repeatedly saying to him: 'You "effing" Lebo, that's what you deserve'.

'They slammed me on the floor then they started kicking me, punching me, kicking my groin area,' El Baba told the national broadcaster.

'I was on the floor in front of my family getting stomped on, getting stomped on, and kicked in my face like a soccer ball.'

His sister, Mona, and his father, Salah, witnessed the alleged attack and feared for their loved one's life.

'We ran down the veranda until we finally reached where the steps were and there I could see my brother's head face down on the ground and police absolutely everywhere, bashing him relentlessly, punching into him, kicking him, kneeing him, elbowing him,' Mona said.

Salah said he thought the 20 police officers were trying to kill his son.

Mona, who is a lawyer by trade, said she pleaded with police to stop and told them what she did for a living.

But the reply she received made her suspect the incident had been racially motivated.

'They kept repeating words to the effect of, "You're a dumb secretary. Get out of our way. You're not a lawyer." Why would they be making such derogatory remarks?' Mona said.

In photographs following the incident, El Baba's face appears swollen with cuts and bruises covering his mouth, nose and cheeks.

Mona described the aftermath as 'absolutely horrific' with blood everywhere.

El Baba was taken to Green Valley police station before travelling to Liverpool Hospital for treatment of his 'minor injuries', a police statement sent to Daily Mail Australia said.

Officers also allege they found a knife in El Baba's car when they searched it and the weapon would 'undergo forensic examinations'.

The plumber's lawyer, Zemarai Khatiz, claims his client was released without charge, but when he sent a letter raising concerns about El Baba's treatment by police they charged him in relation to the incident.

He said El Baba wanted to sue the officers involved in the alleged attack. 

The 23-year-old will appear in Liverpool Local Court on July 16.

He has been charged with three counts of assaulting police, one count of resisting arrest and one count of custody of a knife in a public place.

SOURCE






Mum banned from breastfeeding her baby after she got a TATTOO has the decision overturned

A judge's decision to ban a woman from breastfeeding her son because she got a tattoo has been overturned after an urgent appeal.

Judge Matthew Myers told the Federal Court on Thursday that the NSW mother had put the 11-month-old baby at risk by making the decision to get the body art just four weeks prior to the case being heard.jud

The Family Court overturned the decision on Friday, finding Justice Myers made the order based on evidence that 'should not have been relied upon.'

Even though The 20-year-old mother, known by the pseudonym Ms Jackson for legal reasons, received negative results from tests she underwent to determine whether she had contracted any form of infection from the equipment used, the Justice Myers dismissed them as inconclusive.

 It is believed the baby's father raised the issue in a family dispute.

The full bench of the Family Court were unanimous with their decision to overturn the original ruling.

The court heard that Justice Myers came to his decision after 'surfing the internet' on tattoo risks to infants, causing outrage among breastfeeding advocates, Nine News have reported.

Speaking to the ABC, Rebecca Naylor, chief executive officer of the Australian Breastfeeding Association expressed her shock at Justice Myers' ruling, claiming it sets a dangerous precedent.

She said that if the woman chose a  reputable tattoo parlour there should be no issue with her contracting hepatitis or HIV, for which the mother underwent tests for.  

'Does that mean that women who expose themselves to any sort of risks around the contraction of a blood-borne virus... shouldn't be allowed to breast feed?' she said.

'Women do need to be careful they're feeding a child, it's going to be their main source of nutrition up until they're 12 months of age, so you do have to be careful.  'But it doesn't mean that you have to wrap yourself in glad wrap.'

SOURCE






Enrolments in hard-line Islamic colleges are growing rapidly

Enrolments in hard-line Islamic colleges are growing nine times faster than those of mainstream schools, as more Muslim parents demand a strict religious education for their children in ­Australia. Six schools controlled by the conservative Australian Federation of Islamic Councils now boast 5481 students — a 53 per cent rise in enrolments in five years. Federal Education Department statistics show that 28,267 students attended Australia’s 39 Islamic schools last year — 82 per cent more than the 15,503 who were enrolled in 32 schools in 2009. In contrast, student numbers in all Australian schools grew by 6 per cent over the same period, to 3.7 million.

As with most private schools, taxpayers contribute 80 per cent of Islamic schools’ running costs, providing $300 million in commonwealth and state funding in 2013. The latest official data shows the AFIC schools received $42m in taxpayer funding in 2013, plus $21.5m in government funds for new buildings and other capital works between 2009 and 2013. The Islamic Schools Association of Australia, which represents the 33 non-AFIC schools, said  only one-quarter of Muslim students in Australia ­attended religious schools. ISAA president Abdullah Khan, who is the executive principal of the Australian Islamic College in Perth, said that meant three out of four Islamic students attended mainstream public schools.

He said the rise in enrolments at Islamic schools was fuelled by population growth, including a growing number of Muslim students whose parents were working in Australia on 457 work visas. “Academic focus is one of the reasons parents choose our schools but mainly it’s the values we provide, and the religious education,’’ he said. “Some schools, academically, are performing really well.’’ Tasmanian teacher Peter Jones, who spent time in most of Australia’s Muslim schools to research his thesis on Islamic education, said many Islamic parents thought their children would be safer at the religious schools.

“Many parents and students felt the kids were more sheltered in these schools,’’ he said. “They felt a bit more protected from the community because of hostility. People have been pulling their hijabs off and spitting at them’ Jones said. The surge in Islamic enrolments appears strongest in Melbourne’s outer working-class suburbs. The Ilim College of Australia, in Broadmeadows, has seen enrolments soar 70 per cent to 1514 students. At Minaret College, in the outer Melbourne suburb of Springvale, enrolments have jumped 60 per cent since 2009, to 1502 students last year. The Al-Taqwa College, an ultra-conservative Islamic school in Hoppers Crossing, has boosted student numbers by two-thirds since 2009, to 1701 students in 2014.

Enrolments have more than trebled at Unity Grammar College, an Islamic school in the outer-western Sydney suburb of Austral. The college now boasts 899 students. At the nation’s biggest Islamic school, the AFIC-controlled Malek Fahd Islamic School at Greenacre in Sydney, enrolments have risen one-third to 2412 students. The Islamic College of Brisbane, has seen its numbers grow 20%, to 949 students, in 5 years. South Australia’s schools registration board is investigating parents’ complaints about teaching and curriculum standards at the AFIC-affiliated Islamic College of South Australia, which has 630 students — a third more than it did 5 years ago. The Adelaide school reportedly prohibits boys and girls from mingling in the hallways.

Enrolments have more than doubled to 657 students at the AFIC-affiliated Langford Islamic College in Perth, where even the Year 1 girls are required to wear a headscarf. Dr Jones said most imams teaching religion at the Islamic schools were foreign-born, and not all were qualified teachers, but he insisted Islamic schools were not turning teenagers to jihad. “Mostly the jihadists are kids who are alienated in the state system,’’ he said. “The Islamic schools take a very firm line that suicide is forbidden, it’s forbidden to kill women and children and you can’t kill other Muslims, and violence has to be sanctioned by the state’’ Jones said.

Email from Australian Prayer Network

Cop accused of leaking Surfers Paradise police station bash footage facing charges


Justice campaigner Renee Eaves with the honest cop

A GOLD Coast police officer accused of leaking video footage showing his colleagues brutally bashing a young dad in a police station basement is facing criminal charges.

Gold Coast chef Noa Begic was repeatedly punched and ground in to the concrete floor of the station’s basement with his hands cuffed behind his back in January 2012.

While two officers responsible for the attack were given a slap over the wrist, the officer who allegedly leaked video footage to The Courier­-Mail is now facing charges including misconduct and abuse of public office and fraud.

Rick Flori was a sergeant at Surfers Paradise police station at the time of the incident and his house was raided by officers from the Ethical Standards Command weeks later.  He was ‘reassigned’ and has been fighting to clear his name ever since.

Sgt Flori was formally notified of the charges yesterday but vowed to fight them.  “I intend on fighting the charges to the full extent of the law,” he said in a statement.

Of the four officers involved in the attack, only two ever faced disciplinary action and one of those – a sergeant seen washing away blood with a bucket of water – retired from the service before any findings were made.  The officer caught throwing punches was stood down, but has since been reinstated without demotion.

Charges of public nuisance and obstruct police against Mr Begic were eventually dropped.

Mr Begic, who settled out of court in his own action against the QPS, is now prevented from speaking about the incident, but at the time he paid tribute to those who ensured the video footage came to light.

White knight Renee Eaves, who has helped both men in their battles against the QPS, said the charges against Sgt Flori were a disgrace.  “There are many good police within the organisation without a voice and intimidated by these types of actions,” she said.  “They are too scared to report misconduct for fear of workplace harassment or intimidation.”

SOURCE






Bill Shorten's union took hundreds of thousands from building company

One of Australia's biggest builders paid Bill Shorten's union nearly $300,000 after he struck a workplace deal that cut conditions and saved the company as much as $100 million on a major Melbourne road project.

A Fairfax Media investigation has uncovered large payments from joint venture builder Thiess John Holland to the Australian Workers Union when Mr Shorten, now opposition leader, ran the union.

The payments started soon after work began on the $2.5 billion East Link tollway in Melbourne's eastern suburbs in 2005.

Fairfax Media understands that, at the time, Thiess John Holland regarded the payment as an acknowledgment of the flexibility of the AWU deal, which was struck by Mr Shorten.

It's unclear what the union used the money for. Prime Minister Tony Abbott has previously accused the AWU of running a "business model" whose purpose was "ripping off workers to advance its own political position".

The deal was hugely favourable to the builder, allowing it to effectively work around the clock by reducing conditions around rostering and weekend work, helping the project finish five months early. It was lauded in a 2006 report by the free enterprise lobby, the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), which claimed it saved the company tens of millions of dollars.

The payment was part of more than $1 million of largely unexplained employer cash flowing into the AWU's Victorian branch between January 2004 and late 2007, when Mr Shorten was either state or federal secretary.

These include almost $200,000 from cardboard manufacturer Visy industries, which at the time was run by Shorten's billionaire friend Richard Pratt, almost $100,000 from aluminum giant Alcoa, and $300,000 from chemical giant Huntsman.

The figures are detailed in fine-print in documents lodged with the Australian Electoral Commission as well as documents before the Abbott government's royal commission into union corruption.

Fairfax Media understands that some of these amounts include spending on training and payroll deductions that the union will defend if quizzed by the royal commission.

Huntsman denied any improper payments had been made and said from 2004 it paid the AWU for an on-site "workplace change facilitator", whose role was to balance the "needs of the unionised workforce and the company".

John Holland declined to comment.

A spokesman for Mr Shorten said: "Specific questions about individual contributions from individual companies to the union should be directed to the individual companies or the union".

Last week Mr Shorten was called to appear before the royal commission after Fairfax Media revealed the AWU had received $38,228 from Winslow Constructors in 2005 to pay the union dues of 105 of its employees. The Winslow payments continued for a decade, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Under questioning by the royal commission, current AWU state secretary Ben Davis described the Winslow payments as having "profoundly" weakened the industrial position of the AWU.

But the regular payments from Thiess John Holland are much larger. They started when Mr Shorten was both the AWU's state and national secretary and continued to flow after he left the union and entered federal parliament in late 2007. Mr Shorten is likely to appear before the commission in August or September.

Some of payments from Thiess John Holland are listed in union documents lodged with the Australian Electoral Commission, including $134,500 originally described as a "donation" to the AWU. The filing was amended a year later to be describe the money as "other receipt". As a Labor-affiliated union, the AWU is required to disclose some of the payments it receives.

Other internal AWU documents, including bank and accounting records, list some of the payments as being for "training" but several large amounts are listed as "service" with "???" beside the entries. Total payments from the construction company into the AWU's state branch bank account under Mr Shorten and his successor Cesar Melhem were $282,308. Another $16,500 was paid into the union's national branch account.

Thiess, John Holland and Visy all bought tables to the annual AWU balls in the mid-2000s but they cost only tens of thousands of dollars.

Early completion of a major infrastructure project is a rarity in Victoria, where projects are often delayed by industrial issues and other problems.

Central to the East Link deal was the elimination of industry conditions routinely demanded by AWU arch-rival the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union. The deal struck by Mr Shorten halved the number of mandatory rostered days offs, an end to extended "lock down" weekends, and more flexibility to work in hot and wet weather.

At the time, the CFMEU described the deal as a "second rate agreement", and a "shocker" when it came to rostered days off.

Originally struck exclusively with the AWU, the CFMEU was later included. But its members were given limited work and its officials had little influence over the project.

The IPA report said the reduction in non-working days created a "significant advantage" to the project, allowing work in theory to occur 365 days a year.

At the time, Mr Shorten described the workplace deal as a "unique deal" for a "unique project".  "The terms deliver long-term, secure, well-paid jobs for our members, while recognising that the whole job should not have to shut down for 26 days every year," he said.

"The agreement provides breakthrough levels of superannuation, parental leave, allowances and penalty rates for the industry."

Last week Mr Shorten said he would not comment on his time as a union official before he fronts the royal commission.

On Wednesday, the union's current secretary Ben Davis told Fairfax Media he would not comment on the period when the union was run by predecessors Mr Shorten and Cesar Melhem.

SOURCE






Gillian Triggs’s misguided assault on system

Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs has launched a sweeping assault on Australia’s system of governance, the parliament, the executive and the political parties in the name of human rights freedoms that she claims are being abandoned or prejudiced.

In an escalation of her campaign against executive powers, Triggs, in speeches over the past week, says our democracy is being undermined from within, that dozens of laws breach basic freedoms, that a collusion exists between Labor and Coalition and that the “supremacy of law over the executive is under threat” in Australia.

She continued this campaign in her appearance on the ABC’s Q&A program celebrating the Magna Carta anniversary when, at the conclusion, she made the astonishing claim the Human Rights Commission operated in a “very neutral way”, that she was not being political and that it was unfortunate the commission’s work was interpreted as political.

This was pure sophistry. That Triggs cannot grasp her recent speeches and TV appearance were entirely political cannot be ruled out. She seems to be a synthesis between, on the one hand, an idealistic and naive human rights activist and, on the other, a statutory officer seized by her responsibility laced with a fighting instinct against her opponents in the government. With the government declaring “no confidence” in her, Triggs is free and running.

The Q&A program finished with almost unanimous warnings (Bronwyn Bishop apart) about the “tyranny of the majority” in the context that the tyranny of the king is now substituted by the tyranny of the majority as an evil to be contained. It was gobsmacking stuff.

It was also an illustration of the chasm in this country between a legal culture propelling human rights laws, self-righteous in its moral vanity and intellectual faith, and the practical, imperfect nature of a parliamentary/executive system, obliged to change norms to meet changing situations from terrorism to boat arrivals, and inevitably responsive to public opinion.

What was most striking about the Q&A panel was its patronising, even contemptible, attitude towards majority or “mob” views, with the implied critique that Triggs has been shouting from the rooftops — that parliament and the executive are betraying the freedoms of the Australian people.

These, of course, are the freedoms as pronounced by the Human Rights Commission. It is several years old now but the Colmar Brunton research conducted for the Frank Brennan-led human rights report to the former Labor government found that “most participants in the groups reported that they had had no experience of having their rights violated” and that only 10 per cent of people felt they had ever had their rights infringed.

The Brennan report put heavy emphasis on the need to “educate” the public into proper human rights awareness. This is the crusading purpose of the Human Rights Commission: the public needs to be educated into human rights culture. The patronising nature of the mission is brazen and declared.

The commission is a statutory agency with wide responsibility in relation to racial, sex, disability and aged discrimination. It both manages individual complaints and operates as an advocate, lobby group and media campaigner for its particular view of human rights.

This is a highly ideological view partly because of its statutory charter. The Human Rights Commission puts huge emphasis on human rights that define the progressive agenda, notably asylum-seekers, sex and racial discrimination, but in relation to human rights that define the conservative agenda, notably freedom of religion and free speech, it often appears to be antagonistic.

This ideological bias is inherent in the commission and its culture. It guarantees the political conflict now on display, though it cannot forgive the personal denigration of Triggs herself.

It is, however, the solution that the commission applies that is the heart of the problem. Its fatal flaw is to believe that rule of law constitutes more rule by lawyers. This is a grand folly, yet an idea growing in its illusory impact. More power for lawyers and judges has become an ingrained ideology (and a naked act of self-interest in the case of lawyers). Radiating from every paragraph of Triggs’s recent speeches is the faith that Australia must become a better society by empowering courts with more authority in relation to parliament and the executive. She gives many examples of the abuse of executive power, many valid and some arising from completely legitimate policy changes.

The ultimate objective is a bill of rights. This is an end in itself. In truth, it is something more — it is an industry based on the false idea the result is a better society.

Really? The US has a Bill of Rights along with capital punishment and no universal health insurance. The core assumption of the human rights lobby is still unproved: that giving the courts more power and imposing more limits on the legislature means better social and economic outcomes and more justice. More justice for whom?

The real debate is about conflicting human rights. Who decides how the right of the Australian people to be safe from terrorism should be balanced against the rights of potential terrorists? Who decides how the right of indigenous women and children to be protected from domestic violence should be balanced against the rights of indigenous peoples to be free from state imposed restrictions?

The executive and the parliament are imperfect. But it is their job to take decisions about the conflicting human rights priorities. That is not the proper task of the Human Rights Commission. It is not what judges are equipped to do.

Triggs is a dogmatic product of the transformation of legal culture across the Western world and the powerful notion that parliaments and executives, contained by public opinion, are inherently incapable of securing the protection of human rights.

To the extent the Abbott government is cavalier in dealing with human rights and careless in infringing the judicial power it merely confirms the Triggs’s critique.

The deeper issue, however, is that human rights campaigns, usually in the moral cause of individual enhancement, are always and everywhere about policy. And the Australian people don’t like the policy conclusion where Triggs ends up on boats and terrorism. That is understandable.

In her speech Triggs said that “time and again” the High Court had limited executive discretion and “time and again” the government had persuaded the parliament to change the law to get its way. This is her complaint. In truth, it is how our democracy is supposed to work.

SOURCE






No Charges To Be Laid Against Aboriginal Queensland MP Billy Gordon

According to the Cairns Post, police will not be pressing charges against the North Queensland politician following a three-month investigation.

Mr Gordon resigned from the state Labor party in March after making history as one of only three Aboriginal MPs to be elected to Queensland’s Parliament.

It followed allegations of domestic violence made by his former partner, which he denied at the time. It was also revealed Mr Gordon had failed to disclose his criminal history to the party, including break and enter offences committed when he was a teenager. He was under no legal obligation to disclose the charges.

There were also allegations that Mr Gordon had failed to lodge tax returns and dodged child support payments.

Newly-minted Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was quick to respond to the allegations, saying Mr Gordon had let her, the party, and Queensland down.

In the midst of a police investigation, Mr Gordon publicly stated he hoped he would be afforded “natural justice” and opted to remain in Parliament as an Independent.

It was later revealed that his LNP opponent for Cook, David Kempton, had assisted Mr Gordon’s former partner in revealing the allegations, as well as federal LNP Leichhardt MP Warren Entsch. The allegations were made public on a website linked to former LNP Cook MP Gavin King.

Today, Mr Gordon told the Cairns Post that he had never perpetuated domestic violence in the relationship and condemned the “dirty” political tactics that forced his resignation from the Labor party. “It’s the ultimate baptism of fire,” he told the Cairns Post.

Mr Gordon is now focused on his family, although he has not had contact with his 11-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter from the relationship, he told the Cairns Post.

“I haven’t seen the kids since it’s blown up, but I know they love me and I love them,” he said.

He told the Cairns Post he was now focused on his electorate.

Gordon represents the sprawling electorate of Cook, which takes in Cairns, Cape York and the Torres Strait – which has a sizable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population.

He is the second Aboriginal MP to hold the seat, following in the footsteps of Eric Deeral in the 70s.

[The above report is excerpted from the far-Left "New Matilda".  I have reproduced the factual part and left out all the huffing and puffing. So are we surprised that Matilda does not mention which party Eric Deeral represented?  It was the Country party, the major conservative party in Queensland at the time.  I had forgotten all about him but when Matilda failed to mention his party, I knew immediately what his politics would be. "New Matilda" are amusing in their predictability.  Balance and fair comment are totally  alien to them.  They also fail to mention that Australia's first Aboriginal parliamentarian, Neville Bonner, was also a conservative nominee]

SOURCE

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is appalled by revelations about Shorten the union leader selling out his own  members.



"New Matilda's" idea of survey research

I am probably one of the very few who take any notice of Matilda but they are so determined to come to their foreordained conclusions that I find them amusing.

I find the latest effusion particularly amusing because I spent 20 years as a university survey researcher -- resulting in many academic publications.  So I am quite sure how the sleight of hand below works.

What they do is to compare a properly conducted survey with responses gathered over the internet.  And they found a great divergence of results.  But such comparisons always do diverge.  People contacted over the internet are not representative.  They differ from the mean in being better educated, more socially isolated, more Leftist and in various other ways.  As far as generalizing to any known population is concerned they are invalid and useless.  It takes Matilda to hang their hat on such a survey

A survey distributed on social media has recorded dramatically different results to those released by the government-funded group, finding stronger support for constitution reform among white Australia than black. Amy McQuire reports.

Only 25 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people support the “grassroots” Recognise group, and a majority would vote no in a referendum if it delivered only symbolic recognition, according to a new poll that pours cold water on the Recognise’s claim that nine out of ten blackfellas support their campaign.

In May, the government-funded Recognise group released research suggesting nine in ten Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people supported constitutional recognition.

The polling was conducted by Polity Research, which surveyed 750 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and 2700 non-Indigenous voters, according to Recognise.

Recognise said the “research confirms continuing support for recognition from the vast majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”.

The group released its media statement without detail of the question that was posed to interviewees, or where it had retrieved its sample of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voters.

But the claim of overwhelming Indigenous support is one that was controversial among many who believe the issue is being met with a much more diverse sample of opinions in Aboriginal communities.

While conservative opposition to constitutional reform has been highly publicised, the concerns from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people has been largely overshadowed by the Recognise campaign’s claims of almost unanimous support.

In February, the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples acknowledged that there was a growing opposition to constitutional reform from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, with co-chair Les Malezer saying “we are already receiving messages from our people that they are determined to vote against any referendum”.

This opposition is confirmed by an online survey conducted by Luke Pearson at IndigenousX, a social media platform across Twitter and Facebook, who released the results last night.

The survey drew responses from 827 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the country, with the majority of responses coming from New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.

The poll, conducted on Survey Monkey, was widely shared across Twitter and Facebook, the latter of which has high rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander users.

The survey acknowledges that, like the Recognise polling, the sample size was “still quite small”.

“Questions regarding the distribution of data collected by Recognise should be similarly asked and caution must always be exercised when claiming that a survey is ‘representative’,” the group says.

But the IndigenousX poll produces radically different results to those promoted by the Recognise campaign.

It found that rather than Recognise’s stated 87 per cent Indigenous support, only 25 per cent of IndigenousX respondents supported the group. 58 per cent were in opposition, while a further 17 per cent were still unsure.

SOURCE






The rich are the savers

And it is savings that allow investment.  Without a pile of savings under their control, the banks would have nothing to lend.  Economic progress and increased overall wealth depend therefore almost entirely on the rich.  Taxing them dry would stop all borrowing stone dead.  So no new houses, builders out of work etc. The rich are a vital asset

At least three studies into wealth distribution landed this week, all offering varied takes but inevitably painting an overall picture of a world in which the divide between the haves and have-nots is widening at an increasing pace.

Australia, Canada and Sweden are important exceptions to a middle-class squeeze being experienced in many advanced economies, the IMF declared.

This widespread crunch which Australia has conspicuously avoided is the result of a shift in the allocation of income to the higher and lower rankings, reducing the portion going to the middle 20 per cent in these advanced economies, as well as some large emerging markets.

Pre-tax incomes of middle-class households in the US, the UK and Japan have experienced declining or stagnant growth rates in recent years, reducing the predominant source of income for the majority of households.

Average wages have risen at a slower pace than productivity growth, even as advances such as large increases in executive compensation go to the top end of the income distribution.

But lest we get complacent in Australia, separate research reveals a yawning chasm in household savings that far outstrips disparity in incomes.

The wealthiest fifth of Australian households hold more than 200 times the average savings of the poorest fifth, according to an examination of levels and distribution of savings and debt by the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre.

The number of millionaire households has more than doubled in the last ten years. So now, the wealthiest fifth of Australians have on average $1.3 million and account for three-quarters of all household savings, while the poorest fifth have saved on average less than $6,000.

“The top quintile may receive one-third of all income but they own three-quarters of the total value of savings,” BCEC director Professor Alan Duncan said.

This reveals a gulf between the top and the bottom much bigger than seen by looking at income alone.

Superannuation and cash saved in financial institutions are the main form of savings for Australians, with the median saver sitting on household savings of around $100,000.

Millionaire households, while only accounting for 8 per cent of all households, hold more than half of all savings.

Superannuation and cash deposited in financial institutions are the main forms of savings for most Australians, representing two-thirds of average household savings.

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China and Australia formally sign free trade agreement

China and Australia have signed a trade agreement that is set to increase market access for Australian beef and wine exporters while boosting Chinese carmakers and electronics producers who wish to sell their goods to Australians.

But as ministers from both countries promoted the benefits for industries and consumers, the Australian Labor party and the Greens vowed to scrutinise the yet-to-be-released details to ensure it was a good deal.

One flashpoint is the inclusion of an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clause, which grants foreign companies the right to sue governments for breaching commitments in such agreements. The Australian union movement has also raised concerns about the access to be granted to Chinese citizens under labour market provisions.

Both governments concluded negotiations on the free trade agreement (FTA) in 2014, but it was formally signed in Canberra on Wednesday by Australia’s trade minister, Andrew Robb, and China’s commerce minister, Gao Hucheng.

Gao said it was a “comprehensive, high-quality and balanced agreement” that was a milestone in relations between Australia and China. “It is the highest degree of liberalisation of all the FTAs China has so far signed with any economy,” he said.

The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, said the agreement would give each nation “unprecedented access to each other’s markets” and pointed to the reduction in tariffs imposed on trade.

“It removes barriers to Australian agricultural exports across a range of products, including beef, dairy, lamb, wine, horticulture and seafood,” he said.

“It means duty-free entry for 99.9% of our resources, energy and manufacturing exports within four years. But it’s about so much more than just exporting more and reducing tariffs. Australian services providers, financial, education, health and aged care will have new access to China’s services sector, a sector that is already the largest contributor to China’s GDP and is set to drive economic growth in coming years.

“For China, this agreement liberalises the screening threshold for Chinese private sector investment in Australia and it puts Chinese businesses in the same position as those of our other major trading partners. And of course it means that Australian consumers will pay less for cars, for clothes, for electronics and other goods imported from China.”

The full text of the agreement will be subject to an inquiry by parliament’s joint standing committee on treaties, paving the way for parliament to consider amendments to relevant legislation.

Labor’s Senate leader and trade spokeswoman, Penny Wong, said the party would assess the deal against the test of whether it would increase jobs and economic growth. Labor would look closely at the effect on the Australian labour market.

“Labor supports temporary skilled migration to fix skill shortages. That scheme should never be used as a mechanism to bypass local workers and we will certainly be looking at the detail of that,” Wong said.

“And, as I’ve said previously, Labor does not support investor-state dispute settlement clauses in agreements.”

The Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson said: “Regardless of the supposed marginal economic benefits, the Greens will never support an agreement that makes future governments liable to be sued by foreign corporations simply for making laws that protect the public interest.”

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) raised concerns that the deal would “make it much easier for employers to bring in Chinese workers without having to advertise jobs to local workers”.

The ACTU’s president, Ged Kearney, said the government appeared “intent on selling out even more local jobs”.

“There must be strong rules around labour market testing and labour mobility clauses in the China free trade deal to ensure local jobs are protected,” she said.

The Electrical Trades Union went further, describing the FTA as “an irreversibly reckless move”.

But the Business Council of Australia’s president, Catherine Livingstone, said the agreement would unlock significant opportunities for two-way trade and “deliver lasting benefits for the whole community”.

The Australian Industry Group’s chief executive, Innes Willox, said industry had long viewed the agreement with Australia’s largest trading partner “with a mixture of optimism and trepidation”.

“As with all trade agreements, the process would have benefited from deeper consultation and a better understanding of the opportunities and the threats before signing,” he said.

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Firearms Prohibition Orders

One worrying trend in Australia is toward orders prohibiting individuals from possessing firearms. ‘Firearms Prohibition Orders’ (‘FPOs) are the means by which this is achieved in NSW and SA, and in April 2013 the then Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, urged other states to adopt the South Australian model. So, if you live in a state not currently affected by FPOs - watch out!

Strictly speaking there is nothing new about FPOs, in that they existed under the NSW Firearms & Dangerous Weapons Act 1973.  What is new are recent ‘bells and whistles’ that have seen Police powers of search increased in respect to people who are subject to them.

This increase in powers in NSW occurred against the backdrop of a gang war between rival groups in Southwest Sydney.  The gangs were shooting against one another and, even when someone was the victim, they refused to talk to Police, leaving the crime unsolved and Police looking impotent.

An FPO may be ordered by a delegate of the Police Commissioner, who may be any serving officer above inspector level, even in the absence of a conviction, providing that they are satisfied the subject of the order is ‘not fit, in the public interest to have possession of a firearm’.  In NSW, the power is to be found in section 73 of the Firearms Act 1996.

It comes into effect upon issue, but a person cannot contravene it until the order has been personally served upon them.

A person who is subject to an FPO cannot acquire possess or use a firearm or firearms part.  Penalties on conviction are a maximum of 14 years for a pistol or prohibited weapon or five years in any other case.

Possession of ammunition attracts a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.

If they attend a firearms dealers premises, shooting range or club without reasonable excuse, they may be subject to a fine of up to fifty penalty units (a penalty unit is $110) or 12 months imprisonment.

Worryingly, section 74A of the Act, provides Police with the power to search or detain a person who is subject to an order, enter their premises, or stop a vehicle occupied or controlled by them, and conduct a search for firearms, firearms parts or ammunition.

Therefore, if an order is made against you, it is very important that you appeal it within the time period stated on the document.

The Act provides a limited mechanism for review.  This is initially via internal review and then, if the outcome of that is not satisfactory, it may be reviewed under s60 Administrative Decisions Review Act.

Section 75(1A) of the Act, prevents a person who would be refused a Firearms Licence under section 11(5) or 23(9) of the Act, from applying for external review.  Thus, if you are under 18 years of age, subject to an AVO, a good behavior bond, or have been convicted of a prescribed offence (i.e. one involving drugs, violence, fraud or stealing) within the last ten years, you cannot appeal to the Tribunal.

Ah, I hear you say, FPOs only apply to bad guys, so why should I care?

I was recently consulted by a gentleman who became subject of an FPO 34 years ago, following a failure to produce an Inquiry Agents Licence on demand and possession of a loaded firearm in a public place.

There was nothing sinister about the loaded firearm, it had inadvertently been left loaded in the boot after a hunt.

He was charged with these offences and a fine of $200 recorded.

That the matters were dealt with in a Local Court, and the presence of non-custodial penalties, would suggest that the offences were not considered particularly serious by Police Prosecutors or the presiding Magistrate.

Nevertheless, my guess is that the light penalty upset someone, because Police issued a FPO. This was appealed (note, it was externally reviewable under the 1973 Act, but not the 2006 one).

Unfortunately, his solicitor had made an error in entering the matter in his diary, and he failed to appear, with the result that the Court affirmed the order.

In NSW, under the Criminal Records Act 1991 minor offences become ‘spent’ and drop off a criminal record after a number of years of good behavior, and this has been the case in this case. Notwithstanding this, the FPO remains.

The Gentleman concerned has held Inquiry Agents Licence for  almost four decades in Australia.  He has completed a law degree in the UK, and has been considered to be a ‘fit and proper person’ for the purposes of being admitted as a Solicitor of England and Wales.

He has been granted a Shotgun Certificate in the United Kingdom and has competed internationally in that sport. He is now a company director.  He is certainly in my opinion the very example of a model citizen.

Notwithstanding this, he cannot obtain a firearms licence, in Australia and is also deprived of a number of fundamental rights regarding search and detention.

This unfair law can adversely effect any of us at any time. It is time Parliament stop giving Police everything that they claim a need for on ‘operational grounds’ and start to build in to the system appropriate safeguards to protect individual liberty.

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For whom did Bill Shorten toil while he was a union leader?

OPPOSITION leader Bill Shorten maintains that his ­career with the AWU was ­devoted to providing fair wages and conditions for its members but it seems that is not necessarily so.

“My union record has been public and it’s always been consistent, creating good and safe workplaces, building up better job security for workers, making sure that people got fair wages and conditions,” Shorten, a former Victorian and national secretary of the AWU, insists.

The problem with his ­assertion is that not only were some of those people unaware that they had been “joined” to the union by Shorten, the agreements he made were ­demonstrably not always in the best interests of the ­workers he was being paid to represent.

When Shorten appears ­before the Royal Commission into Trade Union Corruption in late August or early September, he will face a raft of questions which should examine the loss of benefits to workers under contracts he signed ­including the 2001 Melbourne & Olympic Parks Trust ­agreement, the 2001 Cirque du Soleil agreement, the 2003 Cut and Fill agreement and the 2004 Chiquita Mushrooms agreement.

These agreements signed by Shorten laid the groundwork for a culture only now being repudiated by current AWU office holders.
Just last week, an agreement with Cleanevent, one of the companies signed up by Shorten, was terminated after AWU senior national legal ­officer Stephen Crawford ­appeared before the Fair Work Commission.

Mr Crawford said the only purpose of the 2006 agreement (based on an earlier 2004 agreement) was to deny ­employees access to improved weekend and public holiday penalty rates.

“It’s obviously quite clear that it would be to the benefit of all employees for the agreement to be terminated,” he told the FWC. “It is actually in the public interest for this agreement to be terminated.”

Under the deal, the AWU gained at least $75,000 and the workers lost $6 million in ­penalties.

The commission has also heard how Winslow Constructions paid several hundred thousand dollars in union dues to the AWU, whether their employees, were aware or not, when Shorten was state AWU secretary.

Shorten is adamant that he can “guarantee about any of the matters that we always ­improved workers’ conditions, full stop”.  “That is my answer on these matters, my record … I spent every day of my adult life representing workers. My record is there for all to see.”

But that record shows as head of the Victorian branch of the AWU (1998–2006) and National Secretary (2001– 2007), he negotiated or signed multiple enterprise agreements some of which stripped workers of penalty rates or overtime pay or imposed ­unfavourable conditions.

The dud deals were done with employers who were prepared to gain industrial peace. Some employees had their membership, sometimes without their knowledge.

As his successor as national secretary, Paul Howes, said in his effusive farewell to Shorten on December 13, 2007, his predecessor had “looked at new ways to organise members and to organise the un-organised,” and that “the AWU is indebted to Bill Shorten”.

Howes lyrically spoke of Shorten “campaigning and ­attracting to this oldest of ­unions – the union of John Curtin, William Spence, Dame Mary Gilmore, Mick Young, Laurie Short and the shearers’ strike … and Waltzing Matilda – oil and gas workers, jockeys, fruit-pickers and netball players, while simultaneously getting and reading and thinking widely about unionism in a global, ageing world, and the challenges of Asia, and how it all fits in”.

“He worked out new ways, new tools of negotiation to get into non-union workplaces and achieve the solidarity of the steel, aluminium, glass, public sector, manufacturing and aviation workers in an era when the whole notion of unionism was under threat,” Howes said. “So it has come to pass that the AWU I’ve inherited now has 100,000 members.”

Those inflated membership numbers enhanced the AWU’s influence within the Labor Party influence, as author Aaron Patrick (also a former member of Shorten’s Young Labor) explained: “The (Labor Party) system places mass ­unions like the shop assistants’ union, which has about 300,000 members, and the Australian Workers’ Union, with roughly 100,000 members, at the centre of party power.

Through their influence over the party’s finances and internal votes, the unions can get their candidates elected to parliament.”

But as the Australian Jockeys’ Association is at pains to point out, and has written to me to state, there is no evidence that the Jockeys’ Association knew or agreed to the AWU adding the names of jockeys to its membership list. The netballers find themselves similarly bewildered at their union memberships.

This attitude of advancement at all costs was neatly summarised by one of his parliamentary colleagues, Richard Marles MP, in a 2006 interview with the Sunday Age. “If you want to know how Bill has got to where he is now,” Marles said, “if you had to identify one thing, I think it is that he has been prepared to make decisions and to do things that almost anyone else would not.”

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Bronny blasts Australia's human rights chief as 'too political'

Gillian Triggs told to run for office if she wants to be a 'political participant'

Liberal Speaker Bronwyn Bishop has told Australia's human rights chief Gillian Triggs to stand for office if she wants to be a 'political participant'.

Appearing alongside Ms Triggs on the ABC's Q&A program on Monday night, Ms Bishop suggested the law professor has demonstrated bias against the government during her tenure as president of the Human Rights Commission (HRC).

By allegedly delaying a report into the treatment of child asylum seekers until the Liberals took power, Ms Triggs had 'made it very political,' she said.

'That has made you a very political figure,' she told Ms Triggs across the panel table.

'You have to make the decision: Are you a statutory officer carrying out an obligation with the protection of that office, or do you wish to be a political participant?

'If you do wish to be a political participant, then you have to be no longer a statutory officer and perhaps stand for office.'

Ms Triggs brushed off Ms Bishop's criticism, saying it suggested she was doing a good job.

'I am a statutory officer, and that's a position of independence which allows me to speak, based on the evidence and based on the law, as truthfully as I can.

'Were I to receive frequent praise and commendation from the government, I think the Australian people would have a good reason to ask for my resignation,' she said to loud applause.

Ms Triggs said the 180 pieces of work published during the previous Labor government indicated the HRC acted as strongly then as it does now.

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Won’t sign TPP unless farmers gain: Joyce

Australia won’t settle on a landmark trans-Pacific free trade agreement until demands for better US market access for farmers are met, Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce says.

With the Trans-Pacific Partnership in its final stages of negotiations, recent leaks indicate the Obama administration is unwilling to discuss cuts on tariffs and import quotas for Australian cattle farmers and sugar growers.

‘If there’s nothing in it for us then we don’t need to sign it,’ the minister told ABC radio on Friday.

Greens senator Scott Ludlam has previously attacked the secrecy surrounding the TPP negotiations. In a speech to parliament he said, ‘As much as those on the other side of the chamber love to deride the work of the WikiLeaks publishing organisation and its beleaguered publisher and staff, we would know nothing about the progress of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement if it was not for whistleblowers from inside the trade agreement posting two of the chapters – the IP and environment draft chapters – on the WikiLeaks website. We would be operating completely in the dark.

‘Are we seriously proposing we would put ourselves up to be sued by foreign corporations or foreign investors on unelected international tribunals from industry sectors in countries like Brunei?

‘We need to know exactly who is pulling the strings – whether, as it appears from the mark-up in the draft IP chapter, we are simply doing as the US trade negotiators are demanding and traipsing along behind them, or whether we could even detect faint traces of an independent foreign and trade policy inside the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.’

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Counterfeit food threatens Australia's international reputation

Australian food producers and exporters are calling on the federal government to do more to protect the nation’s clean, green image against a rising tide of counterfeiting.

Unscrupulous foreign operators are taking advantage of Australia’s reputation for quality food by counterfeiting labels and packaging to sell their own inferior and potentially unsafe product in international markets.

An increasing number of Australian producers are being targeted by food counterfeiters in Asia and the Middle East, and exporters are bracing for bigger problems in the future.

The first thing you need to think about is that as soon as your product becomes successful over there [China] someone will try to copy it or steal your brand.

‘Counterfeiting is a huge global industry worth an estimated $1.7 trillion dollars,’ says John Houston, CEO of YPB Systems—one of a new breed of companies that's emerging to develop technology to protect food producers from counterfeiters.

‘The standard issue that people are familiar with is going to Asia and buying a fake handbag or fake Polo shirt or something like that, now that problem is exacerbated by food quality and pharmaceutical quality,’ he says.

‘There is an enormous amount of counterfeit or sub-standard food being sold, especially throughout Asia.’

Australia's high food safety standards enable producers to demand a premium price overseas, and the rapidly growing Asian middle class, especially in China, is prepared to pay top dollar for our food and wine.

‘Australian products are highly prized because they come from a country where the provenance of goods is not in question,’ says Houston.

‘What I would say to any Australian food exporter to China is, the first thing you need to think about is that as soon as your product becomes successful over there someone will try to copy it or steal your brand.'

Premium Australian meat is a particular target. Wagyu beef king David Blackmore, whose product is in high demand around the world, fell victim to counterfeiters three years ago.

In 2012 he was contacted by the head chef of a five-star Shanghai hotel who'd previously used Blackmore Wagyu Beef in Dubai and noticed a difference in quality.

Blackmore says the Chinese product was immediately identified as a fake. ‘We actually put a label inside the Cryovac bag and that label has a code in the ink and I immediately identified it wasn’t ours.  ‘My son flew straight to China to get it because we were hearing from other chefs the same sort of thing.

‘There was quite a lot of beef going into the five-star hotels in Shanghai and Beijing that wasn’t our beef.’

Blackmore Wagyu Beef tracked down the source of the counterfeit beef to a Chinese company that had an office in Sydney. The information was passed on to both Chinese and Australian authorities. No action was taken.

‘From my point of view all of the evidence that was needed was handed on and we did chase up two or three times but there had been no further action taken,’ says Blackmore.

The Blackmore Wagyu Company has now largely pulled out of China, supplying only five trusted five-star hotels in Shanghai.

Blackmore says the need to protect the Australian food brand is a national issue.

‘The main thing that Australia’s got over all other agricultural export countries, maybe except New Zealand, is our clean and green image and the fact that Australian food is safe,’ he says.

‘The Australian image is very, very important and if we lose the fact that our food is safe because it’s been counterfeited, that’s going to really affect Australia’s reputation in the world.

‘It definitely should have been raised amongst the free trade agreement discussions.’

However, another Australian victim of food fraudsters believes there is little government can do to tackle the problem.

Howard Hansen is the managing director of Hansen Orchards, which exports fresh Tasmanian cherries into Asia.

‘Whatever happens after the product leaves the Australian shore, it’s very difficult for the government to have any influence over,’ he says. ‘They can’t stop someone in Hong Kong, China or Vietnam pulling a lid off a South American product and putting a counterfeit Tasmanian lid back on it.’

Hansen Orchards has been contending with food counterfeiting for the past decade, although there has been a big increase in the past few years, particularly in China.

‘Normally the artwork has got something a little bit different and it’s not quite the same, but they do seem to be getting more sophisticated and they are getting closer to copying the original designs,’ says Hansen.

A fortnight ago, Hansen Orchards discovered a problem in Vietnam after a consumer posted a complaint about food poisoning on social media and included a photo of a counterfeit package of Tasmanian cherries.  Howard Hansen was alerted to the case by Austrade after the story was picked up by a newspaper in Vietnam.

‘Austrade has responded on our behalf and pointed out that there is no Australian product in the [Vietnamese] market and hasn’t been since December last year,’ he says.

While Hansen is confident the companies who import his fruit continue to trust the brand,  he is worried food counterfeiting could undermine consumer confidence in Australian cherries.

‘Earlier this year, we had a customer in China that picked up our email address off a counterfeit carton and emailed us to say they’d previously bought Tasmanian product and on this occasion they were really, really disappointed and they didn’t taste nice etcetera.  ‘But that was a month before we’d even picked a cherry.

‘We know about that one person who was proactive enough to tell us about it but we don’t whether there were a thousand boxes or 10,000 boxes, or it could’ve been 100,000 boxes.’

It's a problem that is only going to get worse for Australian producers.

John Houston from YPB Systems says it's still early days in the China market, where the sale of Australian produce is in its infancy. ‘It’s probably more of a potential issue than a real current issue.

‘Having said that, a Chinese consumer who reaches for an Australian-made product will start to question, and today they will question if it’s real or not because so many of the other things that are branded are questionable in China,’ he says.

In the past, security for food packaging has revolved around things like holograms, colour shifting ink or elaborate bottle tops.

With an estimated 50,000 hologram manufacturers in China today, producers are now looking to new technologies such as YPB's invisible fluorescent tracer, which can be scanned.

Houston is urging Australian companies to be vigilant in protecting their brand.

‘There is no silver bullet for counterfeiting. It’s really a matter of putting a business process in place with measures that help protect the brand and the consumer,’ he says.

‘There’s very little anti-counterfeit technology being put into many products today but I think we’ll see more of this and brands becoming more proactive.’

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