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31 March, 2006

Muslim gangs in Sydney again

A promising young boxer due to marry this weekend has been gunned down alongside his best friend in the latest outbreak of violence in Sydney's west. Professional boxer Bassam Chami, and friend Ibrahim Assad, were both fatally shot last night on Blaxcell Street at Granville in south-western Sydney. Mr Chami had served time in jail for the stabbing manslaughter of a man in a Sydney pub on Anzac Day in 1998. Police said it was the 22nd shooting incident in Sydney this year, prompting New South Wales Opposition Leader Peter Debnam to label the city's south-west a "war zone". Concerned about the recent increase in gun crime in Sydney, NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney today called a high-level meeting of senior police. In response to the latest killings, police called in the State Crime Command, along with members of Strike Force Gain, established to investigate crime linked to the Middle-Eastern community....

The pair was believed to be standing with a group of men on Blaxcell Street at around 11.15pm (AEDT) when seven shots rang out. One of the two died at the scene, while the other died a few hours later in Westmead Hospital. Assistant Commissioner Graeme Morgan said one of the victims had been carrying a pistol but it had not been used. He said the backgrounds of the two victims would play a "prominent role" in the investigation. Mr Chami was sentenced to a minimum of five and a half years in 1999 for manslaughter, after stabbing a man to death at the Auburn Hotel on Anzac Day in 1998. He also had a lengthy criminal history which included charges for firearms offences and intimidating police.

Police have already spoken to a number of people who were at the crime scene including former Guantanamo Bay inmate Mamdouh Habib, who was driving home along Blaxcell street with his son. Mr Habib is not a suspect. "He heard some shots fired. He saw one youth fall in front of him. He called the police," Mr Habib's lawyer Peter Erman said after speaking with his client. Witnesses described a dark coloured, BMW sedan leaving the crime scene - the same description given by witnesses who saw a car fleeing Guildford three hours later after shots were fired at a house.

Mr Debnam said residents of south-western Sydney were "living with the sound of gunfire" and called on the Government to deploy 500 extra police into the area. NSW Premier Morris Iemma said police would be given whatever resources were required to find those responsible for the double shooting.

More here



No homosexual marriage for Australia

The Federal Government will legislate against any attempts by the ACT to give gay couples the same rights as married couples, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said today. Mr Ruddock said today the Government would investigate what it could do to block attempts by the ACT Labor Government to pass laws that would establish civil unions for homosexual couples. The ACT legislation would allow those in a civil union the same rights as marriage in everything but name.

Under the constitution, the Commonwealth has responsibility for marriage and in 2004, with bipartisan support, the Federal Government legislated to effectively ban gay marriage. Mr Ruddock said the Commonwealth was unhappy with the ACT's attempts to work around federal laws. "Let me make it very clear, that will not satisfy the Commonwealth and we would include the introduction of legislation to prevent that from occurring," he said.

More here



Call to shut bureaucratized childrens' hospitals in Queensland

The Beattie Government is again under fire over its management of the Queensland public hospital system after a damning report called for the closure of two major children's hospitals. A medical panel commissioned by Queensland Health to review pediatric cardiac services has recommended replacing Brisbane's Mater Children's Hospital and the Royal Children's Hospital with a single new hospital. The panel also proposed pediatric services at the Prince Charles Hospital, on Brisbane's north side, be shut down.

Following a series of post-surgery and cardiac deaths, the report found the hospitals were plagued by chronic understaffing, dysfunctional governance and low morale. Its findings were revealed as Premier Peter Beattie ruled out means-testing patients or increasing co-payments for public hospitals, based on the findings of a separate report that explored other possible revenue streams for a system reeling after the "Dr Death" scandal.

Health Minister Stephen Robertson said he would have to consult more widely before shutting any children's hospitals. Admitting he was surprised by the report's findings, Mr Robertson said a single stand-alone hospital could cost the Government about $500 million. The Government yesterday established a taskforce to assess the report's proposals. "This is a big recommendation with big implications for the three hospitals involved and for the public health system's staffing, capital and budget," Mr Robertson said. A proposal to build a single children's hospital in Brisbane was raised under the Goss Labor government in 1994 but rejected.

The latest report found it was "simply impossible" to adequately staff the three existing pediatric units. "It is abundantly clear that systems and arrangements, which had been satisfactory in the past, are no longer able to meet current expectations and standards," the report says. "The service is characterised by chronic understaffing, dysfunctional governance, lack of infrastructure, lack of clinical leadership and unsympathetic line managers regarding specific pediatric needs. "With few exceptions, morale is poor, ranging through frustration and anger to cynicism, hopelessness and despair." The report found no evidence of professional incompetence or negligence among the clinicians.

Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said the report was an "a solid vote of no confidence in administration of health in Queensland". "If it wasn't bad enough before now, it's the kids that are suffering under this Government," he said.

Despite the hospital woes, the Government will forgo about $115 million in additional revenue for the health system after an analysis by the Allen Consulting Group found there would be inadequate financial gains from means-testing or increasing patient co-payments. But Mr Robertson refused to rule out the possibility of raising extra revenue by increasing co-payments from people receiving injury compensations payouts.

Mr Springborg said: "Victims who have taken themselves through the court process and have got compensation payments may be subjected to the Government recovering against them."

Source



Australian climate policy interests Blair

Australia has held talks with Tony Blair on forging a post-Kyoto accord to cut carbon emissions, with the British Prime Minister calling for a "real dose of realism" in the debate over greenhouse gases. John Howard and senior government ministers yesterday discussed with Mr Blair a possible climate strategy involving the world's 20 biggest carbon emitters, including China, India, Australia, the US and Britain. Mr Howard signalled he was keen to explore options, suggesting the recently formed Asia- Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate as a bridge to get other nations "into the tent". Australia and the US are among a few countries that have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, amid concerns the regime will unfairly penalise developed economies that rely strongly on fossil fuels as an energy source.

Mr Blair, who has championed a global push to cut greenhouse gases, described the Asia-Pacific framework, dubbed AP6, as a "very important positive sign". It comprises Australia, the US, China, India, Japan and South Korea. Climate change was one of a number of issues discussed as Mr Blair met cabinet ministers in Canberra yesterday. It is understood Mr Blair and government MPs discussed the need for progress on climate change, with the British leader later accepting that countries such as Australia were reluctant to embrace the Kyoto targets. "Countries are going to be very worried about external targets being imposed on their economic growth," Mr Blair told reporters.

Instead, Australia is hoping the AP6 framework will emerge as a serious group that can lead to the introduction of cleaner energy technologies to cut greenhouse emissions. A group of about 45 Australian representatives, mainly from industry, will travel to the US next month to discuss ways to spend hundreds of millions of dollars offered by governments. But there is a recognition that more will have to be done to combat the rising levels of carbon emissions.

Mr Blair's discussion yesterday revolved around a group of about 20 countries - including the six AP6 members - that could drive global reform. Mr Blair said there was need for a new framework "that allows us to move forward in a disciplined way". "But I think the fact that you've got these initiatives at the moment, all tending in the same direction, is actually a positive sign."

Source



No showers at night for Brisbane?

Greenie opposition to dams is taking its toll

Water pressure is to be turned down at night across southeast Queensland in a desperate bid to stop the region from running out of the precious resource. The dramatic step, with the potential to affect fire-fighting abilities in some areas and increase pumping costs for developers, is one of several conservation initiatives from a drought management taskforce. Without serious rain, experts predict the city will run out of water in August 2008 - even with tough stage three water restrictions to come in in May. The wet season is almost at an end. And the Brisbane City Council has been told there is a less than 50 per cent chance of above-median rainfall before the harsher restrictions take effect.

Environment and sustainability committee chair Helen Abrahams said the decision to turn down pressure was taken because most mains burst at night. Brisbane loses 10 per cent of its water from an average of seven main breaks each day. In some areas, pressure is too high; in others, too low. Cr Abrahams said most breaks occurred at night time, "when we are all asleep and not using the water . . . the pressure builds up in the system. So by a simple way of putting valves at various locations, we can actually reduce that pressure at night time, reduce the incident of breaks, and therefore be able to increase the pressure in the morning when you get up and your domestic use increases again."

In August the council revealed that ageing water pipes in the inner city area were dangerously below firefighting standards. It was claimed that emergency crews were hampered in some densely populated older suburbs with a large number of timber houses, because they received less than one-third of the water volume and velocity needed to control blazes. Developers, who have spent thousands of dollars on pumps to increase water pressure in their buildings to offset the city's poor infrastructure, now face even greater expense. "We would prefer the city take action to actually repair the water mains," said Steve de Nys of the Property Council of Australia industrial committee. It was disappointing that infrastructure fees paid by developers were diverted to the general fund rather than being used on repairs and upgrades, he said....

More here



30 March, 2006

Innisfail is no New Orleans

The North Queensland town of Innisfail got a bigger blow than New Orleans did but there were no deaths and the place is mostly back to normal after only a week. The difference between how an underclass behaves and how country people behave might have something to do with it





"Blue-collar muscle is the bedrock of Innisfail's rapid recovery as local farmers, tradesmen and labourers provide the grunt to get the district back on track. Yesterday morning, just a week after Cyclone Larry left the main street a mass of twisted wreckage and fallen trees, Innisfail was beginning to resemble a normal country town. Cafes were open, banks were trading, the famous Oliveri's Continental Deli was serving its cheeses, stuffed olives and prosciuttos the same way it has for more than 80 years.

Mayor Neil Clarke has warned there is a long road ahead as thousands struggle to overcome a billion-dollar damage bill. But even he was amazed at the spirit and energy of a community that refused to blink when confronted with a category-five cyclone. He said many had waded straight outside into the wreckage with chainsaws. "Just hours after it hit, many were literally cutting their way out of their own properties and going to help a neighbour," he said.

Banana farmer Colin Rostedt surveyed the ruins of his plantation for only minutes on Monday morning before firing up his 22-kilowatt generator, grabbing a chainsaw and going to work. He and his wife and two children didn't wait for help to arrive. They're still cleaning up, but with an eye to the future. "We're looking at replanting," he said. "It's the way that people respond to tragedy that really makes the difference. "Around Innisfail, people know each other. They're related to each other, they went to school with each other, and they help each other," he said.

Cairns TAFE facilities manager Eddie McKeown, who arrived just hours after Larry hit, was amazed to see the Bruce Highway north of Innisfail crowded with men cutting back fallen trees to carve a path into town. "They just appeared out of nowhere with chainsaws," he said. "It was extraordinary."

Len and Anita Oliveri, owners of the deli in Edith St, are the embodiment of the town's can-do spirit. They kept their stock fresh in a cold room powered by their own generator. By Tuesday, they had established a soup kitchen using their own food, as well as stocks donated by scores of other businesses, and provided free meals for thousands. Yesterday Len had put his brief career as a welfare worker behind him and was back behind the counter, as a businessman. "We're getting back to normal as quickly as possible."

Source



Internet censorship demanded by the Australian Left

Under the guise of protecting children from pornography, the Australian Labor Party wants to bar many sites to ADULTS. And you thought censorship on moral grounds was the preserve of the Christian Right! The truth is that the Left will seek kudos wherever it can find it -- regardless of any principle that they have claimed to support previously. Given the pressure from both the Left and Christian conservatives, the Australian Federal government is so far being fairly heroic in resisting the pressure for censorship but there are worrying signs:

"The federal Government is planning to bolster NetAlert, its online safety agency, and give the media regulator greater powers as pressure builds from Labor and its own backbench to curb online pornography. Communications and IT Minister Helen Coonan says, however, that calls from Labor and Coalition colleagues to force internet service providers to filter porn sites are misguided...

Opposition IT spokesman Stephen Conroy said Government research showed the blacklist ISP filtering system that Labor had proposed would have had minimal impact on network performance. "In 2004, the Government received independent advice that ISP filtering to remove blacklisted sites would take just 10 milliseconds and that this delay is generally not noticeable to the user," Senator Conroy said. "The Government should stop making excuses and do all in its power to prevent children from being exposed to prohibited internet content.".... Labor leader Kim Beazley last week put internet pornography back on the agenda saying Labor, if elected, would force ISP's to offer a "clean feed" internet service to Australian families....

The Government was pursuing technology to control the net, Senator Coonan said. ... The latest study found that ISP filters continued to create network performance problems, Senator Coonan said. The best-performing filters slowed network performance by 18 per cent, while the worst-performing filters degraded the network by 78 per cent. "They found that even the best-performing filter missed about a quarter of the content on a small prepared list of sites." ... "We are continuing to look into it," she said. PC-based filtering offered parents greater flexibility than the one-size-fits-all approach of ISP filtering, she said....

Source

Popular artist passes away



Pro Hart was a child of the harsh outback, born and raised at a rundown sheep station, Larloona, in far western NSW.

A hard, enamelled deep blue, domed sky stretched as far as the eye could see. This quintessentially Australian image remained a dominant theme in Hart's prolific painting career.

Hart died yesterday morning, aged 77, after suffering painful and debilitating motor neurone disease. His family had decided to cease his medication last Friday. He died at home in Broken Hill.

So, what is one to make of an artist whose entry in Who's Who lists his hobbies as body-building, pistol shooting and organ music? A dictionary definition of a chameleon is a small lizard able to change colour to suit surroundings; a variable or inconstant person. A maverick is defined as an unbranded calf. Both descriptions are apposite to the life and work of Kevin Charles Hart. He was imbued with an ingrained identification with the dusty world of the far country.

Hart was, in the commercial definition, Australia's most successful artist. The quality of his talent is open to question. He was rubbished by most critics and rejected by many galleries, both commercial and public. Time magazine's Australian art critic Robert Hughes thought Hart's paintings "awful beyond belief".

Yet the respected critic Elwyn Lynn, reviewing Hart for The Australian, did not write him off. "To call Pro Hart a curious artistic phenomenon might seem to give his work too much importance; but despite the taunts of the avant-garde and, after a high-priced selling show, he smiles all the way to his gooey varnish pots. "At least his eclecticism is Australian. He wraps the local image up in billows of cotton wool and he satisfies a need for the blinkered vision which surrounds Australia."

As can be seen, Hart was articulate and could write well, no doubt a tribute to his mother's early training. Aged 18 in 1946, he began work in the mines. For 15 years he drove an electrically powered loco. It was a grim existence, enlivened by mateship. It was in the mines that he acquired the nickname Pro(fessor) for his wide general knowledge....

As he aged, Hart grew a little cranky. He hated unions and the Labor Party and the Hawke and Keating Labor governments, declaring them to be a mob of Marxists. Paradoxically, he liked Bob Hawke. Consistency was of no concern to Hart. He donated paintings to assist Pauline Hanson's legal defence fund. He became a devout Christian and joined a fundamentalist church. "I trust God for inspiration," he said...

More here



Cut in welfare payments to blacks

"Work-for-the-dole" payments for young Aboriginal Australians will be slashed by a quarter under an overhaul of indigenous unemployment programs. The federal government, which advocates mainstreaming indigenous welfare arrangements, argues Aboriginal young people need incentives to find jobs. From July 1, it plans to strip new applicants for the indigenous work-for-dole payment, the Community Development Employment Projects program, of their payments after 12 months. Participants will then be pushed onto lower, mainstream payments. A youth rate is also set to be introduced for the first time.

Any new beneficiaries aged under 20 and living in a remote area will face a cut of almost $60 a week when the indigenous dole is brought down to the general youth allowance rate paid to the non-indigenous jobless. The savings are to be pumped into training opportunities for people on CDEP payments. Employment Minister Kevin Andrews said the changes would bring indigenous people into Australia's economic fold. "Aboriginal people have been largely locked out of the economic life of Australia for a long period of time," Mr Andrews told reporters in Canberra. "If we can return CDEP to a pathway to employment, rather than a dead-end destination as it is in so many instances, then that can only benefit more indigenous people," he said.

But he said today's announcement was not a stepping stone to abolishing indigenous-specific welfare. "I don't foresee that CDEP will cease to exist because CDEP has a broad set of objectives; part of it is employment," he said. Part of the government's rationale for the changes was to treat indigenous people in the same way as non-indigenous Australians. "I think we ought to treat, as far as possible, all Australians the same and not have some special ... program for indigenous people that effectively means they're not treated the same as other Australians," Mr Andrews said....

More here



29 March, 2006

The retired Labor Party mayor of Brisbane wonders what has happened to the workers in his party:

One of the more interesting things in life since I left politics has been the challenge of dealing with governments of all levels from the outside rather than from the inside. Let me say it is very different and I think most would agree that years in the real world generating income from your wits should be mandatory for politicians.

The problem with the Labor Party today is that the talent pool has become restricted to unionists or political aides - not a broad enough background to take on governance of a nation. When Gough Whitlam won in 1972, over three-quarters of the caucus had working backgrounds, and this was the same when Bob Hawke won in 1983. Now Kim Beazley's front bench has only two people from outside the world of unions and political offices.

Let's get serious about encouraging others to put up their hands. Both sides of politics are starved of new ideas.

Source



Aussies in the money

Australians are richer than ever, with new figures showing the country's private wealth has rocketed to more than $6000 billion. Treasury figures released today showed the market value of Australian net private sector wealth was $6200 billion in June last year - up almost 12 per cent in a year. This represents around $300,000 per Australian. The growth in private wealth was lower than the previous three years, but still above the average for the past two decades.

Home ownership made a smaller contribution in the past year - only 3.3 per cent to the growth in private wealth, but homes and units still make up the lion's share ($3600 billion) of private wealth. The other major influence on wealth was the rise in stockmarket prices over the past two years.

Growth in business assets, which includes shares and Australian investment abroad, contributed 9.6 per cent to wealth - more than double its long-term average contribution. Business assets, totalling $2600 billion, made up a third of all private sector wealth in the country.

Forty years ago, every Australian was worth $8600, with national private wealth hovering around $100 billion - more than a third of which was in houses. Twenty years ago, the figure had grown to $56,500 per person and $905 billion nationally - almost half of which was locked up in bricks and mortar.

Source



Fury Over Christians Speaking out

How wrong of them to exercise their democratic rights!

This concerns the recent election in the State of Tasmania. To the media, a constant outpouring of Green/Left propaganda from Australia's public broadcasters is fine. But advertising by Christian groups is deeply offensive. The media report below refers to advertising by a Christian group as a "secretive smear campaign". Pick the real smear!

It shows how anti-Christian the policies of the Australian Green party are that an unworldly group like the Brethren thought they had to get involved in politics.

In the dying moments of Tasmania's election campaign, people wearing animal masks drove through the streets of Hobart towing a trailer with an anti-Greens slogan. In the weeks leading up to this bizarre display, a series of newspaper advertisements and letter-box pamphlets attacked the Greens, warning they were "socially destructive".

Two of the men authorising these ads were later exposed as members of the Exclusive Brethren, a secretive fundamentalist Christian sect whose leader, or Elect Vessel, is Sydney-based businessman Bruce Hales. The Brethren seek to remove themselves from the "evils" of the rest of the world and, until 2002, those leaving the church were completely ostracised, a process former members say has cruelly separated husbands from wives and parents from children. While not allowing members of the sect to vote, they are happy to spend vast amounts of money trying to influence the outcome of election campaigns.

They were undoubtedly misleading. One professionally produced pamphlet, authorised by Scottsdale furniture store owner and Brethren member Trevor Christian, claimed the Greens would "introduce the regulated use of cannabis". It claimed to quote from the Greens' policy, but omitted the words "for medical purposes". Other ads suggested the Greens would destroy families and society. Similar language was used in one Liberal Party pamphlet, prompting questions about Liberal involvement in the Brethren material.

Liberal state director Damien Mantach confirms meeting members of the church before the campaign but denies any involvement in drafting, placing or paying for the ads. Mantach says concerns the Liberal Party paid for at least one series of newspaper ads authorised by an Exclusive Brethren member, are untrue - as far as he is aware....

Federal Treasurer Peter Costello, in Tasmania during the state campaign, confirms he has met members of the Brethren, who have campaigned for John Howard in Bennelong, the electorate where Hales lives. But Costello plays down the significant of the group, saying he has met many religious groups. In the US, the Brethren spent more than $500,000 on newspaper ads supporting President George W. Bush and anti-gay marriage crusader and Senate candidate Mel Martinez.

Exclusive Brethren says it has more than 40,000 followers in 19 countries, about 25 per cent of whom are said to live in Australia, with many in Tasmania's rural north, which takes in timber and farming communities and the north-west Bible belt. Its origins are in a group formed in Plymouth, on England's south coast, in the early 19th century as a backlash against what was regarded as a straying from the Bible by the established church....

Christian and fellow Scottsdale resident, pig farmer Roger Unwin, had previously refused requests to speak to The Australian, but finally relented. Surrounded by pigs and battling to keep swarms of flies from his face, Unwin emerges from the mud, deeply suspicious: "I knew you were in town. I could have shut the gate, but I didn't. I don't mean to be rude, but I just don't like the media."

Unwin and Christian deny they were involved in a secretive smear campaign, backed by the Liberal Party. "We placed these ads so people were aware of (the Greens') policies," Christian says. "There's no smear campaign or hidden agenda. We put our names to them, and we support any government that is good for Tasmania"....

The Greens claim Brethren members are most likely those behind the bizarre animal masks seen in Hobart, but the two men have not returned calls to answer this charge. Instead, they published an advertisement in The Launceston Examiner last week denying the sect paid for the ads: "Whilst we are members of a Christian fellowship known as Exclusive Brethren, our campaign was not initiated, controlled, funded or publicly endorsed by the congregation in any way. "Although our conscience precludes us from voting, it equally creates a responsibility to testify to persons in government and the community to uphold right Christian principles on which our nation is founded. We are willing to support any government, person or organisation that cares for right moral principles and the prosperity of Tasmania." ...

While the Greens' vote slump was ultimately the result of Tasmanians deciding not to risk the uncertainty of minority government, the Greens believe the smear and fear campaigns against them played a big role...

State Greens leader Peg Putt, seething at the loss of at least one seat, was booed and heckled when she used her speech in the tally room last Saturday night to complain about Tasmania's "grubbiest" ever campaign. She later vowed the Greens would adopt a more "hard-nosed" approach to future campaigns, and push for better disclosure laws. "The nation needed to know that there were shadowy forces at work here that won't identify themselves and will not discuss the amounts of money they put into this campaign," Putt says...

More here



More on Blair's excellent speech to the Australian parliament

Excellent points about free trade



The fight against terrorism would fail unless the developed world shared economic prosperity by embracing free trade, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday. Mr Blair backed Australian calls for an end to farm subsidies in the US and Europe and warned that Western arguments about the benefits of political openness were worthless if openness did not apply to international trade. Mr Blair said terrorists and their supporters criticised the West for selectively applying values of fairness.

In a wide-ranging speech to a joint-session of the Australian Parliament, Mr Blair also said it was sometimes difficult being a friend of the US but warned none of the world's problems could be solved without US engagement. As senators joined their colleagues on crowded House of Representatives benches, Mr Blair defended his nation's involvement in the Iraq war, conceding his position was at odds with that of the Australian Labor Party. But he stressed terrorism could not be beaten until critics of democracy understood that it was not a Western ideal but "universal values that should be the right of a global citizen". "Ranged against us are the people who hate us - but beyond them are many more who don't hate us but question our motives, our good faith, our even-handedness - who could support our values but believe we support them selectively," Mr Blair said. "That is why we cannot say we are an open society and close our markets to the trade justice the poorest of the world demand. "We cannot say we favour freedom but sit by whilst millions in Africa die and millions more are denied the very basics of life."

Mr Blair said the ongoing Doha round of international trade talks provided a good opportunity to demonstrate values of openness. He said Europe's system of agricultural protection was "a policy born of another age", which had to change. The US and Japan also must open their agricultural markets and India and Brazil needed to open non-agricultural markets. "We must agree (on) a development package for the poorest that includes 100 per cent market access and aid for trade," Mr Blair said.

On the Iraq war, Mr Blair said it would be wrong to "walk away" and that the West should support any nation of people living in fear, citing Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma and North Korea. "This is a time for the courage to see it through," he said. "We must not hesitate in the face of a battle utterly decisive in whether the values we we believe in triumph or fail. Here are Iraqi and Afghan Muslims saying clearly: 'Democracy is as much our right as yours. This struggle is our struggle.

He warned against anti-US sentiment which he said was building in Europe. "None of the problems that press in on us can be resolved or even contemplated without them," he said of the US. "The danger with America today is not that they are too much involved. The danger is (if) they decide to pull up the drawbridge and disengage."

Mr Blair called for a greater international focus on climate change, saying nations needed to bring together their various efforts to produce a clear and disciplined framework for action. "There will be no forgiving of any of us if we do not pay attention to the degrading and polluting of our planet," Mr Blair said.

Source



28 March, 2006

A good speech from Blair

Tony Blair is visiting Australia



British Prime Minister Tony Blair used a speech to Federal Parliament today to urge global unity in the fight against terrorism and warn against the "madness" of growing anti-Americanism worldwide. Mr Blair said war against terror was as much a battle about values as it was about arms, and that those values were the universal property of humanity. "(It is also) a struggle about values and about modernity, whether to be at ease with it or enraged at it," said Mr Blair, the fifth world leader to address Federal Parliament. "And to win this struggle we have to win the battle of values as much as arms."

MPs and senators crowded into the House of Representatives to hear Mr Blair say that the struggle facing the world today was not just about security. He delivered a candid assessment of his country's alliance with the US, but warned against leaving America out of the fight against terrorism. "I do not always agree with the United States. Sometimes they can be difficult friends to have," Mr Blair said. "But the strain of frankly anti-American feeling in parts of European and world politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in. "The danger with America is not that they are too much involved. The danger is that they decide to pull up the drawbridge and disengage," Mr Blair said. "The reality is that none of the problems that press in on us can be resolved or even contemplated without them."

Britain, along with the US and Australia, has been one of the prime forces in the war against terrorism. Mr Blair said the key to winning the battle against extremist elements was to show it was not a fight of the West against Islam, but about the ownership of common values. "We have to show that these are not Western ... American or Anglo-Saxon values, but values in the common ownership of humanity, universal values that should be the right of the global citizen," he said. "This is the challenge I believe we face and ranged against us are of course the people who hate us, but beyond them are many more who don't hate us but question our motives, our good faith, our even-handedness, who could support our values but believe we support them selectively." These were people that countries such as Britain had to persuade, Mr Blair said. "They have to know this struggle is about justice and tolerance as well as security and prosperity," he said. "And in truth today there is no prosperity without security and no security without justice."

Mr Blair said nations such as Britain and Australia had to construct a global alliance to secure their way of life in the face of a continuing terrorist threat. The roots of terrorism ran deep, he said, and exploited a sense of alienation in the Arab and Muslim world which had to be overcome. "We will not defeat this terrorism until we face up to the fact that its roots are deep, that it is not a passing spasm of anger, but a global ideology at war with us and our way of life," Mr Blair said. "Their case is that democracy is a western concept we are forcing on an unwilling culture of Islam. "The problem we have is that a part of opinion in our own countries agrees with them. "We are in danger of completely misunderstanding the importance of what is happening as we speak in Iraq and Afghanistan." Each of those nations was engaged in a "titanic struggle" to be free of oppression and servitude, and Iraqis and Afghans had seized democracy.

Mr Blair acknowledged that the Iraq war had "split this nation as it did mine", but said it was not the time to walk away from the fight against terrorism. "This is a time for the courage to see it through," he said.

Source



Blair mocks British ad ban



British Prime Minister Tony Blair has had a light-hearted jab at his country's advertising watchdog over the recent banning of Australia's tourism campaign. Mr Blair drew hearty laughs and a round of applause when he told a lunch today at Parliament House about his non-stop schedule since touching down in Melbourne. "We got there in the evening. I literally have not stopped since I got off the plane with meetings and attending events at the (Commonwealth) Games and so on, and here I am in the Australian Parliament building at what I think is something like 4 o'clock in the morning back in the UK so I'm kind of thinking, 'So, where the bloody hell am I?"' Associated Press reports Mr Blair as saying. "I may of course be arrested for that back home," he quipped.

Britain's Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre backed down and allowed the ad to be shown on television after a campaign by Tourism Minister Fran Bailey - who accused the watchdog of a sense of humour deficit - and the ad's star Lara Bingle.

Prime Minister John Howard also alluded to the ad in his welcoming speech to Mr Blair, noting that an old friend had described the British prime minister, who lived in Adelaide from the age of two to five, as an Australian. "Tony Blair is no stranger to Australia, he's no stranger to Australians and his friendships with many are well known," Mr Howard said before Mr Blair's address to both houses of Parliament, Associated Press reports. "It's recorded that his great friend the Anglican priest Peter Thomson said that, and I quote, 'The thing you have to understand about Tony Blair is that he is an Australian.' Perhaps, in that spirit, I could say, Well where the hell have you been?"

Source



So, who's a popular Lord Mayor?



Was it jealousy or admiration in the Victorian premier's voice today at the mention of Melbourne's popular Lord Mayor John So? Mr So has received rousing cheers from the crowd throughout the Commonwealth Games and they seemed to escalate at every mention of him during last night's closing ceremony. This was a fact sharply noted by Premier Steve Bracks this morning when he walked into a media conference and was casually asked by a reporter: "Is John So coming today?" "He's coming to the parade," the Premier quickly replied. Do you want me to mention his name and you can clap?"

Later, Labor's Mr Bracks was asked whether he feared the beleaguered Liberal Party would recruit the well-liked mayor. First, the Liberals will have to be able to say that John So is their 'bro', as Mr Bracks does. "I've said this in the past, I think I said it at another press conference that John So is my bro, and I put my arm around him," Mr Bracks said. "This is a popular catch cry around Melbourne, as I understand it." In fact, people are wearing T-shirts brandishing the slogan.

Besides, Mr Bracks said he thought of Mr So as "a true independent, in the true meaning of the word". "I think the fact that he's popular is a great thing for Melbourne, a great thing for Victoria," he said. "We're in competition really, nationally, for attention for head office companies, for a seamless interface between federal and state governments and also between state governments and (the City of Melbourne). "So I think we've got a great advantage really in attracting people and activity into Melbourne and having John So with his popularity doesn't hurt that at all."

Likewise, Mr Bracks is no stranger to popularity. In mid 2000, he was ranked the most popular premier in Australia, with a personal approval rating as high as 74 per cent. Lately, his approval rating has been about 50 per cent and judging by the 80,000 people at last night's closing ceremony, that's about half of John So's.

Source

It may be worth recalling that a Chinese businessman -- Quong Tart -- was also very popular in the early days of Sydney



More canine/human symbiosis

I am putting this story up mainly because I like the picture of the doggie but it does illustrate the theory that dogs and humans are symbionts -- i.e. they have evolved together and benefit one-another. They certainly regard one-another as family. The most obvious case of the symbiosis is the large and super-sensitive canine nose which does detection jobs that the small human nose cannot. We see it at work in this story



"Meet Ruben, the dalmatian who can spot when his schoolgirl owner is at risk of a life-threatening metabolic attack. While most dogs are out chasing the postman, Ruben is busy monitoring Sarah Mackintosh's health. The five-year-old family pooch is being hailed for his ability to detect when Sarah is at risk of an attack.

Sarah, 9, suffers from a rare metabolic disorder called 3MCC which stops her from being able to break down proteins such as those in cheese and meat. At 14 months, the girl from Maleny in the Sunshine Coast hinterland was revived at Brisbane's Mater Children's Hospital after she had a metabolic stroke. The first in Australia to be diagnosed with 3MCC, and one of only a handful of sufferers worldwide, she is extremely susceptible to common viruses.

But mum Rachael Sharman, 48, said the normally dopey dalmatian can sense when Sarah is at risk of suffering an episode. "Before Sarah was diagnosed she had been eating protein and it had just built up in her system," Ms Sharman said. "We woke up on a Friday morning to her screaming and vomiting blood. "We rushed her to the Mater but she was pretty much dead and the doctors had to revive her.

"When Sarah was five years old we got Ruben and we noticed he could pick up when she was about to become unwell. "He tries to get close to her and will sneak in the house and doesn't want to let her out of his sight. "We've found him hiding under her bed before she gets sick and the last time he just stood there barking at her. "Then, a day or two later, she will be ill. He seems to understand when her metabolites are different and that it's not good. "His behaviour means we can pick it up early.""

Source



27 March, 2006

Another little deception from our major public broadcaster

We read:

"The legal case to compensate residents of Baryulgil, in northern NSW, for the effects of asbestos-related disease, could be under way within two months. A James Hardie mine operated in the predominantly Aboriginal community near Grafton, between 1950 and 1979, leaving at least 22 residents suffering the affects of asbestos dust. David Barron, one of the Sydney barristers representing the community, says it is about time something was done for its residents. "The recognition that there was a problem in Baryulgil, it goes back 30 or 40 years," he said. "There's been at least two inquiries and a royal commission about this and nothing's been done. "The only time something's ... actually going to happen is if private players take on these people and that's what we've done."

HOWEVER: A former employee of the Federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs has written to me to remind us that the reporter of the story as it was broadcast was Matthew Peacock and that Peacock used to report on this very topic in the period 1975-85 but seems to have forgotten something from then.

In 1977-82 the Federal government offered everyone who wanted to move away from unsafe Baryulgil a house at a new asbestos-free site called Malabugilmah. A new, safe community was built from nothing. Unhappily - but it's a free country - quite a few families chose to stay at asbestos-infected Baryulgil. Peacock, then a young reporter, reported on this in 1976-78, but in 2006 conveniently 'forgets'.

So obviously, according to the ABC, the masses must always believe that all mining companies are always evil and governments never do anything to help the oppressed.



Fake blacks

America's nutty Professor Ward Churchill is not the only one to fake indigenous origins

In the late 1990s when Pauline Hanson gathered tens of thousands of followers to her One Nation party, the "Aboriginal industry" became a prime target of her vitriol.... In the days when the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commission existed and squandered much its billion-dollar budget like a drunken sailor, Aboriginality to a scheming, dishonest person meant possible access to high-paying positions of authority in legal, housing, employment or native title organisations where accountability was often little more than a joke.

Aboriginal academic and co-chairwoman of Reconciliation Australia Jackie Huggins tells how people would contact ATSIC or Centrelink claiming they had discovered that a fictitious grandparent was Aboriginal. "The calls would get to me and these people would ask what special benefits they were therefore entitled to claim," Huggins says. "I would say: 'This is what you will get -- life expectancy of 20 years less than non-indigenous Australians, and if you are a woman, add three years; you will get sick and tired of going to funerals; probably get diabetes before age 40, and if not, kidney, heart or lung failure will kill you before you are 60'.

"Spiritually and culturally, there is a treasure trove of benefits. "I am sick of people wrongly claiming that economic or special welfare benefits flow to Aboriginal people. It is just not true. I would recommend an ATSIC publication titled Matter of Fact which spells out the truth for all to see." Her remarks are endorsed by Toowoomba-based Aboriginal academic and author Stephen Hagan who says the education support benefit Abstudy is identical to Austudy, and preference is no longer given to indigenous people seeking jobs or university placements. "It wasn't always so," he says. "When I went to school on Abstudy, us black kids got $2 a week pocket money which white kids on Austudy didn't get. But now everything is means-tested for all applicants." ....

Hagan says the only fraudulent claimants to Aboriginality today who gain real benefit are some who produce "indigenous art". "So many businesses just get some backpacker kids, put them in the back room with a book showing dot paintings, tell them to copy it, sign it as being genuine Aboriginal art, and sell it to unsuspecting tourists. They are the current ones ripping off the system big-time," he says.

Detailed information on Aboriginality was published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics which found that for the period 1996 to 2001 the total Australian population increased 6 per cent, with people declaring themselves indigenous in the census (464,140) increasing by 16 per cent. Of that 16 per cent, 12 per cent was attributed to a natural increase (births over deaths) with 4 per cent due to people's increasing propensity to identify themselves as indigenous....

The most celebrated case of disputed Aboriginality occurred in the Queensland sugar coast town of Bundaberg in 2000 when claims were made by one branch of the Appo family that more than 100 members of their family were of Sri Lankan descent not Aboriginal, and were wrongly receiving concessional loans and benefits said to total millions of dollars over three decades. There were allegations of wrongly claimed business and legal assistance, and even other claims that some family members were selected in state and national indigenous sporting teams despite not having Aboriginal heritage.

The issue came to a head on July 21, 2000 when Allan Keith Appo, then 66, was charged in the Bundaberg magistrates court with possessing undersized and female mudcrabs. In his defence Appo claimed that the Fisheries Act did not apply to him because he was Aboriginal and therefore he could fish without restriction. However, Department of Primary Industries legal officers researched Appo's genealogy and presented generations of birth, death and marriage certificates showing his heritage was purely Sri Lankan. Magistrate John Brennan found Appo was not Aboriginal and fined him $2300....

Earlier, in January 1995, another Appo family member from Bundaberg was also caught by fisheries inspectors with undersized and female crabs. He was charged and used the defence of Aboriginality, but was found guilty because birth certificates showed he did not have Aboriginal heritage. He was fined $2700. Despite that conviction he continued to vote at ATSIC elections, claim Abstudy grants for his children and sell Aboriginal art. He revealed his two brothers and a sister, his wife and his five children "all went through school on Abstudy".

At that time Aboriginal corporation administrator, Garry Hamilton, of the Brisbane legal firm Minter Ellison, stated that the incidence of non-eligible people claiming Aboriginality for financial benefits was "rampant". He told how he had been appointed as administrator at Dalaipi Aboriginal corporation at Caboolture, north of Brisbane in the mid-1990s. "The former administrator of this organisation just let anybody in," he said. "There was an incredible number of white Australians with no Aboriginal connections at all getting benefits. It was so bad I just had to close the place down."

More here



The past is another country

In her study of the first years at Sydney Cove, Clendinnen is not projecting herself back into the past; she knows that these people, settlers and Aborigines, are very different from herself. You need to work hard to understand them. One of the several novelties of Dancing with Strangers is Clendinnen's characterisation of the Aborigines as warriors and her cool appraisal of how violence worked in their society.

When governor Arthur Phillip orders the first punitive expedition against the Aborigines she does not hasten to condemn him; she thinks he has correctly divined the sort of retribution Aborigines will understand. The expedition didn't find any Aborigines -- which Clendinnen, not altogether convincingly, claims is what Phillip intended, reckoning that the threat of retribution would be enough.

Grenville is appalled by the plans for this punitive expedition. Aboriginal heads were to be cut off and brought back in bags. Her modern sensibility reels at this hacking at bone and muscle. Her historical inquiries into violence have obviously not been extensive. Europeans were still hanging, drawing and quartering their own when Sydney was founded.

Grenville is rather coy about Aboriginal violence. We see the results as visited on the settlers but not Aborigines performing it. The settlers on the Hawkesbury follow what Aborigines are doing elsewhere through the pages of the Sydney Gazette and we are encouraged to think that Aboriginal violence is to some extent a media beat-up. However, the climactic European massacre of the Aborigines is rendered in close-up grisly detail.

The liberal imagination, appalled at European violence on the frontier, tends to cast the Aborigines as victims merely and not fine practitioners of violence themselves. Violence was more central to their society since its practice was not allotted to a professional caste of soldiers; all adult males were warriors. Aboriginal warfare was endemic, usually with a small number of deaths, but occasionally Aborigines massacred each other.

Grenville cannot imagine how she would have behaved on the Hawkesbury frontier because unlike the Hawkesbury settlers she does not believe in savagery, European superiority and conquest. The pioneer settlers are not ourselves. Nor are the Aborigines whom the pioneers encountered the Aborigines of today.

Settler Australians no longer hang and flog offenders or invade other countries. Aboriginal Australians no longer abandon their old, kill their superfluous young and levy war against their neighbours. We are all a long way from 1788.

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Downside to new work laws

The laws virtually abolish unfair dismissal claims (unthinkable in France and Germany) but have weaknesses

One of the country's most politically conservative organisations has likened the federal government's new industrial relations laws to the former Soviet system of command and control. The myriad of complex new laws would also create a system where so-called IR professionals would stand to make a lot of money sorting through it, the HR Nicholls Society said. The new laws come into effect tomorrow after being passed by parliament in December.

But society president Ray Evans does not like the centralised power being handed to the government under the changes, nor its encroachment on states' rights. "It's rather like going back to the old Soviet system of command and control, where every economic decision has to go back to some central authority and get ticked off," he said on ABC TV. "There is a lot of that sort of attitude in this legislation and I think it is very unfortunate."

Last year's winner of the society's main award, the Charles Copeman Medal, was Kemalex Plastics owner Richard Colebatch, who was involved in a dispute with unionists over contracting of labour. "The legislation is a wonderful opportunity for the industrial relations professionals in both private practice and in the unions and in the employer associations to make an awful lot of money," he told the ABC. "It is very complicated for anybody to decipher how it's going to work. "The professionals will spend a lot of money, the employers' money, working their way through the mire trying to create the new rules people are going to work towards."

Another HR Nicholls founder, former head of Treasury John Stone, expressed concern about states' rights under the government's proposed use of the constitution's corporations power. "If the government wins this case in the High Court, they'll be able to do almost anything with it, anything involving a corporation," he said.

Source



26 March, 2006

Implications of cyclone Larry?



When tropical Cyclone Larry lashed the Queensland coast at the weekend it raised questions of whether it was a sign of a changing climate. Could it be the harbinger of a new drought-busting La Ni¤a weather cycle? Could it be a product of human-induced climate change? Or is it just too soon to tell?

Larry slammed into Australia's northeast coast on Sunday morning, local time. Initial reports said it was the most powerful cyclone to hit the continent in decades, moving at unusual speed and packing winds of up to 290 kilometres an hour. Dr Geoff Love, director of meteorology at the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) says Larry was on a par with Cyclone Tracey, which devastated Darwin in 1974. The BOM categorises cyclones from 1 to 5, with 5 being the most severe. Love says Larry was probably "high category 4, probably not quite 5" and neither unusual nor unexpected. "Larry was no different from any other tropical cyclone," he says.

But Love says more cyclones hit tropical Queensland in La Nina conditions, a possible sign that Australia is headed for a change after emerging from El Nino three years ago. "With an El Nino, cyclones tend to form out closer to the dateline and probably occur before they reach Australian longitude, in La Ni¤a they form closer to the Australian coast," he says. Records going back to the 1880's show a clear La Nina-El Nino cycle, Love says.

The La Nina and El Nino effects are two extremes of an atmospheric and oceanic oscillation in the Pacific Ocean. They have a direct and significant impact on climate in some parts of the world, including Australia. El Nino occurs when the surface of the ocean warms and leads to drier conditions in Australia, which mean more droughts and fires. Cooling surface waters cause La Nina , which causes wetter conditions and more flooding. The two phases switch every few years. But they don't always neatly alternate, making it difficult to make predictions.

Love says there have been about 20 El Ninos and 20 La Nina s in the past 120 years. This amounts to about 20 six year cycles made up of roughly four neutral years and two years of El Nino or La Nina, or one year of each. Australia is currently in what Love calls a "neutral, weak, wishy-washy" period, although there are signs we're trending towards La Nina. "I think we have been sort of just on the borderline," he says. "The Americans have a lower threshold, they're calling it a weak La Nina. We're saying it's just short of being a La Nina."

The latest global tropical cyclone season, which is just coming to an end, has been described as one of the worst in recent times, making it tempting to view Cyclone Larry as a product of human-related climate change. Grant Beard, a climatologist with the BOM's National Climate Centre, says the recent increase in intense tropical cyclones may be linked to warming. "Looking at the globe ... it seems that the number of intense tropical cyclones has increased over the last 30 years," he says. "That's linked probably to the rising ocean temperatures and this is one sign of the enhanced greenhouse effect."

Dr Kevin Walsh is associate professor of meteorology at the University of Melbourne and previously worked on the effect of climate change on tropical cyclones at CSIRO. He says climate change is likely to have some impact on cyclones, although this is yet to be proved. "All the projections say sea temperatures are warming and there are well known theoretical relationships between the warmth of the ocean and tropical cyclones," he says. "But it's controversial whether those effects have yet been detected."

Love says only time will tell whether Larry is the product of climate change. "The jury's out," he says. "Any one event by itself doesn't prove or disprove anything."

Source



An amusing story from the history of Australia's far-Left:

Comrade Roberts is particularly strong in exposing how the male comrades of the Trotskyite Communist League were unreconstructed chauvinists. As far as they were concerned, the women in Australia, unlike European activists such as Rosa Luxemburg, "existed only as a kind of ladies' auxiliary to the revolution". Shortly before he was assassinated in Mexico, Trotsky had responded to comrade Origlass's inquiry as to the best contribution female party members could make to the class struggle. "The female members," he wrote, "should be rooted on the workshop floor."

As Gee puts it, "Trotsky was master of five languages, but was clearly unfamiliar with Australian double entendre." When this response was brought before the central committee, even chairman Origlass, "to whom every word of the master was holy writ, permitted his granite features to soften for a moment".

More here



Ghost ship



Customs officers have not been able to find many clues about how an unmanned ship came to be drifting in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Customs spokesman, Matt Wardell, says they boarded the abandoned tanker this morning, south-west of Weipa. Mr Wardell says they have been able to identify the 80-metre long boat as the Jian Seng, but have not discovered its nationality or port of registry. He says a broken tow-rope is hanging from its bow. "Our boarding party, following a search of the vessel, has speculated that the vessel was inoperable and under tow when the tow-rope broke and it was subsequently abandoned and has drifted into its current position in Australian waters," he said.

He says they will continue to monitor the boat until they decide what to do with it. "I should say there's no suggestion there's been anybody on board recently or that the vessel's been used in any people smuggling activity," he said. "There's also no indication that the crew left the vessel in any haste or in any distress. "One of the things we have found on board is a large quantity of rice and we believe that the vessel may have been used to resupply fishing boats with food and fuel in waters outside Australia's exclusive economic zone."

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) is sending a tug boat to retrieve the ship. AMSA's Tracey Jiggins says they have arranged a salvor to bring the boat to Weipa. "Due to the remote location of the vessel and the need to relocate salvage crews from the east coast, it's anticipated that just one tug will arrive on scene early on Monday the 27th of March," she said. "But in the interim period before the salvors can reach the vessel, AMSA's working closely with other agencies, including Maritime Safety Queensland to minimise any risk of damage to the environment."

Source



Australia still at the forefront of hypersonic aircraft research

A supersonic jet engine known as a scramjet, which could dramatically reduce the time of air travel around the world, has been tested in South Australia's far north. Seconds after the jet set off, there was a supersonic boom across the Woomera test range. It travelled more than 300 kilometres into the air before crashing ten minutes later, 400 kilometres down the range. The University of Queensland is heading an international team testing the scramjet technology, which travels up to 8,000 kilometres an hour - almost eight times the speed of sound.

Team leader Allan Paul says the flight went well but it will take several months to analyse the data they have collected. He says the team is happy with the result so far. "I haven't seen them on such a high for a long time," he said. "It's been a hard couple of weeks, in fact it's been hard since Christmas, and the team has really responded well." He says the launch went according to plan but there were a few tense moments. "You're looking at it as it goes up, and you're worried if it's going to make it," he said. "It's probably a very unnerving feeling actually." Dr Paul says they should have some preliminary results by tomorrow.

Source



25 March, 2006

Free beer for toads

The giant Bufo Marinus toad (introduced from Brazil) is a great pest in Northern Australia -- killing a lot of wildlife by its poison



Territorians are being offered free beer in return for live cane toads. The RSPCA, Coopers Brewery and the Cavenagh Hotel have teamed up in the name of animal welfare and the result is that toads can be turned into beer. In a move designed to turn seasoned Top End beer drinkers into lean, mean, toad-catching machines, the three Darwin organisations have got together to set up a toad-for-beer exchange. Anyone over the age of 18 who captures a toad and delivers it alive to the Darwin RSPCA qualifies for a glass of icy cold Coopers beer at the Cavenagh Hotel. ``Everyone who takes a cane toad to the RSPCA to be disposed of humanely gets a voucher for a free pot of Coopers ale at the Cav,'' Coopers Brewery's NT sales executive Sean Gould said. He said there would be a beer for each toad -- up to a limit of six a day.

``It's an idea we had from the locally-produced movie Bufo Marinators that screened at the Cav last week,'' Mr Gould said. The film, which featured a posse of toad hunters and a simulated orgy of bufo killing, caused quite a fuss. ``We want to encourage the humane treatment of animals,'' acting chief executive of RSPCA Darwin Lindsay Wilkinson said yesterday. ``If you get a free Coopers out of it then it's a bonus.'' Cavenagh Hotel general manager Brett Simmonds said: ``It's all about the toads, not about the beer.'' But the toads must be alive. ``No coupons for squashed toads,'' Mr Wilkinson said. He was keen to make it clear he wasn't starting a roadkill collection. ``Healthy, live, no squashed cane toads,'' he said.

And Mr Simmonds agreed, saying the deal was ``fresh toads for fresh beer''. While the toad catchers are enjoying their cold ale, the RSPCA will be busy euthanasing the toads with sodium pentobarbitone, an overdose of barbituates administered with a few drops on the skin that kills toads immediately. ``It's the most humane way to kill an animal,'' Mr Wilkinson said. ``They just go to sleep.''

But beer fiends shouldn't get too worked up. Mr Simmonds said there would be a six-pot maximum per person per day. ``The idea is to get people catching toads and taking them for humane disposal, not to get people too drunk,'' Mr Simmonds said. ``If you take six toads in to the RSPCA, you get six vouchers. If you take 100 toads, you get six vouchers.'' But he's worried people will get the wrong idea and deliver a bucket load of toads to his pub hoping to trade them for a few cold ones. Mr Simmonds said no one would get a beer for taking a toad to the pub. He said the toads must be taken to the RSPCA at 80 Boulter Rd Berrimah between 1pm and 5pm on weekdays. Vouchers for the promotion will be valid until April 30.

Source



More indulgence towards Muslims?

Judging both by the names and the behaviour of the scum below and the exceedingly lenient verdict of the judge, the offenders were Muslims

An invalid pensioner dropping his teenage son at the movies was mistaken for a drug dealer, chased home and bashed with a baseball bat by two brothers who also destroyed his car. But Shammi and Shamal Chand escaped with fully suspended sentences when they faced Southport District Court yesterday, angering victim Brett Paterson who said they should have gone to jail. ``It was a violent attack and they should have done time for what they did to me,'' said Mr Paterson, who still bears the physical and emotional scars of the attack. ``I don't think justice has been done.''

Mr Paterson was dropping his 15-year-old son at the Harbour Town shopping centre about 10.30pm on October 1, 2004, when his ordeal began. he court was told Shammi Chand, tired from working long hours in a Redbank Plains furniture business he was establishing, had contacted an associate to get some amphetamines. The Chand brothers drove to the Gold Coast to buy the drugs but the associate disappeared with Shammi's money at Harbour Town.

Mistaking Mr Paterson for the drug dealer, the Chands then followed him home to nearby Labrador, ramming his car with their four-wheel drive utility along the way. Mr Paterson grabbed a baseball bat to defend himself but that was broken and turned on him. As Shamal Chand held Mr Paterson down in his driveway, Shammi Chand bashed him ``four or five times'' with the broken bat, the court was told. Shammi Chand had then twice reversed the 4WD into Mr Paterson's car, causing it to be written off.

The Chand brothers pleaded guilty to assault occasioning bodily harm while armed and in company. Shammi Chand also pleaded guilty to dangerous operation of a motor vehicle. Handing down the sentence, Judge Ian Dearden said the Chand brothers had inflicted ``misery'' on Mr Paterson who suffered ongoing physical problems, had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and was unable to work.

But Judge Dearden said he also took into account the Chands' own misery following the death of their father at 56, the difficulties Shammi Chand faced supporting his extended family and Shamal Chand's battle with drugs and mental illness. The judge sentenced Shammi Chand to 18 months' jail on the assault charge, wholly suspended, and Shamal Chand was sentenced to nine months' jail, wholly suspended.

Source



The arty-farties love this:



I think it is just ugly but what do I know?

The coveted Archibald Prize has been awarded to first-time entrant Marcus Wills for his montage of 29 portraits. The work, titled The Paul Juraszek monolith (after Marcus Gheeraerts), is inspired by an etching contained in the 1567 edition of the children's classic Aesop's fables. Artist Paul Juraszek is the subject of the portrait work. The choice of winner is set to ignite yet another controversy for Australia's most famous art prize. "The painting is very different, very original," Art Gallery of NSW director Edmund Capon said. "That he put 29 portraits into one painting is something of an achievement and I think it is a rather good departure from previous choices. So in every sense it is a most unexpected choice." The 34-year-old artist chose to base his entry on an acquaintance, Melbourne sculptor Mr Juraszek, whose works of mythical animals are also featured in the oil painting. "I didn't expect it at all. I was surprised to even be accepted because the picture is a bit different," Mr Wills said following his win, which earns him $35,000. Since its inception in 1921, the Archibald Prize has been awarded to some of Australia's most significant artists, including George Lambert, William Dobell and Brett Whiteley. This year there were 787 entries for the prize.

Source



Another example of appalling medical advice -- from one of Andrew Bolt's readers:

See also my post of 12th.

Whilst pregnant with my first child I underwent an ultrasound at 13 weeks just for peace of mind. The sonographer initially seemed quite pleasant. But as he was taking the measurement of the fluid at the back of my baby's neck, he became a little agitated that the baby wasn't staying in the correct position for an accurate result. After a few minutes of jerking my stomach with the ultrasound tool, and with my baby still not in the optimum position, he told us that our baby had a one in 14 chance of having Down's syndrome. With very little compassion, he asked us what we wanted to do. I said that we would have to go home and talk about it. He responded dryly with, "You're supposed to talk about these things before you have the ultrasound." He then told us that we would have to "make up your minds, pronto" because the pregnancy was approaching the end of the "safe" period to have an abortion.

These words sent me spinning and I burst into tears. On the drive home something in my bones told me that the sonographer was wrong and that my baby was fine. Mothers' intuition, no doubt. Still, I was scared. I rang my obstetrician and said, "Get me another ultrasound immediately." Our beautiful Max is now 3 1/2 half and perfect in every way. (Well, the matchbox-cars-in-the-toilet incident is an exception).

Source



24 March, 2006

Australia rescues Papuans from Muslim violence

Australia's decision to grant temporary visas to 42 Papuan asylum seekers is an "unfriendly" act and Indonesia must protest, a senior Indonesian MP said today. Jakarta had been calling for the boatload of asylum seekers to be sent back to Indonesia but Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone today announced 42 of the 43 Papuans who landed at Cape York in January have received temporary protection visas (TPV). They would be relocated from Christmas Island to Melbourne, Senator Vanstone said.

The group said they feared they would be killed if they were sent home - a charge Indonesian officials deny. A spokesman for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Dino Pati Djalal, said Jakarta was still drafting a response to the announcement.

But Djoko Susilo, a nationalist MP and member of Indonesia's powerful foreign affairs commission in Parliament, said the decision was "too much". "Giving asylum to them means Australia confirms what's been claimed by the group," he said. "This is an unfriendly gesture by the Australian Government."

Earlier today, Senator Vanstone said she could not comment on whether the move would create tensions with Indonesia, and said the cases were considered on their individual merits.

More here



Americans not amused either

The religious contingent don't understand "bloody" but think it sounds nasty ("Bloody" is usually said to be an old Catholic expression: Short for "By our Lady")



A key conservative American lobby group is set to unleash a campaign of protest against Australian tourism's "where the bloody hell are you?" TV advertisement. The controversial commercial made its US debut tonight in front of 20 million American TV viewers and one influential group was not amused. The American Family Association (AFA), which has more than two million members and leads campaigns against abortion and gay rights, was upset with the bikini-clad model Lara Bingle's use of "bloody" and "hell" in the ad's tagline.

AFA members are expected to bombard Tourism Australia with thousands of emails and phone calls in coming weeks to vent their feelings. Members are also expected to boycott Australia as a holiday destination. "I just feel pretty sure the typical American family who is watching TV with their children and they're exposed to this ad are going to be upset," AFA director of special projects, Randy Sharp, said. "I don't want my children to hear that phrase. "It's a shocking phrase because we're not familiar with it. "I guess they use it all the time in Australia, but it's a foreign language here so I think it'll have a negative impact rather than positive."

British TV authorities dropped a ban on the use of the word "bloody" after pressure from Australia, but now Canadian authorities are unhappy with the way the ad portrays the drinking of unbranded beer.

Tourism Australia launched the ad in the US with a 30-second spot during the hit TV series Lost, which draws around 20 million American viewers each week. The ad also aired on some of America's most-watched cable TV channels, including Rupert Murdoch's FOX News, the popular A&E channel, TNT, TBS, Fine Living and the home improvement network, HGTV.

The ad has not upset America's broadcast regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), but all it takes is for one viewer complaint for the FCC to launch an investigation. FCC spokesperson Rebecca Fisher said she was unaware of any complaints. Tourism Australia acting managing director Andrew McEvoy said US TV networks had no problem clearing the ad.

The Mississippi-based AFA's campaigns have had enormous lobbying success in the US. Last year the group called on its members to file formal complaints against US TV network CBS for a "teenage orgy scene" depicted in Australian actor Anthony LaPaglia's hit TV series, Without A Trace. The FCC last week fined more than 100 CBS affiliate stations $US3.6 million ($5 million) for airing the orgy scene. The AFA website congratulates its members on the campaign with a "You did it!" headline and a link to send the FCC a thank-you message.

The AFA is also calling on its members to lobby Pizza Hut to ban a "sexually suggestive" ad featuring pop star Jessica Simpson, in which she feeds food into a teenager's mouth, causing the boy to faint. Mr Sharp said he enjoyed the Tourism Australia ad until the end when Bingle asks "where the bloody hell are you?" "When you think 'bloody' in America you think the red liquid that flows from human bodies which is usually a sign of some kind of violence," Mr Sharp said.

Tourism Australia contact details will be made available to AFA members. "They will hear from a lot of our members who are going to be insulted," Mr Sharp said. "Australians are spending all of these millions of dollars inviting us, and if we go over there are we going to be exposing our kids to foul language and images of bloody? "We don't want our kids to hear the term 'bloody'. "We certainly don't want our kids to hear profanity."

Source



Kids must learn spelling, grammar and punctuation

An editorial in "The Australian":

That Australia's educationalists are in thrall to some pretty daffy ideas is nothing new. This newspaper has for years defended proven teaching methods such as phonics while exposing the depredations of programs like "critical literacy" and other attempts to politicise and discard the bedrock of our culture in favour of "texts" that are "more relevant". Indeed, last year Queensland's Education Minister vowed to reform English education in his state after being shown examples of students' work by The Australian - including a child's feminist critique of the fairytale Rapunzel.

Horrifying as that is, in Western Australia it's about to get worse - to the point where calculation errors won't matter in maths class, and where spelling, grammar and punctuation will be tossed out the window in English and media classes. It's called "outcomes-based education" and, once implemented in Western Australia, Year 12 English students may pass their final exams without ever reading a book; analysing TV ads and film posters will do. Students will even be allowed to draw their answers, if they are able to figure out the mind-numbingly complex exam instructions.

Like "critical literacy" before it, with its emphasis on finding hidden racism and sexism in great works of literature, outcomes-based education is little more than a jargony post-modern scam foisted on an unsuspecting public by folk-Marxist educationalists. It is the pedagogical equivalent of the Australian Institute of Sport abandoning their world's-best practices for training elite athletes to tell runners that their times don't matter and swimmers that "wetness" is just a Western cultural construction. And Australian educators and politicians are taking young people down a path just as radical under the guise of OBE.

Disturbingly, Western Australia is not the only jurisdiction tearing down proven educational methods in favour of feel-good fads. Outcomes-based education is entrenched across the country: Tasmania recently launched its own radical curriculum, Essential Learnings, which was so controversial that teachers were barred by the local union from criticising it publicly and the state Education Minister was forced to promise a rethink. In South Australia, kids are taught that "Western science . . . is only one form among the sciences of the world", as if the laws of gravity are different in Japan. And Victoria is infamous for letting English students read a grand total of one book a year. More broadly, ideas such as "edutainment" (where an episode of Neighbours is just as valid a "text" as a novel by Dickens) are gaining increasing currency.

The war on excellence being waged in our classrooms is not just a matter of concern for parents and pointy-heads. When Australian students score well behind their foreign counterparts in maths and science exams, or employers find graduates are unable to write a proper sentence, it becomes a matter of vital concern to all Australians. OBE backers say that students will be better equipped for the real world under their regime; in fact, they will learn little more than how to use Google and calculators and to tear down a culture whose roots they have never been taught. This is hardly a recipe for literate and competent citizens who can go on to nourish and transmit all that is great about Australia to their descendants.

Certainly, parents and teachers have the greatest role to play in challenging these fads; in Western Australia, the recently formed PLATO (People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes; http://www.platowa.com) is doing an admirable job of raising the alarm. Especially when politicians have lost their senses (to say nothing of their nerve) someone has to stand athwart brewing disasters such as WA's new curriculum and yell, "Stop!". The feral postmodernism and hyper-relativism that is "outcomes-based education" has no place in Australia's classrooms.

Source



Federal government to smarten up teaching



Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop will consider a major scholarship program to attract some of the best and brightest Year 12 students into maths and science teaching. Ms Bishop was commenting on the revelation that students with Year 12 scores as low as OP19 - the bottom 20 per cent of students - were gaining entry to teaching courses in Queensland.

A Department of Education, Science and Training spokesman said the Federal Government had funded 18,500 more university places in all disciplines nationally this year than in 2004, and another 39,000 places would be allocated by 2009. The growth of Queensland's population meant many of those would be allocated for teaching in this state.

Ms Bishop said that while standards had to be maintained, it was also important to ensure enough teachers were trained to meet demand. "We have to maintain that balance," she said. "I think we should be doing more in terms of encouraging teaching as a career of choice."

Teaching, like nursing, is a national priority area, so students incur the lowest HECS fees. But Ms Bishop said a more targeted approach, such as maths/science scholarships, also would be considered. She said teachers needed good nurturing, social and communication skills, and academic ability alone did not guarantee a good teacher.

While research is limited on how well low-score entrants perform in teaching courses, preliminary data gathered by the University of Southern Queensland suggests students with entry scores below OP15 are struggling. USQ associate dean of education Peter Cronk said: "The data is all over the place, but the preliminary stuff suggests that once you go below OP15 they start to find things more difficult." He said the university was well aware of the need to avoid first-year attrition in courses and had put support programs in place to bolster students' literacy, numeracy and assignment-writing skills. "Someone who has done science at school, for instance, may not be used to writing the kinds of assignments that are expected at university," he said.

While USQ has some of the lowest entry scores at its Wide Bay and Toowoomba campuses with OP19, its new Springfield campus has a teaching cut-off of 15, two places higher than that of the nearby University of Queensland Ipswich campus.

Under the OP system, no student "fails" outright, but scores in the range of 16 to 19 would suggest students scored in the low to middle ranges (low achievement and satisfactory achievement) in their Year 12 subjects.

Griffith University vice-chancellor Professor Ian O'Connor, whose institution's scores have remained in the middle ranges, believed Griffith was attracting better-calibre students because it had invested heavily in its education courses and they had a good name among schools.

Queensland University of Technology vice-chancellor Professor Peter Coaldrake, who has promised to maintain entry scores at the state's biggest university for training teachers at their present levels, said it worried him that no students from leading private schools with high percentages of OP1s and 2s had opted for teaching. "We need to recognise that teaching is a traditional and noble profession, and that it is vital to our economic and community interests in the Smart State era that its value is recognised," he said.

Source



23 March, 2006

Nutty Canadians

They've got more hangups than a drycleaner





First it was "bloody", then it was "hell" and now it's "beer" that's tripping up an Australian tourism advertising campaign. The recently launched and now controversial advertisement which concludes with the tagline "Where the bloody hell are you?" has now run foul of the Canadian regulator. But it's not the tagline that's the trouble this time as much as the opener: "I've bought you a beer". Tourism Minister Fran Bailey said she had been told by Canadian authorities they could not accept that line. "We now have the Canadian authorities not wanting us to use the opening segment of `I've bought you a beer'," Ms Bailey said in Melbourne. "The Canadian regulator says that this implies consumption of unbranded alcohol.

"I have to say that I find this quite astonishing." Ms Bailey clarified that it was not beer consumption itself that was causing the problem for the Canadians but the fact the beer was unbranded. "That's some sort of quirky Canadian regulation," she said. Ms Bailey said the regulator was not troubled by the ad's closing tagline, which they found "warm and friendly and inviting". Even so, the Canadian regulator would not allow the ad to be shown during a children's Easter program because of the final line.

However, the ad had never been scheduled to be shown then anyway, Ms Bailey said. Ms Bailey said it was likely the opening sequence would be replaced with different but equally warm and friendly footage - not involving references to unbranded beer - to get around the problem.

Earlier today, Canadian Broadcasting Corp spokeswoman Ruth Soles said on ABC radio her network had imposed its own restrictions on the advertisement. Ms Soles said the word "hell" might offend viewers who tune in to a particular family viewing timeslot.

Last week, Britain's advertising regulator objected to the word "bloody". But they relented after Ms Bailey flew to the UK and lobbed on their doorstep to argue the case. Ms Bailey said she had been told in London the controversy had itself generated "millions of pounds" worth of free publicity. "As far as this particular Canadian regulator is concerned, I'd love him to come out here and I'll buy him a beer and say thank-you," she said. Ms Bailey declined to say what sort of beer she would offer the Canadians.

Source



Rain disrupts cyclone aid









(Click here for the words and music of the Innisfail song!)



Heavy rainfall has disrupted the flow of relief supplies today to cyclone-devastated north Queensland. Torrential rains lashed coastal areas between Cairns and Ingham overnight, with falls of up to 300mm recorded in the 12 hours to 9am (AEST). Rain has caused significant rises in the Tully and Murray rivers and moderate to major flooding in smaller coastal streams. The Bruce Highway between Innisfail and Townsville is closed while the Bruce Highway has been shut north of Cardwell at Euramo. The roads, which also have been significantly damaged by flood waters, are not expected to reopen until at least midday on Saturday.

Bottled water, a field kitchen, portable toilets, generators and meals have been delivered to Innisfail as part a massive relief effort underway there in the wake of Cyclone Larry.

Up to 55mm of rain was recorded in one hour in the town, which bore the maximum category five cyclone early Monday. Counter Disaster and Rescue Services executive director Frank Pagano today said emergency crews were still trying to deliver other essential items such as tarpaulins, ropes and generators to the area but the rain had hampered efforts. "Changing road and weather conditions (are) impacting the planning process," he said...

An Innisfail police spokesman said the region had suffered extensive localised flooding but rains had recently eased. "The water levels are dropping but the major rivers are still rising," he said. "It's a matter now of just trying to get gear in. There has been a few things that have been held up but a majority of the stuff has come through. "They're talking about (using) choppers now if anything else needs to be quickly shipped in."

More here



Dumb teachers in Australia too

Some of Queensland's future teachers are being drawn from among the bottom third of school leavers seeking tertiary places. Universities are training teaching students who scored as low as OP19 in their final year of school on the 25-point OP scale. Teaching cut-offs for many courses have dropped two OP places in only 12 months.

Several universities have begun support programs for first-year students to bolster their literacy, numeracy, comprehension and assignment-writing skills. They are also beginning to investigate how students with lower entry scores in previous years have performed. But although the minimum scores are low, many students enter teaching courses with OPs as high as one to five.

Education Minister Rod Welford said most Queensland teachers were trained at Brisbane universities where scores were generally ahead of those at regional universities. "Obviously it would be preferable if those entering the teaching profession had the highest scores, but not everyone with top results necessarily becomes a good teacher," he said. Mr Welford said teaching standards in Queensland were being improved through new accountability requirements, which meant that teachers had to update their skills to be re-registered every five years by the College of Teachers.

Richard Smith, Central Queensland University's executive dean of arts, humanities and education, said he had "absolutely no concerns" about the entry score. "There is no correlation between the OP score students enter with and their performance at university," Professor Smith said. "Ours are outcomes-based degrees and we ensure our students are workplace ready."

Under Queensland's OP scoring system for Year 12 students, OP1 - obtained by just 2.37 per cent of students - is the highest grade and OP25 is the lowest. More than 70 per cent of students score OP16 or better. A survey by The Courier-Mail has found that an OP19 was the cut-off for the Bachelor of Education degree for early childhood, primary and middle schooling teachers at the University of Southern Queensland's Wide Bay campus. It was also the cut-off score for early childhood teaching at USQ Toowoomba.

Universities accepting candidates with OP17s include the University of Queensland for middle school teaching (a dual degree with Behavioural Studies), Central Queensland University for early childhood, primary and Japanese teaching, and the University of the Sunshine Coast for science and arts teaching. James Cook University accepts trainee primary, secondary and early childhood teachers with OP16s.

Universities with higher cut-offs include Griffith University (OPs 10 and 11 and OP7 for the combined Science/Education degree), the Australian Catholic University (OP11) and QUT (OPs 11 to 13), which has the largest number of trainee teachers in the state. Many teachers also enter the profession with a post-graduate degree.

QUT vice-chancellor Professor Peter Coaldrake pledged that QUT would not allow entry scores to drop any lower. But he said if a student passed a four-year teaching degree, this overtook their Year 12 result. Queensland Teachers' Union president Steve Ryan said he was worried the focus was on filling universities with trainee teachers, rather than turning out good teachers.

Source



Degrading mathematics education

"Outcomes Based Education" is a system to avoid grading of students. You either attain the "outcome" or you do not. All kids are equal, is the basic (boringly Leftist) idea

Maths students will no longer be penalised for arriving at the correct answer using incorrect calculations under Western Australia's controversial outcomes-based education system. In a fundamental change to the way mathematics is assessed, the new OBE maths curriculum will reward students regardless of the process they use.

Co-founder of lobby group PLATO, Greg Williams, said the move would produce high-school graduates who would not need to have a fundamental understanding of mathematical concepts. Mr Williams said that under the present system, students were awarded marks for the calculations they made, as well as the final answer. But under the OBE system, a student who gave the correct answer but made the wrong calculations to arrive at it would be given exactly the same mark. This would not equip students for a career and life in the real world, Mr Williams said. "If you're an engineer and your calculations are sloppy, the bridge that you are building falls down," Mr Williams said.

PLATO's (People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes) concerns follow revelations that the Curriculum Council of Western Australia has turned away from the importance of spelling and grammar. The 2007 sample exams for English, media and aviation provide teachers with their first glimpse of what will be assessed under the new education system. All three samples state students should not be penalised for "poor spelling, punctuation, grammar or handwriting". Students are also permitted to draw answers or write them in dot form.

"If you're not going to learn how to write English with correct grammar, spelling and continuous prose, where the hell are you going to learn it?" Mr Williams said.

Mathematical Association of Western Australia president Noemi Reynolds said she did not believe the new system would result in a major change to student assessment. "But we have quite a mixture of opinions on OBE," she said. Ms Reynolds said many maths teachers had expressed concern after witnessing the confusion surrounding the implementation of a new English syllabus. "We understand and have sympathy for our fellow English teachers but maths teachers will not stand for a lack of support in the implementation (of the changes)," she said.

State Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich said she would not speculate on how maths calculations would be marked until she had seen a sample exam. "I'm going to wait until I see a copy of an example paper until I comment," Ms Ravlich said. She said claims by PLATO that students would not be prepared for life after school was scaremongering. "Students will need to be able to demonstrate good grammar, spelling and punctuation. If they don't, it will result in students achieving lower marks in the examination," she said. "This is a pretty tough (English) examination. I think it really is quite rigorous."

But federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said that while she was not attacking the concept of outcomes-based education, she did not approve of how the system was being implemented in WA. "The current debate centres around how it is working in practice and whether the (Curriculum Council) promotes sufficient guidelines to teachers," Ms Bishop said. "What I am hearing from teachers is that they need clarity on the knowledge and skills that students are to develop (under OBE)." She said spelling, grammar and punctuation had to be one of the highest priorities in the teaching and assessment of English.

Source



22 March, 2006

NORTH QUEENSLAND CYCLONE ROUNDUP







More pictures here

As I was born and bred in Innisfail, this story had more than the usual interest for me. I in fact remember well living through a similar cyclone in Innisfail when I was about 11.

By way of background it may be worth noting that all North Queensland houses have long been built to be cyclone resistant. Roofs are screwed down and the roof frame is bolted to the house. And the house is bolted to the stumps on which it is set and the stumps in turn are both deep-set in the ground and braced to withstand lateral force. So while many houses were damaged, most stayed intact enough to protect their occupants. The lack of deaths was certainly no accident.

I reproduce below comments from three different writers on the matter



Nobody killed in big Queensland blow

The devastation Hurricane Katrina caused in the United States probably helped save lives in Queensland's cyclone ravaged north, an expert said today. No-one was killed or suffered serious injuries despite the ferocious nature of category five Cyclone Larry, the most powerful cyclone to hit Australia in decades. However, Larry, which made landfall yesterday, destroyed homes, uprooted trees, downed powerlines, and ruined banana and cane crops in and around the town of Innisfail, which bore the brunt of its fury.

Professor Tom Hardy, a cyclone expert with the Australian Maritime College, said it was amazing that no-one was killed. He said the experience of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama last August and killed more than 1000 people, probably helped save north Queenslanders' lives. "I think that the big hurricanes in New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico this last year made people realise 'Oh my gosh, that can happen here'," Prof Hardy said today. "Whereas if this happened a year ago, I think there would have been a few people (asked to evacuate) who would've said 'No, I'm just going to stay here, I've lived here for 20 years and nothing's happened'.

"New Orleans got whacked but I think Innisfail maybe learned a little bit about that." Prof Hardy said a combination of better building standards and warning systems also probably contributed to a lack of casualties. He said most north Queenslanders would have been unaware of what to expect from Cyclone Larry after decades of relatively minor cyclones. "I think we did a damn good job of being prepared for it because no-one died, and the damage will be something that we can recover from," he said.

Source



Technologically Advanced, Modern Economy, Survives Category 5 Cyclone without a Single Fatality

An interesting comparison below lifted from Jennifer Marohasy

A category 5 cyclone, more severe than Cyclone Tracy or Hurricane Katrina, lashes Far North Queensland and there is not a single fatality. It perhaps says something about Australia, modern economies and democracies and their potential capacity to adapt and to survive? Congratulations Far North Queensland! When we were less technologically advanced, that is on 10th March 1918 and a severe cyclone hit Innisfail, over 80 people died. Following is the note in the Bureau of Meterology records for that event:

"This cyclone is widely regarded as the worst cyclone to hit a populated area of Queensland. It crossed the coast and passed directly over Innisfail. Pen on Post Office barograph was prevented from registering below 948 hPa by flange on bottom of drum. 926 hPa read at the Mourilyan Sugar mill at 7 pm 10 Mar. The eye wall reached Innisfail at 9 pm. In Innisfail, then a town of 3,500 residents, only around 12 houses remained intact the rest being blown flat or unroofed. A report from the Harbours and Marine Engineer indicated that at Maria Creek the sea rose to a height of about 3m above high water (If this refers to HAT the water was 4.65m above the tide for that day). Around 4.40pm 10 Mar at Bingil Bay a tidal wave was seen surging in from the east into Bingil Bay taking the bridge over the creek 400 m inland. Mission Beach was covered by 3.6 m water for hundreds of metres inland, the debris reached a height of 7m in the trees. All buildings and structures were destroyed by the storm surge in the Bingil Bay Mission beach area. The surge was 2.6m at Flying Fish Point. Babinda also had many buildings destroyed and some reports suggest that not one building was left standing. There was widespread damage at Cairns and on the Atherton Tablelands. Recent reports suggest that 37 people died in Innisfail while 40 to 60 (mostly aborigines) lost their lives in nearby areas."

The lessons of cyclone Larry

Comment by Benny Peiser below noting that the North Queensland experience is great evidence of how technologically advanced societies can cope very well with even very dangerous natural changes and events:

Throughout human history, natural disasters such as cyclones and hurricanes have had devastating impacts on human life and societies. Until fairly recently, tens of thousands of people around the world were killed each year as a result of tropical mega-storms. Although it is technically impossible, for the time being, to completely neutralise the damage tropical storms bring with them, it is possible, as a result of effective disaster warning and preparedness to significantly reduce the potential risks to human life, infrastructure and the economy.

Disaster warning systems have become essential social mechanisms in the forecast, detection and mitigation of natural disasters. People exposed to natural hazards are increasingly relying on the effectiveness of warning systems. They are most effective for natural catastrophes that develop gradually and relatively slowly, such as floods or tropical cyclones. In 1991, for example, 600,000 people in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh were evacuated in advance of a tropical cyclone, thus minimising the number of fatalities to just over a thousand. 13 years earlier, in comparison, over 10,000 people were killed in a similar cyclone that transpired without any warning. The significant decline in storm-related deaths since 1950 has been attributed to improvements in tornado-warning systems.

The experience with Cyclone Larry only underlines this encouraging development. As Jennifer Marohasy points out above, Cyclone Larry, the strongest cyclone to have hit Australia in almost 100 years, has produced not a single fatality. Cyclone Larry demonstrates that technologically advanced, open societies which develop disaster early warning strategies and effective planning that provides resilience to such disasters can reduce the risks to human life to almost zero. The key lesson of Cyclone Larry is simple: Human adaptation, effective disaster planning, social resilience and proper insurance cover are beginning to transform tropical mega-storms from devastating human catastrophes into managable nuicances.



Federal vouchers to fund private education for slow learners

The parents of children who struggle to make the grade in maths and English could soon be able to send them to private schools under a taxpayer-funded voucher scheme. Education Minister Julie Bishop has flagged her support for an expansion of voucher programs, to also include disabled children. And as part of the push to improve literacy and numeracy, universities would be encouraged to establish centres of excellence for teacher training.

Releasing preliminary findings of a national pilot program offering $700 tutorial vouchers to students who fail to meet Year 3 reading benchmarks, Ms Bishop said parents had resoundingly endorsed the scheme, with 88 per cent "satisfied or very satisfied". However, tuition assessments showed that just 60 per cent of students actually improved their reading skills. Almost 70 per cent of tutors believed their students had improved.

Accusing the states of failing to invest enough in improving students' performance in reading benchmarks, Ms Bishop also backed debate on a voucher scheme in other areas. "I am quite supportive of the notion of vouchers across the board," she told The Australian. "The notion of vouchers to give parents choice is a notion that appeals to me. There are a whole range of areas where tutorial vouchers could be utilised. There is one with children with special needs. I think vouchers have a place there."

Prime Minister John Howard has previously ruled out a voucher scheme for all students that would allow parents to spend a taxpayer-funded grant at public or private schools. However, the Government has embraced the idea of $700 vouchers for students struggling with literacy.

Critics of the current funding model for schools have also argued that a voucher scheme already exists in practice, because students at both public and private schools all secure a basic grant from taxpayers.

Ms Bishop said she was also preparing to unveil major reforms to improve teacher training following complaints some universities were forced to run remedial literacy lessons for undergraduates. "What I think we can do is promote centres for excellence within universities," she said. "If there were a centre for excellence for teacher training other universities could draw upon that."

More here



Lovely Lara



Bloody hell - what are the Poms going to say when they cop an eyeful of this? Lara "bloody" Bingle, the Cronulla chick who is the face of that notorious Tourism Australia ad, will cap off an extraordinary month of events when she appears topless in lads mag Zoo Weekly today.



Since her overnight rise to fame as the "bloody hell" babe in February, Bingle has been caught in a text scandal involving Cronulla Sharks player Greg Bird, pranged her car in a minor accident and flown to London on a successful mission to overturn the British advertising regulators' ban on the Tourism Australia campaign. Today, Bingle is back to doing what she does best - sparking some more bloody controversy. In addition to gracing the front cover of the mag, 18-year-old Bingle will appear topless in one shot of a five-page spread, but with her assets strategically covered.

Source



21 March, 2006

New pro-jobs legal environment to take effect next week

....Its centrepiece is a new Fair Pay Commission to set minimum wages and conditions, and the removal of unfair dismissal laws for workers in firms with fewer than 100 employees.

But the unfair dismissal changes have been widened to remove protection for high-income earners. In a move unions claim is aimed at construction workers, miners and others in top trades, employees earning more than $95,000 will be exempt from unfair dismissal laws. Trainees will also lose their cover, while anyone can be sacked for "genuine operational reasons", including economic or technological. The regulations list terms and conditions workers and bosses cannot include in workplace agreements, such as:

* GIVING unions right of entry to a workplace.

* DEDUCTING union fees from a worker's pay.

* ALLOWING leave for union training.

* RESTRICTING the use of independent contractors.

The first WorkChoices laws were released last year and the remaining sections will be approved in Federal Parliament next week. Releasing the accompanying regulations yesterday, Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews said the changes would be good for the economy. "It's fair legislation: legislation designed to ensure that Australia's productivity continues to grow," Mr Andrews said. Unions said much of the detail was aimed at curbing their ability to operate in workplaces.

More here



Feisty Independent does well in South Australian elections



Anti-pokies crusader Nick Xenophon has become the strongest force in South Australian politics outside the major parties after his shock re-election to the Upper House. Mr Xenophon, who was elected to parliament in 1997 on the back of several parties' preferences, went into Saturday's election hoping for a "minor miracle", after both Labor and Liberal abandoned him in preference deals. But so overwhelming was his first preference support -- with more than 20 per cent of the vote -- that not only did Mr Xenophon retain his own seat, he also won a second berth for his running mate, drug rehabilitation pioneer Ann Bressington.

Mr Xenophon's victory saw him dubbed "the third political force" in the state by shell-shocked federal Liberal MP Christopher Pyne. Clem Macintyre, senior politics lecturer at the University of Adelaide, said the No Pokies MP was now "the second most recognised politician in the state after the Premier". Mr Xenophon has boosted his profile with a series of media stunts, but has gained credibility, advocating on behalf of victims of crime and people suffering from asbestos poisoning. Liberal deputy leader Iain Evans said Saturday's election was a boon for "the two people with relatively high media profiles -- Mike Rann and Nick Xenophon". Mr Evans said the Liberal Party would have to re-evaluate its own relationship with the media.

Mr Xenophon's decisive win also pours cold water on Mr Rann's stated ambition to abolish the upper house. A good strong upper house is an insurance policy against the excesses of an arrogant government," Mr Xenophon said yesterday.

An exhausted but elated Mr Xenophon took to Adelaide's Rundle Mall yesterday to thank supporters in his own inimitable style -- wearing a sandwich board emblazoned with the words: "Thank You". "I'd like to thank Labor and Liberal for preferencing against me," he said, arguing that the decision created a groundswell of support in the community. Mr Xenophon put up $70,000 of his own money to finance his campaign, taking out a bank loan to retain the momentum in the final fortnight, and had a further $80,000 of public donations. "It really was a grassroots campaign," he said.

Source



The Nutty party fades

The South Australian result could mean the demise of the Australian Democrats after voters in the state that has produced four of the party's leaders and where it has often polled strongest gave the party only 2.8 per cent of the vote in Saturday's election. The swing away from the Democrats, once seen as the third force in national politics, means the party is expected to lose both its contested seats in the upper house, leaving the Democrats with only one MP in the South Australian parliament.



Former leader senator Natasha Stott-Despoja, who handed out how-to-vote cards on Saturday, said yesterday it was the party's worst result. "Our heartland has suffered a blow," Senator Stott-Despoja said. Leader Lyn Allison refused to comment.

South Australia cradled the Democrats as it emerged under founder Don Chipp, and leaders Janine Haines, Cheryl Kernot and Meg Lees to become a force in Australian politics under the motto "Keep the bastards honest". The party's popularity peaked in 1997 when two Democrats were elected to South Australia's upper house with 16.5 per cent of the vote. One member had been elected the previous term, taking the party's presence to three elected members. These seats were retained until Saturday.

At its national peak, nine Australian Democrats held seats in the Senate prior to the 2001 federal election. Today, there are four Democrat senators in Canberra, while in NSW the party has an upper house MP.

With veteran Democrats MP Ian Gilfillan retiring from South Australia's upper house, his party colleague and sitting MP, Kate Reynolds, was the party's most prominent candidate. But even with the last two of the 11 seats in the Legislative Council still to be filled, it is unlikely Ms Reynolds will return to her seat. Labor claimed four seats, the Liberals three and Nick Xenophon's No Pokies ticket won two. The last two seats were expected to be won by Family First and the Greens.

Yet Ms Reynolds was refusing to concede. "We definitely haven't ruled ourselves out, this isn't over until the State Electoral Commission declares the polls, and that's not going to be for at least a week," Ms Reynolds said. "We believe we're still in there with a chance." Ms Reynolds said despite political commentators writing the party off, the poor results would not spell the end of the Democrats. "The South Australian Democrats have worked inside and outside of this parliament for 27 years," she said. "We are not giving up if I do not win my seat back. Our work has always been in the community as well as the parliament and that's what we'll keep on doing." A double loss would leave leader Sandra Kanck as the party's only South Australian parliamentarian. She said the upper house vote showed a significant swing towards conservatism that had surprised her. "Four of the 11 elected were conservative, and maybe when you throw a couple of the Liberals and a couple of the conservative Labor Party members in, it's all conservative," Ms Kanck said. "There's only going to be one progressive candidate elected. That is the thing that astounds me the most."

But the party still polled better than it had at last year's federal election, despite the swing. "So there's been an improvement in some ways," she said optimistically

Source



Far-Left agenda hurts Greens in Tasmanian elections

The Greens were once very influential in Tasmania

The Greens thought themselves king-makers but instead suffered a king-hit likely to cost them at least one seat and official party status. The Greens, who had hoped to force their policy platform on a minority government, were yesterday rethinking policy and strategy instead. Kim Booth looked likely to lose in Bass, depriving the Greens of the four members needed for the extra parliamentary resources that go with official party status. Labor believes the Greens may yet lose a second of its four MPs, Tim Morris in rural Lyons, but this appears unlikely.



Greens leader Peg Putt blamed the drop in their vote -- from 22per cent in a poll four weeks ago to 16per cent on Saturday -- on the "grubbiest, most vicious" smear campaign in Tasmanian political history. "Despite coming into the poll looking like we could gain more seats, we just couldn't come back over the top of the negative fear and smear campaign that was run against us from so many quarters," she said. "Perhaps we need to take another look at the fact that negative campaigning has become the norm in Australian politics and that other parties are using that to drive where the electorate goes." She said the party would also take a look at its policy of refusing to guarantee support for budgets in a hung parliament and whether it had failed to focus sufficiently on core environmental issues. She accused both major parties, logging companies, big business and the evangelical Exclusive Brethren group of running smear advertisements against them.

Labor warned a minority government would deter investment and destroy the economy, with Premier Paul Lennon claiming house prices would fall if he failed to achieve majority government. A $100,000 advertising campaign funded by a mostly anonymous group of businessmen also pleaded for majority government. The Greens were also targeted by advertising paid for by forestry companies, while ads placed by the Liberals and Exclusive Brethren church members claimed Greens' policies would threaten the state's social fabric.

Source



20 March, 2006

AUSTRALIA'S PUBLIC HOSPITAL MELTDOWN

Just one weekend's news from the three most populous States below:

NSW hospitals close surgery for long periods

Waiting lists are set to rise as some of the state's largest public hospitals prepare to shut down elective surgery for up to three weeks over Easter. Doctors have labelled the closures as a cost-saving exercise with many hospital budgets already stretched to breaking point, months before the end of the financial year. Except for emergency cases, hospitals including Westmead, Wagga Wagga, Mona Vale, Manly and St Vincent's, are shutting down or reducing elective surgery services for about a fortnight next month. Staff at Ryde Hospital, in north-west Sydney, have been told no elective surgery will be carried out for three weeks.

Australian Medical Association NSW president Dr John Gullotta said next month's close-down period was longer than previous years. "We really have to ensure that these shutdowns don't get longer and longer every year," he said. "It is a blatant cost-saving exercising. It's an attempt to constrain the budgets. "It's also forcing further cancellations of elective surgery and increasing the list."

But a spokeswoman for NSW Health Minister John Hatzistergos said the number of patients waiting longer than 12 months for elective surgery had been halved, decreasing from more than 7000 in February 2005 to about 3400. Latest figures show more than 56,000 patients are waiting for surgery in NSW.

The Easter shutdown comes after many hospitals closed their operating theatres for up to six weeks during Christmas. Dr David Jollow, a visiting gynaecologist at Manly and Mona Vale hospitals, said those hospitals normally only closed for one week at Easter. "It's all to do with saving money," he said. "I don't how much money they save by doing th