What's wrong with "urban sprawl"?
The fact that people choose free-standing houses just arouses Greenie contempt. They want us all back in tenements
Recently, self-appointed planning "experts" have criticised the performance of planning systems that have shaped suburbs and cities, denigrating governments that delivered the homes of millions of Australians.
The critics say such communities and suburban development are unsustainable and have called for government, in the name of sustainability, to choose high-density development over greenfield development, often labelled "sprawl". To them, density is good and suburban development is bad.
But the simple fact is we need to meet dwelling demand, achieve housing affordability and provide much-needed community services and infrastructure.
Across the country, notwithstanding the growing trend to inner-city living and more infill development, demand continues to be for detached houses in greenfield locations, and the strongest population growth continues to be in outer suburbs.
Bear in mind those suburbs will become tomorrow's middle or inner-ring suburbs of emerging cities - Logan, Ipswich and the new cities of Ripley, Yarrabilba and Caloundra South.
While dwellings produced through options such as infill and redevelopment do meet a need for housing in particular urban locations, such consolidation will not, in reality, preclude the need for continuing greenfield development to meet the overwhelming bulk of dwelling demand. Detached housing, typical of greenfield developments, remains the preferred housing type across households and age demographics.
Infill development is popular for many because of reduced travel times and better access to public transport and employment.
However, in southeast Queensland, many master-planned communities, particularly on Brisbane's northern and western outskirts and on the Gold Coast, are also achieving high employment generation targets.
Elsewhere, there are other examples of employment self-sufficiency in outer-urban master-planned developments.
This strategy overcomes the primary complaint of heavy vehicle usage and travel times.
Well-planned suburban and master-planned communities are also designed to be rich in social capital, with high levels of engagement by residents in their local community and with significant participation in local sporting, cultural and social activities and events, often using local parks and recreational facilities.
Typically, in suburban locations there is a net density of eight dwellings per hectare.
Recently, many major developers have achieved between 11 and 13 dwellings per hectare on a net basis in master-planned communities such as Forest Lake, Springfield and North Lakes.
Densities in these locations can only increase incrementally over time, with smaller lots becoming increasingly popular due to affordability.
The next generation of major greenfield development is looking to achieve a net density of at least 15 dwellings per hectare, with a diversity of housing products to meet a wide range of target markets, including more affordable housing options. These would represent twice the density of previous years.
As such, there is a compelling argument that it is sound planning to build communities to these incrementally higher densities at the urban fringe, as well as commit to redevelopment and urban renewal. This is because of two primary factors.
First, upgrading and augmentation of infrastructure in existing areas can be expensive and disruptive and is not an acceptable stand alone solution. Major road works and sewerage and storm water upgrades on busy suburban roads are the bane of economic efficiency and sustainability as they become "crawling car parks".
Second, the creation of cities in growth areas not only provides new sustainable communities, it also creates urban hubs for existing fringe suburbs, adding to life quality.
The answer then is to be inclusive, not exclusive. To provide adequate supplies of both greenfield and infill development under a realistic planning framework based on sustainability performance, infrastructure planning, social preference and market demand realities.
SOURCE
Australia entering a new era of uncertainty in the age of globalisation and information
Mike O'Connor is normally a cheerful writer -- but not below
THERE are times when you sense a sudden and fundamental shift in your world, a moment of realisation which flashes across the mind like summer lightning.
I felt it last week as I read BlueScope Steel was closing part of its steel-making operation and sacking 1000 workers and Qantas was cutting its international services and shedding staff.
In the same week, Foster's was attempting to fend off a hostile foreign takeover, made vulnerable by the remorseless slide in Australian-brewed beer sales and local car makers complained they faced a perilous future.
Ever-cynical, I sneered at the year 2000 celebrations marking the beginning of the new millennium. It was, after all, just the beginning of another year like every other, its passage prefixed by 20 instead of 19.
Eleven years on I realise that the Australia of that last decade of the 20th century, one which had evolved from the post-war world of the 1950s, has gone forever.
The links that tied us to that half century have been severed and the nation now moves into a sea of uncertainty that will test us, as did the military conflicts of the past century, the furnaces in which modern Australia was forged.
"We're bleeding" is the retailers' lament that echoes through the malls that ring our great cities, the theory being that due to the wild fluctuations of the share market and the threat of higher interest rates, shoppers are keeping their hands in their pockets.
Once calmness and sanity again prevail, the chatter of receipts being spat from credit card charge terminals will again bring a smile to the merchants' faces.
Maybe not. Perhaps, in a decade, the great malls will stand idle and their car parks empty, the all-powerful internet having wiped out an industry that began when man first swapped an animal skin for a haunch of meat.
With the malls will go the tens of thousands of jobs that for so long have been the refuge of the semi-skilled, the sales assistants we all love to hate, the bright-eyed kids in their first job and bespectacled matrons who remember when parcels were wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.
Tourism operators appeal to governments to spend more money promoting the wonders of Australia to the world, to lure back those travellers who once packed our beaches and restaurants.
When things settle down, they say, we'll be right. What we need now is a quirky marketing campaign or a video clip that "goes viral".
Maybe not. Maybe the tourists will never return in the numbers which we once enjoyed. The world has become a much larger place and Australia is no longer seen as that unique continent which everyone with the means should visit at least once in their lifetime.
Asia is cheaper, closer, more exotic, Europe more diverse, Africa more intriguing and South America more challenging.
Australia is a "nice" place, somewhere to go when you have retired and are looking for a sedate travel experience.
Nor will Australians fill the motel beds and surf clubs. The two-weeks-at-the-beach family holiday is fading faster than denim in the sun.
We will still flock to our broad, white sand beaches over summer weekends but the money, the real money, will be spent on low-cost Asian airlines ferrying us to Phuket and Bali.
And Qantas? The glory days of the flying kangaroo are gone. There are now seven international airlines rated as five-star Cathay Pacific (Hong Kong), Qatar (Middle East), Hainan (China), Asiana (South Korea), Malaysian (Malaysia), Singapore Airlines (Singapore) and Kingfisher (India).
Qantas? Four-star, along with carriers such as Garuda (Indonesia), Turkish Airlines and Air New Zealand.
If you drive to the beach it will be in a Volkswagen or a Hyundai, not a Commodore. The Commodore and the Falcon will be gone before 2020, the Federal Government having finally accepted that the nation could no longer afford to prop up a product nobody wanted.
We will, largely, stop making things, or at least make only those things that can't be bought more cheaply or more easily from China.
The "Made in Australia" brand will disappear from shelves to be remembered in the same way as my mother recalls Persil washing powder and Kooka gas stoves.
China will continue to grow, although perhaps not at its current frenetic pace, and anyone who believes the United States is likely to return to the prosperity of the 1990s any time soon is, I suspect, living a fantasy.
The cry of "All the way with LBJ" will echo faintly from the past century as the power of Asia and the sub-continent mushrooms and the US retreats behind its borders, never again to gallop over the hill, sabre drawn, as the world's policeman.
The game is changing and changing fast. I'm not saying the quality of life in this country will suffer but there is a fundamental shift occurring in the way the nation operates. This change will require resilience, innovation, intellectual excellence and the ability to adapt, qualities in which we abound. But it will also require leadership.
"Cometh the hour," it is said, "cometh the man." Worryingly, I see no sign yet that this man, or woman, has arrived.
SOURCE
Rogue union says $95 an hour not enough for workers
WORKERS on the regional rail link are set to earn $150,000 a year, but a union is heading to Fair Work Australia to fight for more pay.
Joint bidder AbiGroup and Thiess have agreed to pay Australian Workers' Union members up to $95.23 an hour for work on the $4.3 billion rail line, according to a copy of the agreement seen by the Herald Sun.
But the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union have so far been locked out of negotiations with builders short-listed to work on dedicated VLine tracks between Southern Cross station and Werribee.
The CFMEU, fined $560,000 in June for an illegal blockade, will head to Fair Work Australia on Friday to fight to be included in the project and seek a more lucrative deal.
The Herald Sun understands builders preferred to work with the AWU because it was more reasonable in its demands for pay and conditions.
CFMEU secretary Bill Oliver confirmed the union was taking the dispute to Fair Work Australia. It was taking both the AWU and the contractors to the tribunal.
The AWU has signed a similar agreement with Fulton Hogan and John Holland and was expected to sign another deal next week with the final short-listed bidder Leighton Baulderstone JV.
All three consortiums are bidding to build the link between Deer Park and West Werribee.
AWU secretary Cesar Melhem, who brokered the deals, said it was at the "top end" of civil construction pay rates in Victoria. "The money is good. I'm happy with that," he said. "The average wage will be around $150,000. People might think that's a lot of money, but we are talking about a 56-hour week."
Mr Melhem declined to comment on the CFMEU's bid at Fair Work Australia.
Corey Hannett, chief executive of the Regional Rail Link Authority, said the contract for the Deer Park to West Werribee section of the project would be awarded early next year.
SOURCE
Schools may need to take on underperforming students to ensure funding, report says
The usual Leftist push to reduce everybody to the lowest common denominator
HIGH-performing schools may be put under pressure to take on underperforming students as a condition of funding.
A report commissioned by the Australian Government Review of Funding for Schooling has made the suggestion, adding "we need to question the extent to which public funds should continue to subsidise those already well-resourced selective schools that are not providing 'value' add in terms of student performance".
The independent report - along with three others released by the panel yesterday - has been met with dismay by the private sector but praised by the Australian Education Union.
Comments released by the review panel yesterday state the reports "have made a case for fundamental change in the way we fund schooling at all levels of government".
School Education Minister Peter Garrett said the reports would help the review panel develop its final recommendations, but he distanced the Government from what was in them.
"They do not represent the views of the panel and are not indicative of the Government's intentions," he said.
One report, written by the Allen Consulting Group, recommends school outcome information, including NAPLAN and My School financial data, be used to help decide base funding for all schools.
"Loading" would be provided to schools identified as needing additional resources "to assist students with specific needs to achieve specified outcomes".
Another report, written by a consortium led by The Nous Group, said higher-performing schools should be encouraged to "take on more under-performing students and demonstrate their quality through student performance over and above what would have been expected from past performance. This may mean restructuring some or all of the public subsidies so that they are retrospective and 'reward-based"'.
AEU president Angelo Gavrielatos said the reports confirmed current funding contributed to a "deepening inequality in educational outcomes".
Independent Schools Queensland executive director David Robertson said the review had failed to provide any analysis of its own, leaving private schools still nervous that their funding could be cut in real terms and that top-performing schools might suffer under the new funding model.
SOURCE
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
What's wrong with "urban sprawl"?
The fact that people choose free-standing houses just arouses Greenie contempt. They want us all back in tenements
Recently, self-appointed planning "experts" have criticised the performance of planning systems that have shaped suburbs and cities, denigrating governments that delivered the homes of millions of Australians.
The critics say such communities and suburban development are unsustainable and have called for government, in the name of sustainability, to choose high-density development over greenfield development, often labelled "sprawl". To them, density is good and suburban development is bad.
But the simple fact is we need to meet dwelling demand, achieve housing affordability and provide much-needed community services and infrastructure.
Across the country, notwithstanding the growing trend to inner-city living and more infill development, demand continues to be for detached houses in greenfield locations, and the strongest population growth continues to be in outer suburbs.
Bear in mind those suburbs will become tomorrow's middle or inner-ring suburbs of emerging cities - Logan, Ipswich and the new cities of Ripley, Yarrabilba and Caloundra South.
While dwellings produced through options such as infill and redevelopment do meet a need for housing in particular urban locations, such consolidation will not, in reality, preclude the need for continuing greenfield development to meet the overwhelming bulk of dwelling demand. Detached housing, typical of greenfield developments, remains the preferred housing type across households and age demographics.
Infill development is popular for many because of reduced travel times and better access to public transport and employment.
However, in southeast Queensland, many master-planned communities, particularly on Brisbane's northern and western outskirts and on the Gold Coast, are also achieving high employment generation targets.
Elsewhere, there are other examples of employment self-sufficiency in outer-urban master-planned developments.
This strategy overcomes the primary complaint of heavy vehicle usage and travel times.
Well-planned suburban and master-planned communities are also designed to be rich in social capital, with high levels of engagement by residents in their local community and with significant participation in local sporting, cultural and social activities and events, often using local parks and recreational facilities.
Typically, in suburban locations there is a net density of eight dwellings per hectare.
Recently, many major developers have achieved between 11 and 13 dwellings per hectare on a net basis in master-planned communities such as Forest Lake, Springfield and North Lakes.
Densities in these locations can only increase incrementally over time, with smaller lots becoming increasingly popular due to affordability.
The next generation of major greenfield development is looking to achieve a net density of at least 15 dwellings per hectare, with a diversity of housing products to meet a wide range of target markets, including more affordable housing options. These would represent twice the density of previous years.
As such, there is a compelling argument that it is sound planning to build communities to these incrementally higher densities at the urban fringe, as well as commit to redevelopment and urban renewal. This is because of two primary factors.
First, upgrading and augmentation of infrastructure in existing areas can be expensive and disruptive and is not an acceptable stand alone solution. Major road works and sewerage and storm water upgrades on busy suburban roads are the bane of economic efficiency and sustainability as they become "crawling car parks".
Second, the creation of cities in growth areas not only provides new sustainable communities, it also creates urban hubs for existing fringe suburbs, adding to life quality.
The answer then is to be inclusive, not exclusive. To provide adequate supplies of both greenfield and infill development under a realistic planning framework based on sustainability performance, infrastructure planning, social preference and market demand realities.
SOURCE
Australia entering a new era of uncertainty in the age of globalisation and information
Mike O'Connor is normally a cheerful writer -- but not below
THERE are times when you sense a sudden and fundamental shift in your world, a moment of realisation which flashes across the mind like summer lightning.
I felt it last week as I read BlueScope Steel was closing part of its steel-making operation and sacking 1000 workers and Qantas was cutting its international services and shedding staff.
In the same week, Foster's was attempting to fend off a hostile foreign takeover, made vulnerable by the remorseless slide in Australian-brewed beer sales and local car makers complained they faced a perilous future.
Ever-cynical, I sneered at the year 2000 celebrations marking the beginning of the new millennium. It was, after all, just the beginning of another year like every other, its passage prefixed by 20 instead of 19.
Eleven years on I realise that the Australia of that last decade of the 20th century, one which had evolved from the post-war world of the 1950s, has gone forever.
The links that tied us to that half century have been severed and the nation now moves into a sea of uncertainty that will test us, as did the military conflicts of the past century, the furnaces in which modern Australia was forged.
"We're bleeding" is the retailers' lament that echoes through the malls that ring our great cities, the theory being that due to the wild fluctuations of the share market and the threat of higher interest rates, shoppers are keeping their hands in their pockets.
Once calmness and sanity again prevail, the chatter of receipts being spat from credit card charge terminals will again bring a smile to the merchants' faces.
Maybe not. Perhaps, in a decade, the great malls will stand idle and their car parks empty, the all-powerful internet having wiped out an industry that began when man first swapped an animal skin for a haunch of meat.
With the malls will go the tens of thousands of jobs that for so long have been the refuge of the semi-skilled, the sales assistants we all love to hate, the bright-eyed kids in their first job and bespectacled matrons who remember when parcels were wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.
Tourism operators appeal to governments to spend more money promoting the wonders of Australia to the world, to lure back those travellers who once packed our beaches and restaurants.
When things settle down, they say, we'll be right. What we need now is a quirky marketing campaign or a video clip that "goes viral".
Maybe not. Maybe the tourists will never return in the numbers which we once enjoyed. The world has become a much larger place and Australia is no longer seen as that unique continent which everyone with the means should visit at least once in their lifetime.
Asia is cheaper, closer, more exotic, Europe more diverse, Africa more intriguing and South America more challenging.
Australia is a "nice" place, somewhere to go when you have retired and are looking for a sedate travel experience.
Nor will Australians fill the motel beds and surf clubs. The two-weeks-at-the-beach family holiday is fading faster than denim in the sun.
We will still flock to our broad, white sand beaches over summer weekends but the money, the real money, will be spent on low-cost Asian airlines ferrying us to Phuket and Bali.
And Qantas? The glory days of the flying kangaroo are gone. There are now seven international airlines rated as five-star Cathay Pacific (Hong Kong), Qatar (Middle East), Hainan (China), Asiana (South Korea), Malaysian (Malaysia), Singapore Airlines (Singapore) and Kingfisher (India).
Qantas? Four-star, along with carriers such as Garuda (Indonesia), Turkish Airlines and Air New Zealand.
If you drive to the beach it will be in a Volkswagen or a Hyundai, not a Commodore. The Commodore and the Falcon will be gone before 2020, the Federal Government having finally accepted that the nation could no longer afford to prop up a product nobody wanted.
We will, largely, stop making things, or at least make only those things that can't be bought more cheaply or more easily from China.
The "Made in Australia" brand will disappear from shelves to be remembered in the same way as my mother recalls Persil washing powder and Kooka gas stoves.
China will continue to grow, although perhaps not at its current frenetic pace, and anyone who believes the United States is likely to return to the prosperity of the 1990s any time soon is, I suspect, living a fantasy.
The cry of "All the way with LBJ" will echo faintly from the past century as the power of Asia and the sub-continent mushrooms and the US retreats behind its borders, never again to gallop over the hill, sabre drawn, as the world's policeman.
The game is changing and changing fast. I'm not saying the quality of life in this country will suffer but there is a fundamental shift occurring in the way the nation operates. This change will require resilience, innovation, intellectual excellence and the ability to adapt, qualities in which we abound. But it will also require leadership.
"Cometh the hour," it is said, "cometh the man." Worryingly, I see no sign yet that this man, or woman, has arrived.
SOURCE
Rogue union says $95 an hour not enough for workers
WORKERS on the regional rail link are set to earn $150,000 a year, but a union is heading to Fair Work Australia to fight for more pay.
Joint bidder AbiGroup and Thiess have agreed to pay Australian Workers' Union members up to $95.23 an hour for work on the $4.3 billion rail line, according to a copy of the agreement seen by the Herald Sun.
But the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union have so far been locked out of negotiations with builders short-listed to work on dedicated VLine tracks between Southern Cross station and Werribee.
The CFMEU, fined $560,000 in June for an illegal blockade, will head to Fair Work Australia on Friday to fight to be included in the project and seek a more lucrative deal.
The Herald Sun understands builders preferred to work with the AWU because it was more reasonable in its demands for pay and conditions.
CFMEU secretary Bill Oliver confirmed the union was taking the dispute to Fair Work Australia. It was taking both the AWU and the contractors to the tribunal.
The AWU has signed a similar agreement with Fulton Hogan and John Holland and was expected to sign another deal next week with the final short-listed bidder Leighton Baulderstone JV.
All three consortiums are bidding to build the link between Deer Park and West Werribee.
AWU secretary Cesar Melhem, who brokered the deals, said it was at the "top end" of civil construction pay rates in Victoria. "The money is good. I'm happy with that," he said. "The average wage will be around $150,000. People might think that's a lot of money, but we are talking about a 56-hour week."
Mr Melhem declined to comment on the CFMEU's bid at Fair Work Australia.
Corey Hannett, chief executive of the Regional Rail Link Authority, said the contract for the Deer Park to West Werribee section of the project would be awarded early next year.
SOURCE
Schools may need to take on underperforming students to ensure funding, report says
The usual Leftist push to reduce everybody to the lowest common denominator
HIGH-performing schools may be put under pressure to take on underperforming students as a condition of funding.
A report commissioned by the Australian Government Review of Funding for Schooling has made the suggestion, adding "we need to question the extent to which public funds should continue to subsidise those already well-resourced selective schools that are not providing 'value' add in terms of student performance".
The independent report - along with three others released by the panel yesterday - has been met with dismay by the private sector but praised by the Australian Education Union.
Comments released by the review panel yesterday state the reports "have made a case for fundamental change in the way we fund schooling at all levels of government".
School Education Minister Peter Garrett said the reports would help the review panel develop its final recommendations, but he distanced the Government from what was in them.
"They do not represent the views of the panel and are not indicative of the Government's intentions," he said.
One report, written by the Allen Consulting Group, recommends school outcome information, including NAPLAN and My School financial data, be used to help decide base funding for all schools.
"Loading" would be provided to schools identified as needing additional resources "to assist students with specific needs to achieve specified outcomes".
Another report, written by a consortium led by The Nous Group, said higher-performing schools should be encouraged to "take on more under-performing students and demonstrate their quality through student performance over and above what would have been expected from past performance. This may mean restructuring some or all of the public subsidies so that they are retrospective and 'reward-based"'.
AEU president Angelo Gavrielatos said the reports confirmed current funding contributed to a "deepening inequality in educational outcomes".
Independent Schools Queensland executive director David Robertson said the review had failed to provide any analysis of its own, leaving private schools still nervous that their funding could be cut in real terms and that top-performing schools might suffer under the new funding model.
SOURCE
The fact that people choose free-standing houses just arouses Greenie contempt. They want us all back in tenements
Recently, self-appointed planning "experts" have criticised the performance of planning systems that have shaped suburbs and cities, denigrating governments that delivered the homes of millions of Australians.
The critics say such communities and suburban development are unsustainable and have called for government, in the name of sustainability, to choose high-density development over greenfield development, often labelled "sprawl". To them, density is good and suburban development is bad.
But the simple fact is we need to meet dwelling demand, achieve housing affordability and provide much-needed community services and infrastructure.
Across the country, notwithstanding the growing trend to inner-city living and more infill development, demand continues to be for detached houses in greenfield locations, and the strongest population growth continues to be in outer suburbs.
Bear in mind those suburbs will become tomorrow's middle or inner-ring suburbs of emerging cities - Logan, Ipswich and the new cities of Ripley, Yarrabilba and Caloundra South.
While dwellings produced through options such as infill and redevelopment do meet a need for housing in particular urban locations, such consolidation will not, in reality, preclude the need for continuing greenfield development to meet the overwhelming bulk of dwelling demand. Detached housing, typical of greenfield developments, remains the preferred housing type across households and age demographics.
Infill development is popular for many because of reduced travel times and better access to public transport and employment.
However, in southeast Queensland, many master-planned communities, particularly on Brisbane's northern and western outskirts and on the Gold Coast, are also achieving high employment generation targets.
Elsewhere, there are other examples of employment self-sufficiency in outer-urban master-planned developments.
This strategy overcomes the primary complaint of heavy vehicle usage and travel times.
Well-planned suburban and master-planned communities are also designed to be rich in social capital, with high levels of engagement by residents in their local community and with significant participation in local sporting, cultural and social activities and events, often using local parks and recreational facilities.
Typically, in suburban locations there is a net density of eight dwellings per hectare.
Recently, many major developers have achieved between 11 and 13 dwellings per hectare on a net basis in master-planned communities such as Forest Lake, Springfield and North Lakes.
Densities in these locations can only increase incrementally over time, with smaller lots becoming increasingly popular due to affordability.
The next generation of major greenfield development is looking to achieve a net density of at least 15 dwellings per hectare, with a diversity of housing products to meet a wide range of target markets, including more affordable housing options. These would represent twice the density of previous years.
As such, there is a compelling argument that it is sound planning to build communities to these incrementally higher densities at the urban fringe, as well as commit to redevelopment and urban renewal. This is because of two primary factors.
First, upgrading and augmentation of infrastructure in existing areas can be expensive and disruptive and is not an acceptable stand alone solution. Major road works and sewerage and storm water upgrades on busy suburban roads are the bane of economic efficiency and sustainability as they become "crawling car parks".
Second, the creation of cities in growth areas not only provides new sustainable communities, it also creates urban hubs for existing fringe suburbs, adding to life quality.
The answer then is to be inclusive, not exclusive. To provide adequate supplies of both greenfield and infill development under a realistic planning framework based on sustainability performance, infrastructure planning, social preference and market demand realities.
SOURCE
Australia entering a new era of uncertainty in the age of globalisation and information
Mike O'Connor is normally a cheerful writer -- but not below
THERE are times when you sense a sudden and fundamental shift in your world, a moment of realisation which flashes across the mind like summer lightning.
I felt it last week as I read BlueScope Steel was closing part of its steel-making operation and sacking 1000 workers and Qantas was cutting its international services and shedding staff.
In the same week, Foster's was attempting to fend off a hostile foreign takeover, made vulnerable by the remorseless slide in Australian-brewed beer sales and local car makers complained they faced a perilous future.
Ever-cynical, I sneered at the year 2000 celebrations marking the beginning of the new millennium. It was, after all, just the beginning of another year like every other, its passage prefixed by 20 instead of 19.
Eleven years on I realise that the Australia of that last decade of the 20th century, one which had evolved from the post-war world of the 1950s, has gone forever.
The links that tied us to that half century have been severed and the nation now moves into a sea of uncertainty that will test us, as did the military conflicts of the past century, the furnaces in which modern Australia was forged.
"We're bleeding" is the retailers' lament that echoes through the malls that ring our great cities, the theory being that due to the wild fluctuations of the share market and the threat of higher interest rates, shoppers are keeping their hands in their pockets.
Once calmness and sanity again prevail, the chatter of receipts being spat from credit card charge terminals will again bring a smile to the merchants' faces.
Maybe not. Perhaps, in a decade, the great malls will stand idle and their car parks empty, the all-powerful internet having wiped out an industry that began when man first swapped an animal skin for a haunch of meat.
With the malls will go the tens of thousands of jobs that for so long have been the refuge of the semi-skilled, the sales assistants we all love to hate, the bright-eyed kids in their first job and bespectacled matrons who remember when parcels were wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.
Tourism operators appeal to governments to spend more money promoting the wonders of Australia to the world, to lure back those travellers who once packed our beaches and restaurants.
When things settle down, they say, we'll be right. What we need now is a quirky marketing campaign or a video clip that "goes viral".
Maybe not. Maybe the tourists will never return in the numbers which we once enjoyed. The world has become a much larger place and Australia is no longer seen as that unique continent which everyone with the means should visit at least once in their lifetime.
Asia is cheaper, closer, more exotic, Europe more diverse, Africa more intriguing and South America more challenging.
Australia is a "nice" place, somewhere to go when you have retired and are looking for a sedate travel experience.
Nor will Australians fill the motel beds and surf clubs. The two-weeks-at-the-beach family holiday is fading faster than denim in the sun.
We will still flock to our broad, white sand beaches over summer weekends but the money, the real money, will be spent on low-cost Asian airlines ferrying us to Phuket and Bali.
And Qantas? The glory days of the flying kangaroo are gone. There are now seven international airlines rated as five-star Cathay Pacific (Hong Kong), Qatar (Middle East), Hainan (China), Asiana (South Korea), Malaysian (Malaysia), Singapore Airlines (Singapore) and Kingfisher (India).
Qantas? Four-star, along with carriers such as Garuda (Indonesia), Turkish Airlines and Air New Zealand.
If you drive to the beach it will be in a Volkswagen or a Hyundai, not a Commodore. The Commodore and the Falcon will be gone before 2020, the Federal Government having finally accepted that the nation could no longer afford to prop up a product nobody wanted.
We will, largely, stop making things, or at least make only those things that can't be bought more cheaply or more easily from China.
The "Made in Australia" brand will disappear from shelves to be remembered in the same way as my mother recalls Persil washing powder and Kooka gas stoves.
China will continue to grow, although perhaps not at its current frenetic pace, and anyone who believes the United States is likely to return to the prosperity of the 1990s any time soon is, I suspect, living a fantasy.
The cry of "All the way with LBJ" will echo faintly from the past century as the power of Asia and the sub-continent mushrooms and the US retreats behind its borders, never again to gallop over the hill, sabre drawn, as the world's policeman.
The game is changing and changing fast. I'm not saying the quality of life in this country will suffer but there is a fundamental shift occurring in the way the nation operates. This change will require resilience, innovation, intellectual excellence and the ability to adapt, qualities in which we abound. But it will also require leadership.
"Cometh the hour," it is said, "cometh the man." Worryingly, I see no sign yet that this man, or woman, has arrived.
SOURCE
Rogue union says $95 an hour not enough for workers
WORKERS on the regional rail link are set to earn $150,000 a year, but a union is heading to Fair Work Australia to fight for more pay.
Joint bidder AbiGroup and Thiess have agreed to pay Australian Workers' Union members up to $95.23 an hour for work on the $4.3 billion rail line, according to a copy of the agreement seen by the Herald Sun.
But the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union have so far been locked out of negotiations with builders short-listed to work on dedicated VLine tracks between Southern Cross station and Werribee.
The CFMEU, fined $560,000 in June for an illegal blockade, will head to Fair Work Australia on Friday to fight to be included in the project and seek a more lucrative deal.
The Herald Sun understands builders preferred to work with the AWU because it was more reasonable in its demands for pay and conditions.
CFMEU secretary Bill Oliver confirmed the union was taking the dispute to Fair Work Australia. It was taking both the AWU and the contractors to the tribunal.
The AWU has signed a similar agreement with Fulton Hogan and John Holland and was expected to sign another deal next week with the final short-listed bidder Leighton Baulderstone JV.
All three consortiums are bidding to build the link between Deer Park and West Werribee.
AWU secretary Cesar Melhem, who brokered the deals, said it was at the "top end" of civil construction pay rates in Victoria. "The money is good. I'm happy with that," he said. "The average wage will be around $150,000. People might think that's a lot of money, but we are talking about a 56-hour week."
Mr Melhem declined to comment on the CFMEU's bid at Fair Work Australia.
Corey Hannett, chief executive of the Regional Rail Link Authority, said the contract for the Deer Park to West Werribee section of the project would be awarded early next year.
SOURCE
Schools may need to take on underperforming students to ensure funding, report says
The usual Leftist push to reduce everybody to the lowest common denominator
HIGH-performing schools may be put under pressure to take on underperforming students as a condition of funding.
A report commissioned by the Australian Government Review of Funding for Schooling has made the suggestion, adding "we need to question the extent to which public funds should continue to subsidise those already well-resourced selective schools that are not providing 'value' add in terms of student performance".
The independent report - along with three others released by the panel yesterday - has been met with dismay by the private sector but praised by the Australian Education Union.
Comments released by the review panel yesterday state the reports "have made a case for fundamental change in the way we fund schooling at all levels of government".
School Education Minister Peter Garrett said the reports would help the review panel develop its final recommendations, but he distanced the Government from what was in them.
"They do not represent the views of the panel and are not indicative of the Government's intentions," he said.
One report, written by the Allen Consulting Group, recommends school outcome information, including NAPLAN and My School financial data, be used to help decide base funding for all schools.
"Loading" would be provided to schools identified as needing additional resources "to assist students with specific needs to achieve specified outcomes".
Another report, written by a consortium led by The Nous Group, said higher-performing schools should be encouraged to "take on more under-performing students and demonstrate their quality through student performance over and above what would have been expected from past performance. This may mean restructuring some or all of the public subsidies so that they are retrospective and 'reward-based"'.
AEU president Angelo Gavrielatos said the reports confirmed current funding contributed to a "deepening inequality in educational outcomes".
Independent Schools Queensland executive director David Robertson said the review had failed to provide any analysis of its own, leaving private schools still nervous that their funding could be cut in real terms and that top-performing schools might suffer under the new funding model.
SOURCE
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
High Court rules Malaysian swap deal unlawful
THE Federal Government's Malaysian people swap deal has been ruled unlawful by the High Court. Chief Justice Robert French said the court ordered Immigration Minister Chris Bowen and his Department be restrained from sending asylum seekers to Malaysia. "The declaration made ... was made without power and is invalid," Justice French said.
The Government had wanted to send 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia in exchange for 4000 already processed refugees. The decision effectively stymies the Government's so-called Malaysia Solution.
A 5-2 majority of the Full Bench ruled Mr Bowen's declaration that Malaysia was an appropriate country to which to send asylum seekers was invalid. The court found that a country must be bound by international or domestic law to provide protection for asylum seekers to be an appropriate destination.
"The court also held that the Minister has no other power under the Migration Act to remove from Australia asylum seekers whose claims for protection have not been determined," a summary of the court's judgment read.
Australian National University international law expert Donald Rothwell said the fact that Malaysia was not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention was likely "a key factor" in the court's decision. Professor Rothwell said the decision could not be appealed but that the Government may seek other ways to revive the policy.
Refugee lawyers also argued that sending unaccompanied minors to Malaysia would breach the minister's duty of care as their legal guardian to act in their best interests.
But Commonwealth Solicitor-General Stephen Gageler had argued the Government could lawfully declare Malaysia a safe third country even though it had no domestic or international legal obligations to protect asylum seekers.
SOURCE
Surge in visa success rates 'luring' boatpeople to Australia
SUCCESS rates for refugee claims have leapt from 30 to 70 per cent in just six months, sparking accusations the government is encouraging boatpeople by virtually guaranteeing them visas.
Senior Immigration Department officials conceded at a recent parliamentary committee hearing that the success rate for asylum claims now stood at 70 per cent, not far below its record high of more than 90 per cent.
With the High Court to hand down its ruling on the Malaysia Solution tomorrow, the figures prompted agencies to warn the Department of Immigration's high success rate was acting as an incentive to asylum-seekers to get on a boat.
Senior department official Garry Fleming told a parliamentary committee earlier this month the primary acceptance rate for asylum-seekers who arrive by boat stood at 70 per cent.
Mr Fleming said the speed at which refugee claims were being processed meant that "a good articulation" of people's refugee claims was not being heard at their initial assessment, resulting in a high rate of overturn at review. "That is now seeing primary recognition rates in the order of about 70 per cent," Mr Fleming told the committee.
The figure does not take into account unsuccessful asylum claims that are overturned on review, suggesting the final success rate could be considerably higher.
The rate at which refugee claims for boatpeople are upheld is seen as a key element in the factors driving refugee movements.
Early last year the Rudd government was warned its refugee success rate was "out of whack" with other countries and was acting as a "major pull factor". The warning was contained in confidential advice sent to government prior to the decision to freeze Afghan asylum claims for six months and Sri Lankan claims for three months. At the time the advice was sent the refugee success rate was more than 90 per cent.
According to department statistics the primary success rate was just 27 per cent for the first six months of 2010-11, meaning it has soared more than 40 per cent since the beginning of the year.
Refugee Council chief executive Paul Power said "clearly there have been issues in the quality of the decision-making". "That's the only conclusion one can reasonably draw," Mr Power said yesterday. "The fluctuations of people from the same countries and in similar circumstance being rejected is baffling to anyone outside the department."
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said he found the department's explanation for the wildly fluctuating success rate "unconvincing". "Clearly if your recognition rates are higher than the rest of the world (asylum-seekers) are more likely to say yes to a people-smuggler and get on a boat," Mr Morrison said. "With primary acceptance rates going from the high 90s to the 20s then back up to 70 per cent, it reveals a process that is all over the place."
A spokesman for Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said refugee decisions were made on a "case-by-case" basis. "As we have said before, driving forces will vary from time to time and numbers will rise and fall in different parts of the world at different times," the spokesman said.
SOURCE
Tony Abbott signals a return to individual work agreements under revamped IR policy
TONY Abbott has given his strongest signal yet that the Coalition is considering a form of individual bargaining under a reworked industrial relations policy.
The Opposition Leader today called for “more freedom” in Australian workplaces, and mounted a case for non-union agreement-making between workers and their employers.
“I think we ought to be able to trust businesses and the workers of Australia to come to arrangements that suit themselves,” he told 3AW's Neil Mitchell.
Mr Abbott, who declared Work Choices “dead and buried” at the last election, said greater workplace flexibility was required to address the productivity slump that was dragging the economy down.
His comments follow those of former prime minister John Howard, who last night lashed the Gillard government's tightening of workplace rules. “It's blindingly obvious that one of the worst mistakes Julia Gillard has made is to re-regulate the labour market,” Mr Howard told ABC TV. “It is affecting our productivity and it will therefore affect our competitiveness.”
Mr Abbott said Mr Howard was “essentially right”, but he baulked at pre-empting the Coalition's election policy, and said he wasn't signalling a return to Work Choices. “We've got a lot of problems and I want to be a pragmatic problem solver,” he said.
Statutory individual contracts, known as Australian Workplace Agreements, were the centrepiece of Work Choices, with Mr Howard previously admitting he went too far by axing the no-disadvantage test that ensured workers could not be left worse off under the agreements.
Labor's industrial relations regime only allows individual agreements, in the form of common law contracts, for workers on higher incomes.
Liberal frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull today said the Coalition should wait for the government's Fair Work laws to fail before unveiling its industrial relations policies. “There's some merit in holding fire for a little while longer,” Mr Turnbull said.
He said the opposition had argued from the outset that the Fair Work changes would make Australian industries less productive and increase costs for business. “I believe our warnings have been borne out by experience. Others may not be so convinced,” he said.
Mr Turnbull said the opposition would be in a much better position to frame arguments about the need to reintroduce a measure of flexibility to workplace laws closer to the election.
A review into Labor's Fair Work Act will begin early next year amid criticisms of the laws from Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens and the Productivity Commission.
SOURCE
Fair Work clauses 'too risky' for small business
SMALL businesses are too afraid to take advantage of confusing "flexible" contracts, a peak body said.
The Individual Flexibility Arrangements were introduced as part of the Fair Work Act – which replaced the controversial WorkChoices legislation. They allow employees to negotiate changes in their base pay rate to alter work conditions.
Workplace Relations Minister Chris Evans said small businesses were not taking advantage of these clauses which encourage productivity. “I’d suggest we look at how we can take advantage of the provisions that are in the Fair Work act, many of which have not been used properly yet,” he told ABC Radio yesterday.
But Council of Small Business Australia workplace relations Grace Collier said there was a lack of information available to employers about flexibility clauses and award wage requirements. “It’s impossible to find out beyond any doubt what the rules are,” she said.
“A small business cannot ring up the Government and find out exactly what award they should be paying their staff on. The Government will give you an indication but it’s nothing more than an indication, it’s not legally binding.”
Ms Collier said it was “impossible” for an employer to check that they were meeting award wage requirements. “There’s no lodgement or checking service by the Government on these [Individual Flexibility Agreements],” she said. “It’s quite confusing and if you get it wrong not one checks it and tells you it’s fine. You might be prosecuted six years later because you ripped the employee off unknowingly.”
A spokesman for the Fair Work Ombudsman said that employers don’t need to be afraid to use flexible work arrangements. “If advice was provided by the Fair Work Infoline to an employer, and it acted in good faith on that advice and subsequently we found ourselves in the circumstance of auditing or investigating the workplace, then obviously we would take that into account,” he said. “If, however, we were to find that information supplied to us at the time was wrong, then clearly our obligation would be to point that out and expect the matter in question to be rectified.”
He also encouraged small business to speak to industry associations and employer organisations for specific advice.
There is no requirement for employers or employees to lodge IFAs with the Fair Work Ombudsman, but a Best Practice Guide on creating and using IFAs is available under the resources tab on the Fair Work Ombudsman’s website at www.fairwork.gov.au.
SOURCE
New weapon in cane toad fight
SCIENTISTS may have uncovered the 'silver bullet' in the battle against WA's cane toad invasion.
Researchers from the University of Sydney have found that cane toads release a chemical which stunts the growth of competing tadpoles and reduces their chance of survival. Older tadpoles release their poison on new cane toad egg clutches to better their own chance of survival.
Cane toad expert Professor Richard Shine from the University of Sydney said the species ‘speak’ to each other using pheromones which don't appear to affect native animals and this newly discovered toxin could be exploited and used as the latest weapon in the fight to stop the invasion.
“If you wanted to control an invading species the ideal silver bullet might be some major chemical that affects that species but doesn’t have any affect on any others,” Prof Shine said. “It turns out cane toads have spent the last several million years designing such a chemical themselves because competition is such a big deal between cane toads.”
The invaders, which kill native species, are 30km west of Kununurra and moving south after leaving a trail of destruction across Queensland and the Top End.
Prof Shine made the discovery while studying waterborne chemical cues used by tadpoles from the Northern Territory. His team found that tadpoles exposed to the chemical for even a short period of time grew to only half the size of their unexposed counterparts.
"We don't know where they are producing the chemical from, they do have some specialised cells in their skin that produce chemicals... the chemical responsible may be one that we have already been looking at and identified from earlier work we have been doing," Prof Shine said.
Native to Central and South America, cane toads were introduced to Queensland in 1935 to control beetles. While the species was largely unsuccessful at reducing cane beetles, the animals thrived in Australia, evolving into bigger, stronger creatures and wiping out native species as they spread across the country.
Prof Shine said the next step is to work out how the toads make their poison and if it affects native species.
SOURCE
THE Federal Government's Malaysian people swap deal has been ruled unlawful by the High Court. Chief Justice Robert French said the court ordered Immigration Minister Chris Bowen and his Department be restrained from sending asylum seekers to Malaysia. "The declaration made ... was made without power and is invalid," Justice French said.
The Government had wanted to send 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia in exchange for 4000 already processed refugees. The decision effectively stymies the Government's so-called Malaysia Solution.
A 5-2 majority of the Full Bench ruled Mr Bowen's declaration that Malaysia was an appropriate country to which to send asylum seekers was invalid. The court found that a country must be bound by international or domestic law to provide protection for asylum seekers to be an appropriate destination.
"The court also held that the Minister has no other power under the Migration Act to remove from Australia asylum seekers whose claims for protection have not been determined," a summary of the court's judgment read.
Australian National University international law expert Donald Rothwell said the fact that Malaysia was not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention was likely "a key factor" in the court's decision. Professor Rothwell said the decision could not be appealed but that the Government may seek other ways to revive the policy.
Refugee lawyers also argued that sending unaccompanied minors to Malaysia would breach the minister's duty of care as their legal guardian to act in their best interests.
But Commonwealth Solicitor-General Stephen Gageler had argued the Government could lawfully declare Malaysia a safe third country even though it had no domestic or international legal obligations to protect asylum seekers.
SOURCE
Surge in visa success rates 'luring' boatpeople to Australia
SUCCESS rates for refugee claims have leapt from 30 to 70 per cent in just six months, sparking accusations the government is encouraging boatpeople by virtually guaranteeing them visas.
Senior Immigration Department officials conceded at a recent parliamentary committee hearing that the success rate for asylum claims now stood at 70 per cent, not far below its record high of more than 90 per cent.
With the High Court to hand down its ruling on the Malaysia Solution tomorrow, the figures prompted agencies to warn the Department of Immigration's high success rate was acting as an incentive to asylum-seekers to get on a boat.
Senior department official Garry Fleming told a parliamentary committee earlier this month the primary acceptance rate for asylum-seekers who arrive by boat stood at 70 per cent.
Mr Fleming said the speed at which refugee claims were being processed meant that "a good articulation" of people's refugee claims was not being heard at their initial assessment, resulting in a high rate of overturn at review. "That is now seeing primary recognition rates in the order of about 70 per cent," Mr Fleming told the committee.
The figure does not take into account unsuccessful asylum claims that are overturned on review, suggesting the final success rate could be considerably higher.
The rate at which refugee claims for boatpeople are upheld is seen as a key element in the factors driving refugee movements.
Early last year the Rudd government was warned its refugee success rate was "out of whack" with other countries and was acting as a "major pull factor". The warning was contained in confidential advice sent to government prior to the decision to freeze Afghan asylum claims for six months and Sri Lankan claims for three months. At the time the advice was sent the refugee success rate was more than 90 per cent.
According to department statistics the primary success rate was just 27 per cent for the first six months of 2010-11, meaning it has soared more than 40 per cent since the beginning of the year.
Refugee Council chief executive Paul Power said "clearly there have been issues in the quality of the decision-making". "That's the only conclusion one can reasonably draw," Mr Power said yesterday. "The fluctuations of people from the same countries and in similar circumstance being rejected is baffling to anyone outside the department."
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said he found the department's explanation for the wildly fluctuating success rate "unconvincing". "Clearly if your recognition rates are higher than the rest of the world (asylum-seekers) are more likely to say yes to a people-smuggler and get on a boat," Mr Morrison said. "With primary acceptance rates going from the high 90s to the 20s then back up to 70 per cent, it reveals a process that is all over the place."
A spokesman for Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said refugee decisions were made on a "case-by-case" basis. "As we have said before, driving forces will vary from time to time and numbers will rise and fall in different parts of the world at different times," the spokesman said.
SOURCE
Tony Abbott signals a return to individual work agreements under revamped IR policy
TONY Abbott has given his strongest signal yet that the Coalition is considering a form of individual bargaining under a reworked industrial relations policy.
The Opposition Leader today called for “more freedom” in Australian workplaces, and mounted a case for non-union agreement-making between workers and their employers.
“I think we ought to be able to trust businesses and the workers of Australia to come to arrangements that suit themselves,” he told 3AW's Neil Mitchell.
Mr Abbott, who declared Work Choices “dead and buried” at the last election, said greater workplace flexibility was required to address the productivity slump that was dragging the economy down.
His comments follow those of former prime minister John Howard, who last night lashed the Gillard government's tightening of workplace rules. “It's blindingly obvious that one of the worst mistakes Julia Gillard has made is to re-regulate the labour market,” Mr Howard told ABC TV. “It is affecting our productivity and it will therefore affect our competitiveness.”
Mr Abbott said Mr Howard was “essentially right”, but he baulked at pre-empting the Coalition's election policy, and said he wasn't signalling a return to Work Choices. “We've got a lot of problems and I want to be a pragmatic problem solver,” he said.
Statutory individual contracts, known as Australian Workplace Agreements, were the centrepiece of Work Choices, with Mr Howard previously admitting he went too far by axing the no-disadvantage test that ensured workers could not be left worse off under the agreements.
Labor's industrial relations regime only allows individual agreements, in the form of common law contracts, for workers on higher incomes.
Liberal frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull today said the Coalition should wait for the government's Fair Work laws to fail before unveiling its industrial relations policies. “There's some merit in holding fire for a little while longer,” Mr Turnbull said.
He said the opposition had argued from the outset that the Fair Work changes would make Australian industries less productive and increase costs for business. “I believe our warnings have been borne out by experience. Others may not be so convinced,” he said.
Mr Turnbull said the opposition would be in a much better position to frame arguments about the need to reintroduce a measure of flexibility to workplace laws closer to the election.
A review into Labor's Fair Work Act will begin early next year amid criticisms of the laws from Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens and the Productivity Commission.
SOURCE
Fair Work clauses 'too risky' for small business
SMALL businesses are too afraid to take advantage of confusing "flexible" contracts, a peak body said.
The Individual Flexibility Arrangements were introduced as part of the Fair Work Act – which replaced the controversial WorkChoices legislation. They allow employees to negotiate changes in their base pay rate to alter work conditions.
Workplace Relations Minister Chris Evans said small businesses were not taking advantage of these clauses which encourage productivity. “I’d suggest we look at how we can take advantage of the provisions that are in the Fair Work act, many of which have not been used properly yet,” he told ABC Radio yesterday.
But Council of Small Business Australia workplace relations Grace Collier said there was a lack of information available to employers about flexibility clauses and award wage requirements. “It’s impossible to find out beyond any doubt what the rules are,” she said.
“A small business cannot ring up the Government and find out exactly what award they should be paying their staff on. The Government will give you an indication but it’s nothing more than an indication, it’s not legally binding.”
Ms Collier said it was “impossible” for an employer to check that they were meeting award wage requirements. “There’s no lodgement or checking service by the Government on these [Individual Flexibility Agreements],” she said. “It’s quite confusing and if you get it wrong not one checks it and tells you it’s fine. You might be prosecuted six years later because you ripped the employee off unknowingly.”
A spokesman for the Fair Work Ombudsman said that employers don’t need to be afraid to use flexible work arrangements. “If advice was provided by the Fair Work Infoline to an employer, and it acted in good faith on that advice and subsequently we found ourselves in the circumstance of auditing or investigating the workplace, then obviously we would take that into account,” he said. “If, however, we were to find that information supplied to us at the time was wrong, then clearly our obligation would be to point that out and expect the matter in question to be rectified.”
He also encouraged small business to speak to industry associations and employer organisations for specific advice.
There is no requirement for employers or employees to lodge IFAs with the Fair Work Ombudsman, but a Best Practice Guide on creating and using IFAs is available under the resources tab on the Fair Work Ombudsman’s website at www.fairwork.gov.au.
SOURCE
New weapon in cane toad fight
SCIENTISTS may have uncovered the 'silver bullet' in the battle against WA's cane toad invasion.
Researchers from the University of Sydney have found that cane toads release a chemical which stunts the growth of competing tadpoles and reduces their chance of survival. Older tadpoles release their poison on new cane toad egg clutches to better their own chance of survival.
Cane toad expert Professor Richard Shine from the University of Sydney said the species ‘speak’ to each other using pheromones which don't appear to affect native animals and this newly discovered toxin could be exploited and used as the latest weapon in the fight to stop the invasion.
“If you wanted to control an invading species the ideal silver bullet might be some major chemical that affects that species but doesn’t have any affect on any others,” Prof Shine said. “It turns out cane toads have spent the last several million years designing such a chemical themselves because competition is such a big deal between cane toads.”
The invaders, which kill native species, are 30km west of Kununurra and moving south after leaving a trail of destruction across Queensland and the Top End.
Prof Shine made the discovery while studying waterborne chemical cues used by tadpoles from the Northern Territory. His team found that tadpoles exposed to the chemical for even a short period of time grew to only half the size of their unexposed counterparts.
"We don't know where they are producing the chemical from, they do have some specialised cells in their skin that produce chemicals... the chemical responsible may be one that we have already been looking at and identified from earlier work we have been doing," Prof Shine said.
Native to Central and South America, cane toads were introduced to Queensland in 1935 to control beetles. While the species was largely unsuccessful at reducing cane beetles, the animals thrived in Australia, evolving into bigger, stronger creatures and wiping out native species as they spread across the country.
Prof Shine said the next step is to work out how the toads make their poison and if it affects native species.
SOURCE
High Court rules Malaysian swap deal unlawful
THE Federal Government's Malaysian people swap deal has been ruled unlawful by the High Court. Chief Justice Robert French said the court ordered Immigration Minister Chris Bowen and his Department be restrained from sending asylum seekers to Malaysia. "The declaration made ... was made without power and is invalid," Justice French said.
The Government had wanted to send 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia in exchange for 4000 already processed refugees. The decision effectively stymies the Government's so-called Malaysia Solution.
A 5-2 majority of the Full Bench ruled Mr Bowen's declaration that Malaysia was an appropriate country to which to send asylum seekers was invalid. The court found that a country must be bound by international or domestic law to provide protection for asylum seekers to be an appropriate destination.
"The court also held that the Minister has no other power under the Migration Act to remove from Australia asylum seekers whose claims for protection have not been determined," a summary of the court's judgment read.
Australian National University international law expert Donald Rothwell said the fact that Malaysia was not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention was likely "a key factor" in the court's decision. Professor Rothwell said the decision could not be appealed but that the Government may seek other ways to revive the policy.
Refugee lawyers also argued that sending unaccompanied minors to Malaysia would breach the minister's duty of care as their legal guardian to act in their best interests.
But Commonwealth Solicitor-General Stephen Gageler had argued the Government could lawfully declare Malaysia a safe third country even though it had no domestic or international legal obligations to protect asylum seekers.
SOURCE
Surge in visa success rates 'luring' boatpeople to Australia
SUCCESS rates for refugee claims have leapt from 30 to 70 per cent in just six months, sparking accusations the government is encouraging boatpeople by virtually guaranteeing them visas.
Senior Immigration Department officials conceded at a recent parliamentary committee hearing that the success rate for asylum claims now stood at 70 per cent, not far below its record high of more than 90 per cent.
With the High Court to hand down its ruling on the Malaysia Solution tomorrow, the figures prompted agencies to warn the Department of Immigration's high success rate was acting as an incentive to asylum-seekers to get on a boat.
Senior department official Garry Fleming told a parliamentary committee earlier this month the primary acceptance rate for asylum-seekers who arrive by boat stood at 70 per cent.
Mr Fleming said the speed at which refugee claims were being processed meant that "a good articulation" of people's refugee claims was not being heard at their initial assessment, resulting in a high rate of overturn at review. "That is now seeing primary recognition rates in the order of about 70 per cent," Mr Fleming told the committee.
The figure does not take into account unsuccessful asylum claims that are overturned on review, suggesting the final success rate could be considerably higher.
The rate at which refugee claims for boatpeople are upheld is seen as a key element in the factors driving refugee movements.
Early last year the Rudd government was warned its refugee success rate was "out of whack" with other countries and was acting as a "major pull factor". The warning was contained in confidential advice sent to government prior to the decision to freeze Afghan asylum claims for six months and Sri Lankan claims for three months. At the time the advice was sent the refugee success rate was more than 90 per cent.
According to department statistics the primary success rate was just 27 per cent for the first six months of 2010-11, meaning it has soared more than 40 per cent since the beginning of the year.
Refugee Council chief executive Paul Power said "clearly there have been issues in the quality of the decision-making". "That's the only conclusion one can reasonably draw," Mr Power said yesterday. "The fluctuations of people from the same countries and in similar circumstance being rejected is baffling to anyone outside the department."
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said he found the department's explanation for the wildly fluctuating success rate "unconvincing". "Clearly if your recognition rates are higher than the rest of the world (asylum-seekers) are more likely to say yes to a people-smuggler and get on a boat," Mr Morrison said. "With primary acceptance rates going from the high 90s to the 20s then back up to 70 per cent, it reveals a process that is all over the place."
A spokesman for Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said refugee decisions were made on a "case-by-case" basis. "As we have said before, driving forces will vary from time to time and numbers will rise and fall in different parts of the world at different times," the spokesman said.
SOURCE
Tony Abbott signals a return to individual work agreements under revamped IR policy
TONY Abbott has given his strongest signal yet that the Coalition is considering a form of individual bargaining under a reworked industrial relations policy.
The Opposition Leader today called for “more freedom” in Australian workplaces, and mounted a case for non-union agreement-making between workers and their employers.
“I think we ought to be able to trust businesses and the workers of Australia to come to arrangements that suit themselves,” he told 3AW's Neil Mitchell.
Mr Abbott, who declared Work Choices “dead and buried” at the last election, said greater workplace flexibility was required to address the productivity slump that was dragging the economy down.
His comments follow those of former prime minister John Howard, who last night lashed the Gillard government's tightening of workplace rules. “It's blindingly obvious that one of the worst mistakes Julia Gillard has made is to re-regulate the labour market,” Mr Howard told ABC TV. “It is affecting our productivity and it will therefore affect our competitiveness.”
Mr Abbott said Mr Howard was “essentially right”, but he baulked at pre-empting the Coalition's election policy, and said he wasn't signalling a return to Work Choices. “We've got a lot of problems and I want to be a pragmatic problem solver,” he said.
Statutory individual contracts, known as Australian Workplace Agreements, were the centrepiece of Work Choices, with Mr Howard previously admitting he went too far by axing the no-disadvantage test that ensured workers could not be left worse off under the agreements.
Labor's industrial relations regime only allows individual agreements, in the form of common law contracts, for workers on higher incomes.
Liberal frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull today said the Coalition should wait for the government's Fair Work laws to fail before unveiling its industrial relations policies. “There's some merit in holding fire for a little while longer,” Mr Turnbull said.
He said the opposition had argued from the outset that the Fair Work changes would make Australian industries less productive and increase costs for business. “I believe our warnings have been borne out by experience. Others may not be so convinced,” he said.
Mr Turnbull said the opposition would be in a much better position to frame arguments about the need to reintroduce a measure of flexibility to workplace laws closer to the election.
A review into Labor's Fair Work Act will begin early next year amid criticisms of the laws from Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens and the Productivity Commission.
SOURCE
Fair Work clauses 'too risky' for small business
SMALL businesses are too afraid to take advantage of confusing "flexible" contracts, a peak body said.
The Individual Flexibility Arrangements were introduced as part of the Fair Work Act – which replaced the controversial WorkChoices legislation. They allow employees to negotiate changes in their base pay rate to alter work conditions.
Workplace Relations Minister Chris Evans said small businesses were not taking advantage of these clauses which encourage productivity. “I’d suggest we look at how we can take advantage of the provisions that are in the Fair Work act, many of which have not been used properly yet,” he told ABC Radio yesterday.
But Council of Small Business Australia workplace relations Grace Collier said there was a lack of information available to employers about flexibility clauses and award wage requirements. “It’s impossible to find out beyond any doubt what the rules are,” she said.
“A small business cannot ring up the Government and find out exactly what award they should be paying their staff on. The Government will give you an indication but it’s nothing more than an indication, it’s not legally binding.”
Ms Collier said it was “impossible” for an employer to check that they were meeting award wage requirements. “There’s no lodgement or checking service by the Government on these [Individual Flexibility Agreements],” she said. “It’s quite confusing and if you get it wrong not one checks it and tells you it’s fine. You might be prosecuted six years later because you ripped the employee off unknowingly.”
A spokesman for the Fair Work Ombudsman said that employers don’t need to be afraid to use flexible work arrangements. “If advice was provided by the Fair Work Infoline to an employer, and it acted in good faith on that advice and subsequently we found ourselves in the circumstance of auditing or investigating the workplace, then obviously we would take that into account,” he said. “If, however, we were to find that information supplied to us at the time was wrong, then clearly our obligation would be to point that out and expect the matter in question to be rectified.”
He also encouraged small business to speak to industry associations and employer organisations for specific advice.
There is no requirement for employers or employees to lodge IFAs with the Fair Work Ombudsman, but a Best Practice Guide on creating and using IFAs is available under the resources tab on the Fair Work Ombudsman’s website at www.fairwork.gov.au.
SOURCE
New weapon in cane toad fight
SCIENTISTS may have uncovered the 'silver bullet' in the battle against WA's cane toad invasion.
Researchers from the University of Sydney have found that cane toads release a chemical which stunts the growth of competing tadpoles and reduces their chance of survival. Older tadpoles release their poison on new cane toad egg clutches to better their own chance of survival.
Cane toad expert Professor Richard Shine from the University of Sydney said the species ‘speak’ to each other using pheromones which don't appear to affect native animals and this newly discovered toxin could be exploited and used as the latest weapon in the fight to stop the invasion.
“If you wanted to control an invading species the ideal silver bullet might be some major chemical that affects that species but doesn’t have any affect on any others,” Prof Shine said. “It turns out cane toads have spent the last several million years designing such a chemical themselves because competition is such a big deal between cane toads.”
The invaders, which kill native species, are 30km west of Kununurra and moving south after leaving a trail of destruction across Queensland and the Top End.
Prof Shine made the discovery while studying waterborne chemical cues used by tadpoles from the Northern Territory. His team found that tadpoles exposed to the chemical for even a short period of time grew to only half the size of their unexposed counterparts.
"We don't know where they are producing the chemical from, they do have some specialised cells in their skin that produce chemicals... the chemical responsible may be one that we have already been looking at and identified from earlier work we have been doing," Prof Shine said.
Native to Central and South America, cane toads were introduced to Queensland in 1935 to control beetles. While the species was largely unsuccessful at reducing cane beetles, the animals thrived in Australia, evolving into bigger, stronger creatures and wiping out native species as they spread across the country.
Prof Shine said the next step is to work out how the toads make their poison and if it affects native species.
SOURCE
THE Federal Government's Malaysian people swap deal has been ruled unlawful by the High Court. Chief Justice Robert French said the court ordered Immigration Minister Chris Bowen and his Department be restrained from sending asylum seekers to Malaysia. "The declaration made ... was made without power and is invalid," Justice French said.
The Government had wanted to send 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia in exchange for 4000 already processed refugees. The decision effectively stymies the Government's so-called Malaysia Solution.
A 5-2 majority of the Full Bench ruled Mr Bowen's declaration that Malaysia was an appropriate country to which to send asylum seekers was invalid. The court found that a country must be bound by international or domestic law to provide protection for asylum seekers to be an appropriate destination.
"The court also held that the Minister has no other power under the Migration Act to remove from Australia asylum seekers whose claims for protection have not been determined," a summary of the court's judgment read.
Australian National University international law expert Donald Rothwell said the fact that Malaysia was not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention was likely "a key factor" in the court's decision. Professor Rothwell said the decision could not be appealed but that the Government may seek other ways to revive the policy.
Refugee lawyers also argued that sending unaccompanied minors to Malaysia would breach the minister's duty of care as their legal guardian to act in their best interests.
But Commonwealth Solicitor-General Stephen Gageler had argued the Government could lawfully declare Malaysia a safe third country even though it had no domestic or international legal obligations to protect asylum seekers.
SOURCE
Surge in visa success rates 'luring' boatpeople to Australia
SUCCESS rates for refugee claims have leapt from 30 to 70 per cent in just six months, sparking accusations the government is encouraging boatpeople by virtually guaranteeing them visas.
Senior Immigration Department officials conceded at a recent parliamentary committee hearing that the success rate for asylum claims now stood at 70 per cent, not far below its record high of more than 90 per cent.
With the High Court to hand down its ruling on the Malaysia Solution tomorrow, the figures prompted agencies to warn the Department of Immigration's high success rate was acting as an incentive to asylum-seekers to get on a boat.
Senior department official Garry Fleming told a parliamentary committee earlier this month the primary acceptance rate for asylum-seekers who arrive by boat stood at 70 per cent.
Mr Fleming said the speed at which refugee claims were being processed meant that "a good articulation" of people's refugee claims was not being heard at their initial assessment, resulting in a high rate of overturn at review. "That is now seeing primary recognition rates in the order of about 70 per cent," Mr Fleming told the committee.
The figure does not take into account unsuccessful asylum claims that are overturned on review, suggesting the final success rate could be considerably higher.
The rate at which refugee claims for boatpeople are upheld is seen as a key element in the factors driving refugee movements.
Early last year the Rudd government was warned its refugee success rate was "out of whack" with other countries and was acting as a "major pull factor". The warning was contained in confidential advice sent to government prior to the decision to freeze Afghan asylum claims for six months and Sri Lankan claims for three months. At the time the advice was sent the refugee success rate was more than 90 per cent.
According to department statistics the primary success rate was just 27 per cent for the first six months of 2010-11, meaning it has soared more than 40 per cent since the beginning of the year.
Refugee Council chief executive Paul Power said "clearly there have been issues in the quality of the decision-making". "That's the only conclusion one can reasonably draw," Mr Power said yesterday. "The fluctuations of people from the same countries and in similar circumstance being rejected is baffling to anyone outside the department."
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said he found the department's explanation for the wildly fluctuating success rate "unconvincing". "Clearly if your recognition rates are higher than the rest of the world (asylum-seekers) are more likely to say yes to a people-smuggler and get on a boat," Mr Morrison said. "With primary acceptance rates going from the high 90s to the 20s then back up to 70 per cent, it reveals a process that is all over the place."
A spokesman for Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said refugee decisions were made on a "case-by-case" basis. "As we have said before, driving forces will vary from time to time and numbers will rise and fall in different parts of the world at different times," the spokesman said.
SOURCE
Tony Abbott signals a return to individual work agreements under revamped IR policy
TONY Abbott has given his strongest signal yet that the Coalition is considering a form of individual bargaining under a reworked industrial relations policy.
The Opposition Leader today called for “more freedom” in Australian workplaces, and mounted a case for non-union agreement-making between workers and their employers.
“I think we ought to be able to trust businesses and the workers of Australia to come to arrangements that suit themselves,” he told 3AW's Neil Mitchell.
Mr Abbott, who declared Work Choices “dead and buried” at the last election, said greater workplace flexibility was required to address the productivity slump that was dragging the economy down.
His comments follow those of former prime minister John Howard, who last night lashed the Gillard government's tightening of workplace rules. “It's blindingly obvious that one of the worst mistakes Julia Gillard has made is to re-regulate the labour market,” Mr Howard told ABC TV. “It is affecting our productivity and it will therefore affect our competitiveness.”
Mr Abbott said Mr Howard was “essentially right”, but he baulked at pre-empting the Coalition's election policy, and said he wasn't signalling a return to Work Choices. “We've got a lot of problems and I want to be a pragmatic problem solver,” he said.
Statutory individual contracts, known as Australian Workplace Agreements, were the centrepiece of Work Choices, with Mr Howard previously admitting he went too far by axing the no-disadvantage test that ensured workers could not be left worse off under the agreements.
Labor's industrial relations regime only allows individual agreements, in the form of common law contracts, for workers on higher incomes.
Liberal frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull today said the Coalition should wait for the government's Fair Work laws to fail before unveiling its industrial relations policies. “There's some merit in holding fire for a little while longer,” Mr Turnbull said.
He said the opposition had argued from the outset that the Fair Work changes would make Australian industries less productive and increase costs for business. “I believe our warnings have been borne out by experience. Others may not be so convinced,” he said.
Mr Turnbull said the opposition would be in a much better position to frame arguments about the need to reintroduce a measure of flexibility to workplace laws closer to the election.
A review into Labor's Fair Work Act will begin early next year amid criticisms of the laws from Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens and the Productivity Commission.
SOURCE
Fair Work clauses 'too risky' for small business
SMALL businesses are too afraid to take advantage of confusing "flexible" contracts, a peak body said.
The Individual Flexibility Arrangements were introduced as part of the Fair Work Act – which replaced the controversial WorkChoices legislation. They allow employees to negotiate changes in their base pay rate to alter work conditions.
Workplace Relations Minister Chris Evans said small businesses were not taking advantage of these clauses which encourage productivity. “I’d suggest we look at how we can take advantage of the provisions that are in the Fair Work act, many of which have not been used properly yet,” he told ABC Radio yesterday.
But Council of Small Business Australia workplace relations Grace Collier said there was a lack of information available to employers about flexibility clauses and award wage requirements. “It’s impossible to find out beyond any doubt what the rules are,” she said.
“A small business cannot ring up the Government and find out exactly what award they should be paying their staff on. The Government will give you an indication but it’s nothing more than an indication, it’s not legally binding.”
Ms Collier said it was “impossible” for an employer to check that they were meeting award wage requirements. “There’s no lodgement or checking service by the Government on these [Individual Flexibility Agreements],” she said. “It’s quite confusing and if you get it wrong not one checks it and tells you it’s fine. You might be prosecuted six years later because you ripped the employee off unknowingly.”
A spokesman for the Fair Work Ombudsman said that employers don’t need to be afraid to use flexible work arrangements. “If advice was provided by the Fair Work Infoline to an employer, and it acted in good faith on that advice and subsequently we found ourselves in the circumstance of auditing or investigating the workplace, then obviously we would take that into account,” he said. “If, however, we were to find that information supplied to us at the time was wrong, then clearly our obligation would be to point that out and expect the matter in question to be rectified.”
He also encouraged small business to speak to industry associations and employer organisations for specific advice.
There is no requirement for employers or employees to lodge IFAs with the Fair Work Ombudsman, but a Best Practice Guide on creating and using IFAs is available under the resources tab on the Fair Work Ombudsman’s website at www.fairwork.gov.au.
SOURCE
New weapon in cane toad fight
SCIENTISTS may have uncovered the 'silver bullet' in the battle against WA's cane toad invasion.
Researchers from the University of Sydney have found that cane toads release a chemical which stunts the growth of competing tadpoles and reduces their chance of survival. Older tadpoles release their poison on new cane toad egg clutches to better their own chance of survival.
Cane toad expert Professor Richard Shine from the University of Sydney said the species ‘speak’ to each other using pheromones which don't appear to affect native animals and this newly discovered toxin could be exploited and used as the latest weapon in the fight to stop the invasion.
“If you wanted to control an invading species the ideal silver bullet might be some major chemical that affects that species but doesn’t have any affect on any others,” Prof Shine said. “It turns out cane toads have spent the last several million years designing such a chemical themselves because competition is such a big deal between cane toads.”
The invaders, which kill native species, are 30km west of Kununurra and moving south after leaving a trail of destruction across Queensland and the Top End.
Prof Shine made the discovery while studying waterborne chemical cues used by tadpoles from the Northern Territory. His team found that tadpoles exposed to the chemical for even a short period of time grew to only half the size of their unexposed counterparts.
"We don't know where they are producing the chemical from, they do have some specialised cells in their skin that produce chemicals... the chemical responsible may be one that we have already been looking at and identified from earlier work we have been doing," Prof Shine said.
Native to Central and South America, cane toads were introduced to Queensland in 1935 to control beetles. While the species was largely unsuccessful at reducing cane beetles, the animals thrived in Australia, evolving into bigger, stronger creatures and wiping out native species as they spread across the country.
Prof Shine said the next step is to work out how the toads make their poison and if it affects native species.
SOURCE
Monday, August 29, 2011
Jerusalem street cats
 |
| Two Jerusalem cats at 12 Elazar ha-Modai St. |
Something similar happens with cats and people in the old streets of Jerusalem. Jerusalem cats stand apart; they are and are not like other cats. What is striking is the absolute non-pet nature of their existence and the feline grace some of them can exhibit, even under conditions of hardship. I am speaking of the many street cats, not the ones owned by west Jerusalem Israelis who have come from the West and imported that pet culture (and sometimes the pets themselves) with them, or the few cats kept by “aristocratic” Palestinian families in east Jerusalem who generally keep their pets locked up inside. That kind of culture comes with luxury. The “non-pets” are the many feral cats on the streets, mostly on the east side of the city or within the confines of the Old City walls.It is actually not true that feral cats are mostly on the eastern side of the city - there are many street cats in West Jerusalem as well, and they are generally subjected to the same sad fate as the east Jerusalem and Old City street cats that he writes about.
The author argues also that the English name "cat" probably comes from North African and Asiatic roots, which I suppose is possible, but the Oxford English Dictionary's entry on the etymology of the word does not mention such an origin.
Etymology: The Middle English and modern cat corresponds at once to Old English cat and Old Northern French cat. The name is common European of unknown origin: found in Latin and Greek in 1–4th cent., and in the modern languages generally, as far back as their records go. Byzantine Greek had κάττα (in Cæsarius c350) and later κάττος, as familiar terms = αἴλουρος; modern Greek has γάτα from Italian. Latin had catta in Martial a100, and in the Old Latin Bible version (‘Itala’), where it renders αἴλουρος. Palladius, ? c350, has catus, elsewhere scanned cātus (Lewis and Short), and probably in both cases properly cattus. From cattus, catta, came all the Romanic forms, Italian gatto, Spanish gato, Portuguese gato, Catalan gat, Provencal cat, Old Northern French cat, French chat, with corresponding feminines gatta, gata, cata, cate, chate, chatte. The Germanic forms recorded are Old English cat, catt, Old Norse kött-r ( < kattuz) masculine, genitive kattar (Swedish katt, Danish kat); also Old English catte ? feminine, West Germanic *katta (Middle Low German katte, Middle Dutch katte, kat, Dutch kat, also Swedish katta), Old High German chazzâ (Middle High German, modern German katze) feminine; Old High German had also chataro, Middle High German katero, kater, modern German and Dutch kater, he-cat. The Germanic types of these would be *kattuz (masculine), *kattôn- (feminine), *kat(a)zon- masculine; but as no form of the word is preserved in Gothic, it is not certain that it goes back to the Germanic period. It was at least West Germanic c400–450. It is also in Celtic: Old Irish cat (masculine), Gaelic cat com., Welsh and Cornish cath (feminine), Breton kaz, Vannes kac'h m. Also in Slavonic, with type kot-: Old Slavonic kot'ka (feminine), Bulgarian kotka, Slovene kot (masculine), Russian kot (masculine), kotchka, koshka (feminine), Polish kot (koczur m.), Bohemian kot (masculine), kotka (feminine), Sorbian kotka; also Lithuanian kate; Finnish katti.On the other hand, the Arabic word for "cat" does seem very similar to the Indo-European. From Wiki Answers:
A male cat = qitt قطّThe Hebrew word for "cat" is unrelated - it is חתול or חתולה - hatul (masc.) or hatulah (fem.).
A female cat = qitta قطّة
Cats = qitat قطط
Bob Carr calls for end to Victorian Charter of Human Rights
FORMER NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr has warned that retaining the Victorian Charter of Human Rights could liken the state to the UK, where public servants are too scared to enforce the law in fear of being taken to court.
Speaking at a meeting calling for the repeal of the charter yesterday, Mr Carr said British public servants were so afraid of breaching the European charter of human rights, they were scared into inaction.
"I'm very worried, as my friends at British Labour Party are, that the term human rights is becoming a bad term, because of the way the European charter is invoked. It's become a term of abuse," he said.
Mr Carr said older people in working class electorates in the UK feared criminal behaviour was not dealt with by police because the culprits would claim their human rights had been infringed.
"They say the police won't do anything about it because it'll be against their human rights," Mr Carr said.
"The cases they refer to are the gypsies, or the travellers as we should call them, who go on to private property and camp there and when the police are asked to remove them, threaten to take action in the courts under the human rights charter. "So the police do nothing."
Mr Carr said having a charter of human rights affected and shaped the behaviour of public servants.
"Public service employees will opt for the easiest course," he said. "They don't want to be smacked over the knuckles by an auditor general or an ombudsman or a parliamentary public accounts committee, but they certainly don't want to be dragged into court, even more they don't want to be dragged into court and embarrassed by action invoked under a rights charter."
Mr Carr said the resources put into enforcing Victoria's human rights charter could be better spent on child protection.
But President of the Law Institute of Victoria Caroline Counsel said Mr Carr's argument was "misinformed and illogical".
"The charter should be self perpetuating, if we all do the right thing by our citizens, lawyers won't need to be involved, courts won't need to be involved, it will just happen that we all act in accordance with what is appropriate in terms or implementation of human rights," she said. [Wow! Just who is it who is being "misinformed and illogical"?]
SOURCE
Call for charter schools in Australia
A NSW Liberal MP has contradicted government policy by calling for the creation of fully publicly funded independent "charter" schools in NSW.
Matt Kean, the Member for Hornsby, said some "radical options" needed to be considered in the federal government's review of schools funding.
A Sydney businessman, David Gonski, who is heading the review, will release tomorrow the findings of four research studies his committee has commissioned.
Mr Kean said NSW should follow the lead of the new Coalition government in Western Australia which oversees more than 100 independent public schools.
He told NSW Parliament that as a Liberal, he did not believe "the radical reforms we need in our education system can come from a centralised system run out of Sydney or Canberra". "Personally, I would like to see a debate about charter schools occur in NSW," he said.
"Charter schools are state-funded community schools, accessible to all for no additional compulsory contribution and run by local boards, while meeting minimum standards set down by the state. In other words, while the state continues the funding, the governance and running of the school remains in community hands."
Mr Kean's proposal echoes that of the chief executive officer of Christian Schools Australia, Stephen O'Doherty, who has also called on the NSW government and the Gonski inquiry to consider adopting the charter school model. The Herald understands the model is being considered by the federal review.
Mr Kean said the school principal and not the Department of Education should choose new teachers to avoid "arbitrary quotas or requirements set by head office".
The Minister for Education, Adrian Piccoli, ruled out the proposal yesterday, saying the state government "is not going down the route of charter schools".
A newly released NSW Department of Education paper called "Raising achievement for all: complex challenges", refers to a Stanford University study of 2403 charter schools which found 37 per cent performed significantly worse than public schools in improving maths performance. It also found 46 per cent of charter schools performed no better or worse than public schools.
Christian Schools Australia and the Anglican School Corporation are lobbying for a fairer share of funding for their schools which receive relatively less funding than many similar Catholic schools.
Catholic schools have asked the Gonski inquiry to increase recurrent funding to help them close the gap between the average income level of Catholic schools and government schools "to ensure Catholic schools remain affordable and accessible to families in all regions and all socio-economic circumstances".
SOURCE
Literary festivals and prizes champion politics over quality
Premiers come and premiers go. But premiers' literary prizes, like state government-funded writers' festivals, do not change much at all.
Last week it was announced that David Hicks's Guantanamo: My Journey (William Heinemann, 2010) has been shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards. The aim of these gongs is to "nurture Australia's greatest talent" and "support outstanding Australian writers". Hicks's book has been nominated in the non-fiction category, which carries a $15,000 prize.
Since his return from Guantanamo Bay, after pleading guilty to providing material support for terrorism, Hicks has become something of a hero for the left intelligentsia. He received an enthusiastic standing ovation when he addressed the Sydney Writers' Festival in May. John Howard also spoke at this year's festival, fulfilling the traditional role, at such occasions, of the token conservative. There was no standing ovation for Howard but two protesters were allowed to attend his session holding a large sign declaring him to be a war criminal.
It is reasonable to assume that those who supported the Howard government's policies on Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the national anti-terrorist security legislation, would be critical of Hicks's book. So let's look at the assessments of three commentators who were not obvious supporters of Howard and who have some expertise on the matters published in Guantanamo: My Journey. Namely, journalists Leigh Sales and Sally Neighbour along with academic Waleed Aly.
Sales, who wrote the well received book on the Hicks case titled Detainee 002, challenged many of the claims in Guantanamo: My Journey and said, "it is best read sceptically". Neighbour depicted the book as "a disappointing and deceptive version of the truth" and declared some of the author's claims "beyond belief". Aly wrote that Hicks's memoirs were "self-serving" and "weakest on the points of greatest political scrutiny".
During his time in Guantanamo, Hicks's family released many of his letters to the media. Some were quoted in the sympathetic documentary The President Versus David Hicks. In these letters, Hicks condemned "Western-Jewish domination", praised the Taliban, endorsed Islamist beheadings, boasted of his meeting with Osama bin Laden and related how he had fired live ammunition into the Indian side of the Kashmir Line of Control.
Yet, in his book, Hicks asserts that he "never hurt or injured anyone" and that "no one requires an apology" from him. He also claims never to have met Bin Laden and to only have "participated in the symbolic exchange of fire" when at the Kashmir Line of Control - whatever that might mean.
Neither Hicks nor his publisher has responded to any of the criticisms. Yet Hicks has been judged an outstanding talent and placed on the shortlist for the literary gongs, which will be announced at next week's Brisbane Writers Festival.
Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser is another current favourite of the left intelligentsia - like Hicks, he is admired for his hostility to Howard. In Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs (The Miegunyah Press, 2010), which Fraser co-wrote with Margaret Simons, it is reported that he is "applauded" at literary festivals "by the same kinds of people who had once reviled him for his role in the dismissal" of the Whitlam Labor government.
Last May, Fraser and Simons won $50,000 in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards for their book. The judges specifically praised Fraser's "moral leadership" on several political causes favoured by the left intelligentsia.
Yet Fraser's repetitive memoirs are absolutely littered with factual errors, and numerous key moments in his political life are omitted or glossed over. For example, Fraser claims he has won four elections, retained Gough Whitlam's Medibank universal health insurance scheme and always supported immigration. All claims are inaccurate, perhaps due to Fraser's acknowledgement that he has a "notoriously fallible" memory.
I wrote up a list of the errors in the Fraser/Simons book for the July 2010 The Sydney Institute Quarterly. Neither the authors nor the publisher has challenged this critique. Reviewing Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs, Michael Sexton said, "there is too much rose-coloured light in this account". Yet the co-authors walked away with $50,000 of taxpayers' money, along with much praise from the left.
The Melbourne Writers Festival is now under way. There are many leftist and left-of-centre types on the program but barely a conservative writer or commentator. For example, the session on essay writing will hear the views of only Richard Flanagan, Marieke Hardy and Robert Manne.
In Victoria, the Coalition replaced Labor in office in November last year. However, the political complexion of taxpayer-funded literary festivals never seems to change.
SOURCE
Nurses gagged, afraid of management
NURSES at Victorian hospitals are gagged from speaking out against violence perpetrated against them at work and fear management, an inquiry has heard.
Dandenong Hospital emergency department nurse Leslie Graham said she suffers either physical or verbal abuse at work about every second day.
Ms Graham told a parliamentary inquiry into security at the state's hospitals that, in addition to verbal aggression, she and her colleagues get bitten, punched and slapped and have objects thrown at them.
"We have people ... pull their IVs out and throw blood-stained cannulas, sharps, any kind of weapon they can get their hands on, chairs, at the nursing staff," she said yesterday.
"You just press your duress (alarm) and run away."
Ms Graham said despite frequently being subjected to violence she had never reported it to police because she thought it would cause issues with management.
"If I had a serious issue against myself I would report that to the police, but I know that a lot of people are afraid of the management of different hospitals," she said.
"(A nurse who) got strangled never reported it to the police, and we weren't allowed to make any of the public aware of the violence that we ... come up against because then we could end up in court."
Ms Graham said the design of the new $25 million emergency ward at the hospital, which is run by Southern Health, also contributed to violence against staff. There were instances where staff were backed into corners and unmonitored corridors, she said. "We have just had a brand-new emergency department that has been designed and built not by anyone who has ever worked in an emergency department," Ms Graham said.
The inquiry, held by state parliament's drugs and crime prevention committee, was ordered by Police Minister Peter Ryan after criticism of the coalition's pre-election promise to station armed guards at emergency wards.
Ms Graham said armed guards would not help the situation at her hospital and there needed to be more unarmed security staff instead of just one guard working between 6pm and 3am.
Royal Children's Hospital emergency department nurse Peter Sloman said although the hospital's new facility was more secure, there were still design problems.
The hospital's director of emergency services Simon Young said he did not support the introduction of armed guards.
Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) Victorian branch assistant secretary Paul Gilbert said the $21 million the government had pledged for 120 armed guards could fund an extra 235 full-time nurses in emergency departments.
ANF Victoria occupational health and safety coordinator Kathy Chrisfield said introducing armed guards into emergency departments would simply create another hazard.
SOURCE
FORMER NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr has warned that retaining the Victorian Charter of Human Rights could liken the state to the UK, where public servants are too scared to enforce the law in fear of being taken to court.
Speaking at a meeting calling for the repeal of the charter yesterday, Mr Carr said British public servants were so afraid of breaching the European charter of human rights, they were scared into inaction.
"I'm very worried, as my friends at British Labour Party are, that the term human rights is becoming a bad term, because of the way the European charter is invoked. It's become a term of abuse," he said.
Mr Carr said older people in working class electorates in the UK feared criminal behaviour was not dealt with by police because the culprits would claim their human rights had been infringed.
"They say the police won't do anything about it because it'll be against their human rights," Mr Carr said.
"The cases they refer to are the gypsies, or the travellers as we should call them, who go on to private property and camp there and when the police are asked to remove them, threaten to take action in the courts under the human rights charter. "So the police do nothing."
Mr Carr said having a charter of human rights affected and shaped the behaviour of public servants.
"Public service employees will opt for the easiest course," he said. "They don't want to be smacked over the knuckles by an auditor general or an ombudsman or a parliamentary public accounts committee, but they certainly don't want to be dragged into court, even more they don't want to be dragged into court and embarrassed by action invoked under a rights charter."
Mr Carr said the resources put into enforcing Victoria's human rights charter could be better spent on child protection.
But President of the Law Institute of Victoria Caroline Counsel said Mr Carr's argument was "misinformed and illogical".
"The charter should be self perpetuating, if we all do the right thing by our citizens, lawyers won't need to be involved, courts won't need to be involved, it will just happen that we all act in accordance with what is appropriate in terms or implementation of human rights," she said. [Wow! Just who is it who is being "misinformed and illogical"?]
SOURCE
Call for charter schools in Australia
A NSW Liberal MP has contradicted government policy by calling for the creation of fully publicly funded independent "charter" schools in NSW.
Matt Kean, the Member for Hornsby, said some "radical options" needed to be considered in the federal government's review of schools funding.
A Sydney businessman, David Gonski, who is heading the review, will release tomorrow the findings of four research studies his committee has commissioned.
Mr Kean said NSW should follow the lead of the new Coalition government in Western Australia which oversees more than 100 independent public schools.
He told NSW Parliament that as a Liberal, he did not believe "the radical reforms we need in our education system can come from a centralised system run out of Sydney or Canberra". "Personally, I would like to see a debate about charter schools occur in NSW," he said.
"Charter schools are state-funded community schools, accessible to all for no additional compulsory contribution and run by local boards, while meeting minimum standards set down by the state. In other words, while the state continues the funding, the governance and running of the school remains in community hands."
Mr Kean's proposal echoes that of the chief executive officer of Christian Schools Australia, Stephen O'Doherty, who has also called on the NSW government and the Gonski inquiry to consider adopting the charter school model. The Herald understands the model is being considered by the federal review.
Mr Kean said the school principal and not the Department of Education should choose new teachers to avoid "arbitrary quotas or requirements set by head office".
The Minister for Education, Adrian Piccoli, ruled out the proposal yesterday, saying the state government "is not going down the route of charter schools".
A newly released NSW Department of Education paper called "Raising achievement for all: complex challenges", refers to a Stanford University study of 2403 charter schools which found 37 per cent performed significantly worse than public schools in improving maths performance. It also found 46 per cent of charter schools performed no better or worse than public schools.
Christian Schools Australia and the Anglican School Corporation are lobbying for a fairer share of funding for their schools which receive relatively less funding than many similar Catholic schools.
Catholic schools have asked the Gonski inquiry to increase recurrent funding to help them close the gap between the average income level of Catholic schools and government schools "to ensure Catholic schools remain affordable and accessible to families in all regions and all socio-economic circumstances".
SOURCE
Literary festivals and prizes champion politics over quality
Premiers come and premiers go. But premiers' literary prizes, like state government-funded writers' festivals, do not change much at all.
Last week it was announced that David Hicks's Guantanamo: My Journey (William Heinemann, 2010) has been shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards. The aim of these gongs is to "nurture Australia's greatest talent" and "support outstanding Australian writers". Hicks's book has been nominated in the non-fiction category, which carries a $15,000 prize.
Since his return from Guantanamo Bay, after pleading guilty to providing material support for terrorism, Hicks has become something of a hero for the left intelligentsia. He received an enthusiastic standing ovation when he addressed the Sydney Writers' Festival in May. John Howard also spoke at this year's festival, fulfilling the traditional role, at such occasions, of the token conservative. There was no standing ovation for Howard but two protesters were allowed to attend his session holding a large sign declaring him to be a war criminal.
It is reasonable to assume that those who supported the Howard government's policies on Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the national anti-terrorist security legislation, would be critical of Hicks's book. So let's look at the assessments of three commentators who were not obvious supporters of Howard and who have some expertise on the matters published in Guantanamo: My Journey. Namely, journalists Leigh Sales and Sally Neighbour along with academic Waleed Aly.
Sales, who wrote the well received book on the Hicks case titled Detainee 002, challenged many of the claims in Guantanamo: My Journey and said, "it is best read sceptically". Neighbour depicted the book as "a disappointing and deceptive version of the truth" and declared some of the author's claims "beyond belief". Aly wrote that Hicks's memoirs were "self-serving" and "weakest on the points of greatest political scrutiny".
During his time in Guantanamo, Hicks's family released many of his letters to the media. Some were quoted in the sympathetic documentary The President Versus David Hicks. In these letters, Hicks condemned "Western-Jewish domination", praised the Taliban, endorsed Islamist beheadings, boasted of his meeting with Osama bin Laden and related how he had fired live ammunition into the Indian side of the Kashmir Line of Control.
Yet, in his book, Hicks asserts that he "never hurt or injured anyone" and that "no one requires an apology" from him. He also claims never to have met Bin Laden and to only have "participated in the symbolic exchange of fire" when at the Kashmir Line of Control - whatever that might mean.
Neither Hicks nor his publisher has responded to any of the criticisms. Yet Hicks has been judged an outstanding talent and placed on the shortlist for the literary gongs, which will be announced at next week's Brisbane Writers Festival.
Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser is another current favourite of the left intelligentsia - like Hicks, he is admired for his hostility to Howard. In Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs (The Miegunyah Press, 2010), which Fraser co-wrote with Margaret Simons, it is reported that he is "applauded" at literary festivals "by the same kinds of people who had once reviled him for his role in the dismissal" of the Whitlam Labor government.
Last May, Fraser and Simons won $50,000 in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards for their book. The judges specifically praised Fraser's "moral leadership" on several political causes favoured by the left intelligentsia.
Yet Fraser's repetitive memoirs are absolutely littered with factual errors, and numerous key moments in his political life are omitted or glossed over. For example, Fraser claims he has won four elections, retained Gough Whitlam's Medibank universal health insurance scheme and always supported immigration. All claims are inaccurate, perhaps due to Fraser's acknowledgement that he has a "notoriously fallible" memory.
I wrote up a list of the errors in the Fraser/Simons book for the July 2010 The Sydney Institute Quarterly. Neither the authors nor the publisher has challenged this critique. Reviewing Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs, Michael Sexton said, "there is too much rose-coloured light in this account". Yet the co-authors walked away with $50,000 of taxpayers' money, along with much praise from the left.
The Melbourne Writers Festival is now under way. There are many leftist and left-of-centre types on the program but barely a conservative writer or commentator. For example, the session on essay writing will hear the views of only Richard Flanagan, Marieke Hardy and Robert Manne.
In Victoria, the Coalition replaced Labor in office in November last year. However, the political complexion of taxpayer-funded literary festivals never seems to change.
SOURCE
Nurses gagged, afraid of management
NURSES at Victorian hospitals are gagged from speaking out against violence perpetrated against them at work and fear management, an inquiry has heard.
Dandenong Hospital emergency department nurse Leslie Graham said she suffers either physical or verbal abuse at work about every second day.
Ms Graham told a parliamentary inquiry into security at the state's hospitals that, in addition to verbal aggression, she and her colleagues get bitten, punched and slapped and have objects thrown at them.
"We have people ... pull their IVs out and throw blood-stained cannulas, sharps, any kind of weapon they can get their hands on, chairs, at the nursing staff," she said yesterday.
"You just press your duress (alarm) and run away."
Ms Graham said despite frequently being subjected to violence she had never reported it to police because she thought it would cause issues with management.
"If I had a serious issue against myself I would report that to the police, but I know that a lot of people are afraid of the management of different hospitals," she said.
"(A nurse who) got strangled never reported it to the police, and we weren't allowed to make any of the public aware of the violence that we ... come up against because then we could end up in court."
Ms Graham said the design of the new $25 million emergency ward at the hospital, which is run by Southern Health, also contributed to violence against staff. There were instances where staff were backed into corners and unmonitored corridors, she said. "We have just had a brand-new emergency department that has been designed and built not by anyone who has ever worked in an emergency department," Ms Graham said.
The inquiry, held by state parliament's drugs and crime prevention committee, was ordered by Police Minister Peter Ryan after criticism of the coalition's pre-election promise to station armed guards at emergency wards.
Ms Graham said armed guards would not help the situation at her hospital and there needed to be more unarmed security staff instead of just one guard working between 6pm and 3am.
Royal Children's Hospital emergency department nurse Peter Sloman said although the hospital's new facility was more secure, there were still design problems.
The hospital's director of emergency services Simon Young said he did not support the introduction of armed guards.
Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) Victorian branch assistant secretary Paul Gilbert said the $21 million the government had pledged for 120 armed guards could fund an extra 235 full-time nurses in emergency departments.
ANF Victoria occupational health and safety coordinator Kathy Chrisfield said introducing armed guards into emergency departments would simply create another hazard.
SOURCE
Bob Carr calls for end to Victorian Charter of Human Rights
FORMER NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr has warned that retaining the Victorian Charter of Human Rights could liken the state to the UK, where public servants are too scared to enforce the law in fear of being taken to court.
Speaking at a meeting calling for the repeal of the charter yesterday, Mr Carr said British public servants were so afraid of breaching the European charter of human rights, they were scared into inaction.
"I'm very worried, as my friends at British Labour Party are, that the term human rights is becoming a bad term, because of the way the European charter is invoked. It's become a term of abuse," he said.
Mr Carr said older people in working class electorates in the UK feared criminal behaviour was not dealt with by police because the culprits would claim their human rights had been infringed.
"They say the police won't do anything about it because it'll be against their human rights," Mr Carr said.
"The cases they refer to are the gypsies, or the travellers as we should call them, who go on to private property and camp there and when the police are asked to remove them, threaten to take action in the courts under the human rights charter. "So the police do nothing."
Mr Carr said having a charter of human rights affected and shaped the behaviour of public servants.
"Public service employees will opt for the easiest course," he said. "They don't want to be smacked over the knuckles by an auditor general or an ombudsman or a parliamentary public accounts committee, but they certainly don't want to be dragged into court, even more they don't want to be dragged into court and embarrassed by action invoked under a rights charter."
Mr Carr said the resources put into enforcing Victoria's human rights charter could be better spent on child protection.
But President of the Law Institute of Victoria Caroline Counsel said Mr Carr's argument was "misinformed and illogical".
"The charter should be self perpetuating, if we all do the right thing by our citizens, lawyers won't need to be involved, courts won't need to be involved, it will just happen that we all act in accordance with what is appropriate in terms or implementation of human rights," she said. [Wow! Just who is it who is being "misinformed and illogical"?]
SOURCE
Call for charter schools in Australia
A NSW Liberal MP has contradicted government policy by calling for the creation of fully publicly funded independent "charter" schools in NSW.
Matt Kean, the Member for Hornsby, said some "radical options" needed to be considered in the federal government's review of schools funding.
A Sydney businessman, David Gonski, who is heading the review, will release tomorrow the findings of four research studies his committee has commissioned.
Mr Kean said NSW should follow the lead of the new Coalition government in Western Australia which oversees more than 100 independent public schools.
He told NSW Parliament that as a Liberal, he did not believe "the radical reforms we need in our education system can come from a centralised system run out of Sydney or Canberra". "Personally, I would like to see a debate about charter schools occur in NSW," he said.
"Charter schools are state-funded community schools, accessible to all for no additional compulsory contribution and run by local boards, while meeting minimum standards set down by the state. In other words, while the state continues the funding, the governance and running of the school remains in community hands."
Mr Kean's proposal echoes that of the chief executive officer of Christian Schools Australia, Stephen O'Doherty, who has also called on the NSW government and the Gonski inquiry to consider adopting the charter school model. The Herald understands the model is being considered by the federal review.
Mr Kean said the school principal and not the Department of Education should choose new teachers to avoid "arbitrary quotas or requirements set by head office".
The Minister for Education, Adrian Piccoli, ruled out the proposal yesterday, saying the state government "is not going down the route of charter schools".
A newly released NSW Department of Education paper called "Raising achievement for all: complex challenges", refers to a Stanford University study of 2403 charter schools which found 37 per cent performed significantly worse than public schools in improving maths performance. It also found 46 per cent of charter schools performed no better or worse than public schools.
Christian Schools Australia and the Anglican School Corporation are lobbying for a fairer share of funding for their schools which receive relatively less funding than many similar Catholic schools.
Catholic schools have asked the Gonski inquiry to increase recurrent funding to help them close the gap between the average income level of Catholic schools and government schools "to ensure Catholic schools remain affordable and accessible to families in all regions and all socio-economic circumstances".
SOURCE
Literary festivals and prizes champion politics over quality
Premiers come and premiers go. But premiers' literary prizes, like state government-funded writers' festivals, do not change much at all.
Last week it was announced that David Hicks's Guantanamo: My Journey (William Heinemann, 2010) has been shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards. The aim of these gongs is to "nurture Australia's greatest talent" and "support outstanding Australian writers". Hicks's book has been nominated in the non-fiction category, which carries a $15,000 prize.
Since his return from Guantanamo Bay, after pleading guilty to providing material support for terrorism, Hicks has become something of a hero for the left intelligentsia. He received an enthusiastic standing ovation when he addressed the Sydney Writers' Festival in May. John Howard also spoke at this year's festival, fulfilling the traditional role, at such occasions, of the token conservative. There was no standing ovation for Howard but two protesters were allowed to attend his session holding a large sign declaring him to be a war criminal.
It is reasonable to assume that those who supported the Howard government's policies on Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the national anti-terrorist security legislation, would be critical of Hicks's book. So let's look at the assessments of three commentators who were not obvious supporters of Howard and who have some expertise on the matters published in Guantanamo: My Journey. Namely, journalists Leigh Sales and Sally Neighbour along with academic Waleed Aly.
Sales, who wrote the well received book on the Hicks case titled Detainee 002, challenged many of the claims in Guantanamo: My Journey and said, "it is best read sceptically". Neighbour depicted the book as "a disappointing and deceptive version of the truth" and declared some of the author's claims "beyond belief". Aly wrote that Hicks's memoirs were "self-serving" and "weakest on the points of greatest political scrutiny".
During his time in Guantanamo, Hicks's family released many of his letters to the media. Some were quoted in the sympathetic documentary The President Versus David Hicks. In these letters, Hicks condemned "Western-Jewish domination", praised the Taliban, endorsed Islamist beheadings, boasted of his meeting with Osama bin Laden and related how he had fired live ammunition into the Indian side of the Kashmir Line of Control.
Yet, in his book, Hicks asserts that he "never hurt or injured anyone" and that "no one requires an apology" from him. He also claims never to have met Bin Laden and to only have "participated in the symbolic exchange of fire" when at the Kashmir Line of Control - whatever that might mean.
Neither Hicks nor his publisher has responded to any of the criticisms. Yet Hicks has been judged an outstanding talent and placed on the shortlist for the literary gongs, which will be announced at next week's Brisbane Writers Festival.
Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser is another current favourite of the left intelligentsia - like Hicks, he is admired for his hostility to Howard. In Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs (The Miegunyah Press, 2010), which Fraser co-wrote with Margaret Simons, it is reported that he is "applauded" at literary festivals "by the same kinds of people who had once reviled him for his role in the dismissal" of the Whitlam Labor government.
Last May, Fraser and Simons won $50,000 in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards for their book. The judges specifically praised Fraser's "moral leadership" on several political causes favoured by the left intelligentsia.
Yet Fraser's repetitive memoirs are absolutely littered with factual errors, and numerous key moments in his political life are omitted or glossed over. For example, Fraser claims he has won four elections, retained Gough Whitlam's Medibank universal health insurance scheme and always supported immigration. All claims are inaccurate, perhaps due to Fraser's acknowledgement that he has a "notoriously fallible" memory.
I wrote up a list of the errors in the Fraser/Simons book for the July 2010 The Sydney Institute Quarterly. Neither the authors nor the publisher has challenged this critique. Reviewing Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs, Michael Sexton said, "there is too much rose-coloured light in this account". Yet the co-authors walked away with $50,000 of taxpayers' money, along with much praise from the left.
The Melbourne Writers Festival is now under way. There are many leftist and left-of-centre types on the program but barely a conservative writer or commentator. For example, the session on essay writing will hear the views of only Richard Flanagan, Marieke Hardy and Robert Manne.
In Victoria, the Coalition replaced Labor in office in November last year. However, the political complexion of taxpayer-funded literary festivals never seems to change.
SOURCE
Nurses gagged, afraid of management
NURSES at Victorian hospitals are gagged from speaking out against violence perpetrated against them at work and fear management, an inquiry has heard.
Dandenong Hospital emergency department nurse Leslie Graham said she suffers either physical or verbal abuse at work about every second day.
Ms Graham told a parliamentary inquiry into security at the state's hospitals that, in addition to verbal aggression, she and her colleagues get bitten, punched and slapped and have objects thrown at them.
"We have people ... pull their IVs out and throw blood-stained cannulas, sharps, any kind of weapon they can get their hands on, chairs, at the nursing staff," she said yesterday.
"You just press your duress (alarm) and run away."
Ms Graham said despite frequently being subjected to violence she had never reported it to police because she thought it would cause issues with management.
"If I had a serious issue against myself I would report that to the police, but I know that a lot of people are afraid of the management of different hospitals," she said.
"(A nurse who) got strangled never reported it to the police, and we weren't allowed to make any of the public aware of the violence that we ... come up against because then we could end up in court."
Ms Graham said the design of the new $25 million emergency ward at the hospital, which is run by Southern Health, also contributed to violence against staff. There were instances where staff were backed into corners and unmonitored corridors, she said. "We have just had a brand-new emergency department that has been designed and built not by anyone who has ever worked in an emergency department," Ms Graham said.
The inquiry, held by state parliament's drugs and crime prevention committee, was ordered by Police Minister Peter Ryan after criticism of the coalition's pre-election promise to station armed guards at emergency wards.
Ms Graham said armed guards would not help the situation at her hospital and there needed to be more unarmed security staff instead of just one guard working between 6pm and 3am.
Royal Children's Hospital emergency department nurse Peter Sloman said although the hospital's new facility was more secure, there were still design problems.
The hospital's director of emergency services Simon Young said he did not support the introduction of armed guards.
Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) Victorian branch assistant secretary Paul Gilbert said the $21 million the government had pledged for 120 armed guards could fund an extra 235 full-time nurses in emergency departments.
ANF Victoria occupational health and safety coordinator Kathy Chrisfield said introducing armed guards into emergency departments would simply create another hazard.
SOURCE
FORMER NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr has warned that retaining the Victorian Charter of Human Rights could liken the state to the UK, where public servants are too scared to enforce the law in fear of being taken to court.
Speaking at a meeting calling for the repeal of the charter yesterday, Mr Carr said British public servants were so afraid of breaching the European charter of human rights, they were scared into inaction.
"I'm very worried, as my friends at British Labour Party are, that the term human rights is becoming a bad term, because of the way the European charter is invoked. It's become a term of abuse," he said.
Mr Carr said older people in working class electorates in the UK feared criminal behaviour was not dealt with by police because the culprits would claim their human rights had been infringed.
"They say the police won't do anything about it because it'll be against their human rights," Mr Carr said.
"The cases they refer to are the gypsies, or the travellers as we should call them, who go on to private property and camp there and when the police are asked to remove them, threaten to take action in the courts under the human rights charter. "So the police do nothing."
Mr Carr said having a charter of human rights affected and shaped the behaviour of public servants.
"Public service employees will opt for the easiest course," he said. "They don't want to be smacked over the knuckles by an auditor general or an ombudsman or a parliamentary public accounts committee, but they certainly don't want to be dragged into court, even more they don't want to be dragged into court and embarrassed by action invoked under a rights charter."
Mr Carr said the resources put into enforcing Victoria's human rights charter could be better spent on child protection.
But President of the Law Institute of Victoria Caroline Counsel said Mr Carr's argument was "misinformed and illogical".
"The charter should be self perpetuating, if we all do the right thing by our citizens, lawyers won't need to be involved, courts won't need to be involved, it will just happen that we all act in accordance with what is appropriate in terms or implementation of human rights," she said. [Wow! Just who is it who is being "misinformed and illogical"?]
SOURCE
Call for charter schools in Australia
A NSW Liberal MP has contradicted government policy by calling for the creation of fully publicly funded independent "charter" schools in NSW.
Matt Kean, the Member for Hornsby, said some "radical options" needed to be considered in the federal government's review of schools funding.
A Sydney businessman, David Gonski, who is heading the review, will release tomorrow the findings of four research studies his committee has commissioned.
Mr Kean said NSW should follow the lead of the new Coalition government in Western Australia which oversees more than 100 independent public schools.
He told NSW Parliament that as a Liberal, he did not believe "the radical reforms we need in our education system can come from a centralised system run out of Sydney or Canberra". "Personally, I would like to see a debate about charter schools occur in NSW," he said.
"Charter schools are state-funded community schools, accessible to all for no additional compulsory contribution and run by local boards, while meeting minimum standards set down by the state. In other words, while the state continues the funding, the governance and running of the school remains in community hands."
Mr Kean's proposal echoes that of the chief executive officer of Christian Schools Australia, Stephen O'Doherty, who has also called on the NSW government and the Gonski inquiry to consider adopting the charter school model. The Herald understands the model is being considered by the federal review.
Mr Kean said the school principal and not the Department of Education should choose new teachers to avoid "arbitrary quotas or requirements set by head office".
The Minister for Education, Adrian Piccoli, ruled out the proposal yesterday, saying the state government "is not going down the route of charter schools".
A newly released NSW Department of Education paper called "Raising achievement for all: complex challenges", refers to a Stanford University study of 2403 charter schools which found 37 per cent performed significantly worse than public schools in improving maths performance. It also found 46 per cent of charter schools performed no better or worse than public schools.
Christian Schools Australia and the Anglican School Corporation are lobbying for a fairer share of funding for their schools which receive relatively less funding than many similar Catholic schools.
Catholic schools have asked the Gonski inquiry to increase recurrent funding to help them close the gap between the average income level of Catholic schools and government schools "to ensure Catholic schools remain affordable and accessible to families in all regions and all socio-economic circumstances".
SOURCE
Literary festivals and prizes champion politics over quality
Premiers come and premiers go. But premiers' literary prizes, like state government-funded writers' festivals, do not change much at all.
Last week it was announced that David Hicks's Guantanamo: My Journey (William Heinemann, 2010) has been shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards. The aim of these gongs is to "nurture Australia's greatest talent" and "support outstanding Australian writers". Hicks's book has been nominated in the non-fiction category, which carries a $15,000 prize.
Since his return from Guantanamo Bay, after pleading guilty to providing material support for terrorism, Hicks has become something of a hero for the left intelligentsia. He received an enthusiastic standing ovation when he addressed the Sydney Writers' Festival in May. John Howard also spoke at this year's festival, fulfilling the traditional role, at such occasions, of the token conservative. There was no standing ovation for Howard but two protesters were allowed to attend his session holding a large sign declaring him to be a war criminal.
It is reasonable to assume that those who supported the Howard government's policies on Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the national anti-terrorist security legislation, would be critical of Hicks's book. So let's look at the assessments of three commentators who were not obvious supporters of Howard and who have some expertise on the matters published in Guantanamo: My Journey. Namely, journalists Leigh Sales and Sally Neighbour along with academic Waleed Aly.
Sales, who wrote the well received book on the Hicks case titled Detainee 002, challenged many of the claims in Guantanamo: My Journey and said, "it is best read sceptically". Neighbour depicted the book as "a disappointing and deceptive version of the truth" and declared some of the author's claims "beyond belief". Aly wrote that Hicks's memoirs were "self-serving" and "weakest on the points of greatest political scrutiny".
During his time in Guantanamo, Hicks's family released many of his letters to the media. Some were quoted in the sympathetic documentary The President Versus David Hicks. In these letters, Hicks condemned "Western-Jewish domination", praised the Taliban, endorsed Islamist beheadings, boasted of his meeting with Osama bin Laden and related how he had fired live ammunition into the Indian side of the Kashmir Line of Control.
Yet, in his book, Hicks asserts that he "never hurt or injured anyone" and that "no one requires an apology" from him. He also claims never to have met Bin Laden and to only have "participated in the symbolic exchange of fire" when at the Kashmir Line of Control - whatever that might mean.
Neither Hicks nor his publisher has responded to any of the criticisms. Yet Hicks has been judged an outstanding talent and placed on the shortlist for the literary gongs, which will be announced at next week's Brisbane Writers Festival.
Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser is another current favourite of the left intelligentsia - like Hicks, he is admired for his hostility to Howard. In Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs (The Miegunyah Press, 2010), which Fraser co-wrote with Margaret Simons, it is reported that he is "applauded" at literary festivals "by the same kinds of people who had once reviled him for his role in the dismissal" of the Whitlam Labor government.
Last May, Fraser and Simons won $50,000 in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards for their book. The judges specifically praised Fraser's "moral leadership" on several political causes favoured by the left intelligentsia.
Yet Fraser's repetitive memoirs are absolutely littered with factual errors, and numerous key moments in his political life are omitted or glossed over. For example, Fraser claims he has won four elections, retained Gough Whitlam's Medibank universal health insurance scheme and always supported immigration. All claims are inaccurate, perhaps due to Fraser's acknowledgement that he has a "notoriously fallible" memory.
I wrote up a list of the errors in the Fraser/Simons book for the July 2010 The Sydney Institute Quarterly. Neither the authors nor the publisher has challenged this critique. Reviewing Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs, Michael Sexton said, "there is too much rose-coloured light in this account". Yet the co-authors walked away with $50,000 of taxpayers' money, along with much praise from the left.
The Melbourne Writers Festival is now under way. There are many leftist and left-of-centre types on the program but barely a conservative writer or commentator. For example, the session on essay writing will hear the views of only Richard Flanagan, Marieke Hardy and Robert Manne.
In Victoria, the Coalition replaced Labor in office in November last year. However, the political complexion of taxpayer-funded literary festivals never seems to change.
SOURCE
Nurses gagged, afraid of management
NURSES at Victorian hospitals are gagged from speaking out against violence perpetrated against them at work and fear management, an inquiry has heard.
Dandenong Hospital emergency department nurse Leslie Graham said she suffers either physical or verbal abuse at work about every second day.
Ms Graham told a parliamentary inquiry into security at the state's hospitals that, in addition to verbal aggression, she and her colleagues get bitten, punched and slapped and have objects thrown at them.
"We have people ... pull their IVs out and throw blood-stained cannulas, sharps, any kind of weapon they can get their hands on, chairs, at the nursing staff," she said yesterday.
"You just press your duress (alarm) and run away."
Ms Graham said despite frequently being subjected to violence she had never reported it to police because she thought it would cause issues with management.
"If I had a serious issue against myself I would report that to the police, but I know that a lot of people are afraid of the management of different hospitals," she said.
"(A nurse who) got strangled never reported it to the police, and we weren't allowed to make any of the public aware of the violence that we ... come up against because then we could end up in court."
Ms Graham said the design of the new $25 million emergency ward at the hospital, which is run by Southern Health, also contributed to violence against staff. There were instances where staff were backed into corners and unmonitored corridors, she said. "We have just had a brand-new emergency department that has been designed and built not by anyone who has ever worked in an emergency department," Ms Graham said.
The inquiry, held by state parliament's drugs and crime prevention committee, was ordered by Police Minister Peter Ryan after criticism of the coalition's pre-election promise to station armed guards at emergency wards.
Ms Graham said armed guards would not help the situation at her hospital and there needed to be more unarmed security staff instead of just one guard working between 6pm and 3am.
Royal Children's Hospital emergency department nurse Peter Sloman said although the hospital's new facility was more secure, there were still design problems.
The hospital's director of emergency services Simon Young said he did not support the introduction of armed guards.
Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) Victorian branch assistant secretary Paul Gilbert said the $21 million the government had pledged for 120 armed guards could fund an extra 235 full-time nurses in emergency departments.
ANF Victoria occupational health and safety coordinator Kathy Chrisfield said introducing armed guards into emergency departments would simply create another hazard.
SOURCE
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Liberals say labour laws are adding to the manufacturing sector's dollar woes
LIBERALS have laid the blame for recent manufacturing job losses on Labor and the unions, saying Julia Gillard's re-regulation of the labour market has left the economy unable to cope with emerging challenges.
As the Prime Minister meets with union leaders in Canberra today to discuss the future of manufacturing, Liberal backbenchers seized on calls by Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens for a renewed focus on productivity.
Queensland backbencher Steven Ciobo said Labor had choked labour market flexibility through its Fair Work Act. “The fact is, the proof is in the pudding,” he said. “The re-regulation of the workforce is costing Aussie jobs. As far as I am concerned the 1000 lost jobs at BlueScope last week lie right at the feet of Labor and the unions. “With the high Aussie dollar we need to be even more competitive than our trading partners.”
South Australian backbencher Jamie Briggs said the Australian economy was suffering under the “toxic combination” of a re-regulated labour market and a soaring dollar.
He said Mr Stevens' call for a review of industrial relations laws followed similar advice from the Productivity Commission, the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group.
“Every galah in the pet shop is now saying labour market re-regulation is causing damage to the economy,” he said. “Of course, it absolutely has to be. And it is.” “I think we are going to see, unfortunately, sadly, a lot of job losses between now a Christmas.”
The endorsement of Mr Stevens' position came as the nation's most senior unionist lashed the Reserve Bank governor as “misinformed and out of touch with working Australians and the real economy”.
ACTU president Ged Kearney has also attacked the composition of the RBA board, saying it was too narrowly focused on business and “captive to the top end of town”.
The manufacturing sector has been undergoing a painful period of restructuring as the soaring Australian dollar leaves many exporters struggling to compete with offshore rivals.
BlueScope Steel, which announced 1400 job losses in the past fortnight, blamed its plight squarely on the value of the dollar.
Ms Gillard last week said BlueScope was confronting a number of pressures, none of them related to the industrial relations environment. “The Australian steel industry is facing a unique set of challenges, including a high Australian dollar, continued weak domestic demand, higher raw material prices and excess supply in international steel markets,” Ms Gillard said.
But Mr Briggs said the rigid workplace relations environment made it harder for employers to put on staff at the same time as they were hammered by the effects of the two-speed economy.
“You've got this perverse situation where I've got small businesses in my electorate saying `how can you even be thinking about lifting interest rates?' “But the numbers (Glenn Stevens) is looking at are saying he has to start to think about it. And you've got an international environment that's all over the shop.
“The worst thing you could do in that situation is re-regulate the labour market. But of course that's what the Labor Party has done, and they won't listen to anyone.”
The opposition's industrial relations spokesman Eric Abetz recently called for a review of Labor's Fair Work Act to be fast-tracked, after the Productivity Commission urged fresh industrial relations reforms to aid the struggling retail sector.
But Opposition leader Tony Abbott is wary of pushing too hard on the issue, fearing a WorkChoices-style backlash by Labor and the union movement.
SOURCE
Homosexual marriage bad for children
A BIGOT is someone who refuses to see the other point of view. Articles by Peter van Onselen and James Valentine in The Weekend Australian smeared opponents of gay marriage as bigots, yet both men refuse to see the other point of view -- and that means the point of view of the child.
Marriage is fundamentally about the needs of children, writes David Blankenhorn, a supporter of gay rights in the US who nevertheless draws the line at same-sex marriage. Redefining marriage to include gay and lesbian couples would eliminate entirely in law, and weaken still further in culture, the basic idea of a mother and a father for every child.
Here is the heart of opposition to same-sex marriage: that it means same-sex parenting, and same-sex parenting means that a child must miss out on either a mother or a father.
Marriage is a compound right under Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; it is not only the right to an exclusive relationship, but the right to form a family. Therefore gay marriage includes the right to form a family by artificial reproduction but any child created within that marriage would have no possibility of being raised by both mother and father.
Obviously there are tragic situations where a child cannot have both a mum and a dad, such as the death or desertion of a parent, but that is not a situation we would ever wish upon a child, and that is not a situation that any government should inflict upon a child.
Yet legalising same-sex marriage will inflict that deprivation on a child. That is why it is wrong, and that is why all laws are wrong that permit single people or same-sex couples to obtain a child by IVF, surrogacy, or adoption.
Take Penny Wong, for example, as van Onselen did. She is an effective politician, but she can never be a dad to a little boy. She and her partner tell us they have created a baby who will have no father, only a mother and another woman. Their assertion is that a dad does not matter to a child.
As ethicist Margaret Somerville wrote in these pages, such assertions force us to choose between giving priority to children's rights or to homosexual adults' claims. Yet trivial arguments frame the gay marriage debate solely in terms of the emotional needs of adults, ignoring the child's point of view.
Such adult-centred narcissism raises the wider question: if gender no longer matters in marriage, why should number? If marriage is all about adults who love each other, by what rational principle should three adults who love each other not be allowed to marry? Academic defenders of polyamory are asking that question, and no doubt van Onselen will soon be slurring opponents of polyamory as binary bigots.
While warm, fuzzy writers such as Valentine can imagine no possible harm to society from gay marriage, the serious minds behind the movement occasionally let us glimpse their wider purpose. US activist Michelangelo Signorile urges gays to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely. He sees same-sex marriage as the final tool with which to get education about homosexuality and AIDS into public schools.
Sure enough, we now have empirical evidence that normalising gay marriage means normalising homosexual behaviour for public school children.
Following the November 2003 court decision in Massachusetts to legalise gay marriage, school libraries were required to stock same-sex literature; primary school children were given homosexual fairy stories such as King & King; some high school students were even given an explicit manual of homosexual advocacy entitled The Little Black Book: Queer in the 21st Century, which the Massachusetts Department of Health helped develop. Education had to comply with the new normal.
Beyond the confusion and corruption of schoolchildren, the cultural consequences of legalising same-sex marriage include the stifling of conscientious freedom. Again in Massachusetts, when adoption agency Catholic Charities was told it would have to place children equally with married homosexuals, it had to close. As Canadian QC and lesbian activist Barbara Findlay said, "The legal struggle for queer rights will one day be a showdown between freedom of religion versus sexual orientation". Blankenhorn warned, "Once this proposed reform became law, even to say the words out loud in public -- every child needs a father and a mother -- would probably be viewed as explicitly divisive and discriminatory, possibly even as hate speech."
Our parliament must say these words out loud, because they are bedrock sanity, and must accept that the deep things of human nature are beyond the authority of any political party to tamper with.
Marriage is not a fad to be cut to shape according to social whim. The father of modern anthropology, Claude Levi-Strauss, called marriage a social institution with a biological foundation. Marriage throughout history is society's effort to reinforce this biological reality: male, female, offspring. All our ceremonies and laws exist to buttress nature helping bind a man to his mate for the sake of the child they might create.
Not all marriages do create children but typically they do, and the institution exists for the typical case of marriage. Homosexual relations cannot create children or provide a child with natural role models; such relations are important to the individuals involved, and demand neighbourly civility, but they do not meet nature's job description for marriage.
As van Onselen notes, homosexual couples now enjoy equality with male-female couples in every way short of marriage. It must stop short of marriage, because the demands of adults must end where the birthright of a child begins. Marriage and family formation are about about something much deeper than civil equality; they are about a natural reality which society did not create and which only a decadent party such as the Greens, so out of touch with nature, would seek to destroy.
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Victorian Police have power to demand Muslim women remove face veils
VICTORIAN police have the power to demand that Muslim women remove face veils, the State Government has ruled. And anyone who refuses to show their face can be arrested, a review of the Crimes Act has found.
The Herald Sun revealed in July that the Baillieu Government was seeking legal advice following a move in NSW to introduce special laws which meant people refusing to remove a burqa at police request faced up to a year in jail.
Police Minister Peter Ryan sought advice on the state of the current law from the Victoria Police and Department of Justice - finding police are already empowered to issue the order.
The ruling means Victorian police may make the demand of motorists when checking licences, or of those suspected of crime. There are no exceptions in the law for niqabs or other religious garb, balaclavas or motorcycle helmets.
"The Victorian Government has decided that the current laws are adequate and there is no current need for proposed changes to legislation," spokeswoman Justine Sywak said yesterday. "The Victorian Government will monitor the NSW legislation once it comes into effect."
The review came after a Sydney judge quashed a six-month jail sentence given to a burqa-wearing Sydney mother of seven, Carnita Matthews, who falsely accused a policeman of forcibly trying to remove her headdress.
A summary of the Victorian Government's legal advice, seen by the Herald Sun, shows that the law requires the face to be seen to verify identity.
"Current broad Victorian legislative powers are sufficient to allow police to request a person remove headwear for identification purposes," it says.
Under the Crimes Act, if a person is suspected of committing a crime, police may ask for name and address details. In order to be able to identify the person at a subsequent court appearance, the police officer needs to see the person's face once.
"This would therefore require a person to remove their headwear," the summary says. "If a person refuses to reveal their face, the police currently arrest the person until they can prove their identity."
The same rule applies to motorists. "Police must establish that the person whose name and image appear on the licence is in fact the person holding the licence," the summary says.
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Leftist antisemites meet opposition
PEOPLE brave enough to venture out into the wet at Brisbane's South Bank yesterday found themselves caught in the crossfire of very abusive protesters.
What started out as a protest against chocolate store Max Brenner turned into a heated face-off with those who turned out to support the company.
Pitted against each other outside the chocolate shop, the two opposing groups screamed at each other for 45 minutes before police moved one of the groups on.
The aim of the protesters, made up of the Socialist Alternative and the Justice for Palestine groups, was to highlight the support of Max Brenner's parent company, the Strauss Group, for the Israeli military and its sale of provisions to it.
Chanting "Max Brenner, come off it; there's blood in your chocolate", the group held up placards accusing Max Brenner of supporting apartheid.
The counter-protesters, made up of students, Israeli community members and politicians, screamed at their opponents: "Go home, Nazis!"
Logan City councillor Hajnal Black was repeatedly restrained by police as she pushed through the barricade line yelling: "We don't want Nazis in this country!"
There was a big police presence at the protest yesterday after a demonstration outside a Max Brenner store in Melbourne last month led to 19 arrests and three police officers being injured.
A law student, Danielle Keys, organised the student contingent of counter-protesters on Facebook after seeing footage of the Melbourne protest.
"I don't have a particularly strong opinion either way on Israel or Palestine. What's more important is dealing with freedom of enterprise and freedom of association and freedom of religion in this country," Ms Keys said.
"This is really about the innate anti-Semitic attitudes of extremist groups like the Socialist Alternative. We're all turning up to say, 'No, in Australia we support tolerance.' "
The Queensland Liberal National Party senator, Ron Boswell, said Max Brenner was a popular and "legitimate business" that should not be targeted in this way. "I think it's absolutely outrageous," he said. "I don't mind if people don't want to buy Max Brenner chocolates, but there shouldn't be pickets and intimidation and rallies to stop people.
"I think people that are trying to hit it with a boycott and picketing it, particularly a Jewish business, reminds me of some of the things that happened in the early 1930s."
The Socialist Alternative website says protesters will target Max Brenner Chocolates because it is owned by the Israeli-based Strauss Group.
It says the corporate responsibility section of Strauss Group's website – since amended – pledged the company's support to the Israeli army, including providing soldiers with food for training and missions.
The Socialist Alternative says the company has supported a platoon "infamous for its involvement in the 2006 invasion of Lebanon and other atrocities".
Senator Boswell, who spoke about the boycotts issue in Federal Parliament last week, said the protest was driven by the "super-left".
He said anyone wishing to protest on the issue should do so outside the Israeli embassy. "But don't pick on someone that comes to a chocolate shop; seriously, that's petty," he said.
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