Robust response to Aboriginal flag burners in NT
A LABOR politician last night last night slammed her colleague for calling a group of children who burned the Australian flag "little pricks".
Marion Scrymgour hit back at Rob Knight after he made the remark during a radio interview on Monday. "His comments are not helpful at all, and I don't think Rob's little army should carry on this emotional debate," she said on Facebook. Ms Scrymgour was responding to a post from one of Mr Knight's supporters, congratulating him for his stance.
Mr Knight last night said he stood by his comments. "I absolutely condemn the burning of our flag," he said. "I don't believe any cause has ever been served well by burning any flag."
The minister was inundated with public support yesterday with scores of Territorians flooding the NT News website and social networking sites to back the politician over his controversial remarks.
But his boss, Chief Minister Paul Henderson, was less convincing in his support. "Rob's got to answer for his own comments, but I think he's expressed sentiment," Mr Henderson said in a press conference yesterday. "Now whether I would have expressed it in those terms is another matter, but what we have here is a different discussion taking place in the Northern Territory."
The CLP again attacked Mr Knight over the remarks yesterday. Opposition leader Terry Mills said the flag burning was a deeply offensive act, but that Mr Knight had responded in a crass way.
"Trashing the flag is an offence. It offends the sensibilities of this nation, particularly for our defence forces," he said. "But for a community leader to respond in such a low level and crass way I think diminishes the high office that he holds."
SOURCE
Queenslanders want school performance made public
ALMOST two-thirds of Queenslanders believe teaching and learning audit results of state schools should be publicly released.
A poll on couriermail.com.au found 62 per cent of 2120 respondents wanted to know how schools performed, while 38 per cent did not think the results should be released.
The Courier-Mail's publication of the audit results on Saturday caused a furore among teachers and principals, with the Queensland Teachers' Union directing members to suspend participation in the process.
Political leaders are divided over the issue with Premier Anna Bligh backing the release, saying parents had a right to know, while LNP leader Campbell Newman dodged questions on whether he would continue the audits if his party won government.
"There's this obsession that's being created about doing the measurement, the testing and the measurement and the reporting, rather than helping the kids," he said.
Opposition education spokesman Bruce Flegg said he supported parents having the right to information about their schools but wanted to know more about the cost and benefits before deciding about publication or whether they should still be run in Queensland.
Teachers are now pursuing a way of keeping future teaching and learning audit results from being published, despite the State Government saying it believes parents have a right to the statewide information.
The QTU opposed a Right to Information application by The Courier-Mail late last year for the results, endorsing last November to suspend participation if the outcomes were ever published. That suspension was put in place on Monday.
The union argues it had secured an agreement the statewide results would not be published and any publication of them was misleading.
Every state-run school and education centre was audited in 2010, with 460 re-audited last year against world-class benchmarks in eight teaching and learning practices.
Queensland Teachers' Union president Kevin Bates said they were now considering discussing the future of the audit as part of their impending Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA), including a possible guarantee of confidentiality as part of the EBA.
SOURCE
Interference claim: MP investigation needs investigating, says union chief
The stink of corruption: Craig Thomson's conviction would lead to the downfall of the Gillard government so it must not be allowed to happen
The national secretary of the Health Services Union has called for an immediate inquiry into Fair Work Australia over its investigation into the alleged misconduct of the embattled Labor MP, Craig Thomson, and other senior union officials.
Ms Jackson, the national secretary of the HSU, says the investigation - first flagged in 2009 - was taking far too long and raised the explosive possibility of government interference into the process.
"There needs to be a competent, external inquiry into the goings-on at Fair Work Australia," Ms Jackson said. "Why has it taken so long? Why are we still waiting for answers? And why are we in this position? We need this to end."
Fair Work Australia is investigating allegations of misuse of a union credit card by the Member for Dobell, Mr Thomson, when he was national secretary of the HSU. Fair Work Australia first looked at the case in April 2009 but it did not begin a formal investigation until March 2010.
Ms Jackson said she could not rule out government interference into the inquiry but would not provide details or evidence to support her claim. "Anything is possible, but what I've seen in the last six months has been nothing but appalling," she said.
"The conduct of officials at the HSU, the conduct of certain government ministers about what they have been saying and not been saying privately to people, it all gets back to me."
Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten denied any knowledge of anyone in federal government interfering in the Fair Work Australia investigation.
Cabinet secretary Mark Dreyfus said Ms Jackson herself had said she had no evidence for her allegations. "People should lay off independent public servants that are going about their job," he told Sky News this morning. "This is an independent statutory agency and when it's finished its investigation and made its report public, that's the time for comment on it."
The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, repeated his call for the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to release details of all communication she has had over the Thomson affair. "The prime minister has got to come clean," he said.
"She has to detail every involvement between her, her office, the ministers and their offices and Fair Work Australia over this, because the only way Julia Gillard survives as prime minister right now is because she has the tainted vote of Craig Thomson in the parliament."
Mr Abbott said yesterday he will not move a no-confidence motion in the government over Ms Gillard's former staffer's involvement in the Australia Day protest when Parliament returns next week but was likely to do so if and when Fair Work Australia made adverse findings against Mr Thomson.
The Liberal Party backbencher, Jamie Briggs, defended Ms Jackson's actions saying the union secretary was just "truth-telling". "It's some pretty hard questions for the prime minister to answer today," he said.
Ms Jackson said she was not gunning for the fall of the Gillard government but that it was the fault of Labor if they lost their majority in the House of Representatives in the event Mr Thomson was forced out of Parliament.
"That would be a catastrophic outcome, but this is not of my making. It's not of the making of our union," she said. "The government should have taken more care in preselecting their candidates. This was not a surprise to them."
She also accused sections of the HSU membership of withholding crucial information from the investigation. "There's critical information that the union is withholding from the membership," she said. "But the leadership in NSW is trying to gag debate within this union and I think they hope that it all goes away and it's not going away."
Ms Jackson pledged to release more information to Fair Work Australia by Friday and has launched the website today called Clean UP HSUeast! which will detail more allegations against the senior membership.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told ABC Melbourne Radio this morning that he didn't respond to "conspiracy theories" when asked about Ms Jackson's comments and that he didn't even have the phone number of Fair Work Australia.
Ms Jackson responded that she was "totally offended" at Conroy's implication that she was "a conspiracy theorist".
Ms Jackson has been banned by the HSU from speaking publicly about the allegations and said she was speaking out as a union member.
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SOURCE
Claims for job losses jump under new Leftist regulations
UNFAIR dismissal claims continue to rise under the Fair Work Act and have increased by more than 10 per cent a year since the laws took effect in mid 2009.
The number of claims is now running at about twice the level of the final year of Work Choices.
Nearly 8000 dismissal claims were lodged in the first six months of 2011-12 with Fair Work Australia, a rise of 11 per cent from the same time a year earlier.
The opposition workplace relations spokesman, Eric Abetz, said more employers were paying "go away" money to get rid of claims and the Coalition would seek to cut the number of claims. "One would want to see a reduction in the number of claims to ensure people aren't using this simply as an opportunity to milk some more money out of an employer, just on the basis they can," he said.
Senator Abetz would not say how the Coalition's policy would reduce claims but said it would watch closely submissions to the Fair Work Act review.
The Workplace Relations Minister, Bill Shorten, told the Herald that millions of extra workers now had rights after the Fair Work laws took effect, while there was only a "small increase in the number of claims".
"The Liberals' industrial relations policy must be in a witness protection program, because no one can find it," he said. Mr Shorten said while the Coalition complains about the current system it "won't tell us what rights it will take away from people".
Industrial relations is a fraught area for the Coalition after its Work Choices policy contributed to its 2007 election defeat. That policy exempted all businesses with 100 or fewer staff from unfair dismissal laws.
Labor restored dismissal rights for millions of workers although in businesses with fewer than 15 staff they have more limited protections.
The new data, released by Fair Work Australia, shows claims have nearly doubled since 2008-09, the last year of the Work Choices system.
The data also includes strong growth in general protections claims which relate to discrimination and freedom of association.
Senator Abetz said he suspected the actual claims would be higher still, with anecdotal evidence that employers are prepared to pay off sacked workers before a claim is lodged.
The secretary of the ACTU, Jeff Lawrence, said while the number of workers covered by federal laws have tripled the number of claims have only doubled.
He said nearly all claims were settled, usually for less than a month's pay. "There is no evidence that this is 'go away money', rather than the employer making a genuine payment of compensation in recognition of their wrongdoing and/or paying out entitlements," he said.
The National Retailers Association executive director, Gary Black, said dismissal claims should be limited to discrimination claims and unfair dismissals laws should be abolished.
SOURCE
In politics as in life, fruit doesn't fall far from the ministerial tree
Peter Costello
Leave aside who told who what. The fact is the Prime Minister's office thought it was legitimate politics to organise an Aboriginal protest against her political rival.
As a taxpayer-funded "media adviser", Tony Hodges sent a tip-off to the Aboriginal tent embassy that Tony Abbott was nearby so they could do what? So they could go and protest against him.
And this is the key point. As far as Hodges was concerned the Aboriginal activists were legitimate assets to be used for partisan benefit. The only thing he had to do was to give them the message without leaving fingerprints. But Hodges wasn't up to that. So he had to fall on his sword to protect his boss.
Next time you hear the sound of handwringing coming from the Gillard government about how much they care for indigenous people, remember: they don't care nearly as much about them as they care about Tony Abbott. If they can use them to get at him, they will.
When I saw this my mind went back to the day Kevin Rudd made his apology in Parliament to the "stolen generation". A large overflow crowd gathered outside to watch the event on a big screen - indigenous and non-indigenous. Rudd's speech was received well with much applause and many tears. Then the Opposition Leader rose to speak in support. It was a difficult speech for Brendan Nelson. It involved repudiating the stubborn refusal of John Howard to use the word "sorry".
Howard loyalists were not happy about Nelson's turnaround and Nelson went out on a limb. If he had not given it bipartisan support that day, it would not have been the triumph that it was for Rudd. Rudd owed him a lot for that.
But the crowd did not warm to Nelson's speech. Some even stood up and turned their backs to the screen as his speech was broadcast. It was assumed that he had antagonised indigenous Australians. Later it was discovered that prominent among those turning their backs and demonstrating against Nelson were Lachlan Harris and Tim Gleason from the Prime Minister's staff.
Isn't that a coincidence? Different prime minister, different staff, but both engaging in attempts to fan indigenous protest against a Liberal leader.
We spend a lot of time thinking about how to successfully address indigenous disadvantage. But one thing that does not do it is political staff trying to manipulate indigenous issues for partisan advantage.
These are only two examples where staff have been caught in the act. I suspect there are many more but they have involved much more sophisticated political staff.
Before we get too hard on the staff, it is worth remembering the tone of an office is set by the minister. I always found a courteous minister had a courteous office, a trustworthy minister had trustworthy staff. People employ those who reflect their own values and beliefs. Was Richard Nixon unlucky to have those Watergate types - such as Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Colson - or did it say something about Nixon himself? Where did Hodges get the idea it was his job to spark indigenous protests against Abbott?
Which brings me to the hilarious performance by Anthony Albanese who went to the National Press Club to deliver an oh-so-serious attack on Abbott the day before the Australia Day riot. It turned out that his chief attack line was against the political rival of a fictional president played by the actor Michael Douglas in the movie The American President. Albanese says we shouldn't blame him for the blunder because he only read out a speech given to him by a staffer.
It makes you wonder what those Labor staffers are up to. Perhaps when they went to work in government they thought their lives would imitate art. In Hollywood, people organise demonstrations against opponents, do dirty tricks and get Oscars for doing so.
In the real world, actions have consequences. You learn that when you grow up.
SOURCE
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Robust response to Aboriginal flag burners in NT
A LABOR politician last night last night slammed her colleague for calling a group of children who burned the Australian flag "little pricks".
Marion Scrymgour hit back at Rob Knight after he made the remark during a radio interview on Monday. "His comments are not helpful at all, and I don't think Rob's little army should carry on this emotional debate," she said on Facebook. Ms Scrymgour was responding to a post from one of Mr Knight's supporters, congratulating him for his stance.
Mr Knight last night said he stood by his comments. "I absolutely condemn the burning of our flag," he said. "I don't believe any cause has ever been served well by burning any flag."
The minister was inundated with public support yesterday with scores of Territorians flooding the NT News website and social networking sites to back the politician over his controversial remarks.
But his boss, Chief Minister Paul Henderson, was less convincing in his support. "Rob's got to answer for his own comments, but I think he's expressed sentiment," Mr Henderson said in a press conference yesterday. "Now whether I would have expressed it in those terms is another matter, but what we have here is a different discussion taking place in the Northern Territory."
The CLP again attacked Mr Knight over the remarks yesterday. Opposition leader Terry Mills said the flag burning was a deeply offensive act, but that Mr Knight had responded in a crass way.
"Trashing the flag is an offence. It offends the sensibilities of this nation, particularly for our defence forces," he said. "But for a community leader to respond in such a low level and crass way I think diminishes the high office that he holds."
SOURCE
Queenslanders want school performance made public
ALMOST two-thirds of Queenslanders believe teaching and learning audit results of state schools should be publicly released.
A poll on couriermail.com.au found 62 per cent of 2120 respondents wanted to know how schools performed, while 38 per cent did not think the results should be released.
The Courier-Mail's publication of the audit results on Saturday caused a furore among teachers and principals, with the Queensland Teachers' Union directing members to suspend participation in the process.
Political leaders are divided over the issue with Premier Anna Bligh backing the release, saying parents had a right to know, while LNP leader Campbell Newman dodged questions on whether he would continue the audits if his party won government.
"There's this obsession that's being created about doing the measurement, the testing and the measurement and the reporting, rather than helping the kids," he said.
Opposition education spokesman Bruce Flegg said he supported parents having the right to information about their schools but wanted to know more about the cost and benefits before deciding about publication or whether they should still be run in Queensland.
Teachers are now pursuing a way of keeping future teaching and learning audit results from being published, despite the State Government saying it believes parents have a right to the statewide information.
The QTU opposed a Right to Information application by The Courier-Mail late last year for the results, endorsing last November to suspend participation if the outcomes were ever published. That suspension was put in place on Monday.
The union argues it had secured an agreement the statewide results would not be published and any publication of them was misleading.
Every state-run school and education centre was audited in 2010, with 460 re-audited last year against world-class benchmarks in eight teaching and learning practices.
Queensland Teachers' Union president Kevin Bates said they were now considering discussing the future of the audit as part of their impending Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA), including a possible guarantee of confidentiality as part of the EBA.
SOURCE
Interference claim: MP investigation needs investigating, says union chief
The stink of corruption: Craig Thomson's conviction would lead to the downfall of the Gillard government so it must not be allowed to happen
The national secretary of the Health Services Union has called for an immediate inquiry into Fair Work Australia over its investigation into the alleged misconduct of the embattled Labor MP, Craig Thomson, and other senior union officials.
Ms Jackson, the national secretary of the HSU, says the investigation - first flagged in 2009 - was taking far too long and raised the explosive possibility of government interference into the process.
"There needs to be a competent, external inquiry into the goings-on at Fair Work Australia," Ms Jackson said. "Why has it taken so long? Why are we still waiting for answers? And why are we in this position? We need this to end."
Fair Work Australia is investigating allegations of misuse of a union credit card by the Member for Dobell, Mr Thomson, when he was national secretary of the HSU. Fair Work Australia first looked at the case in April 2009 but it did not begin a formal investigation until March 2010.
Ms Jackson said she could not rule out government interference into the inquiry but would not provide details or evidence to support her claim. "Anything is possible, but what I've seen in the last six months has been nothing but appalling," she said.
"The conduct of officials at the HSU, the conduct of certain government ministers about what they have been saying and not been saying privately to people, it all gets back to me."
Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten denied any knowledge of anyone in federal government interfering in the Fair Work Australia investigation.
Cabinet secretary Mark Dreyfus said Ms Jackson herself had said she had no evidence for her allegations. "People should lay off independent public servants that are going about their job," he told Sky News this morning. "This is an independent statutory agency and when it's finished its investigation and made its report public, that's the time for comment on it."
The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, repeated his call for the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to release details of all communication she has had over the Thomson affair. "The prime minister has got to come clean," he said.
"She has to detail every involvement between her, her office, the ministers and their offices and Fair Work Australia over this, because the only way Julia Gillard survives as prime minister right now is because she has the tainted vote of Craig Thomson in the parliament."
Mr Abbott said yesterday he will not move a no-confidence motion in the government over Ms Gillard's former staffer's involvement in the Australia Day protest when Parliament returns next week but was likely to do so if and when Fair Work Australia made adverse findings against Mr Thomson.
The Liberal Party backbencher, Jamie Briggs, defended Ms Jackson's actions saying the union secretary was just "truth-telling". "It's some pretty hard questions for the prime minister to answer today," he said.
Ms Jackson said she was not gunning for the fall of the Gillard government but that it was the fault of Labor if they lost their majority in the House of Representatives in the event Mr Thomson was forced out of Parliament.
"That would be a catastrophic outcome, but this is not of my making. It's not of the making of our union," she said. "The government should have taken more care in preselecting their candidates. This was not a surprise to them."
She also accused sections of the HSU membership of withholding crucial information from the investigation. "There's critical information that the union is withholding from the membership," she said. "But the leadership in NSW is trying to gag debate within this union and I think they hope that it all goes away and it's not going away."
Ms Jackson pledged to release more information to Fair Work Australia by Friday and has launched the website today called Clean UP HSUeast! which will detail more allegations against the senior membership.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told ABC Melbourne Radio this morning that he didn't respond to "conspiracy theories" when asked about Ms Jackson's comments and that he didn't even have the phone number of Fair Work Australia.
Ms Jackson responded that she was "totally offended" at Conroy's implication that she was "a conspiracy theorist".
Ms Jackson has been banned by the HSU from speaking publicly about the allegations and said she was speaking out as a union member.
Ads by Google
SOURCE
Claims for job losses jump under new Leftist regulations
UNFAIR dismissal claims continue to rise under the Fair Work Act and have increased by more than 10 per cent a year since the laws took effect in mid 2009.
The number of claims is now running at about twice the level of the final year of Work Choices.
Nearly 8000 dismissal claims were lodged in the first six months of 2011-12 with Fair Work Australia, a rise of 11 per cent from the same time a year earlier.
The opposition workplace relations spokesman, Eric Abetz, said more employers were paying "go away" money to get rid of claims and the Coalition would seek to cut the number of claims. "One would want to see a reduction in the number of claims to ensure people aren't using this simply as an opportunity to milk some more money out of an employer, just on the basis they can," he said.
Senator Abetz would not say how the Coalition's policy would reduce claims but said it would watch closely submissions to the Fair Work Act review.
The Workplace Relations Minister, Bill Shorten, told the Herald that millions of extra workers now had rights after the Fair Work laws took effect, while there was only a "small increase in the number of claims".
"The Liberals' industrial relations policy must be in a witness protection program, because no one can find it," he said. Mr Shorten said while the Coalition complains about the current system it "won't tell us what rights it will take away from people".
Industrial relations is a fraught area for the Coalition after its Work Choices policy contributed to its 2007 election defeat. That policy exempted all businesses with 100 or fewer staff from unfair dismissal laws.
Labor restored dismissal rights for millions of workers although in businesses with fewer than 15 staff they have more limited protections.
The new data, released by Fair Work Australia, shows claims have nearly doubled since 2008-09, the last year of the Work Choices system.
The data also includes strong growth in general protections claims which relate to discrimination and freedom of association.
Senator Abetz said he suspected the actual claims would be higher still, with anecdotal evidence that employers are prepared to pay off sacked workers before a claim is lodged.
The secretary of the ACTU, Jeff Lawrence, said while the number of workers covered by federal laws have tripled the number of claims have only doubled.
He said nearly all claims were settled, usually for less than a month's pay. "There is no evidence that this is 'go away money', rather than the employer making a genuine payment of compensation in recognition of their wrongdoing and/or paying out entitlements," he said.
The National Retailers Association executive director, Gary Black, said dismissal claims should be limited to discrimination claims and unfair dismissals laws should be abolished.
SOURCE
In politics as in life, fruit doesn't fall far from the ministerial tree
Peter Costello
Leave aside who told who what. The fact is the Prime Minister's office thought it was legitimate politics to organise an Aboriginal protest against her political rival.
As a taxpayer-funded "media adviser", Tony Hodges sent a tip-off to the Aboriginal tent embassy that Tony Abbott was nearby so they could do what? So they could go and protest against him.
And this is the key point. As far as Hodges was concerned the Aboriginal activists were legitimate assets to be used for partisan benefit. The only thing he had to do was to give them the message without leaving fingerprints. But Hodges wasn't up to that. So he had to fall on his sword to protect his boss.
Next time you hear the sound of handwringing coming from the Gillard government about how much they care for indigenous people, remember: they don't care nearly as much about them as they care about Tony Abbott. If they can use them to get at him, they will.
When I saw this my mind went back to the day Kevin Rudd made his apology in Parliament to the "stolen generation". A large overflow crowd gathered outside to watch the event on a big screen - indigenous and non-indigenous. Rudd's speech was received well with much applause and many tears. Then the Opposition Leader rose to speak in support. It was a difficult speech for Brendan Nelson. It involved repudiating the stubborn refusal of John Howard to use the word "sorry".
Howard loyalists were not happy about Nelson's turnaround and Nelson went out on a limb. If he had not given it bipartisan support that day, it would not have been the triumph that it was for Rudd. Rudd owed him a lot for that.
But the crowd did not warm to Nelson's speech. Some even stood up and turned their backs to the screen as his speech was broadcast. It was assumed that he had antagonised indigenous Australians. Later it was discovered that prominent among those turning their backs and demonstrating against Nelson were Lachlan Harris and Tim Gleason from the Prime Minister's staff.
Isn't that a coincidence? Different prime minister, different staff, but both engaging in attempts to fan indigenous protest against a Liberal leader.
We spend a lot of time thinking about how to successfully address indigenous disadvantage. But one thing that does not do it is political staff trying to manipulate indigenous issues for partisan advantage.
These are only two examples where staff have been caught in the act. I suspect there are many more but they have involved much more sophisticated political staff.
Before we get too hard on the staff, it is worth remembering the tone of an office is set by the minister. I always found a courteous minister had a courteous office, a trustworthy minister had trustworthy staff. People employ those who reflect their own values and beliefs. Was Richard Nixon unlucky to have those Watergate types - such as Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Colson - or did it say something about Nixon himself? Where did Hodges get the idea it was his job to spark indigenous protests against Abbott?
Which brings me to the hilarious performance by Anthony Albanese who went to the National Press Club to deliver an oh-so-serious attack on Abbott the day before the Australia Day riot. It turned out that his chief attack line was against the political rival of a fictional president played by the actor Michael Douglas in the movie The American President. Albanese says we shouldn't blame him for the blunder because he only read out a speech given to him by a staffer.
It makes you wonder what those Labor staffers are up to. Perhaps when they went to work in government they thought their lives would imitate art. In Hollywood, people organise demonstrations against opponents, do dirty tricks and get Oscars for doing so.
In the real world, actions have consequences. You learn that when you grow up.
SOURCE
A LABOR politician last night last night slammed her colleague for calling a group of children who burned the Australian flag "little pricks".
Marion Scrymgour hit back at Rob Knight after he made the remark during a radio interview on Monday. "His comments are not helpful at all, and I don't think Rob's little army should carry on this emotional debate," she said on Facebook. Ms Scrymgour was responding to a post from one of Mr Knight's supporters, congratulating him for his stance.
Mr Knight last night said he stood by his comments. "I absolutely condemn the burning of our flag," he said. "I don't believe any cause has ever been served well by burning any flag."
The minister was inundated with public support yesterday with scores of Territorians flooding the NT News website and social networking sites to back the politician over his controversial remarks.
But his boss, Chief Minister Paul Henderson, was less convincing in his support. "Rob's got to answer for his own comments, but I think he's expressed sentiment," Mr Henderson said in a press conference yesterday. "Now whether I would have expressed it in those terms is another matter, but what we have here is a different discussion taking place in the Northern Territory."
The CLP again attacked Mr Knight over the remarks yesterday. Opposition leader Terry Mills said the flag burning was a deeply offensive act, but that Mr Knight had responded in a crass way.
"Trashing the flag is an offence. It offends the sensibilities of this nation, particularly for our defence forces," he said. "But for a community leader to respond in such a low level and crass way I think diminishes the high office that he holds."
SOURCE
Queenslanders want school performance made public
ALMOST two-thirds of Queenslanders believe teaching and learning audit results of state schools should be publicly released.
A poll on couriermail.com.au found 62 per cent of 2120 respondents wanted to know how schools performed, while 38 per cent did not think the results should be released.
The Courier-Mail's publication of the audit results on Saturday caused a furore among teachers and principals, with the Queensland Teachers' Union directing members to suspend participation in the process.
Political leaders are divided over the issue with Premier Anna Bligh backing the release, saying parents had a right to know, while LNP leader Campbell Newman dodged questions on whether he would continue the audits if his party won government.
"There's this obsession that's being created about doing the measurement, the testing and the measurement and the reporting, rather than helping the kids," he said.
Opposition education spokesman Bruce Flegg said he supported parents having the right to information about their schools but wanted to know more about the cost and benefits before deciding about publication or whether they should still be run in Queensland.
Teachers are now pursuing a way of keeping future teaching and learning audit results from being published, despite the State Government saying it believes parents have a right to the statewide information.
The QTU opposed a Right to Information application by The Courier-Mail late last year for the results, endorsing last November to suspend participation if the outcomes were ever published. That suspension was put in place on Monday.
The union argues it had secured an agreement the statewide results would not be published and any publication of them was misleading.
Every state-run school and education centre was audited in 2010, with 460 re-audited last year against world-class benchmarks in eight teaching and learning practices.
Queensland Teachers' Union president Kevin Bates said they were now considering discussing the future of the audit as part of their impending Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA), including a possible guarantee of confidentiality as part of the EBA.
SOURCE
Interference claim: MP investigation needs investigating, says union chief
The stink of corruption: Craig Thomson's conviction would lead to the downfall of the Gillard government so it must not be allowed to happen
The national secretary of the Health Services Union has called for an immediate inquiry into Fair Work Australia over its investigation into the alleged misconduct of the embattled Labor MP, Craig Thomson, and other senior union officials.
Ms Jackson, the national secretary of the HSU, says the investigation - first flagged in 2009 - was taking far too long and raised the explosive possibility of government interference into the process.
"There needs to be a competent, external inquiry into the goings-on at Fair Work Australia," Ms Jackson said. "Why has it taken so long? Why are we still waiting for answers? And why are we in this position? We need this to end."
Fair Work Australia is investigating allegations of misuse of a union credit card by the Member for Dobell, Mr Thomson, when he was national secretary of the HSU. Fair Work Australia first looked at the case in April 2009 but it did not begin a formal investigation until March 2010.
Ms Jackson said she could not rule out government interference into the inquiry but would not provide details or evidence to support her claim. "Anything is possible, but what I've seen in the last six months has been nothing but appalling," she said.
"The conduct of officials at the HSU, the conduct of certain government ministers about what they have been saying and not been saying privately to people, it all gets back to me."
Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten denied any knowledge of anyone in federal government interfering in the Fair Work Australia investigation.
Cabinet secretary Mark Dreyfus said Ms Jackson herself had said she had no evidence for her allegations. "People should lay off independent public servants that are going about their job," he told Sky News this morning. "This is an independent statutory agency and when it's finished its investigation and made its report public, that's the time for comment on it."
The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, repeated his call for the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to release details of all communication she has had over the Thomson affair. "The prime minister has got to come clean," he said.
"She has to detail every involvement between her, her office, the ministers and their offices and Fair Work Australia over this, because the only way Julia Gillard survives as prime minister right now is because she has the tainted vote of Craig Thomson in the parliament."
Mr Abbott said yesterday he will not move a no-confidence motion in the government over Ms Gillard's former staffer's involvement in the Australia Day protest when Parliament returns next week but was likely to do so if and when Fair Work Australia made adverse findings against Mr Thomson.
The Liberal Party backbencher, Jamie Briggs, defended Ms Jackson's actions saying the union secretary was just "truth-telling". "It's some pretty hard questions for the prime minister to answer today," he said.
Ms Jackson said she was not gunning for the fall of the Gillard government but that it was the fault of Labor if they lost their majority in the House of Representatives in the event Mr Thomson was forced out of Parliament.
"That would be a catastrophic outcome, but this is not of my making. It's not of the making of our union," she said. "The government should have taken more care in preselecting their candidates. This was not a surprise to them."
She also accused sections of the HSU membership of withholding crucial information from the investigation. "There's critical information that the union is withholding from the membership," she said. "But the leadership in NSW is trying to gag debate within this union and I think they hope that it all goes away and it's not going away."
Ms Jackson pledged to release more information to Fair Work Australia by Friday and has launched the website today called Clean UP HSUeast! which will detail more allegations against the senior membership.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told ABC Melbourne Radio this morning that he didn't respond to "conspiracy theories" when asked about Ms Jackson's comments and that he didn't even have the phone number of Fair Work Australia.
Ms Jackson responded that she was "totally offended" at Conroy's implication that she was "a conspiracy theorist".
Ms Jackson has been banned by the HSU from speaking publicly about the allegations and said she was speaking out as a union member.
Ads by Google
SOURCE
Claims for job losses jump under new Leftist regulations
UNFAIR dismissal claims continue to rise under the Fair Work Act and have increased by more than 10 per cent a year since the laws took effect in mid 2009.
The number of claims is now running at about twice the level of the final year of Work Choices.
Nearly 8000 dismissal claims were lodged in the first six months of 2011-12 with Fair Work Australia, a rise of 11 per cent from the same time a year earlier.
The opposition workplace relations spokesman, Eric Abetz, said more employers were paying "go away" money to get rid of claims and the Coalition would seek to cut the number of claims. "One would want to see a reduction in the number of claims to ensure people aren't using this simply as an opportunity to milk some more money out of an employer, just on the basis they can," he said.
Senator Abetz would not say how the Coalition's policy would reduce claims but said it would watch closely submissions to the Fair Work Act review.
The Workplace Relations Minister, Bill Shorten, told the Herald that millions of extra workers now had rights after the Fair Work laws took effect, while there was only a "small increase in the number of claims".
"The Liberals' industrial relations policy must be in a witness protection program, because no one can find it," he said. Mr Shorten said while the Coalition complains about the current system it "won't tell us what rights it will take away from people".
Industrial relations is a fraught area for the Coalition after its Work Choices policy contributed to its 2007 election defeat. That policy exempted all businesses with 100 or fewer staff from unfair dismissal laws.
Labor restored dismissal rights for millions of workers although in businesses with fewer than 15 staff they have more limited protections.
The new data, released by Fair Work Australia, shows claims have nearly doubled since 2008-09, the last year of the Work Choices system.
The data also includes strong growth in general protections claims which relate to discrimination and freedom of association.
Senator Abetz said he suspected the actual claims would be higher still, with anecdotal evidence that employers are prepared to pay off sacked workers before a claim is lodged.
The secretary of the ACTU, Jeff Lawrence, said while the number of workers covered by federal laws have tripled the number of claims have only doubled.
He said nearly all claims were settled, usually for less than a month's pay. "There is no evidence that this is 'go away money', rather than the employer making a genuine payment of compensation in recognition of their wrongdoing and/or paying out entitlements," he said.
The National Retailers Association executive director, Gary Black, said dismissal claims should be limited to discrimination claims and unfair dismissals laws should be abolished.
SOURCE
In politics as in life, fruit doesn't fall far from the ministerial tree
Peter Costello
Leave aside who told who what. The fact is the Prime Minister's office thought it was legitimate politics to organise an Aboriginal protest against her political rival.
As a taxpayer-funded "media adviser", Tony Hodges sent a tip-off to the Aboriginal tent embassy that Tony Abbott was nearby so they could do what? So they could go and protest against him.
And this is the key point. As far as Hodges was concerned the Aboriginal activists were legitimate assets to be used for partisan benefit. The only thing he had to do was to give them the message without leaving fingerprints. But Hodges wasn't up to that. So he had to fall on his sword to protect his boss.
Next time you hear the sound of handwringing coming from the Gillard government about how much they care for indigenous people, remember: they don't care nearly as much about them as they care about Tony Abbott. If they can use them to get at him, they will.
When I saw this my mind went back to the day Kevin Rudd made his apology in Parliament to the "stolen generation". A large overflow crowd gathered outside to watch the event on a big screen - indigenous and non-indigenous. Rudd's speech was received well with much applause and many tears. Then the Opposition Leader rose to speak in support. It was a difficult speech for Brendan Nelson. It involved repudiating the stubborn refusal of John Howard to use the word "sorry".
Howard loyalists were not happy about Nelson's turnaround and Nelson went out on a limb. If he had not given it bipartisan support that day, it would not have been the triumph that it was for Rudd. Rudd owed him a lot for that.
But the crowd did not warm to Nelson's speech. Some even stood up and turned their backs to the screen as his speech was broadcast. It was assumed that he had antagonised indigenous Australians. Later it was discovered that prominent among those turning their backs and demonstrating against Nelson were Lachlan Harris and Tim Gleason from the Prime Minister's staff.
Isn't that a coincidence? Different prime minister, different staff, but both engaging in attempts to fan indigenous protest against a Liberal leader.
We spend a lot of time thinking about how to successfully address indigenous disadvantage. But one thing that does not do it is political staff trying to manipulate indigenous issues for partisan advantage.
These are only two examples where staff have been caught in the act. I suspect there are many more but they have involved much more sophisticated political staff.
Before we get too hard on the staff, it is worth remembering the tone of an office is set by the minister. I always found a courteous minister had a courteous office, a trustworthy minister had trustworthy staff. People employ those who reflect their own values and beliefs. Was Richard Nixon unlucky to have those Watergate types - such as Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Colson - or did it say something about Nixon himself? Where did Hodges get the idea it was his job to spark indigenous protests against Abbott?
Which brings me to the hilarious performance by Anthony Albanese who went to the National Press Club to deliver an oh-so-serious attack on Abbott the day before the Australia Day riot. It turned out that his chief attack line was against the political rival of a fictional president played by the actor Michael Douglas in the movie The American President. Albanese says we shouldn't blame him for the blunder because he only read out a speech given to him by a staffer.
It makes you wonder what those Labor staffers are up to. Perhaps when they went to work in government they thought their lives would imitate art. In Hollywood, people organise demonstrations against opponents, do dirty tricks and get Oscars for doing so.
In the real world, actions have consequences. You learn that when you grow up.
SOURCE
Monday, January 30, 2012
Australian public broadcaster under fire for vilifying Christians
We read:
Video at link
Australian law is very sweeping in its provisions about racial vilification. It says: "It is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if: (a) the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and (b) the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group"
But there is no similar prohibition against religious vilification that I know of. So this complaint is unlikely to go anywhere beyond the bureaucracy.
Even if the Act did apply to religion, it has extensive exemptions. Exempted in Section 18d, for instance, are comments made "in the course of any statement, publication, discussion or debate made or held for any genuine academic, artistic or scientific purpose or any other genuine purpose in the public interest".
One would have thought that the above exemption provided a complete defence for conservative columnist Andrew Bolt in the prosecution recently brought against him. That judge Mordechai Bromberg did not accept that defence and proceeded to convict Bolt is thus incomprehensible in terms of what the law says. It can, as far as I can see, be explained only as a political judgement, akin to many of the judgments handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Even some Leftists were disturbed by Bromberg's extremism.
Given the pervasive Leftism of diaspora Jews, however, I suppose judge Bromberg's judgment and the accompanying tortured reasoning were to be expected. Jews are heavily represented in the Australian judiciary so I suppose we have to be glad that not many politically-relevant cases come before them. Leftism and law don't seem to go well together.
Epidemiologists are known for their poor grip on logic but this guy beats the band
The Warmist epidemiologist below is perfectly correct that past natural climate changes have been disastrous but the disastrous ones were episodes of COOLING. Periods of warming -- as in the Roman warm period -- were periods of prosperity and civilizational advance. Yet he is trying to make the case that history shows warming to be bad. He must know that history indicates the opposite so I say without hesitation that he is a lying crook of zero credibility on anything. I could go on to dispute more of his patently false claims but what's the point?
A LEADING Australian disease expert says prompt action on climate change is paramount to our survival on Earth. Australian National University Epidemiologist Tony McMichael has conducted an historical study that suggests natural climate change over thousands of years has destabilised civilisations via food shortages, disease and unrest.
"We haven't really grasped the fact that a change in climate presents a quite fundamental threat to the foundations of population health," Prof McMichael said. "These things have happened before in response to fairly modest changes to climate.
"Let's be aware that we really must take early action if we are going to maintain this planet as a liveable habitat for humans."
In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Prof McMichael argues the world faces extreme climate change "without precedent" over the past 10,000 years.
"With the exception of a few downward spikes of acute cooling due to massive volcanic eruptions, most of the changes have been within a band of about plus or minus three-quarters of a degree centigrade," he said today.
"Yet we are talking about the likelihood this century of going beyond two degrees centigrade and quite probably, on current trajectory, reaching a global average increase of three to four degrees."
Prof McMichael's paper states that the greatest recurring health risk over past millennia has been from food shortages mostly caused by drying and drought.
Warming also leads to an increase in infectious diseases as a result of better growth conditions for bacteria and the proliferation of mosquitoes.
Drought can also result in greater contact with rodents searching for scarce food supplies.
The ANU academic says while societies today are better equipped to defend themselves physically and technologically, they lack the flexibility smaller groups had in the past. That's partly because the world is now "over populated", according to Prof McMichael, so there are fewer areas available to retreat too.
Populations are also increasingly packed into large cities on coastlines which are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events.
Prof McMichael has been examining the impact of climate change on population health for 20 years and says it's not easy to raise awareness of the risk.
"Most of the attention has been of a more limited shorter-term kind relating to things around us like the economy, our property, infrastructure and risks to iconic ecosystems and species."
SOURCE
Backdown on "Green" fuel policy in NSW
NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell's decision to dump the ban on regular unleaded petrol from July 1 has no doubt won him plenty of goodwill from the 750,000 NSW motorists who faced paying an extra $150 a year each for more expensive premium fuel as a result.
But there is also a definite and dangerous downside for the Premier — the impression that if he is put under enough pressure he will fold on difficult issues, regardless of whether he believes in the policy being attacked.
The question being asked today is: are we witnessing the emergence of Backdown Barry?
When O'Farrell spectacularly capitulated on his government's plan to slash the rebate paid to existing customers of the troubled solar bonus scheme last year to address a cost blow out, the decision was in large part put down to the inexperience and nervousness of a new government.
A backbench revolt sparked by the phone calls of angry constituents quickly led to a backdown and NSW electricity users wore the cost.
O'Farrell was quick to blame poor advice from the public service for the original cabinet decision in a bid to neuter the accusation that he was being politically populist at the expense of good policy.
This time around, the Premier has no such scapegoat. The cabinet made its decision to proceed with the regular unleaded petrol ban late last year to enforce the 6 per cent ethanol mandate — whereby oil companies must ensure that 6 per cent of all fuel sold is ethanol. The move was a former Labor government environmental initiative that was also designed to lower petrol prices.
The O'Farrell cabinet fully intended to stick with the petrol ban come July 1, despite knowing it would cost motorists more. It appears there has been no new information made available to the government in the meantime.
In fact, only one thing has changed — the public learning about the extra cost, thanks to a massive leak of cabinet documents last week, which revealed the numerous warnings about the cost to motorists and the possibility that the ban would be unconstitutional.
Like any leader faced with such a situation, O'Farrell had two options: argue the merits of the policy he and his cabinet believe in; or panic and run scared from the fight.
Today's decision gives the strong impression that O'Farrell has chosen the latter course. If so, it is a short term political fix that is likely to cause him long term political damage.
At the very least, the decision will give every one of the hundreds of lobby groups out there heart that if they can stir up the public sufficiently the government is susceptible to wilting under pressure.
It also confirms the view that in NSW politics, just like everywhere else, money talks. Manildra, the monopoly ethanol supplier in NSW, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Labor and the Coalition.
Which leads to perhaps the greatest irony of all about this decision — while O'Farrell has extinguished a political brush fire, his determination to enforce the ethanol mandate is about to ignite a much bigger fight.
The oil companies oppose the mandate and the big question is how — given he has just jettisoned his most effective lever for enforcing it — O'Farrell intends to do that.
Presumably the legislation he has flagged to remove the unleaded ban will need to contain a big stick such as large financial penalties for oil companies who do not comply.
So he will need to stick to a policy that benefits a generous political donor and — due to its capacity to support regional jobs — has a lot of support from the Nationals in the face of a campaign from the powerful and influential big oil companies.
Already the oil companies are accusing O'Farrell of sleight of hand in today's decision — they argue that enforcing the ethanol mandate will give them no option but to turn all regular unleaded into E10 in NSW to achieve the 6 per cent target of all fuel sold.
In other words, despite today's decision, regular unleaded fuel will still disappear from the bowser and those 750,000 motorists whose cars are incompatible with ethanol blends will be forced to pay more for premium fuel. Which was of course the catalyst for the original backdown.
It seems the stage is well and truly set. It will be fascinating to watch how Backdown Barry handles the fight.
SOURCE
Behind the Canberra riot
It is often said that oppositions don't win elections. Governments lose them. The federal ALP has yet to come to terms with that -- JR
The unintended riot near the Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra on Australia Day serves as a reminder that Labor has an obsession with Tony Abbott. Yet an empirical examination of the opinion polls suggests the Opposition Leader is not Labor's essential problem. Rather, the ALP's political difficulties turn on policy - most notably, its action on climate change.
For a glimpse of Labor's state of delusion, look no further than the events at The Lobby restaurant on January 26. On the available evidence, it appears that Tony Hodges, Julia Gillard's press secretary, thought it would be a good idea if some indigenous Australians from the tent embassy confronted Abbott (either verbally or physically) at The Lobby. Why?
As Greg Turnbull, Paul Keating's one-time media adviser, said on ABC News 24 on Sunday, this was a knuckleheaded idea. Abbott would have experienced no political downside had he, alone, been confronted by radical Aborigines from the tent embassy. A smart political judge would have assessed such a scenario as a positive for the Opposition Leader.
Moreover, as is well known, Abbott has a history of supporting indigenous endeavours and has Aboriginal friends and associates. So why did Hodges do what he did? Presumably because he was so obsessed with Abbott that his judgment deserted him. It's much the same with the secretary of Unions ACT, Kim Sattler, who passed the Hodges message to some tent embassy personnel.
Whatever the exact course of the message, it seems that the recipients believed what they wanted to believe.
This is a common psychological phenomenon. The demonstrators, and more besides, thought Abbott was the kind of person who would call for the tent embassy to be demolished. In fact, of course, he did not.
The likes of Hodges and Sattler did not act automatically. For more than two years, members of the inner-city left have been warning that Abbott poses a threat to democracy and civil order. The group consists of educated leftists and social democrats alike and comprises authors, academics, bloggers, commentators, journalists, professionals and public servants.
Their views are evident to anyone who reads the ABC's online publication The Drum or the letters pages of the broadsheet newspapers.
The problem for Labor is that many Australians do not hold this position and support Abbott's social conservatism and economic policies. In August 2010, Abbott scored about as much support as Gillard. Now the Coalition leads Labor by a large margin in the polls. Clearly, the electorate does not regard Abbott as a threat.
And nor do some sensible, left-of-centre commentators who know him. In October last year, publisher Louise Adler wrote that she did not recognise Abbott in Susan Mitchell's attack biography, Tony Abbott: A Man's Man.
Labor's present political discontents stem not primarily from Abbott but, rather, from its commitment to a carbon tax leading to an emissions trading scheme.
Kevin Rudd's problems began when Abbott replaced Malcolm Turnbull and campaigned against the ETS. This was made clear when Herald journalist Lenore Taylor broke the story in late April 2010 that Labor had temporarily junked its ETS policy. She attributed this decision to "a bid to defuse Tony Abbott's 'great big new tax' attack".
On his blog on The Monthly's website, Robert Manne calls for Rudd to replace Gillard. He writes that "for its first nine months the Gillard government polled respectably" but Gillard's support began to fade in April last year.
True. What's missing is any mention of the fact the Gillard government's support began to fall once the Prime Minister announced, in late February last year, in the presence of the Greens, that Labor would introduce a carbon tax. The combination of a "great big new tax" and a broken election promise has made life difficult for Labor ever since.
The evidence suggests many Labor operatives are in denial about the impact of Rudd's and Gillard's climate change policies on the ALP. On Q&A last March, Lachlan Harris described the carbon tax as "the best decision Julia Gillard has made". The opinion polls, for the moment at least, indicate that Harris is deluded.
It appears that Australians are more concerned with the cost of electricity than with the anti-Catholic sectarianism which fires up much of the inner-city criticism of Abbott, or with the stance the Opposition Leader takes on such issues as Aboriginal advancement, asylum seekers and same-sex marriage.
The next federal election will not be decided on anyone's position on the tent embassy. It is only delusion, fired by obsession, which would lead to any other conclusion.
Or, in Greg Turnbull's terminology, the belief of a knucklehead.
SOURCE
Some disturbing negative externalities
Negative externalities are when private activities hurt other people. Many economists believe that they should be taxed or penalized
ON JANUARY 21, 1930, in the middle of the world's busiest city, excavation for New York's Empire State Building began. Fourteen months later, on May 1, 1931, the building was officially opened.
At 102 storeys it was for years the world's tallest building. About 21,000 people work there every day. It has a total floor area of 257,211 sq m. It cost, in today's dollars, about $500 million or $1944 per square metre.
In my quiet suburban street there is a house being built that has been under construction since the beginning of October 2009. For 28 months, six days a week, teams of carpenters, concretors and sundry tradesmen have been building a two-storey, detached house. With a floor area of about 200 sq m, it is not a mega-mansion. However, more than $5 million has already been spent on the construction and its completion is still a long way off.
When the house is finally finished, each square metre of floor area will have cost about $27,500 and each day of its construction will have produced a mere 0.9 sq m of floor space.
The house replaced a perfectly adequate brick bungalow, which was demolished and carted away. Then, before construction could even start in earnest, hundreds of cubic metres of sandstone bedrock were jack-hammered out of the site to join the remains of the old house at the tip.
The house's fashionable designer has called up only the best and most expensive materials and fittings and added to its complexity and expense with demanding and esoteric architectural details. Consequently the environmental footprint of the house is massive. Its profligacy is clearly indicated in its square metre cost.
As well, the impact of the protracted construction on the immediate neighbourhood has been much greater than that of a more moderate development. For almost 2½ years, our narrow street has been crowded with tradies' utes. Large mobile-cranes, skip-trucks, concrete mixers, earth-moving trucks and excavators regularly visit the building site and stay for hours. Street closures are common and there have been a number of accidents. Parking is a nightmare and walking can be dangerous.
All this aggravation and environmental degradation has been caused by one person with more money than sense and a designer who has no regard for the environment. What can be done to curb these antisocial endeavours?
How about a profligacy tax on buildings that exceed a certain cost? And why not include a completion date in the development approval and penalise the building owner for every day the work goes over that date?
SOURCE
We read:
"In the satirical interview, John Clarke poses as a mental health professional - apparently being questioned by Brian Dawe on the psychological damage caused by lengthy processing of asylum seekers.
But in a twist, it is revealed they are actually discussing how long politicians stay in office before they are finally voted out:
Dawe: A lot of them must realise the damage they are doing?
Clarke: Oh, they do. A lot of them are Christians.
Dawe: So there would be a lot of guilt?
Clarke: A lot of guilt. A lot of denial.
Dawe: Look what they are doing to the asylum seekers.
Source
Video at link
Australian law is very sweeping in its provisions about racial vilification. It says: "It is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if: (a) the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and (b) the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group"
But there is no similar prohibition against religious vilification that I know of. So this complaint is unlikely to go anywhere beyond the bureaucracy.
Even if the Act did apply to religion, it has extensive exemptions. Exempted in Section 18d, for instance, are comments made "in the course of any statement, publication, discussion or debate made or held for any genuine academic, artistic or scientific purpose or any other genuine purpose in the public interest".
One would have thought that the above exemption provided a complete defence for conservative columnist Andrew Bolt in the prosecution recently brought against him. That judge Mordechai Bromberg did not accept that defence and proceeded to convict Bolt is thus incomprehensible in terms of what the law says. It can, as far as I can see, be explained only as a political judgement, akin to many of the judgments handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Even some Leftists were disturbed by Bromberg's extremism.
Given the pervasive Leftism of diaspora Jews, however, I suppose judge Bromberg's judgment and the accompanying tortured reasoning were to be expected. Jews are heavily represented in the Australian judiciary so I suppose we have to be glad that not many politically-relevant cases come before them. Leftism and law don't seem to go well together.
Epidemiologists are known for their poor grip on logic but this guy beats the band
The Warmist epidemiologist below is perfectly correct that past natural climate changes have been disastrous but the disastrous ones were episodes of COOLING. Periods of warming -- as in the Roman warm period -- were periods of prosperity and civilizational advance. Yet he is trying to make the case that history shows warming to be bad. He must know that history indicates the opposite so I say without hesitation that he is a lying crook of zero credibility on anything. I could go on to dispute more of his patently false claims but what's the point?
A LEADING Australian disease expert says prompt action on climate change is paramount to our survival on Earth. Australian National University Epidemiologist Tony McMichael has conducted an historical study that suggests natural climate change over thousands of years has destabilised civilisations via food shortages, disease and unrest.
"We haven't really grasped the fact that a change in climate presents a quite fundamental threat to the foundations of population health," Prof McMichael said. "These things have happened before in response to fairly modest changes to climate.
"Let's be aware that we really must take early action if we are going to maintain this planet as a liveable habitat for humans."
In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Prof McMichael argues the world faces extreme climate change "without precedent" over the past 10,000 years.
"With the exception of a few downward spikes of acute cooling due to massive volcanic eruptions, most of the changes have been within a band of about plus or minus three-quarters of a degree centigrade," he said today.
"Yet we are talking about the likelihood this century of going beyond two degrees centigrade and quite probably, on current trajectory, reaching a global average increase of three to four degrees."
Prof McMichael's paper states that the greatest recurring health risk over past millennia has been from food shortages mostly caused by drying and drought.
Warming also leads to an increase in infectious diseases as a result of better growth conditions for bacteria and the proliferation of mosquitoes.
Drought can also result in greater contact with rodents searching for scarce food supplies.
The ANU academic says while societies today are better equipped to defend themselves physically and technologically, they lack the flexibility smaller groups had in the past. That's partly because the world is now "over populated", according to Prof McMichael, so there are fewer areas available to retreat too.
Populations are also increasingly packed into large cities on coastlines which are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events.
Prof McMichael has been examining the impact of climate change on population health for 20 years and says it's not easy to raise awareness of the risk.
"Most of the attention has been of a more limited shorter-term kind relating to things around us like the economy, our property, infrastructure and risks to iconic ecosystems and species."
SOURCE
Backdown on "Green" fuel policy in NSW
NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell's decision to dump the ban on regular unleaded petrol from July 1 has no doubt won him plenty of goodwill from the 750,000 NSW motorists who faced paying an extra $150 a year each for more expensive premium fuel as a result.
But there is also a definite and dangerous downside for the Premier — the impression that if he is put under enough pressure he will fold on difficult issues, regardless of whether he believes in the policy being attacked.
The question being asked today is: are we witnessing the emergence of Backdown Barry?
When O'Farrell spectacularly capitulated on his government's plan to slash the rebate paid to existing customers of the troubled solar bonus scheme last year to address a cost blow out, the decision was in large part put down to the inexperience and nervousness of a new government.
A backbench revolt sparked by the phone calls of angry constituents quickly led to a backdown and NSW electricity users wore the cost.
O'Farrell was quick to blame poor advice from the public service for the original cabinet decision in a bid to neuter the accusation that he was being politically populist at the expense of good policy.
This time around, the Premier has no such scapegoat. The cabinet made its decision to proceed with the regular unleaded petrol ban late last year to enforce the 6 per cent ethanol mandate — whereby oil companies must ensure that 6 per cent of all fuel sold is ethanol. The move was a former Labor government environmental initiative that was also designed to lower petrol prices.
The O'Farrell cabinet fully intended to stick with the petrol ban come July 1, despite knowing it would cost motorists more. It appears there has been no new information made available to the government in the meantime.
In fact, only one thing has changed — the public learning about the extra cost, thanks to a massive leak of cabinet documents last week, which revealed the numerous warnings about the cost to motorists and the possibility that the ban would be unconstitutional.
Like any leader faced with such a situation, O'Farrell had two options: argue the merits of the policy he and his cabinet believe in; or panic and run scared from the fight.
Today's decision gives the strong impression that O'Farrell has chosen the latter course. If so, it is a short term political fix that is likely to cause him long term political damage.
At the very least, the decision will give every one of the hundreds of lobby groups out there heart that if they can stir up the public sufficiently the government is susceptible to wilting under pressure.
It also confirms the view that in NSW politics, just like everywhere else, money talks. Manildra, the monopoly ethanol supplier in NSW, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Labor and the Coalition.
Which leads to perhaps the greatest irony of all about this decision — while O'Farrell has extinguished a political brush fire, his determination to enforce the ethanol mandate is about to ignite a much bigger fight.
The oil companies oppose the mandate and the big question is how — given he has just jettisoned his most effective lever for enforcing it — O'Farrell intends to do that.
Presumably the legislation he has flagged to remove the unleaded ban will need to contain a big stick such as large financial penalties for oil companies who do not comply.
So he will need to stick to a policy that benefits a generous political donor and — due to its capacity to support regional jobs — has a lot of support from the Nationals in the face of a campaign from the powerful and influential big oil companies.
Already the oil companies are accusing O'Farrell of sleight of hand in today's decision — they argue that enforcing the ethanol mandate will give them no option but to turn all regular unleaded into E10 in NSW to achieve the 6 per cent target of all fuel sold.
In other words, despite today's decision, regular unleaded fuel will still disappear from the bowser and those 750,000 motorists whose cars are incompatible with ethanol blends will be forced to pay more for premium fuel. Which was of course the catalyst for the original backdown.
It seems the stage is well and truly set. It will be fascinating to watch how Backdown Barry handles the fight.
SOURCE
Behind the Canberra riot
It is often said that oppositions don't win elections. Governments lose them. The federal ALP has yet to come to terms with that -- JR
The unintended riot near the Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra on Australia Day serves as a reminder that Labor has an obsession with Tony Abbott. Yet an empirical examination of the opinion polls suggests the Opposition Leader is not Labor's essential problem. Rather, the ALP's political difficulties turn on policy - most notably, its action on climate change.
For a glimpse of Labor's state of delusion, look no further than the events at The Lobby restaurant on January 26. On the available evidence, it appears that Tony Hodges, Julia Gillard's press secretary, thought it would be a good idea if some indigenous Australians from the tent embassy confronted Abbott (either verbally or physically) at The Lobby. Why?
As Greg Turnbull, Paul Keating's one-time media adviser, said on ABC News 24 on Sunday, this was a knuckleheaded idea. Abbott would have experienced no political downside had he, alone, been confronted by radical Aborigines from the tent embassy. A smart political judge would have assessed such a scenario as a positive for the Opposition Leader.
Moreover, as is well known, Abbott has a history of supporting indigenous endeavours and has Aboriginal friends and associates. So why did Hodges do what he did? Presumably because he was so obsessed with Abbott that his judgment deserted him. It's much the same with the secretary of Unions ACT, Kim Sattler, who passed the Hodges message to some tent embassy personnel.
Whatever the exact course of the message, it seems that the recipients believed what they wanted to believe.
This is a common psychological phenomenon. The demonstrators, and more besides, thought Abbott was the kind of person who would call for the tent embassy to be demolished. In fact, of course, he did not.
The likes of Hodges and Sattler did not act automatically. For more than two years, members of the inner-city left have been warning that Abbott poses a threat to democracy and civil order. The group consists of educated leftists and social democrats alike and comprises authors, academics, bloggers, commentators, journalists, professionals and public servants.
Their views are evident to anyone who reads the ABC's online publication The Drum or the letters pages of the broadsheet newspapers.
The problem for Labor is that many Australians do not hold this position and support Abbott's social conservatism and economic policies. In August 2010, Abbott scored about as much support as Gillard. Now the Coalition leads Labor by a large margin in the polls. Clearly, the electorate does not regard Abbott as a threat.
And nor do some sensible, left-of-centre commentators who know him. In October last year, publisher Louise Adler wrote that she did not recognise Abbott in Susan Mitchell's attack biography, Tony Abbott: A Man's Man.
Labor's present political discontents stem not primarily from Abbott but, rather, from its commitment to a carbon tax leading to an emissions trading scheme.
Kevin Rudd's problems began when Abbott replaced Malcolm Turnbull and campaigned against the ETS. This was made clear when Herald journalist Lenore Taylor broke the story in late April 2010 that Labor had temporarily junked its ETS policy. She attributed this decision to "a bid to defuse Tony Abbott's 'great big new tax' attack".
On his blog on The Monthly's website, Robert Manne calls for Rudd to replace Gillard. He writes that "for its first nine months the Gillard government polled respectably" but Gillard's support began to fade in April last year.
True. What's missing is any mention of the fact the Gillard government's support began to fall once the Prime Minister announced, in late February last year, in the presence of the Greens, that Labor would introduce a carbon tax. The combination of a "great big new tax" and a broken election promise has made life difficult for Labor ever since.
The evidence suggests many Labor operatives are in denial about the impact of Rudd's and Gillard's climate change policies on the ALP. On Q&A last March, Lachlan Harris described the carbon tax as "the best decision Julia Gillard has made". The opinion polls, for the moment at least, indicate that Harris is deluded.
It appears that Australians are more concerned with the cost of electricity than with the anti-Catholic sectarianism which fires up much of the inner-city criticism of Abbott, or with the stance the Opposition Leader takes on such issues as Aboriginal advancement, asylum seekers and same-sex marriage.
The next federal election will not be decided on anyone's position on the tent embassy. It is only delusion, fired by obsession, which would lead to any other conclusion.
Or, in Greg Turnbull's terminology, the belief of a knucklehead.
SOURCE
Some disturbing negative externalities
Negative externalities are when private activities hurt other people. Many economists believe that they should be taxed or penalized
ON JANUARY 21, 1930, in the middle of the world's busiest city, excavation for New York's Empire State Building began. Fourteen months later, on May 1, 1931, the building was officially opened.
At 102 storeys it was for years the world's tallest building. About 21,000 people work there every day. It has a total floor area of 257,211 sq m. It cost, in today's dollars, about $500 million or $1944 per square metre.
In my quiet suburban street there is a house being built that has been under construction since the beginning of October 2009. For 28 months, six days a week, teams of carpenters, concretors and sundry tradesmen have been building a two-storey, detached house. With a floor area of about 200 sq m, it is not a mega-mansion. However, more than $5 million has already been spent on the construction and its completion is still a long way off.
When the house is finally finished, each square metre of floor area will have cost about $27,500 and each day of its construction will have produced a mere 0.9 sq m of floor space.
The house replaced a perfectly adequate brick bungalow, which was demolished and carted away. Then, before construction could even start in earnest, hundreds of cubic metres of sandstone bedrock were jack-hammered out of the site to join the remains of the old house at the tip.
The house's fashionable designer has called up only the best and most expensive materials and fittings and added to its complexity and expense with demanding and esoteric architectural details. Consequently the environmental footprint of the house is massive. Its profligacy is clearly indicated in its square metre cost.
As well, the impact of the protracted construction on the immediate neighbourhood has been much greater than that of a more moderate development. For almost 2½ years, our narrow street has been crowded with tradies' utes. Large mobile-cranes, skip-trucks, concrete mixers, earth-moving trucks and excavators regularly visit the building site and stay for hours. Street closures are common and there have been a number of accidents. Parking is a nightmare and walking can be dangerous.
All this aggravation and environmental degradation has been caused by one person with more money than sense and a designer who has no regard for the environment. What can be done to curb these antisocial endeavours?
How about a profligacy tax on buildings that exceed a certain cost? And why not include a completion date in the development approval and penalise the building owner for every day the work goes over that date?
SOURCE
Australian public broadcaster under fire for vilifying Christians
We read:
Video at link
Australian law is very sweeping in its provisions about racial vilification. It says: "It is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if: (a) the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and (b) the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group"
But there is no similar prohibition against religious vilification that I know of. So this complaint is unlikely to go anywhere beyond the bureaucracy.
Even if the Act did apply to religion, it has extensive exemptions. Exempted in Section 18d, for instance, are comments made "in the course of any statement, publication, discussion or debate made or held for any genuine academic, artistic or scientific purpose or any other genuine purpose in the public interest".
One would have thought that the above exemption provided a complete defence for conservative columnist Andrew Bolt in the prosecution recently brought against him. That judge Mordechai Bromberg did not accept that defence and proceeded to convict Bolt is thus incomprehensible in terms of what the law says. It can, as far as I can see, be explained only as a political judgement, akin to many of the judgments handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Even some Leftists were disturbed by Bromberg's extremism.
Given the pervasive Leftism of diaspora Jews, however, I suppose judge Bromberg's judgment and the accompanying tortured reasoning were to be expected. Jews are heavily represented in the Australian judiciary so I suppose we have to be glad that not many politically-relevant cases come before them. Leftism and law don't seem to go well together.
Epidemiologists are known for their poor grip on logic but this guy beats the band
The Warmist epidemiologist below is perfectly correct that past natural climate changes have been disastrous but the disastrous ones were episodes of COOLING. Periods of warming -- as in the Roman warm period -- were periods of prosperity and civilizational advance. Yet he is trying to make the case that history shows warming to be bad. He must know that history indicates the opposite so I say without hesitation that he is a lying crook of zero credibility on anything. I could go on to dispute more of his patently false claims but what's the point?
A LEADING Australian disease expert says prompt action on climate change is paramount to our survival on Earth. Australian National University Epidemiologist Tony McMichael has conducted an historical study that suggests natural climate change over thousands of years has destabilised civilisations via food shortages, disease and unrest.
"We haven't really grasped the fact that a change in climate presents a quite fundamental threat to the foundations of population health," Prof McMichael said. "These things have happened before in response to fairly modest changes to climate.
"Let's be aware that we really must take early action if we are going to maintain this planet as a liveable habitat for humans."
In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Prof McMichael argues the world faces extreme climate change "without precedent" over the past 10,000 years.
"With the exception of a few downward spikes of acute cooling due to massive volcanic eruptions, most of the changes have been within a band of about plus or minus three-quarters of a degree centigrade," he said today.
"Yet we are talking about the likelihood this century of going beyond two degrees centigrade and quite probably, on current trajectory, reaching a global average increase of three to four degrees."
Prof McMichael's paper states that the greatest recurring health risk over past millennia has been from food shortages mostly caused by drying and drought.
Warming also leads to an increase in infectious diseases as a result of better growth conditions for bacteria and the proliferation of mosquitoes.
Drought can also result in greater contact with rodents searching for scarce food supplies.
The ANU academic says while societies today are better equipped to defend themselves physically and technologically, they lack the flexibility smaller groups had in the past. That's partly because the world is now "over populated", according to Prof McMichael, so there are fewer areas available to retreat too.
Populations are also increasingly packed into large cities on coastlines which are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events.
Prof McMichael has been examining the impact of climate change on population health for 20 years and says it's not easy to raise awareness of the risk.
"Most of the attention has been of a more limited shorter-term kind relating to things around us like the economy, our property, infrastructure and risks to iconic ecosystems and species."
SOURCE
Backdown on "Green" fuel policy in NSW
NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell's decision to dump the ban on regular unleaded petrol from July 1 has no doubt won him plenty of goodwill from the 750,000 NSW motorists who faced paying an extra $150 a year each for more expensive premium fuel as a result.
But there is also a definite and dangerous downside for the Premier — the impression that if he is put under enough pressure he will fold on difficult issues, regardless of whether he believes in the policy being attacked.
The question being asked today is: are we witnessing the emergence of Backdown Barry?
When O'Farrell spectacularly capitulated on his government's plan to slash the rebate paid to existing customers of the troubled solar bonus scheme last year to address a cost blow out, the decision was in large part put down to the inexperience and nervousness of a new government.
A backbench revolt sparked by the phone calls of angry constituents quickly led to a backdown and NSW electricity users wore the cost.
O'Farrell was quick to blame poor advice from the public service for the original cabinet decision in a bid to neuter the accusation that he was being politically populist at the expense of good policy.
This time around, the Premier has no such scapegoat. The cabinet made its decision to proceed with the regular unleaded petrol ban late last year to enforce the 6 per cent ethanol mandate — whereby oil companies must ensure that 6 per cent of all fuel sold is ethanol. The move was a former Labor government environmental initiative that was also designed to lower petrol prices.
The O'Farrell cabinet fully intended to stick with the petrol ban come July 1, despite knowing it would cost motorists more. It appears there has been no new information made available to the government in the meantime.
In fact, only one thing has changed — the public learning about the extra cost, thanks to a massive leak of cabinet documents last week, which revealed the numerous warnings about the cost to motorists and the possibility that the ban would be unconstitutional.
Like any leader faced with such a situation, O'Farrell had two options: argue the merits of the policy he and his cabinet believe in; or panic and run scared from the fight.
Today's decision gives the strong impression that O'Farrell has chosen the latter course. If so, it is a short term political fix that is likely to cause him long term political damage.
At the very least, the decision will give every one of the hundreds of lobby groups out there heart that if they can stir up the public sufficiently the government is susceptible to wilting under pressure.
It also confirms the view that in NSW politics, just like everywhere else, money talks. Manildra, the monopoly ethanol supplier in NSW, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Labor and the Coalition.
Which leads to perhaps the greatest irony of all about this decision — while O'Farrell has extinguished a political brush fire, his determination to enforce the ethanol mandate is about to ignite a much bigger fight.
The oil companies oppose the mandate and the big question is how — given he has just jettisoned his most effective lever for enforcing it — O'Farrell intends to do that.
Presumably the legislation he has flagged to remove the unleaded ban will need to contain a big stick such as large financial penalties for oil companies who do not comply.
So he will need to stick to a policy that benefits a generous political donor and — due to its capacity to support regional jobs — has a lot of support from the Nationals in the face of a campaign from the powerful and influential big oil companies.
Already the oil companies are accusing O'Farrell of sleight of hand in today's decision — they argue that enforcing the ethanol mandate will give them no option but to turn all regular unleaded into E10 in NSW to achieve the 6 per cent target of all fuel sold.
In other words, despite today's decision, regular unleaded fuel will still disappear from the bowser and those 750,000 motorists whose cars are incompatible with ethanol blends will be forced to pay more for premium fuel. Which was of course the catalyst for the original backdown.
It seems the stage is well and truly set. It will be fascinating to watch how Backdown Barry handles the fight.
SOURCE
Behind the Canberra riot
It is often said that oppositions don't win elections. Governments lose them. The federal ALP has yet to come to terms with that -- JR
The unintended riot near the Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra on Australia Day serves as a reminder that Labor has an obsession with Tony Abbott. Yet an empirical examination of the opinion polls suggests the Opposition Leader is not Labor's essential problem. Rather, the ALP's political difficulties turn on policy - most notably, its action on climate change.
For a glimpse of Labor's state of delusion, look no further than the events at The Lobby restaurant on January 26. On the available evidence, it appears that Tony Hodges, Julia Gillard's press secretary, thought it would be a good idea if some indigenous Australians from the tent embassy confronted Abbott (either verbally or physically) at The Lobby. Why?
As Greg Turnbull, Paul Keating's one-time media adviser, said on ABC News 24 on Sunday, this was a knuckleheaded idea. Abbott would have experienced no political downside had he, alone, been confronted by radical Aborigines from the tent embassy. A smart political judge would have assessed such a scenario as a positive for the Opposition Leader.
Moreover, as is well known, Abbott has a history of supporting indigenous endeavours and has Aboriginal friends and associates. So why did Hodges do what he did? Presumably because he was so obsessed with Abbott that his judgment deserted him. It's much the same with the secretary of Unions ACT, Kim Sattler, who passed the Hodges message to some tent embassy personnel.
Whatever the exact course of the message, it seems that the recipients believed what they wanted to believe.
This is a common psychological phenomenon. The demonstrators, and more besides, thought Abbott was the kind of person who would call for the tent embassy to be demolished. In fact, of course, he did not.
The likes of Hodges and Sattler did not act automatically. For more than two years, members of the inner-city left have been warning that Abbott poses a threat to democracy and civil order. The group consists of educated leftists and social democrats alike and comprises authors, academics, bloggers, commentators, journalists, professionals and public servants.
Their views are evident to anyone who reads the ABC's online publication The Drum or the letters pages of the broadsheet newspapers.
The problem for Labor is that many Australians do not hold this position and support Abbott's social conservatism and economic policies. In August 2010, Abbott scored about as much support as Gillard. Now the Coalition leads Labor by a large margin in the polls. Clearly, the electorate does not regard Abbott as a threat.
And nor do some sensible, left-of-centre commentators who know him. In October last year, publisher Louise Adler wrote that she did not recognise Abbott in Susan Mitchell's attack biography, Tony Abbott: A Man's Man.
Labor's present political discontents stem not primarily from Abbott but, rather, from its commitment to a carbon tax leading to an emissions trading scheme.
Kevin Rudd's problems began when Abbott replaced Malcolm Turnbull and campaigned against the ETS. This was made clear when Herald journalist Lenore Taylor broke the story in late April 2010 that Labor had temporarily junked its ETS policy. She attributed this decision to "a bid to defuse Tony Abbott's 'great big new tax' attack".
On his blog on The Monthly's website, Robert Manne calls for Rudd to replace Gillard. He writes that "for its first nine months the Gillard government polled respectably" but Gillard's support began to fade in April last year.
True. What's missing is any mention of the fact the Gillard government's support began to fall once the Prime Minister announced, in late February last year, in the presence of the Greens, that Labor would introduce a carbon tax. The combination of a "great big new tax" and a broken election promise has made life difficult for Labor ever since.
The evidence suggests many Labor operatives are in denial about the impact of Rudd's and Gillard's climate change policies on the ALP. On Q&A last March, Lachlan Harris described the carbon tax as "the best decision Julia Gillard has made". The opinion polls, for the moment at least, indicate that Harris is deluded.
It appears that Australians are more concerned with the cost of electricity than with the anti-Catholic sectarianism which fires up much of the inner-city criticism of Abbott, or with the stance the Opposition Leader takes on such issues as Aboriginal advancement, asylum seekers and same-sex marriage.
The next federal election will not be decided on anyone's position on the tent embassy. It is only delusion, fired by obsession, which would lead to any other conclusion.
Or, in Greg Turnbull's terminology, the belief of a knucklehead.
SOURCE
Some disturbing negative externalities
Negative externalities are when private activities hurt other people. Many economists believe that they should be taxed or penalized
ON JANUARY 21, 1930, in the middle of the world's busiest city, excavation for New York's Empire State Building began. Fourteen months later, on May 1, 1931, the building was officially opened.
At 102 storeys it was for years the world's tallest building. About 21,000 people work there every day. It has a total floor area of 257,211 sq m. It cost, in today's dollars, about $500 million or $1944 per square metre.
In my quiet suburban street there is a house being built that has been under construction since the beginning of October 2009. For 28 months, six days a week, teams of carpenters, concretors and sundry tradesmen have been building a two-storey, detached house. With a floor area of about 200 sq m, it is not a mega-mansion. However, more than $5 million has already been spent on the construction and its completion is still a long way off.
When the house is finally finished, each square metre of floor area will have cost about $27,500 and each day of its construction will have produced a mere 0.9 sq m of floor space.
The house replaced a perfectly adequate brick bungalow, which was demolished and carted away. Then, before construction could even start in earnest, hundreds of cubic metres of sandstone bedrock were jack-hammered out of the site to join the remains of the old house at the tip.
The house's fashionable designer has called up only the best and most expensive materials and fittings and added to its complexity and expense with demanding and esoteric architectural details. Consequently the environmental footprint of the house is massive. Its profligacy is clearly indicated in its square metre cost.
As well, the impact of the protracted construction on the immediate neighbourhood has been much greater than that of a more moderate development. For almost 2½ years, our narrow street has been crowded with tradies' utes. Large mobile-cranes, skip-trucks, concrete mixers, earth-moving trucks and excavators regularly visit the building site and stay for hours. Street closures are common and there have been a number of accidents. Parking is a nightmare and walking can be dangerous.
All this aggravation and environmental degradation has been caused by one person with more money than sense and a designer who has no regard for the environment. What can be done to curb these antisocial endeavours?
How about a profligacy tax on buildings that exceed a certain cost? And why not include a completion date in the development approval and penalise the building owner for every day the work goes over that date?
SOURCE
We read:
"In the satirical interview, John Clarke poses as a mental health professional - apparently being questioned by Brian Dawe on the psychological damage caused by lengthy processing of asylum seekers.
But in a twist, it is revealed they are actually discussing how long politicians stay in office before they are finally voted out:
Dawe: A lot of them must realise the damage they are doing?
Clarke: Oh, they do. A lot of them are Christians.
Dawe: So there would be a lot of guilt?
Clarke: A lot of guilt. A lot of denial.
Dawe: Look what they are doing to the asylum seekers.
Source
Video at link
Australian law is very sweeping in its provisions about racial vilification. It says: "It is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if: (a) the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and (b) the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group"
But there is no similar prohibition against religious vilification that I know of. So this complaint is unlikely to go anywhere beyond the bureaucracy.
Even if the Act did apply to religion, it has extensive exemptions. Exempted in Section 18d, for instance, are comments made "in the course of any statement, publication, discussion or debate made or held for any genuine academic, artistic or scientific purpose or any other genuine purpose in the public interest".
One would have thought that the above exemption provided a complete defence for conservative columnist Andrew Bolt in the prosecution recently brought against him. That judge Mordechai Bromberg did not accept that defence and proceeded to convict Bolt is thus incomprehensible in terms of what the law says. It can, as far as I can see, be explained only as a political judgement, akin to many of the judgments handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Even some Leftists were disturbed by Bromberg's extremism.
Given the pervasive Leftism of diaspora Jews, however, I suppose judge Bromberg's judgment and the accompanying tortured reasoning were to be expected. Jews are heavily represented in the Australian judiciary so I suppose we have to be glad that not many politically-relevant cases come before them. Leftism and law don't seem to go well together.
Epidemiologists are known for their poor grip on logic but this guy beats the band
The Warmist epidemiologist below is perfectly correct that past natural climate changes have been disastrous but the disastrous ones were episodes of COOLING. Periods of warming -- as in the Roman warm period -- were periods of prosperity and civilizational advance. Yet he is trying to make the case that history shows warming to be bad. He must know that history indicates the opposite so I say without hesitation that he is a lying crook of zero credibility on anything. I could go on to dispute more of his patently false claims but what's the point?
A LEADING Australian disease expert says prompt action on climate change is paramount to our survival on Earth. Australian National University Epidemiologist Tony McMichael has conducted an historical study that suggests natural climate change over thousands of years has destabilised civilisations via food shortages, disease and unrest.
"We haven't really grasped the fact that a change in climate presents a quite fundamental threat to the foundations of population health," Prof McMichael said. "These things have happened before in response to fairly modest changes to climate.
"Let's be aware that we really must take early action if we are going to maintain this planet as a liveable habitat for humans."
In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Prof McMichael argues the world faces extreme climate change "without precedent" over the past 10,000 years.
"With the exception of a few downward spikes of acute cooling due to massive volcanic eruptions, most of the changes have been within a band of about plus or minus three-quarters of a degree centigrade," he said today.
"Yet we are talking about the likelihood this century of going beyond two degrees centigrade and quite probably, on current trajectory, reaching a global average increase of three to four degrees."
Prof McMichael's paper states that the greatest recurring health risk over past millennia has been from food shortages mostly caused by drying and drought.
Warming also leads to an increase in infectious diseases as a result of better growth conditions for bacteria and the proliferation of mosquitoes.
Drought can also result in greater contact with rodents searching for scarce food supplies.
The ANU academic says while societies today are better equipped to defend themselves physically and technologically, they lack the flexibility smaller groups had in the past. That's partly because the world is now "over populated", according to Prof McMichael, so there are fewer areas available to retreat too.
Populations are also increasingly packed into large cities on coastlines which are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events.
Prof McMichael has been examining the impact of climate change on population health for 20 years and says it's not easy to raise awareness of the risk.
"Most of the attention has been of a more limited shorter-term kind relating to things around us like the economy, our property, infrastructure and risks to iconic ecosystems and species."
SOURCE
Backdown on "Green" fuel policy in NSW
NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell's decision to dump the ban on regular unleaded petrol from July 1 has no doubt won him plenty of goodwill from the 750,000 NSW motorists who faced paying an extra $150 a year each for more expensive premium fuel as a result.
But there is also a definite and dangerous downside for the Premier — the impression that if he is put under enough pressure he will fold on difficult issues, regardless of whether he believes in the policy being attacked.
The question being asked today is: are we witnessing the emergence of Backdown Barry?
When O'Farrell spectacularly capitulated on his government's plan to slash the rebate paid to existing customers of the troubled solar bonus scheme last year to address a cost blow out, the decision was in large part put down to the inexperience and nervousness of a new government.
A backbench revolt sparked by the phone calls of angry constituents quickly led to a backdown and NSW electricity users wore the cost.
O'Farrell was quick to blame poor advice from the public service for the original cabinet decision in a bid to neuter the accusation that he was being politically populist at the expense of good policy.
This time around, the Premier has no such scapegoat. The cabinet made its decision to proceed with the regular unleaded petrol ban late last year to enforce the 6 per cent ethanol mandate — whereby oil companies must ensure that 6 per cent of all fuel sold is ethanol. The move was a former Labor government environmental initiative that was also designed to lower petrol prices.
The O'Farrell cabinet fully intended to stick with the petrol ban come July 1, despite knowing it would cost motorists more. It appears there has been no new information made available to the government in the meantime.
In fact, only one thing has changed — the public learning about the extra cost, thanks to a massive leak of cabinet documents last week, which revealed the numerous warnings about the cost to motorists and the possibility that the ban would be unconstitutional.
Like any leader faced with such a situation, O'Farrell had two options: argue the merits of the policy he and his cabinet believe in; or panic and run scared from the fight.
Today's decision gives the strong impression that O'Farrell has chosen the latter course. If so, it is a short term political fix that is likely to cause him long term political damage.
At the very least, the decision will give every one of the hundreds of lobby groups out there heart that if they can stir up the public sufficiently the government is susceptible to wilting under pressure.
It also confirms the view that in NSW politics, just like everywhere else, money talks. Manildra, the monopoly ethanol supplier in NSW, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Labor and the Coalition.
Which leads to perhaps the greatest irony of all about this decision — while O'Farrell has extinguished a political brush fire, his determination to enforce the ethanol mandate is about to ignite a much bigger fight.
The oil companies oppose the mandate and the big question is how — given he has just jettisoned his most effective lever for enforcing it — O'Farrell intends to do that.
Presumably the legislation he has flagged to remove the unleaded ban will need to contain a big stick such as large financial penalties for oil companies who do not comply.
So he will need to stick to a policy that benefits a generous political donor and — due to its capacity to support regional jobs — has a lot of support from the Nationals in the face of a campaign from the powerful and influential big oil companies.
Already the oil companies are accusing O'Farrell of sleight of hand in today's decision — they argue that enforcing the ethanol mandate will give them no option but to turn all regular unleaded into E10 in NSW to achieve the 6 per cent target of all fuel sold.
In other words, despite today's decision, regular unleaded fuel will still disappear from the bowser and those 750,000 motorists whose cars are incompatible with ethanol blends will be forced to pay more for premium fuel. Which was of course the catalyst for the original backdown.
It seems the stage is well and truly set. It will be fascinating to watch how Backdown Barry handles the fight.
SOURCE
Behind the Canberra riot
It is often said that oppositions don't win elections. Governments lose them. The federal ALP has yet to come to terms with that -- JR
The unintended riot near the Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra on Australia Day serves as a reminder that Labor has an obsession with Tony Abbott. Yet an empirical examination of the opinion polls suggests the Opposition Leader is not Labor's essential problem. Rather, the ALP's political difficulties turn on policy - most notably, its action on climate change.
For a glimpse of Labor's state of delusion, look no further than the events at The Lobby restaurant on January 26. On the available evidence, it appears that Tony Hodges, Julia Gillard's press secretary, thought it would be a good idea if some indigenous Australians from the tent embassy confronted Abbott (either verbally or physically) at The Lobby. Why?
As Greg Turnbull, Paul Keating's one-time media adviser, said on ABC News 24 on Sunday, this was a knuckleheaded idea. Abbott would have experienced no political downside had he, alone, been confronted by radical Aborigines from the tent embassy. A smart political judge would have assessed such a scenario as a positive for the Opposition Leader.
Moreover, as is well known, Abbott has a history of supporting indigenous endeavours and has Aboriginal friends and associates. So why did Hodges do what he did? Presumably because he was so obsessed with Abbott that his judgment deserted him. It's much the same with the secretary of Unions ACT, Kim Sattler, who passed the Hodges message to some tent embassy personnel.
Whatever the exact course of the message, it seems that the recipients believed what they wanted to believe.
This is a common psychological phenomenon. The demonstrators, and more besides, thought Abbott was the kind of person who would call for the tent embassy to be demolished. In fact, of course, he did not.
The likes of Hodges and Sattler did not act automatically. For more than two years, members of the inner-city left have been warning that Abbott poses a threat to democracy and civil order. The group consists of educated leftists and social democrats alike and comprises authors, academics, bloggers, commentators, journalists, professionals and public servants.
Their views are evident to anyone who reads the ABC's online publication The Drum or the letters pages of the broadsheet newspapers.
The problem for Labor is that many Australians do not hold this position and support Abbott's social conservatism and economic policies. In August 2010, Abbott scored about as much support as Gillard. Now the Coalition leads Labor by a large margin in the polls. Clearly, the electorate does not regard Abbott as a threat.
And nor do some sensible, left-of-centre commentators who know him. In October last year, publisher Louise Adler wrote that she did not recognise Abbott in Susan Mitchell's attack biography, Tony Abbott: A Man's Man.
Labor's present political discontents stem not primarily from Abbott but, rather, from its commitment to a carbon tax leading to an emissions trading scheme.
Kevin Rudd's problems began when Abbott replaced Malcolm Turnbull and campaigned against the ETS. This was made clear when Herald journalist Lenore Taylor broke the story in late April 2010 that Labor had temporarily junked its ETS policy. She attributed this decision to "a bid to defuse Tony Abbott's 'great big new tax' attack".
On his blog on The Monthly's website, Robert Manne calls for Rudd to replace Gillard. He writes that "for its first nine months the Gillard government polled respectably" but Gillard's support began to fade in April last year.
True. What's missing is any mention of the fact the Gillard government's support began to fall once the Prime Minister announced, in late February last year, in the presence of the Greens, that Labor would introduce a carbon tax. The combination of a "great big new tax" and a broken election promise has made life difficult for Labor ever since.
The evidence suggests many Labor operatives are in denial about the impact of Rudd's and Gillard's climate change policies on the ALP. On Q&A last March, Lachlan Harris described the carbon tax as "the best decision Julia Gillard has made". The opinion polls, for the moment at least, indicate that Harris is deluded.
It appears that Australians are more concerned with the cost of electricity than with the anti-Catholic sectarianism which fires up much of the inner-city criticism of Abbott, or with the stance the Opposition Leader takes on such issues as Aboriginal advancement, asylum seekers and same-sex marriage.
The next federal election will not be decided on anyone's position on the tent embassy. It is only delusion, fired by obsession, which would lead to any other conclusion.
Or, in Greg Turnbull's terminology, the belief of a knucklehead.
SOURCE
Some disturbing negative externalities
Negative externalities are when private activities hurt other people. Many economists believe that they should be taxed or penalized
ON JANUARY 21, 1930, in the middle of the world's busiest city, excavation for New York's Empire State Building began. Fourteen months later, on May 1, 1931, the building was officially opened.
At 102 storeys it was for years the world's tallest building. About 21,000 people work there every day. It has a total floor area of 257,211 sq m. It cost, in today's dollars, about $500 million or $1944 per square metre.
In my quiet suburban street there is a house being built that has been under construction since the beginning of October 2009. For 28 months, six days a week, teams of carpenters, concretors and sundry tradesmen have been building a two-storey, detached house. With a floor area of about 200 sq m, it is not a mega-mansion. However, more than $5 million has already been spent on the construction and its completion is still a long way off.
When the house is finally finished, each square metre of floor area will have cost about $27,500 and each day of its construction will have produced a mere 0.9 sq m of floor space.
The house replaced a perfectly adequate brick bungalow, which was demolished and carted away. Then, before construction could even start in earnest, hundreds of cubic metres of sandstone bedrock were jack-hammered out of the site to join the remains of the old house at the tip.
The house's fashionable designer has called up only the best and most expensive materials and fittings and added to its complexity and expense with demanding and esoteric architectural details. Consequently the environmental footprint of the house is massive. Its profligacy is clearly indicated in its square metre cost.
As well, the impact of the protracted construction on the immediate neighbourhood has been much greater than that of a more moderate development. For almost 2½ years, our narrow street has been crowded with tradies' utes. Large mobile-cranes, skip-trucks, concrete mixers, earth-moving trucks and excavators regularly visit the building site and stay for hours. Street closures are common and there have been a number of accidents. Parking is a nightmare and walking can be dangerous.
All this aggravation and environmental degradation has been caused by one person with more money than sense and a designer who has no regard for the environment. What can be done to curb these antisocial endeavours?
How about a profligacy tax on buildings that exceed a certain cost? And why not include a completion date in the development approval and penalise the building owner for every day the work goes over that date?
SOURCE
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Compensation bill tipped to hit $2 billion if dam operators found to be negligent during Brisbane floods
This is what the coverup was designed to avoid
THE State Government faces a $2 billion compensation bill if dam operators are found to have been negligent during the 2011 floods, one of the state's leading valuers says.
Iain Herriot, managing partner of WBP Herriots Queensland, said there were as many as 4500 "virtually unsaleable" properties in flood-hit suburbs of Ipswich and Brisbane.
At an average figure of $400,000 to compensate for loss of value and other damages, he estimated the total potential bill for the Government was more than $1.8 billion. That calculation did not take into account properties less badly affected.
"It's unfair that you should personally bear the cost and the loss that you may have occurred as a direct result of what may have been a result of operator error at Wivenhoe Dam," Mr Herriot said.
"If that is what the commission report finally reveals, the adversely affected owner has a classic case against the operator of the dam for compensation.
"If I had a flood-affected house ... the first nasty letter I would be writing would be to the dam operator and the Queensland Government saying 'give me the money - compensate me for your error'."
Cr Pisasale said there was scope to better manage flood events but it was "for the inquiry" to determine whether there had been negligence or even political interference in 2011. "These are the questions that should have been asked the first time round," he said.
A spokesman for Treasurer Andrew Fraser said the state "does not believe it will be, nor is it in possession of advice to suggest that it will be held liable" to compensate homeowners.
In any event, the Queensland Government Insurance Fund was "in place to meet all liabilities", the spokesman said.
LNP deputy leader Tim Nicholls said Queenslanders "may well look to the Government for recompense and that would be of great worry to Queenslanders given the debt and deficit situation we have at the moment".
SOURCE
Australians should not lose sleep over Europe's nightmares
The economic news from Europe in recent days has not been good. And it could get worse as the year progresses. Those guys have big problems. But let's not spook ourselves by imagining it to be any worse than it is.
Unfortunately, there has been a tendency in parts of the media to convey an exaggerated impression of how bad things are and of the extent to which Europe's problems translate into problems for us.
Take last week's downwardly revised forecast for the world economy this year from the International Monetary Fund. We heard a lot about the fund's dire warnings of what could happen if the Europeans did not get their act together, but what was not made clear was that the fund's actual forecast was for global recession to be avoided.
Though the growth forecast in the world economy this year was cut significantly from the forecast in September, at 3.3 per cent it is below the long-run average of about 4 per cent, but still comfortably above the 2 per cent level generally regarded as representing a world recession.
On the day, no one thought it necessary to tell us - even though the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, reminded journalists of it at his press conference - that, from our perspective, the fund's revisions were old news. They were surprisingly similar to the revised forecasts the government adopted in its midyear budget review last November.
The fund has the United States growing by 1.8 per cent this year; Treasury had it at 2 per cent. The fund has the euro area contracting by 0.5 per cent; Treasury had it contracting by 0.25 per cent. For China, the fund has growth of 8.2 per cent, whereas Treasury had 8.25 per cent. For India, it is the fund's 7 per cent versus Treasury's 6.5 per cent. Bottom line? The fund has the world growing by 3.3 per cent, while Treasury had it at 3.5 per cent.....
When Treasury did this sum in the midyear review, growth in the world economy of 3.5 per cent translated to growth in our main trading partners of 4.25 per cent. All this despite Europe's recession.
Fran Kelly of Radio National Breakfast did go to the trouble of asking the lead author of the fund's World Economic Outlook, Jorg Decressin, what the revised forecasts meant for us. His reply deflated most of the hype we have been subjected to.
"Australia will be affected by these downgrades only to a limited extent," he said. Oh. "At this stage, growth in output for Australia is still reasonably strong.
"Growth in Australia is importantly driven by major investment projects that are in the pipeline and these are funded by strong multinationals that don't have problems assessing funding." Oh.
"There is no advanced economy - or maybe there are one or two - that is as well placed as Australia in order to combat a deeper slowdown, were such a slowdown to materialise, and that's because, well, you still have room to cut interest rates if that was necessary and you also have a very strong fiscal [budgetary] position."
SOURCE
Your regulators will protect you -- NOT
THREE times as many Australian women have had PIP breast implants rupture than first thought, the medicines watchdog has said, warning the number of those affected by the faulty device will rise.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration initially received 37 unconfirmed reports that implants made by the French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) had leaked. It has now revised the figure to 102 confirmed cases and 14 unconfirmed.
But the Public Health Association of Australia predicted the rupture rate would rise dramatically. Its chief executive, Michael Moore, said given the standard breast implant rupture rate was one in 10 over 10 years, the estimated number of women affected by leaking PIP implants would climb to more than 1200. "We can confidently say there will be more," Mr Moore said yesterday.
The TGA has told surgeons supplied with PIP implants to contact each patient for a check-up. It also expected the number of patients reporting their breast implants to have ruptured to increase.
"At this stage there is insufficient evidence of a problem with the Australian supplied implants to warrant routine removal of the implants that have not ruptured," a TGA spokeswoman, Kay McNiece, said yesterday.
The federal Minister for Health, Tanya Plibersek, was yesterday unwilling to upgrade her advice. When contacted by The Sun-Herald, a spokesman for Ms Plibersek said: "The minister continues to receive regular updates from the Chief Medical Officer and the TGA who are constantly evaluating information from around the world."
He also advised women who have concerns to contact the Breast Implant Information Line. There have been more than 2000 calls to the line, set up in response to the issue.
The TGA recalled PIP implants in April 2010 after French authorities found they had abnormally high rupture rates. PIP was shut down after concerns it was using industrial silicone, not medical-grade silicone, for implants. The TGA estimates 12,300 PIP implants were sold in Australia between 1998 and 2010.
Ms McNiece said health authorities were working with experts locally and overseas "to obtain more comprehensive information that will help further inform the risk assessment of this situation."
The TGA's updated figures for ruptured PIP implants are more in line with those collated by the Medical Error Action Group.
Three weeks ago the group had received more than 100 reports of ruptured implants. The PIP scandal has exposed the inadequacy of the data the TGA holds on breast implant recipients.
The Sun-Herald recently revealed that the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons is preparing to record the details of every breast implant patient, their surgeon and the type of operation on a national register of breast implants, which will act as an early warning system in the event of faulty devices.
The Society of Plastic Surgeons wants the federal government to fund the estimated $2 million it will cost to run the register every year.
A spokesman for the parliamentary secretary for Health and Ageing, Catherine King, revealed yesterday that the "establishment of medical registers for certain medical devices is under consideration".
SOURCE
Home insulation safety inspectors cost us $3.4 million
Another expensive legacy of "green" thinking
FLYING squads of safety inspectors charged with cleaning up the Federal Government's home insulation scheme have jetted around the country, lodging bills of up to $3000 to inspect a single home.
That's almost twice the original value of insulation installed under the scheme, which offered householders free insulation up to the value of $1600 as an economic stimulus measure.
The frequent-flying inspectors have travelled thousands of kilometres to check dodgy installations, even jetting from the Gold Coast to Melbourne, Perth to Adelaide and Brisbane to Perth.
Despite an edict from the Climate Change Department that "inspectors would not travel to an area where accredited inspectors were already present", new figures reveal more than 15,000 inspections involved travel - at a cost of $3.4 million.
But that is a fraction of the $500 million cost of safety checks for the scheme, axed after it was linked with the deaths of young installers and raised safety fears.
SOURCE
This is what the coverup was designed to avoid
THE State Government faces a $2 billion compensation bill if dam operators are found to have been negligent during the 2011 floods, one of the state's leading valuers says.
Iain Herriot, managing partner of WBP Herriots Queensland, said there were as many as 4500 "virtually unsaleable" properties in flood-hit suburbs of Ipswich and Brisbane.
At an average figure of $400,000 to compensate for loss of value and other damages, he estimated the total potential bill for the Government was more than $1.8 billion. That calculation did not take into account properties less badly affected.
"It's unfair that you should personally bear the cost and the loss that you may have occurred as a direct result of what may have been a result of operator error at Wivenhoe Dam," Mr Herriot said.
"If that is what the commission report finally reveals, the adversely affected owner has a classic case against the operator of the dam for compensation.
"If I had a flood-affected house ... the first nasty letter I would be writing would be to the dam operator and the Queensland Government saying 'give me the money - compensate me for your error'."
Cr Pisasale said there was scope to better manage flood events but it was "for the inquiry" to determine whether there had been negligence or even political interference in 2011. "These are the questions that should have been asked the first time round," he said.
A spokesman for Treasurer Andrew Fraser said the state "does not believe it will be, nor is it in possession of advice to suggest that it will be held liable" to compensate homeowners.
In any event, the Queensland Government Insurance Fund was "in place to meet all liabilities", the spokesman said.
LNP deputy leader Tim Nicholls said Queenslanders "may well look to the Government for recompense and that would be of great worry to Queenslanders given the debt and deficit situation we have at the moment".
SOURCE
Australians should not lose sleep over Europe's nightmares
The economic news from Europe in recent days has not been good. And it could get worse as the year progresses. Those guys have big problems. But let's not spook ourselves by imagining it to be any worse than it is.
Unfortunately, there has been a tendency in parts of the media to convey an exaggerated impression of how bad things are and of the extent to which Europe's problems translate into problems for us.
Take last week's downwardly revised forecast for the world economy this year from the International Monetary Fund. We heard a lot about the fund's dire warnings of what could happen if the Europeans did not get their act together, but what was not made clear was that the fund's actual forecast was for global recession to be avoided.
Though the growth forecast in the world economy this year was cut significantly from the forecast in September, at 3.3 per cent it is below the long-run average of about 4 per cent, but still comfortably above the 2 per cent level generally regarded as representing a world recession.
On the day, no one thought it necessary to tell us - even though the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, reminded journalists of it at his press conference - that, from our perspective, the fund's revisions were old news. They were surprisingly similar to the revised forecasts the government adopted in its midyear budget review last November.
The fund has the United States growing by 1.8 per cent this year; Treasury had it at 2 per cent. The fund has the euro area contracting by 0.5 per cent; Treasury had it contracting by 0.25 per cent. For China, the fund has growth of 8.2 per cent, whereas Treasury had 8.25 per cent. For India, it is the fund's 7 per cent versus Treasury's 6.5 per cent. Bottom line? The fund has the world growing by 3.3 per cent, while Treasury had it at 3.5 per cent.....
When Treasury did this sum in the midyear review, growth in the world economy of 3.5 per cent translated to growth in our main trading partners of 4.25 per cent. All this despite Europe's recession.
Fran Kelly of Radio National Breakfast did go to the trouble of asking the lead author of the fund's World Economic Outlook, Jorg Decressin, what the revised forecasts meant for us. His reply deflated most of the hype we have been subjected to.
"Australia will be affected by these downgrades only to a limited extent," he said. Oh. "At this stage, growth in output for Australia is still reasonably strong.
"Growth in Australia is importantly driven by major investment projects that are in the pipeline and these are funded by strong multinationals that don't have problems assessing funding." Oh.
"There is no advanced economy - or maybe there are one or two - that is as well placed as Australia in order to combat a deeper slowdown, were such a slowdown to materialise, and that's because, well, you still have room to cut interest rates if that was necessary and you also have a very strong fiscal [budgetary] position."
SOURCE
Your regulators will protect you -- NOT
THREE times as many Australian women have had PIP breast implants rupture than first thought, the medicines watchdog has said, warning the number of those affected by the faulty device will rise.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration initially received 37 unconfirmed reports that implants made by the French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) had leaked. It has now revised the figure to 102 confirmed cases and 14 unconfirmed.
But the Public Health Association of Australia predicted the rupture rate would rise dramatically. Its chief executive, Michael Moore, said given the standard breast implant rupture rate was one in 10 over 10 years, the estimated number of women affected by leaking PIP implants would climb to more than 1200. "We can confidently say there will be more," Mr Moore said yesterday.
The TGA has told surgeons supplied with PIP implants to contact each patient for a check-up. It also expected the number of patients reporting their breast implants to have ruptured to increase.
"At this stage there is insufficient evidence of a problem with the Australian supplied implants to warrant routine removal of the implants that have not ruptured," a TGA spokeswoman, Kay McNiece, said yesterday.
The federal Minister for Health, Tanya Plibersek, was yesterday unwilling to upgrade her advice. When contacted by The Sun-Herald, a spokesman for Ms Plibersek said: "The minister continues to receive regular updates from the Chief Medical Officer and the TGA who are constantly evaluating information from around the world."
He also advised women who have concerns to contact the Breast Implant Information Line. There have been more than 2000 calls to the line, set up in response to the issue.
The TGA recalled PIP implants in April 2010 after French authorities found they had abnormally high rupture rates. PIP was shut down after concerns it was using industrial silicone, not medical-grade silicone, for implants. The TGA estimates 12,300 PIP implants were sold in Australia between 1998 and 2010.
Ms McNiece said health authorities were working with experts locally and overseas "to obtain more comprehensive information that will help further inform the risk assessment of this situation."
The TGA's updated figures for ruptured PIP implants are more in line with those collated by the Medical Error Action Group.
Three weeks ago the group had received more than 100 reports of ruptured implants. The PIP scandal has exposed the inadequacy of the data the TGA holds on breast implant recipients.
The Sun-Herald recently revealed that the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons is preparing to record the details of every breast implant patient, their surgeon and the type of operation on a national register of breast implants, which will act as an early warning system in the event of faulty devices.
The Society of Plastic Surgeons wants the federal government to fund the estimated $2 million it will cost to run the register every year.
A spokesman for the parliamentary secretary for Health and Ageing, Catherine King, revealed yesterday that the "establishment of medical registers for certain medical devices is under consideration".
SOURCE
Home insulation safety inspectors cost us $3.4 million
Another expensive legacy of "green" thinking
FLYING squads of safety inspectors charged with cleaning up the Federal Government's home insulation scheme have jetted around the country, lodging bills of up to $3000 to inspect a single home.
That's almost twice the original value of insulation installed under the scheme, which offered householders free insulation up to the value of $1600 as an economic stimulus measure.
The frequent-flying inspectors have travelled thousands of kilometres to check dodgy installations, even jetting from the Gold Coast to Melbourne, Perth to Adelaide and Brisbane to Perth.
Despite an edict from the Climate Change Department that "inspectors would not travel to an area where accredited inspectors were already present", new figures reveal more than 15,000 inspections involved travel - at a cost of $3.4 million.
But that is a fraction of the $500 million cost of safety checks for the scheme, axed after it was linked with the deaths of young installers and raised safety fears.
SOURCE
Compensation bill tipped to hit $2 billion if dam operators found to be negligent during Brisbane floods
This is what the coverup was designed to avoid
THE State Government faces a $2 billion compensation bill if dam operators are found to have been negligent during the 2011 floods, one of the state's leading valuers says.
Iain Herriot, managing partner of WBP Herriots Queensland, said there were as many as 4500 "virtually unsaleable" properties in flood-hit suburbs of Ipswich and Brisbane.
At an average figure of $400,000 to compensate for loss of value and other damages, he estimated the total potential bill for the Government was more than $1.8 billion. That calculation did not take into account properties less badly affected.
"It's unfair that you should personally bear the cost and the loss that you may have occurred as a direct result of what may have been a result of operator error at Wivenhoe Dam," Mr Herriot said.
"If that is what the commission report finally reveals, the adversely affected owner has a classic case against the operator of the dam for compensation.
"If I had a flood-affected house ... the first nasty letter I would be writing would be to the dam operator and the Queensland Government saying 'give me the money - compensate me for your error'."
Cr Pisasale said there was scope to better manage flood events but it was "for the inquiry" to determine whether there had been negligence or even political interference in 2011. "These are the questions that should have been asked the first time round," he said.
A spokesman for Treasurer Andrew Fraser said the state "does not believe it will be, nor is it in possession of advice to suggest that it will be held liable" to compensate homeowners.
In any event, the Queensland Government Insurance Fund was "in place to meet all liabilities", the spokesman said.
LNP deputy leader Tim Nicholls said Queenslanders "may well look to the Government for recompense and that would be of great worry to Queenslanders given the debt and deficit situation we have at the moment".
SOURCE
Australians should not lose sleep over Europe's nightmares
The economic news from Europe in recent days has not been good. And it could get worse as the year progresses. Those guys have big problems. But let's not spook ourselves by imagining it to be any worse than it is.
Unfortunately, there has been a tendency in parts of the media to convey an exaggerated impression of how bad things are and of the extent to which Europe's problems translate into problems for us.
Take last week's downwardly revised forecast for the world economy this year from the International Monetary Fund. We heard a lot about the fund's dire warnings of what could happen if the Europeans did not get their act together, but what was not made clear was that the fund's actual forecast was for global recession to be avoided.
Though the growth forecast in the world economy this year was cut significantly from the forecast in September, at 3.3 per cent it is below the long-run average of about 4 per cent, but still comfortably above the 2 per cent level generally regarded as representing a world recession.
On the day, no one thought it necessary to tell us - even though the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, reminded journalists of it at his press conference - that, from our perspective, the fund's revisions were old news. They were surprisingly similar to the revised forecasts the government adopted in its midyear budget review last November.
The fund has the United States growing by 1.8 per cent this year; Treasury had it at 2 per cent. The fund has the euro area contracting by 0.5 per cent; Treasury had it contracting by 0.25 per cent. For China, the fund has growth of 8.2 per cent, whereas Treasury had 8.25 per cent. For India, it is the fund's 7 per cent versus Treasury's 6.5 per cent. Bottom line? The fund has the world growing by 3.3 per cent, while Treasury had it at 3.5 per cent.....
When Treasury did this sum in the midyear review, growth in the world economy of 3.5 per cent translated to growth in our main trading partners of 4.25 per cent. All this despite Europe's recession.
Fran Kelly of Radio National Breakfast did go to the trouble of asking the lead author of the fund's World Economic Outlook, Jorg Decressin, what the revised forecasts meant for us. His reply deflated most of the hype we have been subjected to.
"Australia will be affected by these downgrades only to a limited extent," he said. Oh. "At this stage, growth in output for Australia is still reasonably strong.
"Growth in Australia is importantly driven by major investment projects that are in the pipeline and these are funded by strong multinationals that don't have problems assessing funding." Oh.
"There is no advanced economy - or maybe there are one or two - that is as well placed as Australia in order to combat a deeper slowdown, were such a slowdown to materialise, and that's because, well, you still have room to cut interest rates if that was necessary and you also have a very strong fiscal [budgetary] position."
SOURCE
Your regulators will protect you -- NOT
THREE times as many Australian women have had PIP breast implants rupture than first thought, the medicines watchdog has said, warning the number of those affected by the faulty device will rise.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration initially received 37 unconfirmed reports that implants made by the French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) had leaked. It has now revised the figure to 102 confirmed cases and 14 unconfirmed.
But the Public Health Association of Australia predicted the rupture rate would rise dramatically. Its chief executive, Michael Moore, said given the standard breast implant rupture rate was one in 10 over 10 years, the estimated number of women affected by leaking PIP implants would climb to more than 1200. "We can confidently say there will be more," Mr Moore said yesterday.
The TGA has told surgeons supplied with PIP implants to contact each patient for a check-up. It also expected the number of patients reporting their breast implants to have ruptured to increase.
"At this stage there is insufficient evidence of a problem with the Australian supplied implants to warrant routine removal of the implants that have not ruptured," a TGA spokeswoman, Kay McNiece, said yesterday.
The federal Minister for Health, Tanya Plibersek, was yesterday unwilling to upgrade her advice. When contacted by The Sun-Herald, a spokesman for Ms Plibersek said: "The minister continues to receive regular updates from the Chief Medical Officer and the TGA who are constantly evaluating information from around the world."
He also advised women who have concerns to contact the Breast Implant Information Line. There have been more than 2000 calls to the line, set up in response to the issue.
The TGA recalled PIP implants in April 2010 after French authorities found they had abnormally high rupture rates. PIP was shut down after concerns it was using industrial silicone, not medical-grade silicone, for implants. The TGA estimates 12,300 PIP implants were sold in Australia between 1998 and 2010.
Ms McNiece said health authorities were working with experts locally and overseas "to obtain more comprehensive information that will help further inform the risk assessment of this situation."
The TGA's updated figures for ruptured PIP implants are more in line with those collated by the Medical Error Action Group.
Three weeks ago the group had received more than 100 reports of ruptured implants. The PIP scandal has exposed the inadequacy of the data the TGA holds on breast implant recipients.
The Sun-Herald recently revealed that the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons is preparing to record the details of every breast implant patient, their surgeon and the type of operation on a national register of breast implants, which will act as an early warning system in the event of faulty devices.
The Society of Plastic Surgeons wants the federal government to fund the estimated $2 million it will cost to run the register every year.
A spokesman for the parliamentary secretary for Health and Ageing, Catherine King, revealed yesterday that the "establishment of medical registers for certain medical devices is under consideration".
SOURCE
Home insulation safety inspectors cost us $3.4 million
Another expensive legacy of "green" thinking
FLYING squads of safety inspectors charged with cleaning up the Federal Government's home insulation scheme have jetted around the country, lodging bills of up to $3000 to inspect a single home.
That's almost twice the original value of insulation installed under the scheme, which offered householders free insulation up to the value of $1600 as an economic stimulus measure.
The frequent-flying inspectors have travelled thousands of kilometres to check dodgy installations, even jetting from the Gold Coast to Melbourne, Perth to Adelaide and Brisbane to Perth.
Despite an edict from the Climate Change Department that "inspectors would not travel to an area where accredited inspectors were already present", new figures reveal more than 15,000 inspections involved travel - at a cost of $3.4 million.
But that is a fraction of the $500 million cost of safety checks for the scheme, axed after it was linked with the deaths of young installers and raised safety fears.
SOURCE
This is what the coverup was designed to avoid
THE State Government faces a $2 billion compensation bill if dam operators are found to have been negligent during the 2011 floods, one of the state's leading valuers says.
Iain Herriot, managing partner of WBP Herriots Queensland, said there were as many as 4500 "virtually unsaleable" properties in flood-hit suburbs of Ipswich and Brisbane.
At an average figure of $400,000 to compensate for loss of value and other damages, he estimated the total potential bill for the Government was more than $1.8 billion. That calculation did not take into account properties less badly affected.
"It's unfair that you should personally bear the cost and the loss that you may have occurred as a direct result of what may have been a result of operator error at Wivenhoe Dam," Mr Herriot said.
"If that is what the commission report finally reveals, the adversely affected owner has a classic case against the operator of the dam for compensation.
"If I had a flood-affected house ... the first nasty letter I would be writing would be to the dam operator and the Queensland Government saying 'give me the money - compensate me for your error'."
Cr Pisasale said there was scope to better manage flood events but it was "for the inquiry" to determine whether there had been negligence or even political interference in 2011. "These are the questions that should have been asked the first time round," he said.
A spokesman for Treasurer Andrew Fraser said the state "does not believe it will be, nor is it in possession of advice to suggest that it will be held liable" to compensate homeowners.
In any event, the Queensland Government Insurance Fund was "in place to meet all liabilities", the spokesman said.
LNP deputy leader Tim Nicholls said Queenslanders "may well look to the Government for recompense and that would be of great worry to Queenslanders given the debt and deficit situation we have at the moment".
SOURCE
Australians should not lose sleep over Europe's nightmares
The economic news from Europe in recent days has not been good. And it could get worse as the year progresses. Those guys have big problems. But let's not spook ourselves by imagining it to be any worse than it is.
Unfortunately, there has been a tendency in parts of the media to convey an exaggerated impression of how bad things are and of the extent to which Europe's problems translate into problems for us.
Take last week's downwardly revised forecast for the world economy this year from the International Monetary Fund. We heard a lot about the fund's dire warnings of what could happen if the Europeans did not get their act together, but what was not made clear was that the fund's actual forecast was for global recession to be avoided.
Though the growth forecast in the world economy this year was cut significantly from the forecast in September, at 3.3 per cent it is below the long-run average of about 4 per cent, but still comfortably above the 2 per cent level generally regarded as representing a world recession.
On the day, no one thought it necessary to tell us - even though the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, reminded journalists of it at his press conference - that, from our perspective, the fund's revisions were old news. They were surprisingly similar to the revised forecasts the government adopted in its midyear budget review last November.
The fund has the United States growing by 1.8 per cent this year; Treasury had it at 2 per cent. The fund has the euro area contracting by 0.5 per cent; Treasury had it contracting by 0.25 per cent. For China, the fund has growth of 8.2 per cent, whereas Treasury had 8.25 per cent. For India, it is the fund's 7 per cent versus Treasury's 6.5 per cent. Bottom line? The fund has the world growing by 3.3 per cent, while Treasury had it at 3.5 per cent.....
When Treasury did this sum in the midyear review, growth in the world economy of 3.5 per cent translated to growth in our main trading partners of 4.25 per cent. All this despite Europe's recession.
Fran Kelly of Radio National Breakfast did go to the trouble of asking the lead author of the fund's World Economic Outlook, Jorg Decressin, what the revised forecasts meant for us. His reply deflated most of the hype we have been subjected to.
"Australia will be affected by these downgrades only to a limited extent," he said. Oh. "At this stage, growth in output for Australia is still reasonably strong.
"Growth in Australia is importantly driven by major investment projects that are in the pipeline and these are funded by strong multinationals that don't have problems assessing funding." Oh.
"There is no advanced economy - or maybe there are one or two - that is as well placed as Australia in order to combat a deeper slowdown, were such a slowdown to materialise, and that's because, well, you still have room to cut interest rates if that was necessary and you also have a very strong fiscal [budgetary] position."
SOURCE
Your regulators will protect you -- NOT
THREE times as many Australian women have had PIP breast implants rupture than first thought, the medicines watchdog has said, warning the number of those affected by the faulty device will rise.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration initially received 37 unconfirmed reports that implants made by the French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) had leaked. It has now revised the figure to 102 confirmed cases and 14 unconfirmed.
But the Public Health Association of Australia predicted the rupture rate would rise dramatically. Its chief executive, Michael Moore, said given the standard breast implant rupture rate was one in 10 over 10 years, the estimated number of women affected by leaking PIP implants would climb to more than 1200. "We can confidently say there will be more," Mr Moore said yesterday.
The TGA has told surgeons supplied with PIP implants to contact each patient for a check-up. It also expected the number of patients reporting their breast implants to have ruptured to increase.
"At this stage there is insufficient evidence of a problem with the Australian supplied implants to warrant routine removal of the implants that have not ruptured," a TGA spokeswoman, Kay McNiece, said yesterday.
The federal Minister for Health, Tanya Plibersek, was yesterday unwilling to upgrade her advice. When contacted by The Sun-Herald, a spokesman for Ms Plibersek said: "The minister continues to receive regular updates from the Chief Medical Officer and the TGA who are constantly evaluating information from around the world."
He also advised women who have concerns to contact the Breast Implant Information Line. There have been more than 2000 calls to the line, set up in response to the issue.
The TGA recalled PIP implants in April 2010 after French authorities found they had abnormally high rupture rates. PIP was shut down after concerns it was using industrial silicone, not medical-grade silicone, for implants. The TGA estimates 12,300 PIP implants were sold in Australia between 1998 and 2010.
Ms McNiece said health authorities were working with experts locally and overseas "to obtain more comprehensive information that will help further inform the risk assessment of this situation."
The TGA's updated figures for ruptured PIP implants are more in line with those collated by the Medical Error Action Group.
Three weeks ago the group had received more than 100 reports of ruptured implants. The PIP scandal has exposed the inadequacy of the data the TGA holds on breast implant recipients.
The Sun-Herald recently revealed that the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons is preparing to record the details of every breast implant patient, their surgeon and the type of operation on a national register of breast implants, which will act as an early warning system in the event of faulty devices.
The Society of Plastic Surgeons wants the federal government to fund the estimated $2 million it will cost to run the register every year.
A spokesman for the parliamentary secretary for Health and Ageing, Catherine King, revealed yesterday that the "establishment of medical registers for certain medical devices is under consideration".
SOURCE
Home insulation safety inspectors cost us $3.4 million
Another expensive legacy of "green" thinking
FLYING squads of safety inspectors charged with cleaning up the Federal Government's home insulation scheme have jetted around the country, lodging bills of up to $3000 to inspect a single home.
That's almost twice the original value of insulation installed under the scheme, which offered householders free insulation up to the value of $1600 as an economic stimulus measure.
The frequent-flying inspectors have travelled thousands of kilometres to check dodgy installations, even jetting from the Gold Coast to Melbourne, Perth to Adelaide and Brisbane to Perth.
Despite an edict from the Climate Change Department that "inspectors would not travel to an area where accredited inspectors were already present", new figures reveal more than 15,000 inspections involved travel - at a cost of $3.4 million.
But that is a fraction of the $500 million cost of safety checks for the scheme, axed after it was linked with the deaths of young installers and raised safety fears.
SOURCE
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Refugee appeals involving false claims cost Australian taxpayers millions
DODGY claims involving fake religious beliefs, sham marriages and lies about sexuality are adding to a logjam of cases in immigration and refugee tribunals, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
Desperate foreign citizens who arrive by plane are launching a barrage of appeals after Immigration officials reject their claims and seek to send them home.
The Refugee Review Tribunal - which handles only plane arrivals - had a 31 per cent jump in appeals last year while the Migration Review Tribunal, which deals with student and partner visas, had a 24 per cent increase. More than 13,000 appeals to the two tribunals in the one year overwhelmed resources.
While much of the national attention has focused on boat arrivals, many thousands more arrive by plane and are fighting to stay. Thousands of extra appeals are being lodged by plane arrivals each year, leading to a cost blow-out for taxpayers and long delays for applicants.
Frustrated tribunal members are finding some claims are blatantly faked, including a Chinese asylum seeker who said he was Catholic but didn't know who the Pope was.
Other men lied about being gay or invented elaborate stories about being pursued by criminal gangs, ex-partners or corrupt officials in an attempt to gain asylum. One Nigerian man sought protection for being part of a militant group involved in armed robbery, kidnapping and other non-political crimes.
Visa overstayers, including students, are also faking it or taking advantage of appeal delays to buy time in Australia at the expense of a clogged system. The Refugee Review Tribunal, which handles only plane arrivals, had 2966 appeals lodged last year - a 31 per cent jump.
The separate Migration Review Tribunal, which handles student, spouse, business and bridging visas, had 10,315 appeals last year - up 24 per cent.
The Federal Government was forced to provide an extra $14 million to the two tribunals for the next four years at the last Budget as appeals skyrocketed.
It can be difficult for asylum seekers to prove persecution, but some claims unravelled under questioning from tribunal members.
Monash University associate researcher Adrienne Millbank said the asylum seeker appeals system was vulnerable to false claims. "You hear about people who are full of hope and integrity and go on these review panels or decision-making (bodies) and get totally cynical," Ms Millbank said. "The whole system is totally farcical. It relies on the credibility of the story ... If you were putting someone in prison on that sort of evidence everyone would be horrified."
Combined appeals to the two tribunals have tripled in the past five years, prompting principal member Denis O'Brien to warn of delays in settling cases this year. A Canberra crackdown on student visas is contributing to the surge.
Immigration lawyers blame incorrect Immigration Department decisions, citing the high rate of successful appeal cases. Last year 41 per cent of appeals to the Migration Review Tribunal and 24 per cent to the Refugee Review Tribunal were successful.
Former attorney-general Michael Lavarch is conducting an independent review of the tribunals as the backlog mounts.
An Immigration Department memo reportedly warned at the time of his appointment last month: "The increasing delays result in uncertainty for applicants and provide an incentive for others to misuse the review process to extend their stay in Australia."
The Refugee Review Tribunal is also set to take on thousands more cases in the coming months when it resumes responsibility for assessing appeals from boat arrivals, who now use a separate system.
Separate appeals can be lodged through the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Federal Magistrates Court, Federal Court, High Court and the boat arrivals system.
SOURCE
Tennis ace critical of homosexuality
TENNIS great Margaret Court claims homosexuality is often the result of sexual abuse. Amid a growing backlash over her opposition to same-sex marriage, the three-time Wimbledon champion told The Sunday Mail "many, many" gay and lesbian people she knew of had "been abused" and this had led to their sexual orientation.
Court, a senior minister at Perth's Victory Life Centre, has already sparked fury among gay and equal rights activists for recent comments, including that the push for gay marriage was trying "to legitimise what God calls abominable sexual practices".
Mental health advocate Chris Tanti accused her of "spreading misery" and putting young gay people at risk of suicide with what he called her anti-gay comments, amid calls for her name to be removed from centre court at Melbourne Park.
But Court said: "We get them (homosexuals) in (at church) and you'll find that many, many of them have been abused". When asked if she felt such abuse led people to homosexuality, Court said: "Yes. You look at a lot of them, that's happened."
She would not be drawn on whether she felt same-sex abuse was specifically to blame, saying, "We'll start another can of worms if I start talking on all this."
Peter Rosengren, editor of the Catholic Church's The Record newspaper, batted away her claims, saying he had "never heard of any scientific study" linking abuse and homosexuality, and that "everyone has to be respected".
In a wide-ranging interview, Court also said:
"The word of God is our TV guide to life. It's not the fear book, it's a love book and it tells us how to live our lives."
"I would have won six Wimbledons not three . . . if I'd known what I know now from the scriptures, on the area of the mind."
Many migrants expected Australians "to change our laws to embrace what they have and I don't feel that's right".
"Christianity is a way forward" for Aboriginal people.
Court also said she did not regret speaking out against same-sex marriage. "I say what God says and that's why I've spoken out," she said. "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. "I have a right as a minister to say that. You look at the decline in the world today. I think it's so important for values and morals and righteousness to come forth like never before."
SOURCE
Free schooling gets expensive in NSW
SCHOOL costs are rising so fast that one in three parents can't afford the $3000 a year needed to send a child to a public primary school.
The cost of preparing a child for the first day of school has become so expensive, more parents are seeking financial assistance from principals and teachers, or turning to charities and second-hand stores for uniforms.
A survey of 12,000 parents shows they can expect to pay up to $514 this year for uniforms, textbooks and stationery for a public primary student, rising to $739 a year in high school.
Parents sending their children to Catholic or private schools face costs as high as $892 in primary and $1355 in high school. Fees, excursions and extracurricular activities are also on the rise.
The Australian Scholarship Group figures show the total cost of high school as high as $4360 a year in the public system, $11,518 at a Catholic school and $24,376 at a private college. Their survey also found one in three families couldn't cope with the cost of their child's education.
Teachers told The Sunday Telegraph many parents struggled to pay a compulsory "book pack" fee of between $10 and $25, depending on the school, to cover exercise books, textbooks and basic school supplies.
Canley Vale Public School principal Cheryl McBride, chairwoman of the NSW Public Schools Principals Forum, said schools were seeing more disadvantaged families each year but principals could help.
"Every principal has a discretionary fund called Student Assistance," Ms McBride said. "It's not a lot of money but it's designed to assist parents who are really struggling with things like uniforms or excursions. No kid should ever miss out on their books."
Tuition fees at NSW public schools were voluntary but wearing the correct school uniform is compulsory.
The Smith Family CEO Dr Lisa O'Brien said the charity was having one of its busiest periods and had launched a Back to School appeal to sponsor an Australian student.
SOURCE
New dam revelations
Wivenhoe Dam operators were so busy minimising disruption to downstream bridges they failed to protect urban areas until it was too late, documents indicate.
Fernvale's Geoff Fisher Bridge, the Mt Crosby Weir, Colleges Crossing, Burtons Bridge, Savages Crossing, Kholo Bridge and Twin Bridges are used by an estimated 20,000 vehicles a day.
They are vital links for their local communities, but keeping traffic flowing pales into insignificance when tens of thousands of residents are at risk of a devastating flood.
Documents now show dam operators may have focused on protecting some bridges instead of cities on the crucial weekend before the floods - in breach of its manual - as water levels soared.
"By protecting those crossings, did they keep too much water in there until it was finally too late?" Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale demanded yesterday.
"Someone would have put pressure on not to close the Brisbane Valley Highway (the Geoff Fisher Bridge)."
The Fernvale and Surrounding Communities Action Group said the bridges were central to local life.
"I have no doubt that they were not releasing the water because of the problems that it would cause for some of those low-lying bridges," co-ordinator Dennis Ward said.
The $15 million flood inquiry was about to release its final report when The Australian newspaper last week revealed dam operators may have used the wrong strategy on the weekend of January 8-9 last year and then misled the inquiry.
A huge mass of water was released from Wivenhoe to protect the dam on Tuesday, January 11, flooding Brisbane two days later and pushing water up the Bremer River to Ipswich, according to expert inquiry evidence.
Supreme Court judge Catherine Holmes will now hold nine extra days of hearings from Thursday, and is facing demands to take a new look at whether releasing water earlier could have prevented the flood.
The bombshell revelations could expose the state to a billion-dollar payout as government-owned dam operator SEQWater is only liable if it breached the dam manual. Under the manual's strategy, known as W1, operators are required to "minimise disruption to downstream rural life".
Lead flood engineer Robert Ayre testified at the inquiry: "We take that (W1) to be interpreted as we're endeavouring to keep the low-level bridges from being submerged prematurely."
When the dam level rises to 68.5m, the manual requires escalated strategies, known as W2 and W3, which have the primary consideration of protecting urban areas from inundation.
Mr Ayre's testimony - that W3 was implemented at 8am on Saturday, January 8 - is contradicted in official reports the inquiry will only now scrutinise.
SOURCE
Government-created midwife shortage in NSW
A DIRE shortage of midwives is being fuelled by the absence of refresher courses in NSW, forcing people to go interstate before they can return to the profession.
Midwives who have not worked for more than five years can't renew their registration without retraining under new national laws although there is no accredited refresher course available in NSW.
They must travel to South Australia to upgrade their skills to meet new nationalised retraining laws and even then it is difficult to find the right course, the Australian College of Midwives said. "We know there are midwives out there who are really caught up in this," Australian College of Midwives NSW president Joanne Gray said.
According to Nurses Association's Judith Kiejda NSW was "crying out for midwives".
The Sunday Telegraph last week revealed nurses wanting to get back into the industry after five years had been told they must pay $10,000 for a refresher course.
The course for retraining in general nursing is only available full-time at the College of Nursing and participants must travel to Burwood to do it. The college has been swamped with inquiries and has more than doubled the number of places it has offered this month.
But only three of the students starting the next course did their original training in Australia. The rest were overseas-trained nurses wishing to get accreditation to work here, college chief executive Tracey Osmond said.
The college does not offer a midwifery refresher course because demand was low and the cost of setting up and delivering such a course was too high, she said. There is no retraining course available for midwives in NSW, Victoria or Queensland.
One midwife caught out by the changes, Lorraine Kelly of Sutherland, suggested giving nurses an extra 12 months to earn their registration back by working in the profession.
Ms Kelly said NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner's comment to The Sunday Telegraph last week that "I can't see how there is a problem" was a joke. "That is a statement from someone who is obviously out of touch with what is happening," Ms Kelly said.
Ms Kiejda said nurses with 1015 years experience would be lost to the profession because of these changes.
SOURCE
DODGY claims involving fake religious beliefs, sham marriages and lies about sexuality are adding to a logjam of cases in immigration and refugee tribunals, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
Desperate foreign citizens who arrive by plane are launching a barrage of appeals after Immigration officials reject their claims and seek to send them home.
The Refugee Review Tribunal - which handles only plane arrivals - had a 31 per cent jump in appeals last year while the Migration Review Tribunal, which deals with student and partner visas, had a 24 per cent increase. More than 13,000 appeals to the two tribunals in the one year overwhelmed resources.
While much of the national attention has focused on boat arrivals, many thousands more arrive by plane and are fighting to stay. Thousands of extra appeals are being lodged by plane arrivals each year, leading to a cost blow-out for taxpayers and long delays for applicants.
Frustrated tribunal members are finding some claims are blatantly faked, including a Chinese asylum seeker who said he was Catholic but didn't know who the Pope was.
Other men lied about being gay or invented elaborate stories about being pursued by criminal gangs, ex-partners or corrupt officials in an attempt to gain asylum. One Nigerian man sought protection for being part of a militant group involved in armed robbery, kidnapping and other non-political crimes.
Visa overstayers, including students, are also faking it or taking advantage of appeal delays to buy time in Australia at the expense of a clogged system. The Refugee Review Tribunal, which handles only plane arrivals, had 2966 appeals lodged last year - a 31 per cent jump.
The separate Migration Review Tribunal, which handles student, spouse, business and bridging visas, had 10,315 appeals last year - up 24 per cent.
The Federal Government was forced to provide an extra $14 million to the two tribunals for the next four years at the last Budget as appeals skyrocketed.
It can be difficult for asylum seekers to prove persecution, but some claims unravelled under questioning from tribunal members.
Monash University associate researcher Adrienne Millbank said the asylum seeker appeals system was vulnerable to false claims. "You hear about people who are full of hope and integrity and go on these review panels or decision-making (bodies) and get totally cynical," Ms Millbank said. "The whole system is totally farcical. It relies on the credibility of the story ... If you were putting someone in prison on that sort of evidence everyone would be horrified."
Combined appeals to the two tribunals have tripled in the past five years, prompting principal member Denis O'Brien to warn of delays in settling cases this year. A Canberra crackdown on student visas is contributing to the surge.
Immigration lawyers blame incorrect Immigration Department decisions, citing the high rate of successful appeal cases. Last year 41 per cent of appeals to the Migration Review Tribunal and 24 per cent to the Refugee Review Tribunal were successful.
Former attorney-general Michael Lavarch is conducting an independent review of the tribunals as the backlog mounts.
An Immigration Department memo reportedly warned at the time of his appointment last month: "The increasing delays result in uncertainty for applicants and provide an incentive for others to misuse the review process to extend their stay in Australia."
The Refugee Review Tribunal is also set to take on thousands more cases in the coming months when it resumes responsibility for assessing appeals from boat arrivals, who now use a separate system.
Separate appeals can be lodged through the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Federal Magistrates Court, Federal Court, High Court and the boat arrivals system.
SOURCE
Tennis ace critical of homosexuality
TENNIS great Margaret Court claims homosexuality is often the result of sexual abuse. Amid a growing backlash over her opposition to same-sex marriage, the three-time Wimbledon champion told The Sunday Mail "many, many" gay and lesbian people she knew of had "been abused" and this had led to their sexual orientation.
Court, a senior minister at Perth's Victory Life Centre, has already sparked fury among gay and equal rights activists for recent comments, including that the push for gay marriage was trying "to legitimise what God calls abominable sexual practices".
Mental health advocate Chris Tanti accused her of "spreading misery" and putting young gay people at risk of suicide with what he called her anti-gay comments, amid calls for her name to be removed from centre court at Melbourne Park.
But Court said: "We get them (homosexuals) in (at church) and you'll find that many, many of them have been abused". When asked if she felt such abuse led people to homosexuality, Court said: "Yes. You look at a lot of them, that's happened."
She would not be drawn on whether she felt same-sex abuse was specifically to blame, saying, "We'll start another can of worms if I start talking on all this."
Peter Rosengren, editor of the Catholic Church's The Record newspaper, batted away her claims, saying he had "never heard of any scientific study" linking abuse and homosexuality, and that "everyone has to be respected".
In a wide-ranging interview, Court also said:
"The word of God is our TV guide to life. It's not the fear book, it's a love book and it tells us how to live our lives."
"I would have won six Wimbledons not three . . . if I'd known what I know now from the scriptures, on the area of the mind."
Many migrants expected Australians "to change our laws to embrace what they have and I don't feel that's right".
"Christianity is a way forward" for Aboriginal people.
Court also said she did not regret speaking out against same-sex marriage. "I say what God says and that's why I've spoken out," she said. "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. "I have a right as a minister to say that. You look at the decline in the world today. I think it's so important for values and morals and righteousness to come forth like never before."
SOURCE
Free schooling gets expensive in NSW
SCHOOL costs are rising so fast that one in three parents can't afford the $3000 a year needed to send a child to a public primary school.
The cost of preparing a child for the first day of school has become so expensive, more parents are seeking financial assistance from principals and teachers, or turning to charities and second-hand stores for uniforms.
A survey of 12,000 parents shows they can expect to pay up to $514 this year for uniforms, textbooks and stationery for a public primary student, rising to $739 a year in high school.
Parents sending their children to Catholic or private schools face costs as high as $892 in primary and $1355 in high school. Fees, excursions and extracurricular activities are also on the rise.
The Australian Scholarship Group figures show the total cost of high school as high as $4360 a year in the public system, $11,518 at a Catholic school and $24,376 at a private college. Their survey also found one in three families couldn't cope with the cost of their child's education.
Teachers told The Sunday Telegraph many parents struggled to pay a compulsory "book pack" fee of between $10 and $25, depending on the school, to cover exercise books, textbooks and basic school supplies.
Canley Vale Public School principal Cheryl McBride, chairwoman of the NSW Public Schools Principals Forum, said schools were seeing more disadvantaged families each year but principals could help.
"Every principal has a discretionary fund called Student Assistance," Ms McBride said. "It's not a lot of money but it's designed to assist parents who are really struggling with things like uniforms or excursions. No kid should ever miss out on their books."
Tuition fees at NSW public schools were voluntary but wearing the correct school uniform is compulsory.
The Smith Family CEO Dr Lisa O'Brien said the charity was having one of its busiest periods and had launched a Back to School appeal to sponsor an Australian student.
SOURCE
New dam revelations
Wivenhoe Dam operators were so busy minimising disruption to downstream bridges they failed to protect urban areas until it was too late, documents indicate.
Fernvale's Geoff Fisher Bridge, the Mt Crosby Weir, Colleges Crossing, Burtons Bridge, Savages Crossing, Kholo Bridge and Twin Bridges are used by an estimated 20,000 vehicles a day.
They are vital links for their local communities, but keeping traffic flowing pales into insignificance when tens of thousands of residents are at risk of a devastating flood.
Documents now show dam operators may have focused on protecting some bridges instead of cities on the crucial weekend before the floods - in breach of its manual - as water levels soared.
"By protecting those crossings, did they keep too much water in there until it was finally too late?" Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale demanded yesterday.
"Someone would have put pressure on not to close the Brisbane Valley Highway (the Geoff Fisher Bridge)."
The Fernvale and Surrounding Communities Action Group said the bridges were central to local life.
"I have no doubt that they were not releasing the water because of the problems that it would cause for some of those low-lying bridges," co-ordinator Dennis Ward said.
The $15 million flood inquiry was about to release its final report when The Australian newspaper last week revealed dam operators may have used the wrong strategy on the weekend of January 8-9 last year and then misled the inquiry.
A huge mass of water was released from Wivenhoe to protect the dam on Tuesday, January 11, flooding Brisbane two days later and pushing water up the Bremer River to Ipswich, according to expert inquiry evidence.
Supreme Court judge Catherine Holmes will now hold nine extra days of hearings from Thursday, and is facing demands to take a new look at whether releasing water earlier could have prevented the flood.
The bombshell revelations could expose the state to a billion-dollar payout as government-owned dam operator SEQWater is only liable if it breached the dam manual. Under the manual's strategy, known as W1, operators are required to "minimise disruption to downstream rural life".
Lead flood engineer Robert Ayre testified at the inquiry: "We take that (W1) to be interpreted as we're endeavouring to keep the low-level bridges from being submerged prematurely."
When the dam level rises to 68.5m, the manual requires escalated strategies, known as W2 and W3, which have the primary consideration of protecting urban areas from inundation.
Mr Ayre's testimony - that W3 was implemented at 8am on Saturday, January 8 - is contradicted in official reports the inquiry will only now scrutinise.
SOURCE
Government-created midwife shortage in NSW
A DIRE shortage of midwives is being fuelled by the absence of refresher courses in NSW, forcing people to go interstate before they can return to the profession.
Midwives who have not worked for more than five years can't renew their registration without retraining under new national laws although there is no accredited refresher course available in NSW.
They must travel to South Australia to upgrade their skills to meet new nationalised retraining laws and even then it is difficult to find the right course, the Australian College of Midwives said. "We know there are midwives out there who are really caught up in this," Australian College of Midwives NSW president Joanne Gray said.
According to Nurses Association's Judith Kiejda NSW was "crying out for midwives".
The Sunday Telegraph last week revealed nurses wanting to get back into the industry after five years had been told they must pay $10,000 for a refresher course.
The course for retraining in general nursing is only available full-time at the College of Nursing and participants must travel to Burwood to do it. The college has been swamped with inquiries and has more than doubled the number of places it has offered this month.
But only three of the students starting the next course did their original training in Australia. The rest were overseas-trained nurses wishing to get accreditation to work here, college chief executive Tracey Osmond said.
The college does not offer a midwifery refresher course because demand was low and the cost of setting up and delivering such a course was too high, she said. There is no retraining course available for midwives in NSW, Victoria or Queensland.
One midwife caught out by the changes, Lorraine Kelly of Sutherland, suggested giving nurses an extra 12 months to earn their registration back by working in the profession.
Ms Kelly said NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner's comment to The Sunday Telegraph last week that "I can't see how there is a problem" was a joke. "That is a statement from someone who is obviously out of touch with what is happening," Ms Kelly said.
Ms Kiejda said nurses with 1015 years experience would be lost to the profession because of these changes.
SOURCE
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