SBS screens this week a three part series ‘Go Back Where You Came From’, a documentary which shows a group of Australians being confronted (sic) with the living conditions of so-called ‘refugees’ in the camps of Asia and Africa and with their difficult journeys (sic) to come to Australia.
The program is pure propaganda.
Originally, Australia First members Jim Saleam and Perry Jewell, were also approached to participate. As could reasonably be expected, the tentative invitations to these nationalists were not pursued. At all points, the true purpose of the producers was to choose persons who were likely to be ‘remoulded’ by a type of hands-on live-drama re-education.
So it was.
At no time does this program really explain that refugees (sic) are often people who have declined to take up arms against their alleged oppressors, that the conditions they may find themselves in are in one sense of their own making, what economic refugees may be as opposed to political dissenters, that many consider permanent flight of better value than a fighting return, that many have social practises repugnant to Australian society, that many of these people may also hate and be envious of those who possess wealth and territory – and that overpopulation and New World Order wars and other ethnic based strife are the chief underlying causes of many outpourings from the Third World.
We are witness then to an attempt to brainwash Australians to accept that they are guilty people if they lack compassion.
In fact, for most Australians other than the liberal minded, there is a feeling that this brainwash should be resisted but they don’t know how.
The Case Of Raye Colbey
The star of the show, Raye Colbey, is described as a lady from Inverbrackie in South Australia where a refugee detention centre has been founded. Mrs. Colbey goes on the SBS organized jaunt overseas and learns about her ‘hate’, learns of compassion and so forth.
Reports passed to Australia First in South Australia , suggest that Mrs. Colbey has family members involved in support campaigns for so-called refugees.
Mrs Colbey has been a victim, if she really is a victim, of psychological manipulation. We note how quickly the usual media suspects have been to publish a public recant from her of her ‘former’, t=racist (sic) views.
Schools Will Get The SBS Doco But ‘The Camp Of The Saints’ Will Be There In Reply
A report was given to Australia First in New South Wales that the program will be shown on DVD to high school students as part of a propaganda offensive to soften students’ attitudes to the refugee invasion. This offers an opportunity for the new Eureka Youth League and Australia First Party to fight back.
Both organisations will surely seek to make mass awareness of the antidote: The Camp Of The Saints, the 1972 novel which explained the psychosis the dominant groups of our Western societies faced with a refugee invasion of European lands – a work composed before there were any mass refugee outpourings from the Third World . This revolutionary novel posited that overpopulation and poverty, war and envy, would propel masses towards the vision of a better life. It then pilloried the false-moralities that would justify to certain Westerners the very destruction of their own societies.
For the curious:
http://www.archive.org/details/CampOfTheSaints
This book should be studied by all Australians who need a counter-morality to the SBS type propaganda about to invade our screens.
Intensify The Struggle: ‘Expel The Refugees’
Australians need to act against the army of churchmen, Greens, Trotskyites, lawyer-advocates and others who play morality games over the refugee invasion and who mobilize daily to beat down Australians.
The morality is on the side of the Australian people, who under the challenge of mass immigration and now refugee invasion, have opted to resist.
Our party will repudiate the United Nations Convention On Refugees (1951). Ultimately, we will expel the refugees! But we make this very, very, dark promise: the traitors who have decided to give away our birthright will pay for the assisted return, if necessary of hundreds of thousands of persons to countries of origin – by the public seizure of their assets.
It has come to this.
Warn your friends and children against the latest SBS propaganda.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
NSW power sale a 'charity giveaway'
Tuesday, January 18, 2011 » 07:16pm
The NSW opposition has labelled the $5.3b power privatisation a charity fire sale, after costs are included.
The NSW opposition and crossbench MPs have labelled the $5.3 billion power privatisation a charity fire sale, after costs are included.
NSW Treasury Secretary Michael Schur fronted an upper house inquiry into the partial privatisation on Tuesday and described the deal as 'the next best option' to full privatisation or leasing out the power stations.
He also revealed that $1.2 billion would go to pay out the debts of generators Delta West and Eraring Energy, while $360 million had been written into the deal to cover the risk of unplanned power outages.
NSW has retained control of power stations managed by Eraring Energy and Delta West, but sold the generation rights under the complex Gentrader model.
It also offloaded retail assets Energy Australia, Integral Energy and Country Energy.
In a blow to the government, Mr Schur admitted the Gentrader model was not his preferred sale option, saying it had failed to completely 'de-risk' the state against the vagaries of power generation.
'There is only one way we could have got rid of this risk entirely ... the only way you can get rid of this unplanned outage risk is to enter into long-term leases of the assets or sell them,' he told the inquiry in Sydney.
However, Mr Schur denied the Gentrader structure was a 'second-rate option'.
'I have said on more than one occasion ... that the Gentrader option is the next best option available to the state.'
The inquiry is examining whether the multibillion-dollar sale represents good value for the taxpayers, and why eight Eraring and Delta directors resigned in protest at the deal hours before it was finalised last month.
However, the former board members have refused to appear at the inquiry, fearing that because parliament was prorogued just before Christmas they will not be protected by parliamentary privilege.
They have now been summonsed to appear at the inquiry next Monday.
Opposition treasury spokesman Mike Baird said the state would be left with nothing more than short change after the sale.
Mr Baird described the sale as a 'charity giveaway' with the inclusion of the $1.5 billion needed to develop the Cobbora Coal mine near Mudgee, to provide an estimated $1 billion in coal subsidies to the Gentraders.
'If you take away all the costs you see today, then effectively there is a few hundred million for all these assets,' he told AAP.
Chairman of the inquiry, Christian Democrat MP the Reverend Fred Nile, said the $5.3 billion figure for the sale was just a 'gross price'.
'It does appear to be, as we said earlier, a fire sale or a charity giveaway,' he told reporters after the hearing.
'When the top people in the treasury indicate they did not favour the process, it is obviously then being driven politically rather than economically.'
But Mr Schur said the cost of the Cobbora mine should not be included when tallying up the sale.
'The view on Cobbora is that it is a commercially viable, stand-alone entity that will recover its costs of funds,' he told the hearing.
Mr Nile said current board members of the state electricity companies would be invited to give evidence on Friday, after Ms Keneally criticised the inquiry for only seeking input from those directors who quit.
Opposition leader Barry O'Farrell and Mr Baird have also agreed to appear next Monday.
http://bigpondnews.com/articles/Finance/2011/01/18/NSW_power_sale_a_charity_giveaway_566025.html
The NSW opposition has labelled the $5.3b power privatisation a charity fire sale, after costs are included.
The NSW opposition and crossbench MPs have labelled the $5.3 billion power privatisation a charity fire sale, after costs are included.
NSW Treasury Secretary Michael Schur fronted an upper house inquiry into the partial privatisation on Tuesday and described the deal as 'the next best option' to full privatisation or leasing out the power stations.
He also revealed that $1.2 billion would go to pay out the debts of generators Delta West and Eraring Energy, while $360 million had been written into the deal to cover the risk of unplanned power outages.
NSW has retained control of power stations managed by Eraring Energy and Delta West, but sold the generation rights under the complex Gentrader model.
It also offloaded retail assets Energy Australia, Integral Energy and Country Energy.
In a blow to the government, Mr Schur admitted the Gentrader model was not his preferred sale option, saying it had failed to completely 'de-risk' the state against the vagaries of power generation.
'There is only one way we could have got rid of this risk entirely ... the only way you can get rid of this unplanned outage risk is to enter into long-term leases of the assets or sell them,' he told the inquiry in Sydney.
However, Mr Schur denied the Gentrader structure was a 'second-rate option'.
'I have said on more than one occasion ... that the Gentrader option is the next best option available to the state.'
The inquiry is examining whether the multibillion-dollar sale represents good value for the taxpayers, and why eight Eraring and Delta directors resigned in protest at the deal hours before it was finalised last month.
However, the former board members have refused to appear at the inquiry, fearing that because parliament was prorogued just before Christmas they will not be protected by parliamentary privilege.
They have now been summonsed to appear at the inquiry next Monday.
Opposition treasury spokesman Mike Baird said the state would be left with nothing more than short change after the sale.
Mr Baird described the sale as a 'charity giveaway' with the inclusion of the $1.5 billion needed to develop the Cobbora Coal mine near Mudgee, to provide an estimated $1 billion in coal subsidies to the Gentraders.
'If you take away all the costs you see today, then effectively there is a few hundred million for all these assets,' he told AAP.
Chairman of the inquiry, Christian Democrat MP the Reverend Fred Nile, said the $5.3 billion figure for the sale was just a 'gross price'.
'It does appear to be, as we said earlier, a fire sale or a charity giveaway,' he told reporters after the hearing.
'When the top people in the treasury indicate they did not favour the process, it is obviously then being driven politically rather than economically.'
But Mr Schur said the cost of the Cobbora mine should not be included when tallying up the sale.
'The view on Cobbora is that it is a commercially viable, stand-alone entity that will recover its costs of funds,' he told the hearing.
Mr Nile said current board members of the state electricity companies would be invited to give evidence on Friday, after Ms Keneally criticised the inquiry for only seeking input from those directors who quit.
Opposition leader Barry O'Farrell and Mr Baird have also agreed to appear next Monday.
http://bigpondnews.com/articles/Finance/2011/01/18/NSW_power_sale_a_charity_giveaway_566025.html
The Chinese Superpower: A Historical Note For Nationalist Activists
Dr. Jim Saleam
18 January 2011
Some of the material published on this blog site on the rise of the Chinese superpower (I particularly note: 'Chinese expansionism/military build up just exposed') excited commentary from various nationalists in Australia First and outside it. I was asked: was it true that Australian nationalists identified China as a 'superpower' as early as the 1970's? was it the case that Australian nationalism developed after that time with a keen awareness of our nation's
vulnerability to Chinese imperialism?
I am able to say 'yes' to both questions.
In 1977, a group of young nationalists in Sydney founded the 'Audacity' magazine, the same title now used for the Australia First journal. In response to public campaigns from the political Left (which identified global rivalry between the USA and the USSR, the big two, the so- called 'superpowers'), the Audacity group stated that the modernisation program in China which had started after Mao's death and after considering the sheer size of China and its armed forces, identified it already as a 'superpower', certainly a power more commanding than any others on earth short of the USA and the USSR. It was explained that China's industrial expansion, which would fuel a massive military build-up, meant (even if it was not technically the case in the 1970's) that China would become the Third Superpower, alongside the USA and the USSR in fair time. That prediction has essentially been realized.
The Australian nationalists from the 1970's onwards consistently developed a public 'propaganda' on the matter of China. There is no need to describe it here. It figured in many documents and campaigns and was regarded as a tenet of ideology. These pioneers of our patriotic world-view are to be commended for recognizing the nature of China.
I recall many on the Left refusing to recognize that China was a developing superpower and needless to say they were all accused of 'racism' for their presumption.
In recent times, it has been the Australia First Party that has upheld the correct view that Chinese imperialism threatens Australia and that China has achieved true superpower status. China has carved out huge mining leases, sent hordes of cheap contract labour to Australia, has established a fifth column of migrants (sic) on our soil, has bought politicians and purchased Australian land. It has no end of public stooges who sing its praises. Chinese imperialism runs counter to Australian
independence and it threatens weaker peoples too throughout the South Pacific. Notably, in the recent Wikileaks controversy, it has been shown that Australian defence analysts are aware of the nature and extend of the military build-up of the Chinese superpower.
I expect that Australian nationalists will be compelled to expand their public outreach campaign on the mortal danger that the Chinese superpower poses to the survival of our people and nation.
18 January 2011
Some of the material published on this blog site on the rise of the Chinese superpower (I particularly note: 'Chinese expansionism/military build up just exposed') excited commentary from various nationalists in Australia First and outside it. I was asked: was it true that Australian nationalists identified China as a 'superpower' as early as the 1970's? was it the case that Australian nationalism developed after that time with a keen awareness of our nation's
vulnerability to Chinese imperialism?
I am able to say 'yes' to both questions.
In 1977, a group of young nationalists in Sydney founded the 'Audacity' magazine, the same title now used for the Australia First journal. In response to public campaigns from the political Left (which identified global rivalry between the USA and the USSR, the big two, the so- called 'superpowers'), the Audacity group stated that the modernisation program in China which had started after Mao's death and after considering the sheer size of China and its armed forces, identified it already as a 'superpower', certainly a power more commanding than any others on earth short of the USA and the USSR. It was explained that China's industrial expansion, which would fuel a massive military build-up, meant (even if it was not technically the case in the 1970's) that China would become the Third Superpower, alongside the USA and the USSR in fair time. That prediction has essentially been realized.
The Australian nationalists from the 1970's onwards consistently developed a public 'propaganda' on the matter of China. There is no need to describe it here. It figured in many documents and campaigns and was regarded as a tenet of ideology. These pioneers of our patriotic world-view are to be commended for recognizing the nature of China.
I recall many on the Left refusing to recognize that China was a developing superpower and needless to say they were all accused of 'racism' for their presumption.
In recent times, it has been the Australia First Party that has upheld the correct view that Chinese imperialism threatens Australia and that China has achieved true superpower status. China has carved out huge mining leases, sent hordes of cheap contract labour to Australia, has established a fifth column of migrants (sic) on our soil, has bought politicians and purchased Australian land. It has no end of public stooges who sing its praises. Chinese imperialism runs counter to Australian
independence and it threatens weaker peoples too throughout the South Pacific. Notably, in the recent Wikileaks controversy, it has been shown that Australian defence analysts are aware of the nature and extend of the military build-up of the Chinese superpower.
I expect that Australian nationalists will be compelled to expand their public outreach campaign on the mortal danger that the Chinese superpower poses to the survival of our people and nation.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Kristina Keneally's power enquiry block goes to State Parliament's Jubilee Room
Andrew Clennell, Gemma Jones and Kate Sikora January 14, 2011 12:00AM
THIS is where the power inquiry Kristina Keneally tried to block will be heard - State Parliament's Jubilee Room.
Yesterday the room was empty. When hearings start on Monday, it might as well be.
Legislative Council President Amanda Fazio is expected to block attempts to force the appearance of eight former directors of power companies who resigned in disgust at the Government's rushed sale, neutering the inquiry.
The inquiry begins with Premier Keneally and Treasurer Eric Roozendaal to answer MPs' questions on the $5.3 billion power sale Mr Roozendaal rushed through. On Monday morning, the committee will meet and National Party MP Trevor Khan, Liberal Greg Pearce and Greens MP John Kaye will move to summons the former directors.
It will then be up to committee chair Fred Nile's casting vote against Labor MPs to approve the summons.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/kristina-keneallys-power-enquiry-block-goes-to-state-parliaments-jubilee-room/comments-e6freuy9-1225987363077
THIS is where the power inquiry Kristina Keneally tried to block will be heard - State Parliament's Jubilee Room.
Yesterday the room was empty. When hearings start on Monday, it might as well be.
Legislative Council President Amanda Fazio is expected to block attempts to force the appearance of eight former directors of power companies who resigned in disgust at the Government's rushed sale, neutering the inquiry.
The inquiry begins with Premier Keneally and Treasurer Eric Roozendaal to answer MPs' questions on the $5.3 billion power sale Mr Roozendaal rushed through. On Monday morning, the committee will meet and National Party MP Trevor Khan, Liberal Greg Pearce and Greens MP John Kaye will move to summons the former directors.
It will then be up to committee chair Fred Nile's casting vote against Labor MPs to approve the summons.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/kristina-keneallys-power-enquiry-block-goes-to-state-parliaments-jubilee-room/comments-e6freuy9-1225987363077
China as Number One: US poll
January 13, 2011 - 4:31PM
Americans say China, not the US, is the world's top economic power, reflecting a shift in attitudes after the global financial crisis, a poll found.
Some 47 per cent of Americans surveyed from Jan. 5-9 by the Washington-based Pew Research Center for the People and the Press said China is the leading economic power, while 31 per cent named the US. A February 2008 Pew poll, taken before the collapses of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, found 41 per cent of Americans considered the US the top economic power, with 30 per cent naming China.
The results highlight the rising influence of China, whose economy has expanded more than 90-fold in the last three decades and illustrate the importance of next week's summit in Washington between President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao.
The poll measures perception, not reality. US gross domestic product is still almost three times the size of China's and dwarfs the Asian nation in terms of per capita income. The US, with just over 300 million people, has an annual GDP of $US14.1 trillion compared with $US4.99 trillion for China's 1.3 billion people.
A Pew poll in January 1989 found that by a two-to-one margin, Americans considered Japan to be the world's preeminent economic power, a decade after the release of the controversial "Japan as Number One'' book by Harvard University Professor Ezra Vogel. The poll released yesterday found only 9 per cent of the 1,503 respondents hold that view.
Fewer than one-quarter of the respondents view China as an adversary, the poll found. Some 58 per cent of respondents said it is important to build stronger ties between the two countries. Most people polled said China was a greater economic than military threat, with 67 per cent saying that the US was the world's top military power, compared with 16 per cent who said China had the most potent military.
Almost half of Americans, 47 per cent, view China favorably, compared with 36 per cent who view China unfavorably, according to the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus three per centage points.
Most respondents, 53 per cent, said the US should get tougher with China on the trade and economic issues, with Republicans and Democrats expressing almost identical positions. The US posted a record $US28 billion trade deficit with China in August, according to US Census Bureau figures. The US says China's currency is undervalued, undercutting US exports and eliminating jobs.
Bloomberg News
http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/china-as-number-one-us-poll-20110113-19ph4.html
Americans say China, not the US, is the world's top economic power, reflecting a shift in attitudes after the global financial crisis, a poll found.
Some 47 per cent of Americans surveyed from Jan. 5-9 by the Washington-based Pew Research Center for the People and the Press said China is the leading economic power, while 31 per cent named the US. A February 2008 Pew poll, taken before the collapses of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, found 41 per cent of Americans considered the US the top economic power, with 30 per cent naming China.
The results highlight the rising influence of China, whose economy has expanded more than 90-fold in the last three decades and illustrate the importance of next week's summit in Washington between President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao.
The poll measures perception, not reality. US gross domestic product is still almost three times the size of China's and dwarfs the Asian nation in terms of per capita income. The US, with just over 300 million people, has an annual GDP of $US14.1 trillion compared with $US4.99 trillion for China's 1.3 billion people.
A Pew poll in January 1989 found that by a two-to-one margin, Americans considered Japan to be the world's preeminent economic power, a decade after the release of the controversial "Japan as Number One'' book by Harvard University Professor Ezra Vogel. The poll released yesterday found only 9 per cent of the 1,503 respondents hold that view.
Fewer than one-quarter of the respondents view China as an adversary, the poll found. Some 58 per cent of respondents said it is important to build stronger ties between the two countries. Most people polled said China was a greater economic than military threat, with 67 per cent saying that the US was the world's top military power, compared with 16 per cent who said China had the most potent military.
Almost half of Americans, 47 per cent, view China favorably, compared with 36 per cent who view China unfavorably, according to the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus three per centage points.
Most respondents, 53 per cent, said the US should get tougher with China on the trade and economic issues, with Republicans and Democrats expressing almost identical positions. The US posted a record $US28 billion trade deficit with China in August, according to US Census Bureau figures. The US says China's currency is undervalued, undercutting US exports and eliminating jobs.
Bloomberg News
http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/china-as-number-one-us-poll-20110113-19ph4.html
North Korea, Marrickville: Going rogue
James Morrow The Daily Telegraph January 13, 2011 12:00AM
WHAT does the desert theocracy of Saudi Arabia have in common with Marrickville Council in Sydney's Inner West?
Ever since a Marrickville Council meeting late last year, both are sworn enemies of Israel. In a 10-2 vote, the council decided it would "boycott all goods made in Israel and any sporting, academic institutions, government or institutional cultural exchanges".
Trendy councils supporting trendy causes is nothing new. Greens-dominated Marrickville is a nuclear-free zone that abhors Australia's treatment of refugees while taking a "BANANA" approach to development: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.
But by boycotting Israel, Marrickville Council is taking its UN routine a step too far. The first problem is what the boycott would mean in practice.
Israel is one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial countries in the world. Its products and inventions find their way into computers, mobile phones, and medicines. A ban means a lot more than just making sure the hummus at council meetings is non-kosher. The second problem is that the move cuts against the proper business of a council and demonstrates that the supposed progressivism of the district only goes so far.
Keep in mind that this is a council that already enjoys a "sister city" relationship with Bethlehem, the West Bank town run by Fatah, successor to the PLO.
Fatah, and indeed most of that part of the world with the exception of Israel, is not exactly committed to those values Greens share with normal people, including the right of women to dress how they choose and of homosexuals not to be executed.
And, unlike Marrickville, which just wants to boycott Israel, Fatah is committed to its elimination.
This isn't the first time Marrickville has taken such a stance. Last year when a local shopkeeper painted an anti-burqa mural on his own wall, Marrickville Council finally found a piece of "street art" it didn't like.
Councillor Sam Iskandar, thought to be the driving force behind the Israel boycott, said the mural "goes against the values" of the Marrickville community and tried to get it removed.
Presumably those with strong opinions on any issue of the day are encouraged to cross Parramatta Rd to Leichhardt and hash it out in a cafe where they won't offend anyone.
Better yet, Marrickville councillors and frustrated local foreign ministers everywhere should realise what the values of serving in local government are all about. Improving amenities. Picking up the trash. Scrubbing graffiti.
And leaving the diplomacy to Canberra.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw-act/north-korea-marrickville-going-rogue/story-e6freuzi-1225986592031
WHAT does the desert theocracy of Saudi Arabia have in common with Marrickville Council in Sydney's Inner West?
Ever since a Marrickville Council meeting late last year, both are sworn enemies of Israel. In a 10-2 vote, the council decided it would "boycott all goods made in Israel and any sporting, academic institutions, government or institutional cultural exchanges".
Trendy councils supporting trendy causes is nothing new. Greens-dominated Marrickville is a nuclear-free zone that abhors Australia's treatment of refugees while taking a "BANANA" approach to development: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.
But by boycotting Israel, Marrickville Council is taking its UN routine a step too far. The first problem is what the boycott would mean in practice.
Israel is one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial countries in the world. Its products and inventions find their way into computers, mobile phones, and medicines. A ban means a lot more than just making sure the hummus at council meetings is non-kosher. The second problem is that the move cuts against the proper business of a council and demonstrates that the supposed progressivism of the district only goes so far.
Keep in mind that this is a council that already enjoys a "sister city" relationship with Bethlehem, the West Bank town run by Fatah, successor to the PLO.
Fatah, and indeed most of that part of the world with the exception of Israel, is not exactly committed to those values Greens share with normal people, including the right of women to dress how they choose and of homosexuals not to be executed.
And, unlike Marrickville, which just wants to boycott Israel, Fatah is committed to its elimination.
This isn't the first time Marrickville has taken such a stance. Last year when a local shopkeeper painted an anti-burqa mural on his own wall, Marrickville Council finally found a piece of "street art" it didn't like.
Councillor Sam Iskandar, thought to be the driving force behind the Israel boycott, said the mural "goes against the values" of the Marrickville community and tried to get it removed.
Presumably those with strong opinions on any issue of the day are encouraged to cross Parramatta Rd to Leichhardt and hash it out in a cafe where they won't offend anyone.
Better yet, Marrickville councillors and frustrated local foreign ministers everywhere should realise what the values of serving in local government are all about. Improving amenities. Picking up the trash. Scrubbing graffiti.
And leaving the diplomacy to Canberra.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw-act/north-korea-marrickville-going-rogue/story-e6freuzi-1225986592031
Roozendaal's prints all over power farce
January 9, 2011
"I RECKON they've finally imploded once and for all." That was the candid assessment of the Keneally government by an experienced parliamentarian I spoke to last week. It's hard to disagree.
The thorough mishandling of the electricity sale inquiry and the early lock-up of Parliament by the Premier have people on all sides of state politics – including Labor backbenchers – wondering what the hell is going on inside Governor Macquarie Tower.
More than a few commentators have compared NSW Labor to the last days of Rome.
It now looks more like the final scenes of The Perfect Storm – without the steering.
Half the crew has jumped overboard and those who remain aren't sure what to do before the tidal wave of voter anger hits in March. If Barry O'Farrell could have scripted his Christmas and new year he wouldn't have changed a thing, except for the cricket scores.
I wrote last week that unless Keneally caves in and allows the power inquiry to proceed, voters would go to the polls with O'Farrell's mantra ringing in their ears: "What has she got to hide?"
The Premier did cave in but because she only went halfway and won't reverse the proroguing of Parliament, the question is still being asked.
Who knows what the answer is? The way the government fought to head off an inquiry it can only be assumed it is one big fat dud deal. On a broader level, Keneally is hiding something else.
She is struggling to impose her leadership and is too easily influenced by the people around her. Particularly by those who helped in her rocket ride to the top job.
It might sound like a reworking of the infamous Nathan Rees "puppet" quote but recent events have proven it to be true.
The proroguing of Parliament has the fingerprints of Eric Roozendaal all over it.
Roozendaal's office has briefed some in the media that Keneally took the decision to prorogue Parliament. Others inside government say that isn't the case.
Who stands to lose if the detail of the power sell-off is exposed as second rate? The Treasurer.
The Premier did not work on the fine detail of the deal. It wasn't up to her to sell the merits of the privatisation to the directors of Delta Electricity and Eraring Energy. It wasn't her job to prevent them from quitting en masse.
Still, when it came to it Keneally took Roozendaal's advice to shut Parliament and hopefully prevent any scrutiny.
While Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid are usually bundled together as the "puppet masters" it should not be forgotten that Roozendaal, a former ALP general secretary, was instrumental in Keneally's rails run to preselection to the safe seat of Heffron before entering Parliament in 2003.
She has sought his counsel ever since.
It is the intricate web of personal relationships, favours, factionalism, square-ups – built up over 15 long years in power – that have led to the aforementioned "implosion" of the Labor government.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/roozendaals-prints-all-over-power-farce-20110108-19jbb.html
"I RECKON they've finally imploded once and for all." That was the candid assessment of the Keneally government by an experienced parliamentarian I spoke to last week. It's hard to disagree.
The thorough mishandling of the electricity sale inquiry and the early lock-up of Parliament by the Premier have people on all sides of state politics – including Labor backbenchers – wondering what the hell is going on inside Governor Macquarie Tower.
More than a few commentators have compared NSW Labor to the last days of Rome.
It now looks more like the final scenes of The Perfect Storm – without the steering.
Half the crew has jumped overboard and those who remain aren't sure what to do before the tidal wave of voter anger hits in March. If Barry O'Farrell could have scripted his Christmas and new year he wouldn't have changed a thing, except for the cricket scores.
I wrote last week that unless Keneally caves in and allows the power inquiry to proceed, voters would go to the polls with O'Farrell's mantra ringing in their ears: "What has she got to hide?"
The Premier did cave in but because she only went halfway and won't reverse the proroguing of Parliament, the question is still being asked.
Who knows what the answer is? The way the government fought to head off an inquiry it can only be assumed it is one big fat dud deal. On a broader level, Keneally is hiding something else.
She is struggling to impose her leadership and is too easily influenced by the people around her. Particularly by those who helped in her rocket ride to the top job.
It might sound like a reworking of the infamous Nathan Rees "puppet" quote but recent events have proven it to be true.
The proroguing of Parliament has the fingerprints of Eric Roozendaal all over it.
Roozendaal's office has briefed some in the media that Keneally took the decision to prorogue Parliament. Others inside government say that isn't the case.
Who stands to lose if the detail of the power sell-off is exposed as second rate? The Treasurer.
The Premier did not work on the fine detail of the deal. It wasn't up to her to sell the merits of the privatisation to the directors of Delta Electricity and Eraring Energy. It wasn't her job to prevent them from quitting en masse.
Still, when it came to it Keneally took Roozendaal's advice to shut Parliament and hopefully prevent any scrutiny.
While Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid are usually bundled together as the "puppet masters" it should not be forgotten that Roozendaal, a former ALP general secretary, was instrumental in Keneally's rails run to preselection to the safe seat of Heffron before entering Parliament in 2003.
She has sought his counsel ever since.
It is the intricate web of personal relationships, favours, factionalism, square-ups – built up over 15 long years in power – that have led to the aforementioned "implosion" of the Labor government.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/roozendaals-prints-all-over-power-farce-20110108-19jbb.html
China's land disputes at crisis point as revolutionary turmoil beckons, says professor of disenfranchised
John Garnaut March 1, 2010
The Australian ambassador could not have had any idea about the fuss he caused by simply asking through proper official channels to see a respected Chinese scholar.
But Yu Jianrong is not just any scholar. He may know more about China's street-side social and political realities than anyone on the planet.
It was March 2008, the month of the Tibet riots, and only weeks before the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, had delivered his famous human rights speech at Peking University.
Professor Yu's employer, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, sought advice from the Department of Propaganda, which called a crisis meeting.
"Our [Academy] got very nervous, because in normal circumstances an ambassador would not make a visit," said Professor Yu, telling part of the story in a December 26 speech to the Beijing Lawyers Association, the text of which has recently surfaced on Chinese language websites.
"So the work unit made a preplan, like you lawyers having meetings and organising people to guess possible questions and how I should answer," he said.
Professor Yu was gently poking fun at how China's bureaucracy orders its priorities. The bureaucratic straitjacket does not seem to suit him.
Not long before Geoff Raby's request, Professor Yu had dressed up as a downtrodden peasant and lived for weeks in Beijing's "petitioners village", to find out why these aggrieved citizens persisted in futile quests for justice.
He somehow manages to straddle the enormous distance between the disenfranchised bottom of Chinese society and the political elite. When not mixing with peasants and workers who are appealing for justice, he interviews officials, caucuses with ministers and travels with top leaders in their VIP jets on inspection tours.
Professor Yu's uniquely valuable research and analysis provides him with an unusual degree of political protection, although he sensibly declines to test it by talking with foreign journalists.
Another well-known Chinese scholar said Professor Yu had recently been given a very large research grant from the Propaganda Department to find out what was really going on with mass unrest around the country "because they actually needed to find a real scholar to find out these things".
Back in 2008, Dr Raby's question was sufficiently well-aimed to get through the defences of China's most influential think tank, the world's most formidable propaganda apparatus and even Professor Yu.
"Finally he came but didn't ask any questions we thought of," Professor Yu told the Beijing lawyers.
"He asked three questions, one of which was: 'In 2007 Chinese peasants in three regions made declarations of private land ownership. What happens if one day all Chinese peasants do?' I felt dizzy at that moment because that question wasn't on our preplan. I told him, according to our investigations, more than 90 per cent of Chinese farmers don't yet have such conceptions."
Dr Raby was asking about declarations of individual land ownership that had materialised in December 2007 in Heilongjiang, Shaanxi and Tianjin. I had visited one of those disputes, in Heilongjiang up near the Russian border, and it was about as serious as a land dispute can get before calling it a war.
That pre-Olympics revolutionary excitement has subsided but it has not gone away. Private land ownership in the countryside continues to be outlawed under the Chinese constitution - a kind of bottom line that allows the Communist Party to at least argue a commitment to socialism - but the subject is at the centre of raging political, economic and social policy debates.
Poor peasants do not have secure title to trade and mortgage their land efficiently. Land is often the only asset they have, and yet officials and their cronies are, in effect, stealing it and flipping it to developers at enormous mark-ups, while keeping the difference as government revenue or private "grey'' income.
Cheap, stolen land is fueling an ever-growing construction and industrial production boom. Last year local governments received 22 per cent of their total revenue from land sales, says a UBS economist, Wang Tao. Other economists are warning of local government and banking system ruin when the system goes belly up.
Nevertheless, despite the central government's strident warnings and feeble interventions, the problem of officials stealing peasant land is reaching ever-greater heights.
"Since June 2004, land disputes have become the critical problem of rural China," said Professor Yu, referring to the year when the central government abolished agricultural taxes and set local officials off in pursuit of a replacement revenue stream.
"For tax protests, farmers directed their accusations to the county and township governments. But for land disputes they accuse city, provincial or even central governments," he said. "Most importantly, the number of large scale mass riots is growing."
And gangsters are now shouldering the dirty work.
"Today, more than 90 per cent of land disputes have a black society background," Professor Yu said.
He believes the situation is reaching crisis point.
"When conflict deepens, social pressure builds and everybody feels there is no way out, all social forces start looking for a bottom line," Professor Yu said. "Otherwise, there will be greater social turmoil and it will destroy all social order.
"There are two basic choices. First, the fear of these disastrous consequences will lead the various interest groups towards rational compromise, a reasonable bottom line that is acceptable to all. Second, in the absence of such compromise, fundamental and revolutionary turmoil may take place."
What does the first, "rational compromise'', choice involve? It is also revolutionary: subordinate the Communist Party to the nation's laws.
"Let's forget all about ideology, don't look back at Mao's period, or talk about Deng's era, and just safeguard our constitution,'' Professor Yu said. ''There is nothing to safeguard now in Chinese society; again and again we retreat in defeat. Can we safeguard our final bottom line?"
http://www.smh.com.au/business/chinas-land-disputes-at-crisis-point-as-revolutionary-turmoil-beckons-says-professor-of-disenfranchised-20100228-pb4n.html
The Australian ambassador could not have had any idea about the fuss he caused by simply asking through proper official channels to see a respected Chinese scholar.
But Yu Jianrong is not just any scholar. He may know more about China's street-side social and political realities than anyone on the planet.
It was March 2008, the month of the Tibet riots, and only weeks before the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, had delivered his famous human rights speech at Peking University.
Professor Yu's employer, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, sought advice from the Department of Propaganda, which called a crisis meeting.
"Our [Academy] got very nervous, because in normal circumstances an ambassador would not make a visit," said Professor Yu, telling part of the story in a December 26 speech to the Beijing Lawyers Association, the text of which has recently surfaced on Chinese language websites.
"So the work unit made a preplan, like you lawyers having meetings and organising people to guess possible questions and how I should answer," he said.
Professor Yu was gently poking fun at how China's bureaucracy orders its priorities. The bureaucratic straitjacket does not seem to suit him.
Not long before Geoff Raby's request, Professor Yu had dressed up as a downtrodden peasant and lived for weeks in Beijing's "petitioners village", to find out why these aggrieved citizens persisted in futile quests for justice.
He somehow manages to straddle the enormous distance between the disenfranchised bottom of Chinese society and the political elite. When not mixing with peasants and workers who are appealing for justice, he interviews officials, caucuses with ministers and travels with top leaders in their VIP jets on inspection tours.
Professor Yu's uniquely valuable research and analysis provides him with an unusual degree of political protection, although he sensibly declines to test it by talking with foreign journalists.
Another well-known Chinese scholar said Professor Yu had recently been given a very large research grant from the Propaganda Department to find out what was really going on with mass unrest around the country "because they actually needed to find a real scholar to find out these things".
Back in 2008, Dr Raby's question was sufficiently well-aimed to get through the defences of China's most influential think tank, the world's most formidable propaganda apparatus and even Professor Yu.
"Finally he came but didn't ask any questions we thought of," Professor Yu told the Beijing lawyers.
"He asked three questions, one of which was: 'In 2007 Chinese peasants in three regions made declarations of private land ownership. What happens if one day all Chinese peasants do?' I felt dizzy at that moment because that question wasn't on our preplan. I told him, according to our investigations, more than 90 per cent of Chinese farmers don't yet have such conceptions."
Dr Raby was asking about declarations of individual land ownership that had materialised in December 2007 in Heilongjiang, Shaanxi and Tianjin. I had visited one of those disputes, in Heilongjiang up near the Russian border, and it was about as serious as a land dispute can get before calling it a war.
That pre-Olympics revolutionary excitement has subsided but it has not gone away. Private land ownership in the countryside continues to be outlawed under the Chinese constitution - a kind of bottom line that allows the Communist Party to at least argue a commitment to socialism - but the subject is at the centre of raging political, economic and social policy debates.
Poor peasants do not have secure title to trade and mortgage their land efficiently. Land is often the only asset they have, and yet officials and their cronies are, in effect, stealing it and flipping it to developers at enormous mark-ups, while keeping the difference as government revenue or private "grey'' income.
Cheap, stolen land is fueling an ever-growing construction and industrial production boom. Last year local governments received 22 per cent of their total revenue from land sales, says a UBS economist, Wang Tao. Other economists are warning of local government and banking system ruin when the system goes belly up.
Nevertheless, despite the central government's strident warnings and feeble interventions, the problem of officials stealing peasant land is reaching ever-greater heights.
"Since June 2004, land disputes have become the critical problem of rural China," said Professor Yu, referring to the year when the central government abolished agricultural taxes and set local officials off in pursuit of a replacement revenue stream.
"For tax protests, farmers directed their accusations to the county and township governments. But for land disputes they accuse city, provincial or even central governments," he said. "Most importantly, the number of large scale mass riots is growing."
And gangsters are now shouldering the dirty work.
"Today, more than 90 per cent of land disputes have a black society background," Professor Yu said.
He believes the situation is reaching crisis point.
"When conflict deepens, social pressure builds and everybody feels there is no way out, all social forces start looking for a bottom line," Professor Yu said. "Otherwise, there will be greater social turmoil and it will destroy all social order.
"There are two basic choices. First, the fear of these disastrous consequences will lead the various interest groups towards rational compromise, a reasonable bottom line that is acceptable to all. Second, in the absence of such compromise, fundamental and revolutionary turmoil may take place."
What does the first, "rational compromise'', choice involve? It is also revolutionary: subordinate the Communist Party to the nation's laws.
"Let's forget all about ideology, don't look back at Mao's period, or talk about Deng's era, and just safeguard our constitution,'' Professor Yu said. ''There is nothing to safeguard now in Chinese society; again and again we retreat in defeat. Can we safeguard our final bottom line?"
http://www.smh.com.au/business/chinas-land-disputes-at-crisis-point-as-revolutionary-turmoil-beckons-says-professor-of-disenfranchised-20100228-pb4n.html
The intelligence and the luck that saves us from murderers
Gerard Henderson January 4, 2011
The bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt, at the weekend, apparently by a radical Islamist, was widely reported as a suicide attack. This is a serious misnomer.
The intention of a person who commits suicide is to kill himself or herself. The aim of the perpetrator of the crime in Alexandria was to kill as many Christians as possible. This is murder. The act is perhaps best described as suicide/homicide.
Egypt's President, Hosni Mubarak, has said that the attack was the work of ''foreign hands''. He seems to believe that the suicide/homicide attack was organised by a person loyal to al-Qaeda who entered Egypt to commit crime - following threats by Osama bin Laden's followers directed at Egypt's Copts. This analysis is probably correct.
Recent evidence from Britain, Denmark, Sweden and the US indicates that attacks on Western targets have been thwarted by a combination of good intelligence and good luck. Danish and Swedish police say they prevented an attempt to massacre staff at the newspaper Jyllands-Posten in protest at its decision in 2005 to publish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
In Britain, authorities say they stopped an attack on the US embassy in London and the London Stock Exchange. In Stockholm in mid-December the Swedish-born and British-educated Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly killed himself while attempting, unsuccessfully, to murder as many Christmas shoppers as possible. And then there was the attempted terrorist attack in Times Square, New York, last May.
What all these activities have in common is that they were apparently the work of a ''lone wolf'' or, rather, a number of lone wolves. The term has been used by Dr Sajjan Gohel, of the Asia-Pacific Foundation.
According to his research, the number of attacks that have been controlled by what he terms ''al-Qaeda central'' has diminished since 2006. He attributes this to several factors. First, the original al-Qaeda central organisation ''has been severely disrupted by allied operations in north and south Waziristan along the Afghan-Pakistan border region''. Second, al-Qaeda is finding it harder to raise and receive finance.
This leads Gohel to conclude that the growing concern in the West is to individuals who are not connected to any particular cell or network but who became ''radicalised as a result of jihadist literature online''.
Roshonara Choudhry is a case in point. A gifted student at King's College London who is fluent in four languages, she was influenced by the American-born and Yemen-based Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Last May, inspired by al-Awlaki's teachings on the internet, she tried to stab to death a Labour MP, Stephen Timms. Choudhry was a lone-wolf attacker who decided to be a martyr. It is all but impossible for intelligence organisations to thwart such attacks.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is another case. The son of a successful and wealthy Nigerian family, he allegedly tried to bring down an aircraft bound for Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 by igniting chemicals strapped to his inner leg.
Many members of the civil liberties lobby in Australia opposed the Howard government's Anti-Terrorism Act in 2005, which was supported by the Labor opposition. However, a number of jury trials in Australia have supported the view that there are people in Australia who have planned terrorist attacks.
First, there were convictions in the Operation Pendennis trials - the first in Sydney, the second in Melbourne. Juries were convinced, after lengthy trials and long deliberations, that Abdul Nacer Benbrika and some Islamist associates had conspired to undertake terrorist attacks on targets in Australia. In both cases the defendants were provided with able defence teams, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer.
Second, last month, a jury in Melbourne convicted three Islamists for taking part in a conspiracy (termed by police Operation Neath) to wage an attack on Holsworthy army base in Sydney. Two of the accused were acquitted after another long trial and lengthy jury deliberation.
What was particularly disturbing about Operation Neath turned on the evident contempt of the Somalia-born Saney Aweys for his fellow Australians. Yet Aweys's intercepted phone conversations indicate that he was more than willing to accept welfare payments in support of his wife and children and saw no contradiction in residing in public housing while condemning what he termed the ''filthy people'' who make up contemporary Australia.
The convictions in the Operation Pendennis and Operation Neath cases support Gohel's thesis. There is no evidence that those convicted were operating in accordance with directives from al-Qaeda central - unlike those Islamists who took part in the attacks in the US in 2001 or the attacks in Britain in 2005. Rather, the current danger in Australia appears to turn on individuals who have been radicalised at home or after brief visits overseas.
It is difficult to obtain guilty verdicts in conspiracy cases where no physical attack has taken place.
The success of counter-terrorism operations in Australia so far suggests that police and intelligence services are doing well in a difficult environment.
As the mainstream British Muslim Mohammed Bashir said recently of Islamists groups in Luton: ''They enjoy living in this country and then spend all their time speaking out against it; they are fools but they are also very dangerous.''
The sad fact is that some of these dangerous fools commit, or conspire to commit, suicide/homicide.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-intelligence-and-the-luck-that-saves-us-from-murderers-20110103-19dsa.html
The bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt, at the weekend, apparently by a radical Islamist, was widely reported as a suicide attack. This is a serious misnomer.
The intention of a person who commits suicide is to kill himself or herself. The aim of the perpetrator of the crime in Alexandria was to kill as many Christians as possible. This is murder. The act is perhaps best described as suicide/homicide.
Egypt's President, Hosni Mubarak, has said that the attack was the work of ''foreign hands''. He seems to believe that the suicide/homicide attack was organised by a person loyal to al-Qaeda who entered Egypt to commit crime - following threats by Osama bin Laden's followers directed at Egypt's Copts. This analysis is probably correct.
Recent evidence from Britain, Denmark, Sweden and the US indicates that attacks on Western targets have been thwarted by a combination of good intelligence and good luck. Danish and Swedish police say they prevented an attempt to massacre staff at the newspaper Jyllands-Posten in protest at its decision in 2005 to publish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
In Britain, authorities say they stopped an attack on the US embassy in London and the London Stock Exchange. In Stockholm in mid-December the Swedish-born and British-educated Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly killed himself while attempting, unsuccessfully, to murder as many Christmas shoppers as possible. And then there was the attempted terrorist attack in Times Square, New York, last May.
What all these activities have in common is that they were apparently the work of a ''lone wolf'' or, rather, a number of lone wolves. The term has been used by Dr Sajjan Gohel, of the Asia-Pacific Foundation.
According to his research, the number of attacks that have been controlled by what he terms ''al-Qaeda central'' has diminished since 2006. He attributes this to several factors. First, the original al-Qaeda central organisation ''has been severely disrupted by allied operations in north and south Waziristan along the Afghan-Pakistan border region''. Second, al-Qaeda is finding it harder to raise and receive finance.
This leads Gohel to conclude that the growing concern in the West is to individuals who are not connected to any particular cell or network but who became ''radicalised as a result of jihadist literature online''.
Roshonara Choudhry is a case in point. A gifted student at King's College London who is fluent in four languages, she was influenced by the American-born and Yemen-based Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Last May, inspired by al-Awlaki's teachings on the internet, she tried to stab to death a Labour MP, Stephen Timms. Choudhry was a lone-wolf attacker who decided to be a martyr. It is all but impossible for intelligence organisations to thwart such attacks.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is another case. The son of a successful and wealthy Nigerian family, he allegedly tried to bring down an aircraft bound for Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 by igniting chemicals strapped to his inner leg.
Many members of the civil liberties lobby in Australia opposed the Howard government's Anti-Terrorism Act in 2005, which was supported by the Labor opposition. However, a number of jury trials in Australia have supported the view that there are people in Australia who have planned terrorist attacks.
First, there were convictions in the Operation Pendennis trials - the first in Sydney, the second in Melbourne. Juries were convinced, after lengthy trials and long deliberations, that Abdul Nacer Benbrika and some Islamist associates had conspired to undertake terrorist attacks on targets in Australia. In both cases the defendants were provided with able defence teams, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer.
Second, last month, a jury in Melbourne convicted three Islamists for taking part in a conspiracy (termed by police Operation Neath) to wage an attack on Holsworthy army base in Sydney. Two of the accused were acquitted after another long trial and lengthy jury deliberation.
What was particularly disturbing about Operation Neath turned on the evident contempt of the Somalia-born Saney Aweys for his fellow Australians. Yet Aweys's intercepted phone conversations indicate that he was more than willing to accept welfare payments in support of his wife and children and saw no contradiction in residing in public housing while condemning what he termed the ''filthy people'' who make up contemporary Australia.
The convictions in the Operation Pendennis and Operation Neath cases support Gohel's thesis. There is no evidence that those convicted were operating in accordance with directives from al-Qaeda central - unlike those Islamists who took part in the attacks in the US in 2001 or the attacks in Britain in 2005. Rather, the current danger in Australia appears to turn on individuals who have been radicalised at home or after brief visits overseas.
It is difficult to obtain guilty verdicts in conspiracy cases where no physical attack has taken place.
The success of counter-terrorism operations in Australia so far suggests that police and intelligence services are doing well in a difficult environment.
As the mainstream British Muslim Mohammed Bashir said recently of Islamists groups in Luton: ''They enjoy living in this country and then spend all their time speaking out against it; they are fools but they are also very dangerous.''
The sad fact is that some of these dangerous fools commit, or conspire to commit, suicide/homicide.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-intelligence-and-the-luck-that-saves-us-from-murderers-20110103-19dsa.html
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Chinese expansion fears revealed
Philip Dorling January 7, 2011
AUSTRALIA'S intelligence agencies believe China is hiding the extent of a huge military build-up that goes beyond national defence and poses a serious threat to regional stability.
A strategic assessment by the agencies found China's military spending for 2006 was $90 billion - double the $45 billion announced publicly by Beijing.
Australia's peak intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments, as well as the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the Defence and Foreign Affairs departments concluded that China was building a military capability well beyond its priorities of self-defence and preventing Taiwan's independence.
''China's longer-term agenda is to develop 'comprehensive national power', including a strong military, that is in keeping with its view of itself as a great power,'' says a copy of the secret assessment provided by Foreign Affairs officials to the US embassy in Canberra.
''We agree that the trend of China's military modernisation is beyond the scope of what would be required for a conflict over Taiwan. Arguably China already poses a credible threat to modern militaries operating in the region and will present an even more formidable challenge as its modernisation continues.''
Details of the 2006 intelligence assessment are contained in a US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to the Herald.
The Australian document goes on to warn that the pace of China's military build-up and ''the opacity of Beijing's intentions and programs'' was ''already altering the balance of power in Asia and could be a destabilising influence''.
''There is the potential for possible misconceptions which could lead to a serious miscalculation or crisis,'' it says.
The Australian intelligence agencies suggest China could overestimate its own capabilities with a significant risk of strategic miscalculation and instability.
''The nature of the [People's Liberation Army] and the regime means that transparency will continue to be viewed as a potential vulnerability. This contributes to the likelihood of strategic misperceptions,'' the document says.
''The rapid improvements in PLA capabilities, coupled with a lack of operational experience and faith in asymmetric strategies, could lead to China overestimating its military capability. These factors, coupled with rising nationalism, heightened expectations of China's status, China's historical predilection for strategic deception, difficulties with Japan, and the Taiwan issue mean that miscalculations and minor events could quickly escalate.''
Although successive Australian governments have called on China to be more transparent about its military spending, ministers and diplomats have studiously avoided public reference to the scale of the discrepancy between Beijing's published figures and the likely reality behind the scenes.
The Australian estimate of a 2006 military budget of $US70 billion ($90 billion at the September 2006 exchange rate), has not been revealed previously - though it is consistent with academic and published US government estimates of China's growing military spending.
The secret Australian assessment is also much sharper than the language later employed in the Rudd government's 2009 Defence white paper, which said China was on the way to becoming Asia's strongest military power ''by a considerable margin'' and warned that the pace and scope of its growth could give its neighbours cause for concern if not properly explained.
The Rudd government publicly played down reports of a hostile Chinese reaction to the white paper when it was published, but secretly briefed the US that Beijing had threatened that Australia would ''suffer the consequences'' if references to China's growing military capabilities were not watered down.
The Defence Chief, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, and the then defence minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, insisted that China had no problem with the white paper. But other leaked US embassy cables report that the then deputy secretary for Defence, Mike Pezzullo, briefed US diplomats that he had been ''dressed down'' by Chinese officials who had a ''look of cold fury'' at the references to China in the white paper.
In the September 2006 briefing of the US embassy, Foreign Affairs officials advised that Australia hoped to use its defence relationship with China to promote increased transparency in that country's military development plans.
''We remain focused on deepening the Australia-China defence relationship in areas such as peacekeeping, counter-terrorism and junior leadership exchanges, while remaining cautious to avoid practical co-operation that might help the PLA to fill capability gaps,'' the Australian paper presented to the embassy concluded.
The Royal Australian Navy and the Chinese navy held their first joint exercise involving firing of live ammunition in September last year.
Last month the Defence Department secretary, Ian Watt, and Air Chief Marshal Houston attended the 13th annual Australia-China Defence Strategic Dialogue, which was hosted in China by General Chen Bingde, the chief of the PLA General Staff.
Dr Watt said that the dialogue was ''an integral component of Australia's defence engagement with China, and provided the opportunity to have frank and open conversations and to exchange views on areas of common interest''.
Dr Watt and Air Chief Marshal Houston also met the vice-president and deputy chairman of China's Central Military Commission, Xi Jinping.
Air Chief Marshal Houston said: ''We committed to continuing to develop our military relationship and practical cooperation together.''
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/chinese-expansion-fears-revealed-20110106-19hna.html
AUSTRALIA'S intelligence agencies believe China is hiding the extent of a huge military build-up that goes beyond national defence and poses a serious threat to regional stability.
A strategic assessment by the agencies found China's military spending for 2006 was $90 billion - double the $45 billion announced publicly by Beijing.
Australia's peak intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments, as well as the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the Defence and Foreign Affairs departments concluded that China was building a military capability well beyond its priorities of self-defence and preventing Taiwan's independence.
''China's longer-term agenda is to develop 'comprehensive national power', including a strong military, that is in keeping with its view of itself as a great power,'' says a copy of the secret assessment provided by Foreign Affairs officials to the US embassy in Canberra.
''We agree that the trend of China's military modernisation is beyond the scope of what would be required for a conflict over Taiwan. Arguably China already poses a credible threat to modern militaries operating in the region and will present an even more formidable challenge as its modernisation continues.''
Details of the 2006 intelligence assessment are contained in a US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to the Herald.
The Australian document goes on to warn that the pace of China's military build-up and ''the opacity of Beijing's intentions and programs'' was ''already altering the balance of power in Asia and could be a destabilising influence''.
''There is the potential for possible misconceptions which could lead to a serious miscalculation or crisis,'' it says.
The Australian intelligence agencies suggest China could overestimate its own capabilities with a significant risk of strategic miscalculation and instability.
''The nature of the [People's Liberation Army] and the regime means that transparency will continue to be viewed as a potential vulnerability. This contributes to the likelihood of strategic misperceptions,'' the document says.
''The rapid improvements in PLA capabilities, coupled with a lack of operational experience and faith in asymmetric strategies, could lead to China overestimating its military capability. These factors, coupled with rising nationalism, heightened expectations of China's status, China's historical predilection for strategic deception, difficulties with Japan, and the Taiwan issue mean that miscalculations and minor events could quickly escalate.''
Although successive Australian governments have called on China to be more transparent about its military spending, ministers and diplomats have studiously avoided public reference to the scale of the discrepancy between Beijing's published figures and the likely reality behind the scenes.
The Australian estimate of a 2006 military budget of $US70 billion ($90 billion at the September 2006 exchange rate), has not been revealed previously - though it is consistent with academic and published US government estimates of China's growing military spending.
The secret Australian assessment is also much sharper than the language later employed in the Rudd government's 2009 Defence white paper, which said China was on the way to becoming Asia's strongest military power ''by a considerable margin'' and warned that the pace and scope of its growth could give its neighbours cause for concern if not properly explained.
The Rudd government publicly played down reports of a hostile Chinese reaction to the white paper when it was published, but secretly briefed the US that Beijing had threatened that Australia would ''suffer the consequences'' if references to China's growing military capabilities were not watered down.
The Defence Chief, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, and the then defence minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, insisted that China had no problem with the white paper. But other leaked US embassy cables report that the then deputy secretary for Defence, Mike Pezzullo, briefed US diplomats that he had been ''dressed down'' by Chinese officials who had a ''look of cold fury'' at the references to China in the white paper.
In the September 2006 briefing of the US embassy, Foreign Affairs officials advised that Australia hoped to use its defence relationship with China to promote increased transparency in that country's military development plans.
''We remain focused on deepening the Australia-China defence relationship in areas such as peacekeeping, counter-terrorism and junior leadership exchanges, while remaining cautious to avoid practical co-operation that might help the PLA to fill capability gaps,'' the Australian paper presented to the embassy concluded.
The Royal Australian Navy and the Chinese navy held their first joint exercise involving firing of live ammunition in September last year.
Last month the Defence Department secretary, Ian Watt, and Air Chief Marshal Houston attended the 13th annual Australia-China Defence Strategic Dialogue, which was hosted in China by General Chen Bingde, the chief of the PLA General Staff.
Dr Watt said that the dialogue was ''an integral component of Australia's defence engagement with China, and provided the opportunity to have frank and open conversations and to exchange views on areas of common interest''.
Dr Watt and Air Chief Marshal Houston also met the vice-president and deputy chairman of China's Central Military Commission, Xi Jinping.
Air Chief Marshal Houston said: ''We committed to continuing to develop our military relationship and practical cooperation together.''
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/chinese-expansion-fears-revealed-20110106-19hna.html
Food crisis fears as global prices hit record high
Rudy Ruitenberg January 7, 2011
PARIS: Global food prices last month were the highest in records dating to 1990, exceeding 2008 levels that sparked deadly riots across the world.
An index of 55 food commodities tracked by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation rose for a sixth straight month to 214.7 points, above the previous high of 213.5 in June 2008, the agency said in a monthly report.
A senior economist at the FAO in Rome, Abdolreza Abbassian, told the Financial Times the increase was "alarming" but that the situation was not yet a crisis similar to 2007-08, when food riots affected more than 30 poor countries, including Haiti, Bangladesh and Egypt.
''The world faces a food price shock,'' he told the paper, adding that a prolonged spike could lead to a food crisis.
''Things could become explosive again … that's what people are concerned about,'' said Daniel Gustafson, the director of the FAO's Washington office.
Sugar climbed for a third year in a row and corn jumped the most in four years on the Chicago futures exchange. Food prices may rise more unless the world grain crop increased ''significantly'' this year, the FAO said in November.
At least 13 people died last year in Mozambique in protests over plans to raise bread prices.
Mr Abbassian said that ''there is still, unfortunately, the potential for grain prices to strengthen on the back of a lot of uncertainty''.
''If anything goes wrong with the South American crop, there is plenty of room for them to increase.''
In December, the cost of food was up 25 per cent from a year earlier, based on the FAO figures, after Chinese demand strengthened and Russia's worst drought in 50 years devastated grain crops.
Last month's year-on-year rise compares with the 43 per cent jump in food costs in June 2008. Record prices for fuel, weather-related crop problems, increasing the demand from the growing Indian and Chinese middle classes, and the push to grow corn for ethanol fuel all contributed to the crisis that year.
''In 2008 we had rapid increases in petroleum prices, fertiliser prices and other inputs,'' Mr Abbassian said. ''So far, those increases have been rather constrained. It doesn't really reduce the fear about what could be in store in the coming weeks or months.''
Global food production will have to rise 70 per cent by 2050 as the world population expands to 9.1 billion from about 6.8 billion last year, the FAO has said.
In response to the 2008 crisis, countries from India and Egypt to Vietnam and Indonesia banned exports of rice, a staple for half the world. Skyrocketing food prices sparked protests and riots in more than 30 poor nations including Haiti, Somalia, Burkina Faso and Cameroon.
In 2008 countries drew from global food reserves to replace the lost supply. Without that cushion, the overall market is more volatile.
Mr Gustafson cautioned against assuming high prices now would lead to unrest. The landscape had changed rapidly.
However, if a few big food exporters experienced extreme weather such as a drought, prices could rise, and that could bring unrest, he said.
Sugar and oilseeds had a disproportionate effect on the food index because it was based on trade values for commodities, Mr Abbassian said. The price of staples, including rice, was lower than in 2008, he said.
The surge in the index is mostly due to rising costs for corn, sugar and vegetable oil. These were less important than rice and wheat for food-insecure countries, the Financial Times reported. Bloomberg, Associated Press
http://www.smh.com.au/world/food-crisis-fears-as-global-prices-hit-record-high-20110106-19hni.html
PARIS: Global food prices last month were the highest in records dating to 1990, exceeding 2008 levels that sparked deadly riots across the world.
An index of 55 food commodities tracked by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation rose for a sixth straight month to 214.7 points, above the previous high of 213.5 in June 2008, the agency said in a monthly report.
A senior economist at the FAO in Rome, Abdolreza Abbassian, told the Financial Times the increase was "alarming" but that the situation was not yet a crisis similar to 2007-08, when food riots affected more than 30 poor countries, including Haiti, Bangladesh and Egypt.
''The world faces a food price shock,'' he told the paper, adding that a prolonged spike could lead to a food crisis.
''Things could become explosive again … that's what people are concerned about,'' said Daniel Gustafson, the director of the FAO's Washington office.
Sugar climbed for a third year in a row and corn jumped the most in four years on the Chicago futures exchange. Food prices may rise more unless the world grain crop increased ''significantly'' this year, the FAO said in November.
At least 13 people died last year in Mozambique in protests over plans to raise bread prices.
Mr Abbassian said that ''there is still, unfortunately, the potential for grain prices to strengthen on the back of a lot of uncertainty''.
''If anything goes wrong with the South American crop, there is plenty of room for them to increase.''
In December, the cost of food was up 25 per cent from a year earlier, based on the FAO figures, after Chinese demand strengthened and Russia's worst drought in 50 years devastated grain crops.
Last month's year-on-year rise compares with the 43 per cent jump in food costs in June 2008. Record prices for fuel, weather-related crop problems, increasing the demand from the growing Indian and Chinese middle classes, and the push to grow corn for ethanol fuel all contributed to the crisis that year.
''In 2008 we had rapid increases in petroleum prices, fertiliser prices and other inputs,'' Mr Abbassian said. ''So far, those increases have been rather constrained. It doesn't really reduce the fear about what could be in store in the coming weeks or months.''
Global food production will have to rise 70 per cent by 2050 as the world population expands to 9.1 billion from about 6.8 billion last year, the FAO has said.
In response to the 2008 crisis, countries from India and Egypt to Vietnam and Indonesia banned exports of rice, a staple for half the world. Skyrocketing food prices sparked protests and riots in more than 30 poor nations including Haiti, Somalia, Burkina Faso and Cameroon.
In 2008 countries drew from global food reserves to replace the lost supply. Without that cushion, the overall market is more volatile.
Mr Gustafson cautioned against assuming high prices now would lead to unrest. The landscape had changed rapidly.
However, if a few big food exporters experienced extreme weather such as a drought, prices could rise, and that could bring unrest, he said.
Sugar and oilseeds had a disproportionate effect on the food index because it was based on trade values for commodities, Mr Abbassian said. The price of staples, including rice, was lower than in 2008, he said.
The surge in the index is mostly due to rising costs for corn, sugar and vegetable oil. These were less important than rice and wheat for food-insecure countries, the Financial Times reported. Bloomberg, Associated Press
http://www.smh.com.au/world/food-crisis-fears-as-global-prices-hit-record-high-20110106-19hni.html
Australian churches threatened
Friday, January 07, 2011 » 04:58am
NSW Police are providing extra security for four Coptic Orthodox churches threatened with terror attacks.
Threats of terror attacks on at least four Australian churches prompted police to protect thousands of Coptic Christians during Christmas Eve services.
Police on Thursday surrounded the Coptic Orthodox churches in Sydney after a bomb blast killed 21 people during a New Year's Eve Coptic church service in Alexandria, Egypt.
Coptic Churches around the world are also on high alert as their Christmas Eve services are scheduled for Friday (Australian time).
On Thursday night in Sydney, bomb searches and police helicopters were part of the security measures that soured Christmas Eve celebrations.
Some church officials are worried that an attack may eventuate when least expected on any on of their churches, monasteries or schools in Australia.
A police detail searched St Antonious and St Paul parish in Guildford, in Sydney's west, on Thursday afternoon prior to its 7pm Christmas Eve services, a church official told AAP.
Up to 700 parishioners were estimated to be in attendance.
During the service, teams of officers surrounded the area while helicopters with spotlights searched the local suburb.
'There were threats to our church - three or four churches in the (Sydney) Coptic church,' said the man who asked not to be identified.
He said NSW Police contacted the church this week to say the Guildford site and three others in Sydney had been the target of a terrorist threat.
Archangel and St Bishoy at Mt Druitt, in Sydney's west, St Demiana and St Athanasius at Punchbowl, in Sydney's southwest and St Mary and St Merkorious, at Rhodes, were understood to be on the threat list.
A woman witnessed a police operation in her neighbourhood at Arncliffe, where St Mark Coptic Church is located in Sydney's south.
'The police helicopter is sweeping the suburb with this massive spotlight,' the woman told AAP.
All of the churches cancelled their traditional dinners that would normally happen after Christmas Eve services.
The spokesman said Thursday's threat, which resulted in no reported incidents, could have been a diversion.
'They want you to focus on the area that they're not going to be touching,' he said.
'And even though the threat was for Christmas Eve, they might do it on a normal Sunday. That's how they work.'
Police issued a statement to AAP following Thursday's operations.
'The NSW Police Force is closely monitoring international developments in the wake of the attack on the Coptic community in Egypt,' the statement read.
'Police have met with local Coptic leaders and are currently working with them to allay any fears within that community.'
Peter Mikhail attended the Guildford service and said the threats soured the service and have put fear into the congregation.
'It was not a nice way to be celebrating Christmas here in a country where you're supposed to be safe,' Mr Mikhail told AAP.
He said the traditionally long mass but had to be cut short at police request and people were dispersed immediately.
'We went to church today feeling quite apprehensive thinking oh my God' what if something does take place,' Mr Mikhail said.
'I'm worried about my wife, I'm worried about my kids.'
http://bigpondnews.com/articles/TopStories/2011/01/07/Australian_churches_threatened_561093.html
NSW Police are providing extra security for four Coptic Orthodox churches threatened with terror attacks.
Threats of terror attacks on at least four Australian churches prompted police to protect thousands of Coptic Christians during Christmas Eve services.
Police on Thursday surrounded the Coptic Orthodox churches in Sydney after a bomb blast killed 21 people during a New Year's Eve Coptic church service in Alexandria, Egypt.
Coptic Churches around the world are also on high alert as their Christmas Eve services are scheduled for Friday (Australian time).
On Thursday night in Sydney, bomb searches and police helicopters were part of the security measures that soured Christmas Eve celebrations.
Some church officials are worried that an attack may eventuate when least expected on any on of their churches, monasteries or schools in Australia.
A police detail searched St Antonious and St Paul parish in Guildford, in Sydney's west, on Thursday afternoon prior to its 7pm Christmas Eve services, a church official told AAP.
Up to 700 parishioners were estimated to be in attendance.
During the service, teams of officers surrounded the area while helicopters with spotlights searched the local suburb.
'There were threats to our church - three or four churches in the (Sydney) Coptic church,' said the man who asked not to be identified.
He said NSW Police contacted the church this week to say the Guildford site and three others in Sydney had been the target of a terrorist threat.
Archangel and St Bishoy at Mt Druitt, in Sydney's west, St Demiana and St Athanasius at Punchbowl, in Sydney's southwest and St Mary and St Merkorious, at Rhodes, were understood to be on the threat list.
A woman witnessed a police operation in her neighbourhood at Arncliffe, where St Mark Coptic Church is located in Sydney's south.
'The police helicopter is sweeping the suburb with this massive spotlight,' the woman told AAP.
All of the churches cancelled their traditional dinners that would normally happen after Christmas Eve services.
The spokesman said Thursday's threat, which resulted in no reported incidents, could have been a diversion.
'They want you to focus on the area that they're not going to be touching,' he said.
'And even though the threat was for Christmas Eve, they might do it on a normal Sunday. That's how they work.'
Police issued a statement to AAP following Thursday's operations.
'The NSW Police Force is closely monitoring international developments in the wake of the attack on the Coptic community in Egypt,' the statement read.
'Police have met with local Coptic leaders and are currently working with them to allay any fears within that community.'
Peter Mikhail attended the Guildford service and said the threats soured the service and have put fear into the congregation.
'It was not a nice way to be celebrating Christmas here in a country where you're supposed to be safe,' Mr Mikhail told AAP.
He said the traditionally long mass but had to be cut short at police request and people were dispersed immediately.
'We went to church today feeling quite apprehensive thinking oh my God' what if something does take place,' Mr Mikhail said.
'I'm worried about my wife, I'm worried about my kids.'
http://bigpondnews.com/articles/TopStories/2011/01/07/Australian_churches_threatened_561093.html
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Keneally's power backflip
Andrew Clennell State Political Editor January 06, 2011
SHE closed Parliament early in an attempt to disband it, but Premier Kristina Keneally will be a surprise guest at the power inquiry she has branded "unconstitutional".
In a bizarre announcement yesterday, Ms Keneally said both she and Treasurer Eric Roozendaal would appear before the inquiry.
It means the Government is giving legitimacy to a parliamentary inquiry it has previously said could endanger the $5.3 billion sale of the state's electricity assets.
But Ms Keneally yesterday continued to refuse to reverse her decision to prorogue Parliament, meaning the inquiry may not have the protection of parliamentary privilege.
She said in a statement that public servants - who may reveal damaging secrets about the sale - will not have to give evidence because they can rely on Crown Solicitor's advice that they might not be protected by privilege.
However, the Premier said she and Mr Roozendaal would "represent the government" at the inquiry. "I have taken this decision based on my commitment to transparency and openness," she said.
"While the Crown Solicitor's legal advice is abundantly clear that the committee is unconstitutional and is unable to compel witnesses, I have decided that the Treasurer and I will attend voluntarily, along with members of the electricity bid project team, to answer any questions."
Last night, a spokesman for the Premier claimed it was too difficult to reverse Ms Keneally's decision on December 22 to prorogue Parliament, which the Premier insists had nothing to do with trying to shut down the power inquiry.
"We cannot unprorogue Parliament. You can't," the spokesman said. "This is the best possible way of doing it. This is 100 per cent openness and transparency."
But Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said yesterday's announcement was a "desperate act to get this issue off the front pages". "This is the ultimate act of hypocrisy," he said.
"Ms Keneally must immediately unprorogue Parliament to ensure witnesses have full protection."
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/keneally-power-backflip/story-e6freuy9-1225982691766
SHE closed Parliament early in an attempt to disband it, but Premier Kristina Keneally will be a surprise guest at the power inquiry she has branded "unconstitutional".
In a bizarre announcement yesterday, Ms Keneally said both she and Treasurer Eric Roozendaal would appear before the inquiry.
It means the Government is giving legitimacy to a parliamentary inquiry it has previously said could endanger the $5.3 billion sale of the state's electricity assets.
But Ms Keneally yesterday continued to refuse to reverse her decision to prorogue Parliament, meaning the inquiry may not have the protection of parliamentary privilege.
She said in a statement that public servants - who may reveal damaging secrets about the sale - will not have to give evidence because they can rely on Crown Solicitor's advice that they might not be protected by privilege.
However, the Premier said she and Mr Roozendaal would "represent the government" at the inquiry. "I have taken this decision based on my commitment to transparency and openness," she said.
"While the Crown Solicitor's legal advice is abundantly clear that the committee is unconstitutional and is unable to compel witnesses, I have decided that the Treasurer and I will attend voluntarily, along with members of the electricity bid project team, to answer any questions."
Last night, a spokesman for the Premier claimed it was too difficult to reverse Ms Keneally's decision on December 22 to prorogue Parliament, which the Premier insists had nothing to do with trying to shut down the power inquiry.
"We cannot unprorogue Parliament. You can't," the spokesman said. "This is the best possible way of doing it. This is 100 per cent openness and transparency."
But Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said yesterday's announcement was a "desperate act to get this issue off the front pages". "This is the ultimate act of hypocrisy," he said.
"Ms Keneally must immediately unprorogue Parliament to ensure witnesses have full protection."
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/keneally-power-backflip/story-e6freuy9-1225982691766
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Time to develop our own talent to fill the key jobs
SKILLS SHORTAGE: Sarah-Jane Tasker and Annabel Hepworth From: The Australian December 09, 2010 12:00AM
AUSTRALIAN companies concerned about skilled labour shortages should focus on training local staff.
They should not be campaigning for changes to migrant visas, which has been described as an "unsustainable" strategy.
The Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union has called on local companies to focus on training and upskilling the national talent pool to address the critical labour issue instead of finding overseas workers.
"Every time this issue comes up we have employers saying 'we have to loosen red tape and deregulate' to make sure all these major resource projects and nation building initiatives are able to supply labour," national secretary Peter Tighe said. "We understand skilled migration has to take place and it is a mechanism to address skills shortages, when there (are) cyclical trends, but our view is you should grow your own at home."
Australia's resources sector is riding the wave of China's increasing demand but the country's biggest companies are concerned that multi-billion-dollar projects will face major delays or cost blowouts if the skills shortage issue is not addressed urgently by the government.
Key industry figures, including Rio Tinto iron ore boss Sam Walsh and Leighton Holdings chief executive Wal King have called for the government to make the 457 visa -- the most commonly used program for bringing in overseas workers on a temporary basis -- to be expanded and made more flexible.
Mr Tighe said that despite industry concerns, the union had not seen evidence of employers "putting their shoulders to the wheel" in relation to taking on trainees. "Also, we have not seen them do anything else other than bleat about the problem and argue you should loosen the arrangements to bring in people from overseas," he said.
"We don't believe skilled migrants should be the source of Australian skilled labour."
Mr Tighe's comments came as a new high-level report warned that Australia's reliance on skilled migrants and international students was an "unsustainable" strategy.The report by the Australian National Engineering Taskforce found that about 60 per cent of newly qualified engineers were skilled migrants (compared with 40 per cent five years ago) with the number of engineers working in Australia on section 457 visas more than tripling since 2003-04. "Recruitment of international students and workers should not replace wholesale investment in local skills development and in the development of the profession in Australia," the report said.
The taskforce found a mismatch between the number of engineering graduates and industry needs, adding to pressures on businesses to recruit offshore. While there are about 6000 engineering graduates yearly, up to 4000 extra engineers will be needed in the roads sector alone in the next eight years. But engineers are in short supply globally.
One concern is that the resources sector is draining engineering skills, having a knock-on effect in other sectors such as roads and rail. The taskforce warned that skills shortages were adding to the problems of poor scoping on big projects.
The latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, also released yesterday, also pointed to the hiring surge expected in the services and mining and construction sector next year.
Employers in the services sector are showing the highest employment optimism for the first quarter of next year, at a seasonally adjusted 28 per cent, up from 27 per cent in the same period last year. "We've heard a lot from mining and construction sector employers about skills shortages and these figures now serve to add more urgency to the need for a solution," said Lincoln Crawley, managing director of Manpower Australia & New Zealand. "Organisations need to prioritise attraction and retention strategies as the war for talent will heat up."
Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, has been addressing the skills shortage issue with a graduate program, with the aim to have 100 graduates in the next five years.
Lyle van der Veer, national support and training manager at Schneider, said they had formed alliances with universities. "The idea is to get students job-ready during their degree process because a lot of the problem is when they come into our business, there is still a minimum of 12 to 18 months before they're useful onsite," he said.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/time-to-develop-our-own-talent-to-fill-the-key-jobs/story-e6frg8zx-1225967885831
AUSTRALIAN companies concerned about skilled labour shortages should focus on training local staff.
They should not be campaigning for changes to migrant visas, which has been described as an "unsustainable" strategy.
The Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union has called on local companies to focus on training and upskilling the national talent pool to address the critical labour issue instead of finding overseas workers.
"Every time this issue comes up we have employers saying 'we have to loosen red tape and deregulate' to make sure all these major resource projects and nation building initiatives are able to supply labour," national secretary Peter Tighe said. "We understand skilled migration has to take place and it is a mechanism to address skills shortages, when there (are) cyclical trends, but our view is you should grow your own at home."
Australia's resources sector is riding the wave of China's increasing demand but the country's biggest companies are concerned that multi-billion-dollar projects will face major delays or cost blowouts if the skills shortage issue is not addressed urgently by the government.
Key industry figures, including Rio Tinto iron ore boss Sam Walsh and Leighton Holdings chief executive Wal King have called for the government to make the 457 visa -- the most commonly used program for bringing in overseas workers on a temporary basis -- to be expanded and made more flexible.
Mr Tighe said that despite industry concerns, the union had not seen evidence of employers "putting their shoulders to the wheel" in relation to taking on trainees. "Also, we have not seen them do anything else other than bleat about the problem and argue you should loosen the arrangements to bring in people from overseas," he said.
"We don't believe skilled migrants should be the source of Australian skilled labour."
Mr Tighe's comments came as a new high-level report warned that Australia's reliance on skilled migrants and international students was an "unsustainable" strategy.The report by the Australian National Engineering Taskforce found that about 60 per cent of newly qualified engineers were skilled migrants (compared with 40 per cent five years ago) with the number of engineers working in Australia on section 457 visas more than tripling since 2003-04. "Recruitment of international students and workers should not replace wholesale investment in local skills development and in the development of the profession in Australia," the report said.
The taskforce found a mismatch between the number of engineering graduates and industry needs, adding to pressures on businesses to recruit offshore. While there are about 6000 engineering graduates yearly, up to 4000 extra engineers will be needed in the roads sector alone in the next eight years. But engineers are in short supply globally.
One concern is that the resources sector is draining engineering skills, having a knock-on effect in other sectors such as roads and rail. The taskforce warned that skills shortages were adding to the problems of poor scoping on big projects.
The latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, also released yesterday, also pointed to the hiring surge expected in the services and mining and construction sector next year.
Employers in the services sector are showing the highest employment optimism for the first quarter of next year, at a seasonally adjusted 28 per cent, up from 27 per cent in the same period last year. "We've heard a lot from mining and construction sector employers about skills shortages and these figures now serve to add more urgency to the need for a solution," said Lincoln Crawley, managing director of Manpower Australia & New Zealand. "Organisations need to prioritise attraction and retention strategies as the war for talent will heat up."
Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, has been addressing the skills shortage issue with a graduate program, with the aim to have 100 graduates in the next five years.
Lyle van der Veer, national support and training manager at Schneider, said they had formed alliances with universities. "The idea is to get students job-ready during their degree process because a lot of the problem is when they come into our business, there is still a minimum of 12 to 18 months before they're useful onsite," he said.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/time-to-develop-our-own-talent-to-fill-the-key-jobs/story-e6frg8zx-1225967885831
Overseas labour 'key to projects'
December 13, 2010 12:00AM
AUSTRALIA'S only hope of building infrastructure projects needed to lift national productivity is to turn to cheaper overseas workers.
Governments should consider putting public projects such as ports, interstate rail and big city transport construction out to international tender, allowing the winning bidder to bring their own workers in to do the job, Australia's leading demographer, Peter McDonald, said.
"It should only be for discrete major projects, the work quality would have to be vetted by Australian engineers and be subject to Australian occupational health and safety standards," said Professor McDonald, director of the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute at the Australian National University. "But otherwise these projects will never happen because of the prohibitive cost of labour here.
Related Coverage
• Labor must join the dots The Australian, 13 Dec 2010
• Time to develop our own talent The Australian, 8 Dec 2010
• Skills crisis risks $150bn in projects The Australian, 7 Dec 2010
• Nation needs immigration debate The Daily Telegraph, 20 Jul 2010
• Migrants must fill labour gap in mining The Australian, 20 Jul 2010
"The winning tenderer would have its own workforce. They come in, they build the thing, then they leave. This is commonly done in other countries. Ports would be one example. Railways another. The Chinese, for instance, are building very fast train services between their cities all over China. We will just never build them on our own.
"Sydney and Melbourne have grown in size to be past the point where they should have good urban transit systems.
"But, of course, they don't, and they won't because it will be far too expensive unless they're built in the way I've described."
While accepting the idea would be strongly resisted by the unions, Professor McDonald said it was up to governments as to how much they valued higher productivity when economic growth per capita was restricted in coming years by an ageing population.
Governments are currently wrestling with how to balance a public backlash against "big Australia", with skills shortages driven by the mining boom complicated by the fact that the local labour supply is stagnating as hundreds of thousands of baby boomers move into retirement.
Construction workers are being lured away from housing and public works projects in the eastern states by bigger pay cheques in Western Australia and Queensland.
This propels wages growth, in turn increasing inflationary pressures across the economy.
Already mining and construction companies have called on the Gillard government to provide greater flexibility in issuing 457 temporary visas to skilled foreign workers or risk huge projects being deferred.
Professor McDonald said with domestic labour supply stagnating due to the ageing population, the only option to meet increasing labour demand and keep the economy ticking was migrants.
Yet net overseas migration fell 25 per cent to 241,400 in the year to March, albeit off record highs from 2008 and 2009, a decline attributed to a tightening of the rules surrounding overseas students taking up permanent residency, greater competition from the US and Britain for international students, and a change to the requirements for work visas under the general skilled migration program.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/industry-sectors/overseas-labour-key-to-projects/story-e6frg97o-1225969802314
AUSTRALIA'S only hope of building infrastructure projects needed to lift national productivity is to turn to cheaper overseas workers.
Governments should consider putting public projects such as ports, interstate rail and big city transport construction out to international tender, allowing the winning bidder to bring their own workers in to do the job, Australia's leading demographer, Peter McDonald, said.
"It should only be for discrete major projects, the work quality would have to be vetted by Australian engineers and be subject to Australian occupational health and safety standards," said Professor McDonald, director of the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute at the Australian National University. "But otherwise these projects will never happen because of the prohibitive cost of labour here.
Related Coverage
• Labor must join the dots The Australian, 13 Dec 2010
• Time to develop our own talent The Australian, 8 Dec 2010
• Skills crisis risks $150bn in projects The Australian, 7 Dec 2010
• Nation needs immigration debate The Daily Telegraph, 20 Jul 2010
• Migrants must fill labour gap in mining The Australian, 20 Jul 2010
"The winning tenderer would have its own workforce. They come in, they build the thing, then they leave. This is commonly done in other countries. Ports would be one example. Railways another. The Chinese, for instance, are building very fast train services between their cities all over China. We will just never build them on our own.
"Sydney and Melbourne have grown in size to be past the point where they should have good urban transit systems.
"But, of course, they don't, and they won't because it will be far too expensive unless they're built in the way I've described."
While accepting the idea would be strongly resisted by the unions, Professor McDonald said it was up to governments as to how much they valued higher productivity when economic growth per capita was restricted in coming years by an ageing population.
Governments are currently wrestling with how to balance a public backlash against "big Australia", with skills shortages driven by the mining boom complicated by the fact that the local labour supply is stagnating as hundreds of thousands of baby boomers move into retirement.
Construction workers are being lured away from housing and public works projects in the eastern states by bigger pay cheques in Western Australia and Queensland.
This propels wages growth, in turn increasing inflationary pressures across the economy.
Already mining and construction companies have called on the Gillard government to provide greater flexibility in issuing 457 temporary visas to skilled foreign workers or risk huge projects being deferred.
Professor McDonald said with domestic labour supply stagnating due to the ageing population, the only option to meet increasing labour demand and keep the economy ticking was migrants.
Yet net overseas migration fell 25 per cent to 241,400 in the year to March, albeit off record highs from 2008 and 2009, a decline attributed to a tightening of the rules surrounding overseas students taking up permanent residency, greater competition from the US and Britain for international students, and a change to the requirements for work visas under the general skilled migration program.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/industry-sectors/overseas-labour-key-to-projects/story-e6frg97o-1225969802314
Immigration Department's red book warns on student backlash after cuts to migration
• Siobhain Ryan From: The Australian January 05, 2011
CANBERRA is preparing for a backlash from tens of thousands of overseas students caught out by its reforms to its migration programs.
The Department of Immigration's Red Book released yesterday warned its incoming minister, Chris Bowen, of a blowout in the overseas student queue for permanent visas and of the likely rejection of most applicants, despite grandfathering provisions aimed at helping them through the changes.
About 455,000 people held student visas when the government moved to review the points test, tighten the list of occupations in demand and reserve the right to cap visa places for some occupations.
About one-third of the 455,000 would have expected to attain permanent residence, but the reforms would now "render a majority of them ineligible".
"Even if their expectations of permanent residence have been unreasonably formed, this group is sizeable, many are aggrieved and they are beginning to mobilise," the Red Book said.
The problem is compounded by the fact there are 106,000 former students already on temporary or bridging visas awaiting a decision on their applications for permanent residency.
Many would be left in limbo indefinitely, the department acknowledged.
The department, which faces an Australian National Audit Office probe into its management of student visas this financial year, is so concerned about student discontent it is commissioning research to specifically monitor them, the Red Book reveals.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/warning-on-student-backlash/story-e6frg6nf-1225981972188
CANBERRA is preparing for a backlash from tens of thousands of overseas students caught out by its reforms to its migration programs.
The Department of Immigration's Red Book released yesterday warned its incoming minister, Chris Bowen, of a blowout in the overseas student queue for permanent visas and of the likely rejection of most applicants, despite grandfathering provisions aimed at helping them through the changes.
About 455,000 people held student visas when the government moved to review the points test, tighten the list of occupations in demand and reserve the right to cap visa places for some occupations.
About one-third of the 455,000 would have expected to attain permanent residence, but the reforms would now "render a majority of them ineligible".
"Even if their expectations of permanent residence have been unreasonably formed, this group is sizeable, many are aggrieved and they are beginning to mobilise," the Red Book said.
The problem is compounded by the fact there are 106,000 former students already on temporary or bridging visas awaiting a decision on their applications for permanent residency.
Many would be left in limbo indefinitely, the department acknowledged.
The department, which faces an Australian National Audit Office probe into its management of student visas this financial year, is so concerned about student discontent it is commissioning research to specifically monitor them, the Red Book reveals.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/warning-on-student-backlash/story-e6frg6nf-1225981972188
Ex-energy bosses ready to speak out
Andrew Clennell and Gemma Jones: The Daily Telegraph January 05, 2011
TWO of the eight energy company directors who quit over the State Government's power sell-off are prepared to give evidence to the inquiry into the sale.
Their declarations came as Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell promised legislation or a referendum to prevent Parliament being shut early by a premier again.
The news came a day after Premier Kristina Keneally presented Crown Solicitor's advice that said the inquiry - set up by the Opposition and Fred Nile after she discontinued Parliament sessions early before Christmas - was "unconstitutional".
Two directors contacted by The Daily Telegraph said they would be prepared to appear.
Former Railcorp chairman Ross Bunyon and Michael Vertigan, who audited the state's finances for former premier Morris Iemma in 2005, both resigned as Eraring directors because they could not stomach Treasurer Eric Roozendaal's $5.3 billion sale.
They said they would be willing to explain why they quit but are concerned they might not be protected by parliamentary privilege.
"I'm inclined to appear but it would be dependent on legal advice," Mr Bunyon said. "I will take some legal advice to ensure that my own personal situation and interests are properly protected," Mr Vertigan said.
Ms Keneally presented the Crown Solicitor's advice that said parliamentary privilege was at "risk" and witnesses could not be compelled to appear. It had been expected that directors would elect not to appear.
The break in ranks from the directors will put more pressure on Ms Keneally to back the inquiry proceeding.
Mr O'Farrell yesterday promised that, if elected in March, he would change the rules around proroguing Parliament by legislation, or referendum in 2015, if necessary.
"After this rort, I am very keen to get clear rules in place for the prorogation of Parliament," he said.
Greens MP David Shoebridge, a member of the committee, said there was a precedent to Premier Keneally being able to reverse her controversial proroguing of Parliament, so the inquiry could proceed with certainty around privilege.
In 1982, former premier Neville Wran reversed a proroguing of Parliament so he could introduce a fuel tax. All that was required was a letter from Ms Keneally to NSW Governor Marie Bashir.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/ex-energy-bosses-ready-to-speak-out/story-e6freuy9-1225982012257
TWO of the eight energy company directors who quit over the State Government's power sell-off are prepared to give evidence to the inquiry into the sale.
Their declarations came as Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell promised legislation or a referendum to prevent Parliament being shut early by a premier again.
The news came a day after Premier Kristina Keneally presented Crown Solicitor's advice that said the inquiry - set up by the Opposition and Fred Nile after she discontinued Parliament sessions early before Christmas - was "unconstitutional".
Two directors contacted by The Daily Telegraph said they would be prepared to appear.
Former Railcorp chairman Ross Bunyon and Michael Vertigan, who audited the state's finances for former premier Morris Iemma in 2005, both resigned as Eraring directors because they could not stomach Treasurer Eric Roozendaal's $5.3 billion sale.
They said they would be willing to explain why they quit but are concerned they might not be protected by parliamentary privilege.
"I'm inclined to appear but it would be dependent on legal advice," Mr Bunyon said. "I will take some legal advice to ensure that my own personal situation and interests are properly protected," Mr Vertigan said.
Ms Keneally presented the Crown Solicitor's advice that said parliamentary privilege was at "risk" and witnesses could not be compelled to appear. It had been expected that directors would elect not to appear.
The break in ranks from the directors will put more pressure on Ms Keneally to back the inquiry proceeding.
Mr O'Farrell yesterday promised that, if elected in March, he would change the rules around proroguing Parliament by legislation, or referendum in 2015, if necessary.
"After this rort, I am very keen to get clear rules in place for the prorogation of Parliament," he said.
Greens MP David Shoebridge, a member of the committee, said there was a precedent to Premier Keneally being able to reverse her controversial proroguing of Parliament, so the inquiry could proceed with certainty around privilege.
In 1982, former premier Neville Wran reversed a proroguing of Parliament so he could introduce a fuel tax. All that was required was a letter from Ms Keneally to NSW Governor Marie Bashir.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/ex-energy-bosses-ready-to-speak-out/story-e6freuy9-1225982012257
Migration logjam hits skilled workers
• Sid Maher and Annabel Hepworth From: The Australian January 05, 2011 12:00AM
Source: The Australian
MORE than 140,000 skilled migrants are caught in an Immigration Department processing backlog of up to 28 months.
Business leaders are warning of a looming skills shortage and a wages breakout driven by a resurgent economy.
In a secret briefing to Immigration Minister Chris Bowen, the department warned of potential legal action by skilled migrants unable to get a decision on their applications. The department also said that, in order to offset the ageing of the workforce, migration would need to remain at levels that would lead to Australia having a population of 35.9 million by 2050 - the figure that sparked the "big Australia" debate and Julia Gillard's promise of a sustainable Australia.
Despite cuts to migration levels that would cause net overseas migration to plateau at about 190,000 a year by 2012, the Red Book briefing said net overseas migration would still be above the 180,000-a-year level used by Treasury in the 2010 Inter-Generational Report, when it calculated the figure of 35.9 million by 2050.
The release of the briefing came as Reserve Bank director Graham Kraehe called for an increase to skilled immigration to avoid a broader wages breakout.
"I think skills shortages are a major problem and if we don't increase the amount of skilled migration then we are going to have some real pressure on wages," said Mr Kraehe, who is also chairman of BlueScope Steel and Brambles.
The departmental brief, obtained under Freedom of Information laws and compiled in September, also predicted further riots from the detained Indonesian crews of asylum-seeker boats and warned that immigration detention facilities were stretched beyond capacity, with 2646 people held for more than 120 days.
The briefing painted a picture of a department under "stress" from an influx of "irregular maritime arrivals" and a migration program facing a situation where "there are far more people seeking to migrate to Australia than the country wishes to absorb".
The briefing said the influx of asylum-seekers had meant an extra 400 qualified staff would be required to handle the workload.
The department warned it urgently needed extra funding to house the asylum-seekers, after being overwhelmed by approximately 700 arrivals by boat a month last financial year, more than four times its budgeted estimate of 166 a month, and the average processing time from arrival to granting a visa stood at 147 days.
In a remark that places the government on a potential collision course with the Greens, the briefing foreshadowed the possible need for legislation to advance the East Timor processing centre, a measure flatly opposed by the minor party's leader, Bob Brown.
The Red Book also revealed that the government:
► Screened 369 citizenship and visa applicants suspected of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide during 2009-10.
► Developed a contingency plan for an emergency evacuation of Australians from New Delhi in the event of a major incident at the Commonwealth Games and contemplated also bringing out South Pacific Island VIPs and athletes.
► Is examining using "advanced analytic software", including data mining, pattern recognition and network analysis techniques to detect possible threats and fraud.
► Faces a backlash from tens of thousands of overseas students caught by the government's reforms to international education visa programs who were facing a blowout in the overseas student queue for permanent visas and likely rejection, despite grandfathering provisions aimed at smoothing the adjustment.
In addition to the processing backlog of 140,000 applications in the general skilled migration category, there were 29,000 people seeking processing for partner places under the family reunion program.
The department warned the backlogs could spark legal action from disaffected people awaiting processing as, under the Migration Act, a person who lodged a valid application was entitled to a decision.
"The use of priority processing directions in recent years, so as to selectively target applications for skilled migration, in combination with high applicant numbers, has meant that some people are persistently at the bottom of the queue with their application unprocessed," the brief said. "It is possible that legal action may be launched by disaffected people in this group."
In calling for an increase in skilled migration, Mr Kraehe said shortages were already emerging. "We are already seeing that up in the northwest and that will just get worse," Mr Kraehe told The Australian last night. "That will exacerbate the two-speed economy that we are facing and the issues related to it.
"Two things are critical: one is some measures to improve productivity, which has been very poor in the last three or four years and declining; and the second is to increase the skilled immigration quotas so we can address what is already a shortage and something that is putting pressure on project costs and more broadly will put pressure on wages costs in the community."
Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder - who oversees one of the country's biggest employers spanning Coles supermarkets and Bunnings hardware stores - said he was keeping a "very close eye" on skills shortages.
"It's something we are very aware of, particularly in engineering, both skilled and semi-skilled areas. In the industrial businesses we've got particularly, it's something we are acutely aware of."
Australian Industry Group chief executive Heather Ridout said skills shortages would only grow in the months and years ahead and were contributing to wages inflation.
"We are at the early stage of a very, very big investment boom in Australia and that would suggest these are going to get worse," Ms Ridout said. "How these skilled migration systems and processes work is going to be really important over the next few years. They are certainly biting now."
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Peter Anderson demanded a more flexible skilled migration program. "If the government puts hard and fast rules in place that create gaps in our labour market then we will suffer productivity losses," Mr Anderson said.
"As a nation, we start this year with an already sluggish productivity rate and gaps in our labour market will exacerbate our productivity problems."
Business Council of Australia deputy chief executive Maria Tarrant said it was crucial that the government "streamline and deal with some of the causes of the backlog". "If you are thinking about how in the long term you deal with an ageing population, growing economy and skills gaps, skilled migration has to be part of the kit bag going forward."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/migration-logjam-hits-skilled-workers/story-fn59niix-1225982007455
Source: The Australian
MORE than 140,000 skilled migrants are caught in an Immigration Department processing backlog of up to 28 months.
Business leaders are warning of a looming skills shortage and a wages breakout driven by a resurgent economy.
In a secret briefing to Immigration Minister Chris Bowen, the department warned of potential legal action by skilled migrants unable to get a decision on their applications. The department also said that, in order to offset the ageing of the workforce, migration would need to remain at levels that would lead to Australia having a population of 35.9 million by 2050 - the figure that sparked the "big Australia" debate and Julia Gillard's promise of a sustainable Australia.
Despite cuts to migration levels that would cause net overseas migration to plateau at about 190,000 a year by 2012, the Red Book briefing said net overseas migration would still be above the 180,000-a-year level used by Treasury in the 2010 Inter-Generational Report, when it calculated the figure of 35.9 million by 2050.
The release of the briefing came as Reserve Bank director Graham Kraehe called for an increase to skilled immigration to avoid a broader wages breakout.
"I think skills shortages are a major problem and if we don't increase the amount of skilled migration then we are going to have some real pressure on wages," said Mr Kraehe, who is also chairman of BlueScope Steel and Brambles.
The departmental brief, obtained under Freedom of Information laws and compiled in September, also predicted further riots from the detained Indonesian crews of asylum-seeker boats and warned that immigration detention facilities were stretched beyond capacity, with 2646 people held for more than 120 days.
The briefing painted a picture of a department under "stress" from an influx of "irregular maritime arrivals" and a migration program facing a situation where "there are far more people seeking to migrate to Australia than the country wishes to absorb".
The briefing said the influx of asylum-seekers had meant an extra 400 qualified staff would be required to handle the workload.
The department warned it urgently needed extra funding to house the asylum-seekers, after being overwhelmed by approximately 700 arrivals by boat a month last financial year, more than four times its budgeted estimate of 166 a month, and the average processing time from arrival to granting a visa stood at 147 days.
In a remark that places the government on a potential collision course with the Greens, the briefing foreshadowed the possible need for legislation to advance the East Timor processing centre, a measure flatly opposed by the minor party's leader, Bob Brown.
The Red Book also revealed that the government:
► Screened 369 citizenship and visa applicants suspected of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide during 2009-10.
► Developed a contingency plan for an emergency evacuation of Australians from New Delhi in the event of a major incident at the Commonwealth Games and contemplated also bringing out South Pacific Island VIPs and athletes.
► Is examining using "advanced analytic software", including data mining, pattern recognition and network analysis techniques to detect possible threats and fraud.
► Faces a backlash from tens of thousands of overseas students caught by the government's reforms to international education visa programs who were facing a blowout in the overseas student queue for permanent visas and likely rejection, despite grandfathering provisions aimed at smoothing the adjustment.
In addition to the processing backlog of 140,000 applications in the general skilled migration category, there were 29,000 people seeking processing for partner places under the family reunion program.
The department warned the backlogs could spark legal action from disaffected people awaiting processing as, under the Migration Act, a person who lodged a valid application was entitled to a decision.
"The use of priority processing directions in recent years, so as to selectively target applications for skilled migration, in combination with high applicant numbers, has meant that some people are persistently at the bottom of the queue with their application unprocessed," the brief said. "It is possible that legal action may be launched by disaffected people in this group."
In calling for an increase in skilled migration, Mr Kraehe said shortages were already emerging. "We are already seeing that up in the northwest and that will just get worse," Mr Kraehe told The Australian last night. "That will exacerbate the two-speed economy that we are facing and the issues related to it.
"Two things are critical: one is some measures to improve productivity, which has been very poor in the last three or four years and declining; and the second is to increase the skilled immigration quotas so we can address what is already a shortage and something that is putting pressure on project costs and more broadly will put pressure on wages costs in the community."
Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder - who oversees one of the country's biggest employers spanning Coles supermarkets and Bunnings hardware stores - said he was keeping a "very close eye" on skills shortages.
"It's something we are very aware of, particularly in engineering, both skilled and semi-skilled areas. In the industrial businesses we've got particularly, it's something we are acutely aware of."
Australian Industry Group chief executive Heather Ridout said skills shortages would only grow in the months and years ahead and were contributing to wages inflation.
"We are at the early stage of a very, very big investment boom in Australia and that would suggest these are going to get worse," Ms Ridout said. "How these skilled migration systems and processes work is going to be really important over the next few years. They are certainly biting now."
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Peter Anderson demanded a more flexible skilled migration program. "If the government puts hard and fast rules in place that create gaps in our labour market then we will suffer productivity losses," Mr Anderson said.
"As a nation, we start this year with an already sluggish productivity rate and gaps in our labour market will exacerbate our productivity problems."
Business Council of Australia deputy chief executive Maria Tarrant said it was crucial that the government "streamline and deal with some of the causes of the backlog". "If you are thinking about how in the long term you deal with an ageing population, growing economy and skills gaps, skilled migration has to be part of the kit bag going forward."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/migration-logjam-hits-skilled-workers/story-fn59niix-1225982007455
Monday, January 3, 2011
Premier faces 11th-hour inquiry
Sean Nicholls and Brian Robins January 4, 2011
AN INQUIRY into the government's $5.3 billion power sale is to be held only weeks before the state election after its chairman, Fred Nile, said fresh legal advice did not affect its plans and the President of the Legislative Council, Amanda Fazio, revealed that her ''inclination'' was not to intervene.
The Premier, Kristina Keneally, yesterday released new legal advice from the Crown Solicitor, Ian Knight.
She had previously relied on advice he gave in 1994 to claim the inquiry would be illegal because it would be set up after she shut down Parliament on December 22.
In the new advice, Mr Knight said his view remained that the parliamentary committee that plans to run the inquiry on January 17 and 18 ''cannot function'' while Parliament is prorogued.
However, in contrast to Ms Keneally's statements that it could not afford witnesses the protection of parliamentary privilege, he advised that there was only a ''risk'' that that would be the case.
Ms Keneally said she would distribute the advice to Ms Fazio, Mr Nile and the clerk of the Parliament, Lynn Lovelock, ''to digest it and consider what the next steps are''.
But Ms Fazio, who as President could stymie the inquiry by withholding resources, told the Herald she was prepared to let it proceed, given the conflicting advice between Mr Knight and Ms Lovelock, who has advised Mr Nile that the inquiry can proceed. ''My inclination is not to withhold the resources of the Parliament from the committee,'' she said.
''Both sets of advice are saying there is no privilege. I'd be prepared to allow it to proceed as long as witnesses are appearing in a voluntary capacity, knowing they are without privilege.''
They are likely to include eight power company directors who resigned in protest on the night of the sale.
But Mr Nile said Mr Knight's advice about privilege was in line with a standard warning issued to witnesses before every inquiry.
Ms Fazio said Ms Lovelock was ''preparing more detailed advice''. She hoped to have her response by the time she returned to work next week.
The Opposition Leader, Barry O'Farrell, said the government should seek an order from the Supreme Court about the legitimacy of the inquiry but Ms Keneally's spokeswoman said Mr Knight's advice questioned whether the court would hear the application.
The Greens MP David Shoebridge said Mr O'Farrell was trying to ''pass the buck'' to the courts and argued that the inquiry should proceed.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/premier-faces-11thhour-inquiry-20110103-19dwh.html
AN INQUIRY into the government's $5.3 billion power sale is to be held only weeks before the state election after its chairman, Fred Nile, said fresh legal advice did not affect its plans and the President of the Legislative Council, Amanda Fazio, revealed that her ''inclination'' was not to intervene.
The Premier, Kristina Keneally, yesterday released new legal advice from the Crown Solicitor, Ian Knight.
She had previously relied on advice he gave in 1994 to claim the inquiry would be illegal because it would be set up after she shut down Parliament on December 22.
In the new advice, Mr Knight said his view remained that the parliamentary committee that plans to run the inquiry on January 17 and 18 ''cannot function'' while Parliament is prorogued.
However, in contrast to Ms Keneally's statements that it could not afford witnesses the protection of parliamentary privilege, he advised that there was only a ''risk'' that that would be the case.
Ms Keneally said she would distribute the advice to Ms Fazio, Mr Nile and the clerk of the Parliament, Lynn Lovelock, ''to digest it and consider what the next steps are''.
But Ms Fazio, who as President could stymie the inquiry by withholding resources, told the Herald she was prepared to let it proceed, given the conflicting advice between Mr Knight and Ms Lovelock, who has advised Mr Nile that the inquiry can proceed. ''My inclination is not to withhold the resources of the Parliament from the committee,'' she said.
''Both sets of advice are saying there is no privilege. I'd be prepared to allow it to proceed as long as witnesses are appearing in a voluntary capacity, knowing they are without privilege.''
They are likely to include eight power company directors who resigned in protest on the night of the sale.
But Mr Nile said Mr Knight's advice about privilege was in line with a standard warning issued to witnesses before every inquiry.
Ms Fazio said Ms Lovelock was ''preparing more detailed advice''. She hoped to have her response by the time she returned to work next week.
The Opposition Leader, Barry O'Farrell, said the government should seek an order from the Supreme Court about the legitimacy of the inquiry but Ms Keneally's spokeswoman said Mr Knight's advice questioned whether the court would hear the application.
The Greens MP David Shoebridge said Mr O'Farrell was trying to ''pass the buck'' to the courts and argued that the inquiry should proceed.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/premier-faces-11thhour-inquiry-20110103-19dwh.html
The intelligence and the luck that saves us from murderers
Gerard Henderson January 4, 2011
The bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt, at the weekend, apparently by a radical Islamist, was widely reported as a suicide attack. This is a serious misnomer.
The intention of a person who commits suicide is to kill himself or herself. The aim of the perpetrator of the crime in Alexandria was to kill as many Christians as possible. This is murder. The act is perhaps best described as suicide/homicide.
Egypt's President, Hosni Mubarak, has said that the attack was the work of ''foreign hands''. He seems to believe that the suicide/homicide attack was organised by a person loyal to al-Qaeda who entered Egypt to commit crime - following threats by Osama bin Laden's followers directed at Egypt's Copts. This analysis is probably correct.
Recent evidence from Britain, Denmark, Sweden and the US indicates that attacks on Western targets have been thwarted by a combination of good intelligence and good luck. Danish and Swedish police say they prevented an attempt to massacre staff at the newspaper Jyllands-Posten in protest at its decision in 2005 to publish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
In Britain, authorities say they stopped an attack on the US embassy in London and the London Stock Exchange. In Stockholm in mid-December the Swedish-born and British-educated Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly killed himself while attempting, unsuccessfully, to murder as many Christmas shoppers as possible. And then there was the attempted terrorist attack in Times Square, New York, last May.
What all these activities have in common is that they were apparently the work of a ''lone wolf'' or, rather, a number of lone wolves. The term has been used by Dr Sajjan Gohel, of the Asia-Pacific Foundation.
According to his research, the number of attacks that have been controlled by what he terms ''al-Qaeda central'' has diminished since 2006. He attributes this to several factors. First, the original al-Qaeda central organisation ''has been severely disrupted by allied operations in north and south Waziristan along the Afghan-Pakistan border region''. Second, al-Qaeda is finding it harder to raise and receive finance.
This leads Gohel to conclude that the growing concern in the West is to individuals who are not connected to any particular cell or network but who became ''radicalised as a result of jihadist literature online''.
Roshonara Choudhry is a case in point. A gifted student at King's College London who is fluent in four languages, she was influenced by the American-born and Yemen-based Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Last May, inspired by al-Awlaki's teachings on the internet, she tried to stab to death a Labour MP, Stephen Timms. Choudhry was a lone-wolf attacker who decided to be a martyr. It is all but impossible for intelligence organisations to thwart such attacks.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is another case. The son of a successful and wealthy Nigerian family, he allegedly tried to bring down an aircraft bound for Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 by igniting chemicals strapped to his inner leg.
Many members of the civil liberties lobby in Australia opposed the Howard government's Anti-Terrorism Act in 2005, which was supported by the Labor opposition. However, a number of jury trials in Australia have supported the view that there are people in Australia who have planned terrorist attacks.
First, there were convictions in the Operation Pendennis trials - the first in Sydney, the second in Melbourne. Juries were convinced, after lengthy trials and long deliberations, that Abdul Nacer Benbrika and some Islamist associates had conspired to undertake terrorist attacks on targets in Australia. In both cases the defendants were provided with able defence teams, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer.
Second, last month, a jury in Melbourne convicted three Islamists for taking part in a conspiracy (termed by police Operation Neath) to wage an attack on Holsworthy army base in Sydney. Two of the accused were acquitted after another long trial and lengthy jury deliberation.
What was particularly disturbing about Operation Neath turned on the evident contempt of the Somalia-born Saney Aweys for his fellow Australians. Yet Aweys's intercepted phone conversations indicate that he was more than willing to accept welfare payments in support of his wife and children and saw no contradiction in residing in public housing while condemning what he termed the ''filthy people'' who make up contemporary Australia.
The convictions in the Operation Pendennis and Operation Neath cases support Gohel's thesis. There is no evidence that those convicted were operating in accordance with directives from al-Qaeda central - unlike those Islamists who took part in the attacks in the US in 2001 or the attacks in Britain in 2005. Rather, the current danger in Australia appears to turn on individuals who have been radicalised at home or after brief visits overseas.
It is difficult to obtain guilty verdicts in conspiracy cases where no physical attack has taken place.
The success of counter-terrorism operations in Australia so far suggests that police and intelligence services are doing well in a difficult environment.
As the mainstream British Muslim Mohammed Bashir said recently of Islamists groups in Luton: ''They enjoy living in this country and then spend all their time speaking out against it; they are fools but they are also very dangerous.''
The sad fact is that some of these dangerous fools commit, or conspire to commit, suicide/homicide.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-intelligence-and-the-luck-that-saves-us-from-murderers-20110103-19dsa.html
The bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt, at the weekend, apparently by a radical Islamist, was widely reported as a suicide attack. This is a serious misnomer.
The intention of a person who commits suicide is to kill himself or herself. The aim of the perpetrator of the crime in Alexandria was to kill as many Christians as possible. This is murder. The act is perhaps best described as suicide/homicide.
Egypt's President, Hosni Mubarak, has said that the attack was the work of ''foreign hands''. He seems to believe that the suicide/homicide attack was organised by a person loyal to al-Qaeda who entered Egypt to commit crime - following threats by Osama bin Laden's followers directed at Egypt's Copts. This analysis is probably correct.
Recent evidence from Britain, Denmark, Sweden and the US indicates that attacks on Western targets have been thwarted by a combination of good intelligence and good luck. Danish and Swedish police say they prevented an attempt to massacre staff at the newspaper Jyllands-Posten in protest at its decision in 2005 to publish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
In Britain, authorities say they stopped an attack on the US embassy in London and the London Stock Exchange. In Stockholm in mid-December the Swedish-born and British-educated Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly killed himself while attempting, unsuccessfully, to murder as many Christmas shoppers as possible. And then there was the attempted terrorist attack in Times Square, New York, last May.
What all these activities have in common is that they were apparently the work of a ''lone wolf'' or, rather, a number of lone wolves. The term has been used by Dr Sajjan Gohel, of the Asia-Pacific Foundation.
According to his research, the number of attacks that have been controlled by what he terms ''al-Qaeda central'' has diminished since 2006. He attributes this to several factors. First, the original al-Qaeda central organisation ''has been severely disrupted by allied operations in north and south Waziristan along the Afghan-Pakistan border region''. Second, al-Qaeda is finding it harder to raise and receive finance.
This leads Gohel to conclude that the growing concern in the West is to individuals who are not connected to any particular cell or network but who became ''radicalised as a result of jihadist literature online''.
Roshonara Choudhry is a case in point. A gifted student at King's College London who is fluent in four languages, she was influenced by the American-born and Yemen-based Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Last May, inspired by al-Awlaki's teachings on the internet, she tried to stab to death a Labour MP, Stephen Timms. Choudhry was a lone-wolf attacker who decided to be a martyr. It is all but impossible for intelligence organisations to thwart such attacks.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is another case. The son of a successful and wealthy Nigerian family, he allegedly tried to bring down an aircraft bound for Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 by igniting chemicals strapped to his inner leg.
Many members of the civil liberties lobby in Australia opposed the Howard government's Anti-Terrorism Act in 2005, which was supported by the Labor opposition. However, a number of jury trials in Australia have supported the view that there are people in Australia who have planned terrorist attacks.
First, there were convictions in the Operation Pendennis trials - the first in Sydney, the second in Melbourne. Juries were convinced, after lengthy trials and long deliberations, that Abdul Nacer Benbrika and some Islamist associates had conspired to undertake terrorist attacks on targets in Australia. In both cases the defendants were provided with able defence teams, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer.
Second, last month, a jury in Melbourne convicted three Islamists for taking part in a conspiracy (termed by police Operation Neath) to wage an attack on Holsworthy army base in Sydney. Two of the accused were acquitted after another long trial and lengthy jury deliberation.
What was particularly disturbing about Operation Neath turned on the evident contempt of the Somalia-born Saney Aweys for his fellow Australians. Yet Aweys's intercepted phone conversations indicate that he was more than willing to accept welfare payments in support of his wife and children and saw no contradiction in residing in public housing while condemning what he termed the ''filthy people'' who make up contemporary Australia.
The convictions in the Operation Pendennis and Operation Neath cases support Gohel's thesis. There is no evidence that those convicted were operating in accordance with directives from al-Qaeda central - unlike those Islamists who took part in the attacks in the US in 2001 or the attacks in Britain in 2005. Rather, the current danger in Australia appears to turn on individuals who have been radicalised at home or after brief visits overseas.
It is difficult to obtain guilty verdicts in conspiracy cases where no physical attack has taken place.
The success of counter-terrorism operations in Australia so far suggests that police and intelligence services are doing well in a difficult environment.
As the mainstream British Muslim Mohammed Bashir said recently of Islamists groups in Luton: ''They enjoy living in this country and then spend all their time speaking out against it; they are fools but they are also very dangerous.''
The sad fact is that some of these dangerous fools commit, or conspire to commit, suicide/homicide.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-intelligence-and-the-luck-that-saves-us-from-murderers-20110103-19dsa.html
Sunday, January 2, 2011
City mansion stands waiting
Marc Pallisco 3 January 2011
One of the few remaining historic mansions in Melbourne's grand St Kilda Road is for sale — but its fate — as a luxury home, or as an equally lavish office — now lies in the hands of whoever waves the biggest cheque.
The prominent Airlie mansion at 452 St Kilda Road, on the north-west corner of Arthur Street was once home to prime minister Stanley Bruce, whose National-Country coalition governed the country between 1923 and 1929.
Built in 1891, Airlie was eminent during when St Kilda Road was revered as the address of Melbourne's wealthiest aristocrats and where some of the city's most grandiose residential real estate was developed.
Most of those homes have been demolished in the past half century, making way for office buildings that are now among the cheapest in the city to buy or lease.
Increasingly they are being replaced with apartment towers.
Some historic mansions have remained around the precinct but, like Airlie, had their side and back yards sliced, diced, developed, subdivided and sold.
In June 2007, Queens Road developer Asian Pacific Building Corporation paid $12 million for the 452 St Kilda Road estate, which included a development permit for what was a car park, behind the mansion.
Airlie was previously the headquarters of the Royal District Nursing Service, and also the office of investor and developer Clement Lee, who owned the asset for a period.
On land behind Airlie, APBC has since developed the Blackman Hotel, an 18-level, 209-unit tower.
It also embarked on a lavish restoration of the mansion, and took the unusual step of marketing Airlie concurrently with commercial and residential agents targeting quite different types of buyers.
What are bedrooms to agency Kay & Burton, which is marketing the asset as a prestige home, are boardrooms to CB Richard Ellis, whose floor plan suggests a 700-square-metre luxury office that could attract corporate operators through to consulates.
The mansion is expected to fetch about $8 million for APBC, which is also selling retail investments at the ground floor of the Blackman Hotel (expected to fetch another $4 million) and the Kings Business Park in South Melbourne.
The business park has price expectations of about $110 million.
Around the corner, a consortium including Macquarie is planning to demolish the 107-year-old Avalon mansion at 70 Queens Road.
Avalon is one of the few surviving homes by prominent architect William Pitt, who also designed the Princes Theatre and Olderfleet buildings in town.
A 12-level, 91-unit apartment complex, Proximity, will be developed on that site.
http://smh.domain.com.au/real-estate-news/city-mansion-stands-waiting-20101026-17218.html
One of the few remaining historic mansions in Melbourne's grand St Kilda Road is for sale — but its fate — as a luxury home, or as an equally lavish office — now lies in the hands of whoever waves the biggest cheque.
The prominent Airlie mansion at 452 St Kilda Road, on the north-west corner of Arthur Street was once home to prime minister Stanley Bruce, whose National-Country coalition governed the country between 1923 and 1929.
Built in 1891, Airlie was eminent during when St Kilda Road was revered as the address of Melbourne's wealthiest aristocrats and where some of the city's most grandiose residential real estate was developed.
Most of those homes have been demolished in the past half century, making way for office buildings that are now among the cheapest in the city to buy or lease.
Increasingly they are being replaced with apartment towers.
Some historic mansions have remained around the precinct but, like Airlie, had their side and back yards sliced, diced, developed, subdivided and sold.
In June 2007, Queens Road developer Asian Pacific Building Corporation paid $12 million for the 452 St Kilda Road estate, which included a development permit for what was a car park, behind the mansion.
Airlie was previously the headquarters of the Royal District Nursing Service, and also the office of investor and developer Clement Lee, who owned the asset for a period.
On land behind Airlie, APBC has since developed the Blackman Hotel, an 18-level, 209-unit tower.
It also embarked on a lavish restoration of the mansion, and took the unusual step of marketing Airlie concurrently with commercial and residential agents targeting quite different types of buyers.
What are bedrooms to agency Kay & Burton, which is marketing the asset as a prestige home, are boardrooms to CB Richard Ellis, whose floor plan suggests a 700-square-metre luxury office that could attract corporate operators through to consulates.
The mansion is expected to fetch about $8 million for APBC, which is also selling retail investments at the ground floor of the Blackman Hotel (expected to fetch another $4 million) and the Kings Business Park in South Melbourne.
The business park has price expectations of about $110 million.
Around the corner, a consortium including Macquarie is planning to demolish the 107-year-old Avalon mansion at 70 Queens Road.
Avalon is one of the few surviving homes by prominent architect William Pitt, who also designed the Princes Theatre and Olderfleet buildings in town.
A 12-level, 91-unit apartment complex, Proximity, will be developed on that site.
http://smh.domain.com.au/real-estate-news/city-mansion-stands-waiting-20101026-17218.html
Advice backs State power inquiry
Gemma Jones Political Reporter January 03, 2011 12:00AM
PREMIER Kristina Keneally could be in contempt of parliament over her attempts to stop the power sale inquiry, constitutional and legal experts said.
Barrister Arthur Moses SC and prominent constitutional lawyer Professor Patrick Keyzer have told the Opposition that the inquiry is legal and Ms Keneally may be in serious trouble.
She has already admitted her claim that the inquiry was illegal was based on Crown Solicitor's advice from 1994.
She is now considering calling the Crown Solicitor back from holidays for an update.
Mr Moses and Professor Keyzer said the Government needed to urgently seek a declaration from the Supreme Court.
After shutting parliament more than two months early in a bid to stop the inquiry into the government's botched power sell-off, Ms Keneally was rebuffed by the clerk of the Legislative Council who said that it could go ahead with full parliamentary privilege.
Ms Keneally responded by claiming there was "no legal standing" and witnesses would have no protection.
"The purpose of parliamentary committees, protected by parliamentary privilege, is to ensure freedom of speech and absolute candour in deliberations about matters in the public interest, including concerns about maladministration by a government," Mr Moses and Professor Keyzer said in their advice to the Opposition.
"The comments of the Premier in our view have the tendency to interfere with the purpose of the committee, and may constitute a contempt of the NSW Parliament.
"It is a matter for the NSW Parliament to determine whether the conduct of the Premier constitutes contempt of the NSW Parliament and if so, what sanctions, if any, it determines to impose upon the Premier."
Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell yesterday claimed that Ms Keneally's questioning of the inquiry was simply to prevent witnesses attending.
"Besides the obvious contempt of Parliament issues involved, there's an overriding public interest for Kristina Keneally to stop harassing this inquiry," he said.
"The community's right to know the facts of the power sell-off and whether it will see electricity bills rise even higher."
A spokesman for the Premier claimed the advice from Mr Moses and Professor Keyzer was "politically motivated".
"The Government will rely on the advice of the NSW Crown Solicitor - the authority on government legal matters," he said.
"And the Government will rely on the Auditor-General to conduct a thorough, independent evaluation of the electricity transaction." The Auditor-General will report after the March election.
Should Kristina Keneally step down over trying to block the power inquiry?
• Yes 93.99% (2924 votes)
• No 6.01% (187 votes)
Total votes: 3111
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/advice-backs-state-power-inquiry/story-e6freuy9-1225980587511
PREMIER Kristina Keneally could be in contempt of parliament over her attempts to stop the power sale inquiry, constitutional and legal experts said.
Barrister Arthur Moses SC and prominent constitutional lawyer Professor Patrick Keyzer have told the Opposition that the inquiry is legal and Ms Keneally may be in serious trouble.
She has already admitted her claim that the inquiry was illegal was based on Crown Solicitor's advice from 1994.
She is now considering calling the Crown Solicitor back from holidays for an update.
Mr Moses and Professor Keyzer said the Government needed to urgently seek a declaration from the Supreme Court.
After shutting parliament more than two months early in a bid to stop the inquiry into the government's botched power sell-off, Ms Keneally was rebuffed by the clerk of the Legislative Council who said that it could go ahead with full parliamentary privilege.
Ms Keneally responded by claiming there was "no legal standing" and witnesses would have no protection.
"The purpose of parliamentary committees, protected by parliamentary privilege, is to ensure freedom of speech and absolute candour in deliberations about matters in the public interest, including concerns about maladministration by a government," Mr Moses and Professor Keyzer said in their advice to the Opposition.
"The comments of the Premier in our view have the tendency to interfere with the purpose of the committee, and may constitute a contempt of the NSW Parliament.
"It is a matter for the NSW Parliament to determine whether the conduct of the Premier constitutes contempt of the NSW Parliament and if so, what sanctions, if any, it determines to impose upon the Premier."
Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell yesterday claimed that Ms Keneally's questioning of the inquiry was simply to prevent witnesses attending.
"Besides the obvious contempt of Parliament issues involved, there's an overriding public interest for Kristina Keneally to stop harassing this inquiry," he said.
"The community's right to know the facts of the power sell-off and whether it will see electricity bills rise even higher."
A spokesman for the Premier claimed the advice from Mr Moses and Professor Keyzer was "politically motivated".
"The Government will rely on the advice of the NSW Crown Solicitor - the authority on government legal matters," he said.
"And the Government will rely on the Auditor-General to conduct a thorough, independent evaluation of the electricity transaction." The Auditor-General will report after the March election.
Should Kristina Keneally step down over trying to block the power inquiry?
• Yes 93.99% (2924 votes)
• No 6.01% (187 votes)
Total votes: 3111
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/advice-backs-state-power-inquiry/story-e6freuy9-1225980587511
Cast adrift from reality, the slick spruikers of 'our' shame
Paul Sheehan January 3, 2011
The water in Sydney Harbour over the New Year weekend was clear, the sky was bright blue and endless, and the new fashion on the beach was bikini-clad women wearing pork-pie hats. A great look. There can be no city in the world where so many people, millions, have easy access to so much natural beauty and a comfortable life. Nowhere else on this scale.
Millions of people would want to come here if they could. I don't blame them. There are roughly 60 million refugees or displaced people in the world, and we would like to scoop them all up and save them. But in the real world it can take a powerful amount of work to even save one's own children from harm. If Australia decided, by an act of democratic will, to become the most generous nation in history, and open its borders to all who sought a better life here, in time this would have dire consequences for the society that has evolved here, and the environment we have already degraded so much.
In this context, I would like to hand out medals for the most dubious contributions to Australian public life in 2010. I don't question the sincerity or good intentions of those I am about to disabuse, I question their grasp on reality.
The gold medal goes to Graeme Innes, the Human Right Commission's disability discrimination commissioner and race discrimination commissioner, who has spent his entire 33-year career as a human rights lawyer. In August, Innes flew to Geneva, at taxpayers' expense, to address the committee of the United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
Innes managed to cram his speech with six major points that I regard as self-serving or untrue or both: (1) He said there was ''a strong need for a domestic implementation mechanism for CERD in Australia''. (2) He claimed, ''We have a clear sense of what the Australian community wanted … an enshrined bill of rights …''. (3) He called for changes to the Australian constitution to give greater effect to anti-racism laws. (4) He wants ''a national multicultural policy''. (5) He complained that there was ''no national data on the prevalence of migrants as victims of crime''. (6) He called for a ''federal law to criminalise race hate''.
This is a proscriptive paradise for human rights lawyers, as if Australia were not already excessively regulated and litigious and footing the bill for a human rights industry scrambling for clients and relevance.
The silver medal goes to another lawyer, a District Court judge, Stephen Norrish, who believes Aboriginal criminals should have prison terms of less than 12 months automatically suspended or converted to community service. He wants culture and disadvantage to be considered in mitigation during sentencing. He wants special ''Koori courts''. ''Unless acts of affirmative action are formally recognised,'' he said, ''not only will the disproportionate number of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system continue, but it will increase, to this nation's greater shame.''
What about some collective remorse and self-criticism from the Aboriginal community? What about the gangs of young Aboriginal men who roam the streets of Sydney and country towns stealing and belting white kids, a problem my extended family has experienced first-hand multiple times? What about an apology from the Aboriginal people (a concept which itself is a white fiction) for the endemic child abuse inside Aboriginal families and communities?
I don't believe most Australians feel ''shame'' that Aborigines are 15-times over-represented in the criminal justice system. I believe they feel anger, as the victims of crime. Australians are sick of the chasm between rhetoric and reality, and the idea that the only acceptable public narratives for Aboriginal people are that of victim or artist or noble custodian. The percentage of incarcerated Aboriginals would be even higher if so many were not given a free pass by the justice system, which in turn has led to a self-perpetuating culture of violence.
The human rights industry, and lawyers from the High Court down, have created a system of moral and legal apartheid in this country in which Aboriginal communities are guaranteed to fail. And they want more of the same failed policies.
Judge Norrish does not treat Aborigines as human beings. Instead they are to be treated as something outside Australian law and culture, as victims, mendicants, piccaninnies, avatars of white guilt, incapable of knowing right from wrong. His comments are profoundly insulting to the majority of Aboriginal and part-Aboriginal people who function well within the norms of society.
At least he does not extend his ''shame'', like Commissioner Innes, who returned to Australia and complained about the ''race to the bottom'' by the major political parties in their policies for the handling of illegal boat arrivals. This is a deeply contemptuous phrase. It strips all principle from the debate for those who support strong border protection. It supports the false premise that the relatively small number of people who arrive by illegal boats makes this a minor matter than can be dealt with by compassion, not hysteria, exaggeration or xenophobia.
But this argument is about principle. Not numbers. The principle applies whether there are two boats or two hundred. The heart of the current debacle is a failure of law, an absence of legal certainty. If an election were to be fought today over whether those who arrive by illegal means, or without proper papers, should be guaranteed of failure, Julia Gillard and her government would be gone.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/cast-adrift-from-reality-the-slick-spruikers-of-our-shame-20110102-19cz9.html
The water in Sydney Harbour over the New Year weekend was clear, the sky was bright blue and endless, and the new fashion on the beach was bikini-clad women wearing pork-pie hats. A great look. There can be no city in the world where so many people, millions, have easy access to so much natural beauty and a comfortable life. Nowhere else on this scale.
Millions of people would want to come here if they could. I don't blame them. There are roughly 60 million refugees or displaced people in the world, and we would like to scoop them all up and save them. But in the real world it can take a powerful amount of work to even save one's own children from harm. If Australia decided, by an act of democratic will, to become the most generous nation in history, and open its borders to all who sought a better life here, in time this would have dire consequences for the society that has evolved here, and the environment we have already degraded so much.
In this context, I would like to hand out medals for the most dubious contributions to Australian public life in 2010. I don't question the sincerity or good intentions of those I am about to disabuse, I question their grasp on reality.
The gold medal goes to Graeme Innes, the Human Right Commission's disability discrimination commissioner and race discrimination commissioner, who has spent his entire 33-year career as a human rights lawyer. In August, Innes flew to Geneva, at taxpayers' expense, to address the committee of the United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
Innes managed to cram his speech with six major points that I regard as self-serving or untrue or both: (1) He said there was ''a strong need for a domestic implementation mechanism for CERD in Australia''. (2) He claimed, ''We have a clear sense of what the Australian community wanted … an enshrined bill of rights …''. (3) He called for changes to the Australian constitution to give greater effect to anti-racism laws. (4) He wants ''a national multicultural policy''. (5) He complained that there was ''no national data on the prevalence of migrants as victims of crime''. (6) He called for a ''federal law to criminalise race hate''.
This is a proscriptive paradise for human rights lawyers, as if Australia were not already excessively regulated and litigious and footing the bill for a human rights industry scrambling for clients and relevance.
The silver medal goes to another lawyer, a District Court judge, Stephen Norrish, who believes Aboriginal criminals should have prison terms of less than 12 months automatically suspended or converted to community service. He wants culture and disadvantage to be considered in mitigation during sentencing. He wants special ''Koori courts''. ''Unless acts of affirmative action are formally recognised,'' he said, ''not only will the disproportionate number of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system continue, but it will increase, to this nation's greater shame.''
What about some collective remorse and self-criticism from the Aboriginal community? What about the gangs of young Aboriginal men who roam the streets of Sydney and country towns stealing and belting white kids, a problem my extended family has experienced first-hand multiple times? What about an apology from the Aboriginal people (a concept which itself is a white fiction) for the endemic child abuse inside Aboriginal families and communities?
I don't believe most Australians feel ''shame'' that Aborigines are 15-times over-represented in the criminal justice system. I believe they feel anger, as the victims of crime. Australians are sick of the chasm between rhetoric and reality, and the idea that the only acceptable public narratives for Aboriginal people are that of victim or artist or noble custodian. The percentage of incarcerated Aboriginals would be even higher if so many were not given a free pass by the justice system, which in turn has led to a self-perpetuating culture of violence.
The human rights industry, and lawyers from the High Court down, have created a system of moral and legal apartheid in this country in which Aboriginal communities are guaranteed to fail. And they want more of the same failed policies.
Judge Norrish does not treat Aborigines as human beings. Instead they are to be treated as something outside Australian law and culture, as victims, mendicants, piccaninnies, avatars of white guilt, incapable of knowing right from wrong. His comments are profoundly insulting to the majority of Aboriginal and part-Aboriginal people who function well within the norms of society.
At least he does not extend his ''shame'', like Commissioner Innes, who returned to Australia and complained about the ''race to the bottom'' by the major political parties in their policies for the handling of illegal boat arrivals. This is a deeply contemptuous phrase. It strips all principle from the debate for those who support strong border protection. It supports the false premise that the relatively small number of people who arrive by illegal boats makes this a minor matter than can be dealt with by compassion, not hysteria, exaggeration or xenophobia.
But this argument is about principle. Not numbers. The principle applies whether there are two boats or two hundred. The heart of the current debacle is a failure of law, an absence of legal certainty. If an election were to be fought today over whether those who arrive by illegal means, or without proper papers, should be guaranteed of failure, Julia Gillard and her government would be gone.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/cast-adrift-from-reality-the-slick-spruikers-of-our-shame-20110102-19cz9.html
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