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31 January, 2006

Queensland parents now need permission to photograph their own kids!

Parents are being banned from taking photos of their children at sporting events in response to growing fears about pedophiles. Queensland's junior sports clubs are demanding parents get permission from other parents and team officials before photographing children. And some sporting codes now require professional photographers to hold blue cards before allowing them to work at grand finals. Many clubs said the crackdown was in response to reports about men photographing children swimming at South Bank in inner Brisbane and posting the images on websites.

South Bank and pool operators such as Belgravia Leisure, which runs a chain of water parks including the Albany Creek Leisure Centre on Brisbane's northside, said they had a policy of asking people not to take photographs without permission. They also banned mobile phones with camera functions in their change rooms.

A similar situation now applied at most of the state's patrolled beaches, where lifesavers have been given guidelines on camera use. "Sadly in this day and age we have had to be more vigilant," a Surf Life Saving Queensland spokeswoman said. "We don't want to stop the mums and dads taking photos, and nor is that our place, but it's all part of our duty of care."

Queensland Netball affiliates such as the Downey Park Netball Association in Brisbane have a total ban on photography unless it has approval from team officials. Netball Queensland also has an official policy of employing only photographers with blue cards. "We ask parents who want to take pictures of their children to go to the manager of both teams which will be playing," Downey Park president Jane Seawright said. "The policy has been in place for over two years because sometimes we have undesirables hanging around."

AFL Brisbane juniors administration manager Cherie Brockwell said that from the start of the season in April the league would make parents check with ground marshals before taking pictures. "It was only a recommendation last season," she said. "We haven't had any incidents but we decided to be proactive because of what happened at South Bank." ....

A Grandparents and Grandchildren Society spokeswoman said the changes removed a simple pleasure for families. "These photos are what grandparents live for," she said. "You take that away and you're taking away a lot of enjoyment of life for a lot of people."

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Baby abuse secret in socialist Victoria

A report by the State Ombudsman into the case of a five-month-old boy left in the care of a sadistic foster mother is being kept secret by the Bracks Government. Community Services Minister Sherryl Garbutt, who announced her retirement from politics last week, has refused to release the damning report. The Herald Sun revealed last year a pediatrician from the Royal Children's Hospital recommended baby "Ben" should not be returned to his foster carer after being treated for broken bones, cuts, burns and bruises in November 2003. But it was only after the foster mother allegedly gouged out the baby's teeth with a knife a month later that the boy was removed from her care.

Ms Garbutt refused to comment last week when asked if the report would be tabled in Parliament before she retired at the November election. "Today is not a day for that sort of detail," she said. "I will be hard at work on all those issues and completing the reform agenda I have set in place."

Police and the Ombudsman are investigating the abuse of Ben, who was returned to the care of his natural parents. Opposition health spokeswoman Helen Shardey said yesterday she understood the Ombudsman's report had been with Ms Garbutt for at least two months. "The community has a right to know what happened to this little boy and what steps have been taken to ensure that this never happens again," Ms Shardey said. Ms Garbutt said last year the Department of Human Services was implementing new measures to prevent other children in government care from being harmed. Child protection workers will be asked to take the most conservative and cautious approach if they are confronted with conflicting medical advice on a child's injuries. Better communication would also be set up between the RCH and child protection workers.

Source



Some imams 'condoning violence'

In Australia, Muslim women can speak out

The nation's most senior Islamic woman has attacked Muslim religious leaders who condone "wife-beating" and other forms of domestic violence. Aziza Abdel-Halim, the only female member of the Prime Minister's Muslim Advisory Council, has warned that Islamic women are being "put down" by imams and their rights ignored. "Women have suffered from sometimes ill-informed imams ... who have tried to put down women and negate some of their rights or activities," she said yesterday. "And some of them (imams) have condoned men beating women, which is un-Islamic."

The comments, unusually outspoken for a female Muslim leader, have surfaced amid concerns that no female community representatives had been invited to the coming national imams conference in Sydney. The conference is likely to see moderate spiritual leaders attempt to crack down on radical clerics and their extremists views and to develop a national board of imams. The imams meeting will be attended by 10 community representatives and 62 imams, including firebrand cleric Mohammed Omran, who has come under fire from the Federal Government and moderate Muslim leaders for espousing radical views, including that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is not a terrorist but a "good man".

Sister Abdel-Halim, president of the Muslim Women's National Network Australia, said the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, the conference host, was being "unjust" by not inviting female community representatives to attend. "Women are half of the community and they bring up the other half, so you shouldn't really exclude them from anything," she said. "There should be some women observers who have a background in ... Islamic studies, and these women will represent the women within the community and should have an input." She said the women may "raise a few points of concern that the imams may not be aware of or may be aware of and may be reluctant to address".

Sister Abdel-Halim's comments about cruelty towards Muslim women were backed by Jamila Hussain, a lecturer in Islamic Law at the University of Technology Sydney, who said many imams were out of touch with issues concerning Muslim women. She worried that some spiritual leaders were indifferent to the cruelty being experienced by some women at the hands of aggressive partners. "We don't know what imams are telling the men," Ms Hussain said. "Are they taking a stand for example against domestic violence? They should be, but we don't know whether they are or not. We suspect that some are, but probably the majority are not."

Sister Abdel-Halim told The Australian that "imams wield a great deal of power over the community". "When people go to congregation, the imam for them is the source of religious knowledge and what he says to a lot of them is indisputable," she said. She said that, along with the imams who would be present at the conference, male and female academics and youth leaders should also be invited to share their views. She said she thought the AFIC board of executives "find educated women very threatening because women are ... very good community organisers and high achievers when it comes to (setting up initiatives)".

The federation has recently come under attack from community youth representatives and other Muslim leaders for not being representative of the Islamic community in Australia.

Source



Australian actress does well



Australian actress Emilie De Ravin took out a prize at the Screen Actors' Guild Awards in LA today. De Ravin, who stars in US TV series Lost, won the award for best ensemble performance for a dramatic television series along with 16 of her fellow castmates. The Desperate Housewives cast received the ensemble award for best comedy series. Meanwhile, Australian film star Heath Ledger's Oscar hopes are fading, after Phillip Seymour Hoffman won the best actor gong. Hoffman won for his for his performance as writer Truman Capote in the biopic Capote. Reese Witherspoon won best actress honors for her portrayal of June Carter in Walk the Line. The prizes bolster their chances of winning an Oscar when the Academy Awards are presented in March.

More here



30 January, 2006

Lying Leftist historians are still ducking and weaving

Christopher Pearson comments on the call for "civility" by one of them, Wilfrid Prest

The polite fiction that local historians are a band of scholars resolute in the disinterested pursuit of truth perished long ago, which explains the decline of the profession's once-enviable reputation. When Prest calls for more sweetness and light and quotes R.H. Tawney's view that "an erring colleague is not an Amalekite, to be smitten hip and thigh", it is as though the Great Disruption of the 1960s, in Francis Fukuyama's phrase, had never happened, or Prest had spent the past 30 years dreaming.



For all that, Prest's disdainful review of Connor and defence of the Aboriginal history establishment, including most notably Henry Reynolds, is not without guile. It's the first sustained attempt to damn with faint praise a dissident historian challenging the dominant but collapsing paradigm of Australia's settlement. As readers may remember, Connor was the historian who in 2003 radically called into question the usefulness of the term terra nullius. He pointed out that it had no place in common law or in the thinking of 18th-century Whitehall or explorers and colonial administrators. Not only was it a 20th-century term, it had been dragged into arguments about settlement as window-dressing, to suggest that the enterprise had been based on the transparent legal fiction that the country had no prior owners. Reynolds had also used the magic phrase to mean, variously, unoccupied land, land belonging to no one, land with no sovereign and land with no system or tenure.

Terra nullius was a talismanic term. Everyone suddenly assumed the phrase encapsulated a freight of solemn argument that established the bad faith of our forbears and undermined Aboriginal rights in land. In fact, there was a dialogue of the deaf in which all sorts of people, including the judges in the Mabo case, revealed that they didn't know what they were talking about.

Prest concedes Reynolds's uses of the term are bewildering. Yet, he says, "Reynolds's undoubtedly confusing shifts of meaning seem in part at least merely to reproduce earlier confusions about the respective rights of Aborigines, colonists and the Crown". Prest never comes to terms with the charge that Reynolds has been culpably confusing, nor that he introduced the term disingenuously, as a piece of stage machinery - as another historian, Bain Attwood, asserted - to help sway ignorant judges' minds about 200 years of settled land law.

Prest does admit the High Court made decisions in Mabo and Wik "which seemed to lend special authority to some quite far-fetched misconceptions of terra nullius". But nonetheless he seems incapable of identifying instrumentalist history at its most blatant, either on the page or in the judgment. Instead he persists in seeing the phrase as a convenient construct in historical debate. "When historians of Europe or Britain refer to, say, the Renaissance or the Industrial Revolution, they are also imposing anachronistic, generalising labels on the complex, messy reality of past eras ... While the precise meaning and significance of such broad classifying terms is by no means agreed upon by all who now use them, their utility evidently derives from a common core content. The same may well be true of terra nullius."

For bare-faced effrontery, this takes some beating. Surely Prest, as a professorial fellow in law and history, ought to be defending categorical clarity and deploring confusion rather than sanctioning it. He ought also to realise the fatuity of bracketing sturdy portmanteau terms such as the Renaissance, which has well-attested uses, with terra nullius, which has so far been a mare's-nest.

Prest is on firmer ground when he argues that "the crucial issue nevertheless is whether the concept of terra nullius as (Reynolds) expounded it fairly represented late 18th century and 19th century official thinking about the legal status of the Australian colonies".

This might be a serious argument rather than just a debating point if historians, lawyers and commentators had ever shared a common understanding for which the phrase might serve as a shorthand term. We could then perhaps talk of terra nullius avant la lettre. However, there is no such shared understanding and never has been, as Connor's book conclusively establishes. For his pains in doing so, Prest calls him "a historian determinedly literal-minded in his approach to the past".

Prest bewails at some length the fact that Connor shows "unbounded contempt" for "numerous named colleagues and peers" and quotes some of Connor's descriptions of them: "state-salaried historians", "history warlords" and a "middle-class, careerist, intellectual elite". Prest remarks that "one can only speculate as to the sources of this extraordinary animus" and then proceeds to do just that. We are treated to an ill-informed, wholly speculative and presumptuous explanation for Connor's attitude towards the historians he takes to task, based on imagined wrongs Prest thinks he may have had to endure as a mature-age graduate student.

It seems never to have occurred to Prest that Connor might be justifiably indignant at the careless, ideologically driven history that has brought the profession into disrepute. Nor does Prest seem to see that terra nullius is the core of an account of settlement which is a gratuitous calumny on the settlers and which has also needlessly inflamed contemporary race relations in Australia.

The force of Connor's insistent refrain - "Henry Reynolds, please, produce your evidence" - is as lost on Prest as it seems to have been on Reynolds himself over the past two years. However, even in the cosy world of Aboriginal history, pressure is mounting for Reynolds to give an account of himself, from quarters which would once have been considered "on side". Tim Rowse, a senior research fellow at the Australian National University and organiser of the Australian Historical Society Conference, told The Australian's Higher Education Supplement (January 18) that Reynolds needed to respond promptly to Connor. "I think Henry should comment on this and I don't think he should wait until July's conference to do so. His reputation is in question."

When HES offered Reynolds an opportunity to answer Connor's arguments, he replied by email: "Have been in Europe for six weeks and don't feel able to comment at present."



Why Australia's greatest story is just not being told

The nation's heritage is being forgotten in history lessons, writes Kevin Donnelly

Was John Howard correct this week? Has the teaching of history fallen victim to a politically correct, New Age approach to curriculum, and are students receiving a fragmented understanding of the past? The evidence suggests "yes". Since the 1970s and '80s, as outlined in Why Our Schools Are Failing, left-wing academics, education bureaucracies and professional associations have embarked on the long march through the institutions to overthrow more conservative approaches to education.

The so-called traditional academic curriculum, with its emphasis on initiating students into established disciplines such as history and literature, and the belief that education can be impartial, have been attacked as misguided, Eurocentric and socially unjust. One of the first examples of the new history was the Keating government-inspired national studies of society and environment (SOSE) course outline published in 1993. History as a discrete subject disappeared and early drafts of the document were described as "a subject for satire" and "a case of political correctness gone wild". European settlement is described as an invasion, Australia's Anglo-Celtic heritage is either marginalised or ignored, indigenous culture is portrayed as beyond reproach and teachers are told they must give priority to perspectives of gender, multiculturalism and global future.

The 1999 Queensland SOSE curriculum, for one, was also decidedly New Age and one-sided. The values associated with the subject mirror the usual PC suspects, such as social justice, peace and ecological sustainability. In line with postmodernism, students are also taught that "knowledge is always tentative", that they should "deconstruct dominant views of society", "critique the socially constructed element of text" and examine "how privilege and marginalisation are created and sustained in society". Forget the ideal of seeking truth and developing a disinterested understanding of the world. Students are now told that everything is tentative and shifting and the purpose of education is to criticise mainstream society in terms of gender, ethnicity and class.

As a result of adopting an outcomes-based education model, all Australian history education documents adopt a constructivist view of learning. The student is placed centre-stage while the learning of important dates, events and the significance of great historical figures gives way to studying the local community or the life of such worthies as princess Di. As noted in Stuart Macintyre's The History Wars, detailing how history is taught in schools: "The traditional discipline came under increasing criticism from curriculum reformers for being old, stale and simply unrelated to students' needs. 'Relevance' became an educational ethos." Current approaches to history ask students to uncritically celebrate multiculturalism and cultural diversity without recognising that much of Australia's economic, political and legal stability relies on a Eurocentric tradition steeped in the Judeo/Christian ethic. A commitment to human rights, the rule of law and tolerance does not arise by accident.

The reality is that Australian society has proven to be such a successful social experiment because of those very values grounded in Western civilisation that can be traced back thousands of years via England and Europe to early Rome, Greece and biblical Israel.

Australian teachers are also told that how one interprets history is subjective and relative to one's culture and place. As argued by the History Teachers' Association of Victoria in the early '90s: "One of the great developments in history teaching has been the emphasis on the nature of representations, or versions, of history. There is no single version of history which can be presented to students. "History is a version of the past which varies according to the person and the times ... So not only is there no single version of history, but each generation re-interprets the past in the light of its own values and attitudes."

Taken to its logical conclusion, such a view allows Japanese textbooks to ignore the rape of Nanking and for British author David Irving to deny that millions were killed in the Holocaust. The belief that different versions of the past are of equal value and that each generation has the right to re-interpret history in terms of current values also allows revisionist historians to judge past actions in terms of what is now considered politically correct. As a result, today's historians describe the First Fleet as an invasion even though the Admiralty had given Governor Phillip express orders to co-exist with the indigenous population and Phillip, after being speared, did not punish those responsible.

As noted by the Monash University historian Mark Peel, of greater concern is that generations of students no longer understand or appreciate the grand narrative associated with the rise of Western civilisation and Australia's development as a nation. Peel states: "Students seem anxious about the absence of a story by which to comprehend change, or to understand how the nation and world they are about to inherit came to be. Indeed, their sense of the world's history is often based upon intense moments and fragments that have no real momentum or connection

Source



Call for tax revolution

The Wall Street Journal has called for a tax revolution in Australia, with the removal of superannuation tax, the GST and lower income taxes. In an editorial in its Asian edition, the newspaper praised Sydney Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull's plan for a $10 billion tax cut and a flatter tax system. But it said Finance Minister Nick Minchin's recent plan to scrap the 15 per cent super tax did not go far enough, especially with a $11.5 billion Budget surplus at hand. "The trouble is, Mr Minchin's ideas aren't revolutionary enough," the editorial said. The Journal said: "With a parliamentary majority, Mr Minchin and his government can afford to take some risks -- and make life less taxing for Australians."

Source



Pam's itsy-bitsy visit (and gratuitous pic)



Beach babe Pamela Anderson is tipped to spend Valentine's Day in Melbourne. Anderson, who made waves on Baywatch before creating headlines with her chaotic marriage to wild rocker Tommy Lee, is understood to be heading to Melbourne to launch the new green M&M chocolate. Anderson will make a flying visit to be guest of honour at a celebrity-studded Valentine's Day party on February 14.

Source



29 January, 2006

More on NSW government and police inaction in response to Muslim crime

.... Malcolm Kerr, a Liberal MP whose seat is Cronulla, says he's had a stream of constituents come into his office complaining of inaction by the police on revenge attacks despite what they said was clear evidence.

Some locals may have believed [police chief] Moroney when he said the lack of video evidence was the problem. "When the video turned up with that guy being attacked, it blew that out of the water," Kerr says. And, says Kerr, the fact that Iemma announced a huge increase in officers for Enoggera shows he did not take the issue seriously enough at the outset. "If the Government now says the task needs much greater resources, they should have put them in at the start five weeks earlier, when the clues were still hot," Kerr says.

Iemma and Moroney still say the police have not been soft on Middle Eastern crime. But the evidence suggests otherwise. A notorious police document outlines how, the night after the Sunday riots, "numerous vehicles were sighted congregated in the vicinity of Punchbowl Park [in Sydney's inner southwest]". "These vehicles and the crowd that had been gathered were suspected to be Middle Eastern criminals who have been involved in malicious damage and civil disobedience offences throughout the Sutherland Shire and St George areas," the document says. "A direction was given to police around midnight not to enter the area and antagonise these persons."

According to former police officers, it's not unusual. The police don't take on Lebanese gangs. But Debnam has not provided any evidence to back up his assertion that the Government specifically ordered the police to go soft on Middle Eastern crime. He has also failed to put up any proof that Middle Eastern political power brokers in the ALP are exerting influence on the Government to do so. Debnam's critics say his allegation is like saying that because his well-heeled electorate of Vaucluse, in Sydney's eastern suburbs, is largely Anglo-Saxon, he would be under pressure to go soft on Anglo-Saxon crime. Debnam agrees that the overwhelming majority of the Middle Eastern community has no interest in keeping the gangs out of jail. "Whenever I go out to those electorates and door-knock, all they say, whether they come from a Middle Eastern background or any other, is that they want the Government to crack down on crime," he says.

However, some former police officers, such as former police assistant commissioner and ministerial adviser Geoff Schuberg, say that, leaving the wilder elements of Debnam's conspiracy theory aside, there are some real reasons why the police are soft on Middle Eastern crime. One is politicisation of the police force in which police commissioners are less independent from ministers, and police are nervous right down the line of doing something that could be seen as politically incorrect or lead to a complaint of racial targeting. Schuberg says Moroney could stand up more to the gangs and the Government. "As a police commissioner you need to be a bit of a mongrel and give firm direction," he says. "I don't see that in Ken."

A second factor put forward by Schuberg, and well-known former detective Tim Priest, is that the skills inculcated in police officers have shifted from an emphasis on old-fashioned street policing to a more cerebral curriculum stressing socially conscious policing. "The old school of police of the past has been replaced with academics, who haven't the stomach," Priest says.

The third factor, Schuberg and Priest say, is plain fear of Lebanese gangs that, they say, have absolutely no respect for police, threaten to harm their families and have weapons they are quite prepared to use.

Some community leaders say the situation has highlighted the deep suspicion of governments and authority by many people of Middle Eastern background whose families have come from countries where governments are either corrupt or unreliable. "There is an old Arabic saying, 'Me and my brother against my cousin, me and my cousin against the world'," says one Lebanese leader. Randa Kattan, the executive director of the Arab Council Australia, believes there was possibly some underlying frustration that spilt over during the revenge attacks. "There is a lot of frustration in the community," she says. "They have had a lot to deal with since the rape stories [referring to infamous court cases]. It is a daily reality grappling with public opinion about Middle Eastern people and it won't go away very soon." ....

Tensions between Lebanese and whites at Cronulla are not new. Jane Tozen tells of an incident she witnessed well before the riots. It was December 7, and the mercury hit 38C at around 4.15pm, when she had just finished her regular routine in the gym of the North Cronulla surf lifesaving club. She and a couple of mates were looking out the window at a TV crew filming on the beach. But another group caught their eye. "There was a group of Lebanese hanging around the shower area," Tozen tells Inquirer. "They were mouthing off at one of the locals. Then they attacked him. He fell to the ground. He was covering his head. They were like flies, they were around him and kicking the shit out of him. A second local went in to help him and he was beaten, too. Then a lot of locals came round and there was a bit of a stand-off."

Lifesavers in the club called the police. The first car took 15 minutes to arrive and when it did the lone officer chased one of the Lebanese men. "I'm told he ran like hell and jumped over a fence," the new Task Force Enoggera commander Ken McKay tells Inquirer. "It was quite a chase. We got the PolAir helicopter in but he got away."

According to Tozen, the Lebanese man snatched a bag and ran, deliberately to allow the others to leave the scene uninterviewed. It was another 45 minutes, according to Tozen, before the police arrived in force. The two injured local men, streaming blood, had been treated at the surf club and had left. By that time some of the Lebanese had drifted back. According to Tozen, she and other witnesses pointed out the perpetrators to police. "They didn't arrest any of them," Tozen says.

"We told them the numberplates, which had these really gross words like Hot & Wet. The police did nothing, they just let them walk away. "It should all have been on high-quality video, because the television crew had turned its attention to the attack and filmed it. Everyone saw them do it. They told the police." But according to Tozen, the police did not act. She was wondering whether to go to the media, but her surf-lifesaving club banned members from speaking to journalists. (Tozen is not her real name - her fear is not of the Lebanese, but in being expelled from the club.)

This week, Tozen decided she'd had enough. She went to her local state MP, Kerr. He arranged for her to see McKay, whose task force is charged with rounding up "revenge attackers", the Middle Eastern men who attacked whites and their property after the race riots on December 11. McKay is trying to work out what happened. "There were a whole lot of incidents that day," he says. "It's a matter of establishing which event is related to which other one." McKay says he's trying to find the TV video but there is confusion about which channel the crew came from. One victim has been interviewed and a statement taken, McKay says. Another has been interviewed but does not want to pursue the attack. But no suspects have been interviewed let alone arrested.

So far, the Lebanese attackers have got away with it. Tozen is still as mad as hell. To her, it's just the latest of events that have been going on for years, in which Lebanese gangs have invaded her turf with impunity, bad-mouthing the locals, harassing and denigrating the women, sometimes starting fights.

But, as with a lot of the incidents McKay is trying to dissect, it's not always clean-cut. Inquirer this week tracked down one of the victims of the attack. Rather than present himself as an innocent bystander, the Cronulla local took pride in saying he started the whole thing. "That was the hottest Wednesday," says the victim, who did not give his name. "The lifesavers were attacked on the Sunday. I heard all the conflicting reports in the newspapers and radio. So I came down to the surf club and asked the lifesavers what happened.

"I was on my third longneck [beer] at that point, though I'm not trying to stress that now. I walked off and saw four Lebanese sitting on the park bench, they were being interviewed by a TV camera. As I walked past them I said 'f---ing Lebs' real loud, trying to get my voice on camera. I saw one of them calling his mates towards them. I got just past the lifesaving tower, next thing I know they all came past me and it was on. They were all over me. I reckon there was more like 15 than 20 of them. My mate was with me. He got kicked all the way from the point over to where the lifesaving club is. I got all the blokes off me, turned away and ran across the park. He was on the ground trying to get up and they were hitting and kicking him."

More here



The facts come first: All Australia's history must be taught in our schools

An editorial from "The Australian" newspaper below:

Many young Australians celebrated Australia Day in ignorance of what their ancestors accomplished and why. They will do the same come April 25th. Thanks to the way a generation has been taught, or rather not taught, history at school, young Australians are growing up completely clueless about how their country came to be the prosperous democracy they are proud of. As the Prime Minister warned yesterday, less than a quarter of senior school students study any history at all, and far fewer learn anything about their own country's past. The situation is equally awful in junior school years around the country. Certainly the previous premier of NSW, Bob Carr, recognised his responsibility to ensure students understand the importance of the great narrative of Australia's past, but too often our national story is little more than an optional educational extra.

To those who believe the primacy of the present means the past is irrelevant and that schools should exclusively prepare young people for further study or the workforce, this ignorance may not matter. For black-armed bedecked curriculum planners, out of sympathy with popular patriotism, it is a good thing because the national story they believe matters most is the story of the dispossession of indigenous Australians by white men, who also oppressed women and migrants. And because these are the people who have mainly held the heights in the state education departments it is their version of our past that has prevailed. In Victoria the fate of Aborigines, the evils of colonialism, and so forth and so on, are on the agenda. And because acting is an easy way of conducting a class in Queensland, students can be encouraged to learn history by role-playing oppressed people. So, instead of an overall narrative of our nation, and information on political events in European cultures that made us who we are, kids are taught bits and pieces of the past, as if history is an ideological grab bag, from which we can take whatever issues, ideas and events suit political agendas in our own age. This is a history that assumes young people need to learn our ancestors' failings first. Even more alarming, it bases what is taught on contested ideologies, that confuse patriotism with imperialism and judges people in the past by the standards of today. And it is all done independent of any narrative that explains the key events in our past and how they are connected to each other.

Advocates of the orthodox approach say an emphasis on facts and dates will always fail, boring students into ignoring irrelevant detail. Not if the epochal events of our national story are taught well it won't. And the idea that selectively sampling aspects of the past and using political ideas from the present to explain them ensures that students end up thinking the past is much like the present, only in fancy dress. It need not be like this. The task for history teachers in the junior school years is to give students a sense of the events and ideas that made us who we are. Inevitably that means an emphasis on the long march to democracy in Great Britain, Europe and North America. And it must include the story of Federation and the fight for women's suffrage at home. It probably does not matter much if 15-year-olds do not know the details of the deaths of Burke and Wills. But it is vital they understand how Australians developed universal suffrage. Selectively teaching what is wrong in Australia's past before young people are given the incontestable facts and dates they need to assess all the interpretations on offer is an affront to Australia's civil religion of an egalitarian democracy. It is time for all schools to give their students the facts about our past. And if crowded curriculums mean there is less time for political role play, that will be no bad thing.



A forgotten but notable episode in Australian history

The historical amnesia described by the Prime Minister, John Howard, on Wednesday was on full display on Thursday. Yet again, Australia Day was celebrated with no reference to the most momentous event ever to have occurred in Sydney on January 26: the Rum Rebellion of 1808. That evening, the local garrison marched down Bridge Street with bayonets fixed and music playing, and deposed Governor William Bligh, formerly of the Bounty. It was an exciting action that affected the course of our history and arguably influenced our national character. As we approach its bicentenary in 2008, it is time to consider celebrating it with an annual parade.

The Rum Rebellion has slipped into historical oblivion because it is widely misunderstood. Most people believe the autocratic Bligh was removed because he threatened the huge profits that were being made from trading in spirits by the officers of the NSW Corps and by businessmen such as John Macarthur. This view suggests it was nothing more than a squabble between equally unsavoury parties.

But it is completely wrong.... So what was the cause of Bligh's removal, and why should we commemorate it today? Essentially it was the culmination of a long-running tussle for power between government and entrepreneurs, a fight over the future and the nature of the colony. The early governors wanted to keep NSW as a large-scale open prison, with a primitive economy based on yeomen ex-convicts and run by government fiat. In contrast, a growing number of entrepreneurs wanted to build a vigorous economy, and sought political influence for themselves (as they would have had back in Britain). So the rebellion is important as the first major crisis in the fight between government and capital in Australia....

The Rum Rebellion led to the appointment of Governor Lachlan Macquarie, who through his unusual encouragement of ex-convicts possibly contributed to Australia's egalitarian character. One can argue over this (as well as just how egalitarian we really are), but the rebellion and its aftermath are part of that argument - another reason for remembering this climactic episode in our early history. It was also the beginning of that unusual local tradition of deposing leaders peacefully (NSW premier Jack Lang in 1932; prime minister Gough Whitlam in 1975)....

More here



28 January, 2006

Australian multiculturalists know they have a problem but ignore history in looking for the solution

They are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Community relations were better before they came along

Miranda Devine has an interesting article pointing out that even Australian left liberals are now airing doubts about multiculturalism's ugly side. She points out how recently Philip Adams interviewed Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki, the man often credited with being the intellectual architect of Australia's multiculturalism policy.

"Zubrzycki told Adams the Cronulla riots were a "wake-up call" for multiculturalism. They illustrated the folly of dumping poor, unskilled migrants from Lebanon in the outer suburbs of Sydney in the 1980s, "on the understanding they would be looked after by their families . We left them to their own devices, with no specific settlement policy, traumatised [by civil war], unable to speak the language, unable to come to grips with Australian culture and also largely of the Islamic faith" ."

So the answer to multiculturalism's failures is even more multicultural bureaucracy. Isn't this like a losing General demanding he be sent more troops? My guess is that both Adams and Zubrzycki would (as I do) regard Australia's post WW2 immigration as successful. Yet the hundreds of thousands who came to our shores in the two decades after WW2, many of whom experienced devastation and wartime traumas, at least as bad as anything seen in Lebanon, had far fewer government provided services than immigrants and refugees who have arrived in recent decades. Many post-WW2 refugee immigrants to Australia ended up in Displaced Persons camps and had to spend two years living in amenity poor tent cities, with dozens of nationalities thrown together, more or less at random, working with pick and shovel before being released into the general community. Once released they had no translator services, no high profile community advocates on TV every night, and anti-discrimination laws were decades away. Hard work was really their only option. Still they survived and thrived. The immigrant groups who have come since the 1990s have, comparatively speaking, had it easy.

The pundits also ignore the comparative add-on costs between the two generations of immigrants and it's impact in promoting anti-immigration sentiment in the wider community. In the 1940s-1960s immigrants had a much lower government spending price tag per capita, even in relative terms, than in the 1990s-2000s. As such it shouldn't be surprising to learn that polls show popular opposition to the immigration program was much lower in the earlier period. Despite Australian society in the 1990s being considered much more diverse and 'tolerant' than the "White Australia" of the 1950s.

Trickle down arguments about modern immigrants 'paying their own way' may be correct in a textbook economics sense but are irrelevant in this particular case. If modern immigrants manage to 'pay their own way', the earlier generation must have been a bargain. The pundits also fail to explain why there were no "anti-immigrant" riots among the former generation of anglophile-educated Australians. No liberal pundits have even noticed that the participants in the Cronulla riot were actually from the first generation of Australians with pro-multicultural schooling from their first day of kindergaten. We know that three generations of Communist propaganda failed to turn the Russians into true believer marxists. Even though in the Soviet era all learned to mouth the phrases as required. Perhaps a similar situation impacts the doctrine of multiculturalism. Zubrzycki's solution would undoubtedly exacerbate tensions not relieve them.



Leftists protest over call to teach a balanced Australian history

Australia's national day of celebration was marked by a renewed outbreak of the culture wars as education experts debated the way Australia's story is taught in schools. The latest hostilities were provoked by John Howard's comments at the National Press Club on Wednesday, where he claimed the teaching of history had degenerated into a "fragmented stew" of post-modernist ideas with no clear narrative thread. His comments renewed the longstanding dispute between those who oppose the so-called "black armband" view of Australian history and those who argue that any single, authorised account of our story only serves to marginalise the powerless.

Opposition Leader Kim Beazley yesterday agreed with the need for "decent narrative history" but dismissed the Prime Minister's comments as coming "straight out of the right-wing playbook of the US".

Education expert Kevin Donnelly backed Mr Howard's concerns about the history curriculum being taught in schools but lamented the lack of change in history teaching after a decade of conservative government in Canberra. He pointed out that many currently fashionable ideas about the subject had taken hold under conservative state governments.

But history teachers attacked Mr Howard's emphasis on Australia's British heritage. Australian Education Union secretary Andrew Gohl told The Australian: "We know that John Howard says we shouldn't have a black armband view of history, but what does that mean? Does it mean we can't talk about the invasion of Australia, or the appalling treatment of indigenous Australians?"

State education ministers were also on the counter-attack yesterday, with South Australia's Jane Lomax-Smith saying politicians should not "dictate details of the curriculum". Victorian Opposition education spokesman Victor Perton backed Mr Howard, saying history courses were "all slanted against the European settlement of Australia". But acting Education Minister Jacinta Allan said history should be taught in a way that "encourages healthy debate".

A spokesman for NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt said NSW had a well-established curriculum of traditional Australian history and said the subject was compulsory from years seven to nine. However, the NSW curriculum for younger students shows that, as in the other states, history is being taught as part of "human society and its environment" rather than as a free-standing subject. The NSW curriculum also stipulates seven "perspectives" that should be applied to the subject matter: Aboriginal, civics and citizenship, environmental, gender, global, multicultural and work.

Mr Donnelly argues the relativist approach, in which no single perspective dominates, is inherently contradictory. On the one hand curriculum documents point to the subjectivity of historical understanding, while on the other mandating approaches such as feminism and environmentalism as templates for students' understanding. The difficulty with reforming the system, he said, was that changes mandated from above were implemented by state-based education bureaucrats and professional associations with their own agendas.

Source



Your government will look after you

Trains have had "dead man" braking systems worldwide for over 100 years but it was all too hard for Queensland government trains

Queensland Rail has been blasted for seven years of bungling over a train safety system that could have prevented the 2004 tilt train derailment. Despite telling a parliamentary committee a decade ago that the high-speed trains would have automatic train protection systems, QR has admitted it took seven years to get the safeguards working properly on electric tilt trains. A series of software and braking problems plagued the ATP system since 1998, and it was not properly operational on electric trains until last July. Diesel tilt trains are still operating without the ATP engaged. ATP automatically slows or stops high-speed trains if a driver fails to do so, as happened when the diesel-powered City of Townsville derailed north of Bundaberg on November 15, 2004.

Opposition transport spokesman Michael Caltabiano, who raised questions about why the ATP was not operational when the trains began service, said the answer had been more damning than he had anticipated. "So we've paid for the ATP system, it's been installed but they haven't got it operational until seven years later," he said. Mr Caltabiano produced transcripts of a Public Works Committee hearing from December 1996 at which Queensland Rail officials said the new trains would feature ATP systems. The committee's report also noted the tilt train project included "introduction of an automated train protection system", and said provision of the system had been contracted out.

A QR spokeswoman said it had clearly been QR's intention from the beginning to have the ATP operating, "but nobody knew how that system would work on the tilt train because it wasn't designed for a tilt train so it had to be modified". "I think Queensland Rail was probably frustrated with the length of time it was taking, but it was a matter of being 100 per cent confident that the system was safe," she said.

QR has received 110 claims for compensation as a result of injuries sustained in the derailment, and has so far paid out almost $360,000 in compensation. An Australian Transport Safety Bureau report into the accident found the train approached a 60km/h curve at 112km/h just before it left the rails.

Mr Caltabiano said QR had failed to offer its passengers the same protection it had used for years on freight trains. "The pain and suffering of those passengers on the City of Townsville train on November 15, 2004, has now been shown to be totally unnecessary and totally avoidable," he said.

More here



The Queensland police "service" at work

Big brave police handcuff double-parked mum



A mother was handcuffed and taken from her car by police in front of her children for double-parking outside a school. Yvette Green, 38, of Ipswich in Queensland, said she was stunned when a policeman thrust his hand through the open window of her car and slapped handcuffs on her as she tried to drop two of her five children at school about 8.40am (AEST) on Wednesday. Ms Green said her three-year-old son was left alone and scared, strapped in the back seat as she was led handcuffed from her BMW to an unmarked police car, also double-parked, outside the Collingwood Park State School.

School staff and parents - who asked not to be named - said dozens of children, including Ms Green's three-year-old son, were hysterical and crying as police took her into custody. Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson later rejected several of Ms Green's claims, but a local councillor has referred the matter to the Crime and Misconduct Commission.

Ms Green said she had had an amicable conversation with the police officer as he wrote her a traffic infringement notice. "I asked him why he was writing me a ticket and why he was also double-parked?" she said. "He then gave me an official warning and said, 'That's it' and leaned in and put the handcuffs on me while my engine was still running. "I couldn't believe it. The whole school, including parents, watched as I was taken away and put into the police car. I was so humiliated."

Two police officers took Ms Green to the Ipswich watchhouse where she was fingerprinted, photographed and charged with obstructing police, disobeying a direction and behaving in a disorderly and offensive manner. She said she was released and had to walk about 4km before getting a lift home. "I could not believe they arrested me with my youngest child (Greg) still strapped in the car," she said. It is understood police left the scene before Greg was removed from the car. He was allegedly left in the care of the school's principal until one of Ms Green's friends collected him.....

Local councillor Paul Tully said he had been besieged with telephone calls from local residents after the incident and last night formally requested the CMC investigate the matter. Ms Green said she intended to fully defend the charges in the Ipswich Magistrate's Court on February 15.

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27 January, 2006

Howard puts emphasis on traditional British values



John Howard has outlined his vision of a tolerant nation that rejects racism while placing core Australian values ahead of multiculturalism. In a keynote Australia Day address, Mr Howard identified the nation's "dominant cultural pattern" as a mix of Judaeo-Christian ethics, the spirit of the Enlightenment and British political institutions and culture. But he also praised the contribution of the Irish, non-conformists and successive waves of settlers to forging new attitudes and traditions. "When it comes to being an Australian there is no hierarchy of descent," he said.

While condemning the criminals responsible for last December's Cronulla riots, he said there was no need for "moral panic".

Mr Howard said immigrants were expected "to make an overriding commitment to Australia, its laws and democratic values". "We expect them to master the common language of English and we will help them to do so," he said.

In his address to the National Press Club in Canberra, Mr Howard again rejected a bill of rights, warning that such reforms could limit freedoms rather than protect them. He said the strength of Australian democracy rested on the three pillars of parliament, the rule of law and a free and sceptical press. Describing "a sense of balance" as the secret to Australia's greatness, Mr Howard said cultural diversity would never alter Australia's commitment to freedom and equality.

"We've drawn back from being too obsessed with diversity, to a point where Australians are now better able to appreciate the enduring values of the national character that we proudly celebrate and preserve," he said. "We've moved on from a time when multiculturalism, in the words of the historian Gregory Melleuish, came to be associated with the transformation of Australia from a bad old Australia that was xenophobic, racist and monocultural to a good new Australia that is culturally diverse, tolerant and exciting. Such a view was always a distortion and a caricature.

"In Australia's case, that dominant pattern comprises Judaeo-Christian ethics, the progressive spirit of the Enlightenment and the institutions and values of British political culture. Its democratic and egalitarian temper also bears the imprint of distinct Irish and non-conformist traditions."

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Sick government uses firemen to give medical care

More fallout from the closure of emergency services at Caboolture hospital

A fire crew was dispatched to give urgent first aid to a Bribie Island man who had a heart attack because ambulances were busy transporting patients away from the troubled Caboolture Hospital. Fire officers gave oxygen for almost 1 1/2 hours to retired NSW police officer John Kenny, 57, until an ambulance was available. As well as having to wait for an ambulance, Mr Kenny was diverted away from Caboolture Hospital's emergency department which normally would have treated heart attack victims in the area.

A Queensland Ambulance Service spokesman last night confirmed a fire truck had been sent to Mr Kenny because it was "an unusually busy night". He denied ambulance crews had been busy diverting patients from the Caboolture Hospital. "Every available crew in the area were on a code-one emergency response," he said. "It was just an unusually busy period at that stage. "We responded with a firefighting crew who all have advance first-aid and lifesaving equipment on their trucks. "While it doesn't happen very often, we do have a standing agreement with the fire service to do this sort of thing. They are a great back-up. It is better having someone with advanced first-aid and life-saving equipment than no one at all." The spokesman said that at all times ambulance officers were in contact with Mr Kenny and the fire officers treating him.

Mr Kenny said he telephoned for the ambulance at 3am on Saturday and was shocked 10 minutes later to hear a fire engine siren outside and four fire officers walking into his home. "They put me on some oxygen and said there were no ambulances available," Mr Kenny said last night. "I didn't believe it. I thought someone was playing a bad joke on me. It took an ambulance an hour and a half to get there. "In the end an ambulance came from Caboolture station. They said they were spending all their time running people around the place because there is no Caboolture Hospital."

Mr Kenny has been in Brisbane's Prince Charles Hospital waiting for an angiogram since Saturday morning. He said the person he was sharing his room with had been waiting for most of that time for a 10-minute stress test which he was unlikely to get before Friday. "I moved here seven years ago and I remember (Premier) Peter Beattie saying we've got the best hospital system in the world. It's world-class," Mr Kenny said. "It might have been then, but, by God, it's not now. "You can give the firies and the ambos a real wrap. But you can give the people running the place -- the State Government -- the thumbs-down."

A spokeswoman for Mr Beattie said last night the Premier was unable to comment until he had been briefed on the circumstances. Opposition health spokesman Bruce Flegg said the incident showed other emergency services were being drawn into the problems confronting the state's public health system. "Heart attack carries with it a very high risk of sudden death," Dr Flegg said. "Failing to dispatch the properly equipped ambulance and paramedics increases the risk the patient will not survive." He said the failure to send an ambulance was compounded by the fact that the nearest hospital, Caboolture, was not taking patients such as Mr Kenny.

Source



Guess who?

(Post lifted from Samizdata)

"We've taken the biggest surge in national income in years and squandered it. The punters are spending every cent they can and Canberra is encouraging that by handing back its share of the commodity price loot as tax cuts."

Who would say such a thing? Sounds like the rantings of some bleeding heart welfarist think tank, rather than Australia's leading economics consultancy, as Access Economics likes to describe itself.

Yes, Keynesian wannabes Access Economics released a report fretting about interest rate hikes, and it feels the answer is to remove the financial options of individuals and ensure that the government collects and hoards ever more of the people's income. I suppose one should look at it this way; some day soon you might benefit if you find yourself in a geographic or demographic sweet spot that the government needs to court come election time.

Talking about rum plans, this proposal from Deloitte floats an admirable (though not particularly original) idea - swapping tax deductions on work expenses for across-the-board tax cuts. Liberals will start to choke when they see Deloitte's adjustment of the progressive income tax rates:

The poorest tax payers would see their rate cut from 15 per cent to 4 per cent, with the 42 per cent tax rate paid by people earning $75,001-$125,000 falling to 33 per cent. The top 47 per cent rate paid by those earning more than $125,000 could be cut to 44 per cent.

Deloitte would surely have access to the masses of theoretical and empirical evidence showing the superior economic benefits of shrinking the gap between top marginal rates of income tax and the lower rates, not to mention the moral argument. Why this EC (and I do not mean European Community, though maybe I do...) drivel, then? Why do Deloitte believe they need to field a taxation proposal that is going to win elections?

Thankfully, the political party that prides itself on its fiscal responsibility and economic liberalism holds government in Australia. Yet we have a curmudgeonly treasurer (chancellor of the exchequer) who steadfastly refuses to budge over our absurdly high top marginal tax rate of 47%. He is more than happy to ladle out benefits to politically useful groups, however. Oddly named, the Liberal Party of Australia, when one considers it is run by big government conservatives.

Couple these few good men with the leading economics consultancies, who seem to be trying to outdo each other in the social crusading stakes.

Have these people never heard of the Chicago school? I despair.



26 January, 2006

Greenie council caves in on beachside flag display

Three weeks ago Waverley Council was accused of banning the Australian flag. Now it seems it cannot get enough of it. To show that the national flag is welcome in Bondi, the council will fly it from flag poles on Campbell Parade on Australia Day - and if residents approve, the flag could fly over the beachfront permanently. The council also plans to hold a flag-raising ceremony at its chambers on Australia Day and to hand out flags to participants in its citizenship ceremony. But the Mayor of Waverley, Mora Main, denied that the council had backed down on its decision last month not to erect new poles and fly the flag on the Bondi Pavilion. "It's really more about trying to sell the fact that there is not a ban and there never has been." Under the plan announced yesterday, Aboriginal, NSW and Torres Strait Island flags will also be raised on Campbell Parade to mark Australia Day. Cr Main said the council, at its meeting next month, would consider whether to fly the four flags permanently. She said the proposal by a Liberal councillor, Joy Clayton, to erect flag poles on the pavilion was rejected because of concerns about concrete cancer.

Source



Former Labor leader close to political ousting in back-room deals

Poor old Simon. I liked him. Even the contemptible Mark Latham liked him. Simon Crean is serious, well-informed and responsible but a bit on the boring side. But in the Labor party, intelligence and a record of service come a distant second to power. The graphic pictures him giving a speech



Former federal Labor leader Simon Crean is one step away from being forced out of politics as tense negotiations continue over preselections in the Victorian ALP. Former Hawke government minister Robert Ray has confirmed to colleagues he will quit the Senate at or before the next election, opening a scramble for Senate vacancies. And Premier Steve Bracks has suggested inviting national intervention in the branch to avoid the embarrassment of an all-in brawl over state upper house preselections.

Party sources have told The Australian that Mr Crean's hard-fought battle to hold on to his plum Melbourne seat of Hotham is close to lost, as the powerful shoppies' union (the SDA), has declared it is prepared to back his rival, National Union of Workers secretary Martin Pakula. But the SDA will only do so as part of a broader deal within the right-wing alliance that runs the party, and alliance partners the NUW and Labor Unity are split over other battles, and have not yet reached agreement.

Supporters of Mr Crean, 56, still refuse to say die in the seat he has held since 1990. They deny there has been any change in the SDA's position, and claim they have been assured of the union's continued support. If neither side backs down, the party could be in for an ugly internal brawl over the southeast suburban seat, embarrassing the state Government during an election year.

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Government paramedics at work (or not)



Queensland Ambulance will install a third communications system in six years after complaints that unanswered Triple-0 emergency calls led to patient deaths. The computer-aided Premier and Right dispatch systems had become obsolete, with one operator saying they "never did what they were supposed to do". It was expected to cost more than $1 million to set up the new system.

The Sunday Mail revealed this month how a Kilkivan man almost died when the ambulance service ignored his wife's initial call for help. Paramedics were dispatched only after she telephoned a second time, an hour later. Ambulance Commissioner Jim Higgins blamed the delay on a fault with the dispatch system. A communications officer was counselled over the incident, but no details released.

A paramedic who contacted The Sunday Mail this week said bosses were to blame. "The truth is the Queensland Ambulance Service bought a very expensive computer system . . . that was a mistake. It could not do the job and a second system had to be bought," the source said. He claimed staff warned management of the "high probability of error" with the systems. "They should be the ones held accountable, not a poor ambo working the failure-prone system," he said.

Officers had also told of a stoush [fight] between call centre operators in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, which they claimed had left critically ill patients to die. The battle related to who should take emergency calls and led to staff being disciplined and fined. An internal service briefing paper leaked to The Sunday Mail revealed Triple-0 calls overflowed from busier communications centres and were "causing difficulties" for smaller centres. The document said 17 per cent of calls were not answered in the first presentation from Telstra. Calls had increased, but staff numbers had not gone up accordingly.

A spokesman for Mr Higgins said the new computer-aided dispatch system would be introduced in ambulance and fire call-centres this year. He said it was an upgrade of systems which would ensure a "cleaner, smoother" operation. The spokesman would not reveal the cost of the new system.

Source



Australian schools: Basics missing in 'sandpit science'

Science curriculums in Australian schools are becoming dangerously unscientific as education departments bow to the politically correct dogma of cultural relativism. Teachers and academics claim students are being taught "sandpit science" dictated by a dumbed-down syllabus that ignores basic scientific teaching. They say so-called "outcomes-based education" portrays science as subjective and culturally determined, and encourages students to treat established scientific principles with scepticism and disdain.

The South Australian curriculum describes Western science as "the most dominant form of science but it is only one form among the sciences of the world", while in the Northern Territory science is treated "as a way of knowing ... constructed in a socio-cultural context". While the traditional view of science is based on absolutes that can be empirically tested, the West Australian curriculum says truth is culturally determined. "(Students) recognise that aspects of scientific knowledge are constructed from a particular gender or cultural perspective," it says.

As education expert Kevin Donnelly points out in The Weekend Australian today, supporters of the relativist approach to science ironically include many who oppose the teaching of "intelligent design" creationism in schools.

Perth-based senior science teacher Marko Vojkovic said the foundations of science were not being properly laid in many secondary schools. "Last time I checked, Newton's theories of motion hadn't changed, the periodic table hasn't changed, the basic atomic theory hasn't changed and I don't think it's going to either," he said. "In a lot of primary schools the kids are getting no hard science. They are drawing holes in the ozone layer and saying that's why we've got global warming." Mr Vojkovic, a co-founder of the West Australian education lobby group PLATO, lamented the push towards activity-based learning, which often failed to provide content. "I call that sandpit science. Just let the kids into the box, let them play around and investigate. They learn absolutely nothing."

Australian Science Teachers Association president Paul Carnemolla yesterday defended constructivism, arguing against a return to a traditional, "transmissional" approach. "Trying to pump knowledge into an empty vessel has proven ineffective because it ignores the fact that students come into the classroom with all sorts of preconceptions, and if those are not dealt with appropriately, learning cannot take place," he told The Weekend Australian.

Source



25 January, 2006

They've finally caught two Lebs

Two men charged over a Cronulla riot revenge attack have been refused bail in Sydney's Sutherland Local Court. Wael Tahan, of Riverwood, and Mahmoud Eid, of Regents Park, both in Sydney's southwest, were charged today over the attack of a man at Cronulla in the early hours of December 12, one day after the Cronulla riot in which people of Middle Eastern descent were chased and attacked. The court was told Mr Tahan and Mr Eid, both 19, were among a group of men who jumped out of a car to attack a man with concrete blocks and stomp on his head. The 20-year-old alleged victim of the attack, Jake Schofield, suffered serious injuries, including a fractured eye socket and nose, and two stab wounds. Mr Tahan and Mr Eid each have been charged with robbery in company, maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm and affray. Mr Eid has pleaded not guilty to the charges, while Mr Tahan has not entered a plea. Magistrate Paul Falzon refused bail, remanding both men in custody to reappear in Central Local Court on January 31.

Source



NSW Police commander blames Arab leaders

The new police commander of the squad investigating the summer riots has made the explosive claim that Arabic community leaders have failed to inform on men involved in revenge attacks. Detective Superintendent Ken McKay, of Strike Force Enoggera, yesterday angered the community and the one leader singled out, Keysar Trad, on the same day the Police Commissioner, Ken Moroney, was forced into an embarrassing compromise, reinstating the officer he sacked as the head of the same strike force on Friday.

After a 90-minute meeting with strike force members and the Police Association, Mr Moroney would not specify Acting Superintendent Dennis Bray's new role, but the Herald understands he will be second-in-charge under Superintendent McKay. The association protested that Acting Superintendent Bray had been made a scapegoat when Mr Moroney dumped him for failing to tell him there was video footage of 30 men of Middle Eastern appearance attacking a youth in Cronulla.

Superintendent McKay complained yesterday that only five people had come forward to help police since that footage was released last week. He had expected 100. "Senior members of the Arabic community need to really have a close look at themselves and start . identifying these people. The only people that know these people out there are members of the Middle Eastern community . They need to stand up and . be held accountable for the actions of people in the community."

When the Herald later asked to whom he was referring to, a spokeswoman identified Mr Trad, the president of the Islamic Friendship Association, as one who could do more to identify culprits. Mr Trad denied shielding criminals, saying: "This is unfair. I am dumbfounded by it really. I spent most of Saturday helping the police." He accompanied Ahmed Jajieh, the one man interviewed over the Cronulla bashing, to a police station on Saturday. Mr Jajieh told them he had helped protect the bashing victim, known as Steve B, from 30 attackers, but police are frustrated because they believe he may have known some of them.

Mr Trad said he was contacted by the family of Mr Jajieh, whom he called "this hero", and agreed to accompany him for a voluntary interview. Mr Trad said he had met Mr Moroney and offered to find Islamic youth leaders who would help identify men in the video. The Lebanese Muslims Association president, Ahmad Kamaleddine, also took offence at Superintendent McKay's remarks.

On the reinstatement of Superintendent Bray, Mr Moroney said: "It's not a case of backing down at all." He had a "full and frank" meeting with him yesterday and pointed out that Superintendent McKay was still at the helm.

Source



Peter Walsh: The Australian Labor Party should ditch the Greenies

Peter Walsh was a senator and finance minister in the Hawke Labor government

Since the 1980s, Australian Labor Party policy has been incrementally hijacked by well-heeled, self-indulgent, morally vain and would-be authoritarian activists, whom the media often misdescribes as the intelligentsia. If language had been less debauched, they would have been more accurately described as secular religious fundamentalists, as contemptuous of the values and aspirations of mainstream Australians as Mao Zedong was of Chinese peasants.

The consequences for Labor have been four successive electoral defeats. Short of a self-destructive Coalition implosion, there is little chance of reversing this electoral trend in the near future. Some smart Labor people have been long aware of the poisoned chalice handed to Labor by green ideologues and their media cheer squad. Opposition resources spokesman Martin Ferguson is one person to have attacked their holy grail: global warming and the Kyoto Protocol. Writing on this page recently, Ferguson drew attention to the mutual exclusivity of green hostility to economic growth, the greens' self-proclaimed commitment to social justice, their Kyoto-inspired eagerness to export technically efficient Australian industry to Third World countries (thereby increasing greenhouse gas emissions), and their secular religious veto of the only economically feasible alternative to fossil fuel for base load power: nuclear energy.

To secular religious fundamentalists - and others who should know better - global warming, induced by burning fossil fuels, is responsible for all disagreeable or dangerous climatic events: extreme high temperatures, extreme low temperatures, drought, floods, dying coral reefs and rising sea levels. Never mind that one of its high priests, Stephen Schneider, was predicting a catastrophic ice age only 35 years ago. The Kyoto hypothesis, so we are told, must be accepted without reservation. In several important respects empirical evidence does not confirm the climate model or models on which the Kyoto hypothesis is based. For example:

* Satellite temperature sensors - the most reliable source of global temperature data - show little if any increase in the lower tropospheric temperature.

* Precipitation on the Antarctic continent is increasing.

* Evidence, not yet conclusive, does suggest a small rise in surface temperature since 1970, but to fit the Kyoto models this should have happened 50 years ago. It didn't.

* Anyone who knows anything - including the authors associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - concedes their models are imprecise, even if they have not been designed to prop up favoured or predetermined conclusions. But Ian Castles and David Henderson's exposure of the fanciful economic statistics incorporated in IPCC models suggests they have been fiddled. If your case is immaculate, why feed lies into it?

* Authentic history is more reliable than models, doctored or otherwise. The Vikings, who settled Greenland early in the second millennium, grew barley crops for several centuries. To do that, the climate would have to be at least 2C warmer than now, but glaciers did not melt, sea levels did not rise, coral reefs did not disappear and atmospheric carbon dioxide remained stable. How come?

To divert attention from the enormous damage ratification of Kyoto would inflict on the Australian economy, the green cheer squad asserts we are forgoing a golden opportunity to make a fortune from carbon trading. That is another lie. At best, an honest international carbon trading system would reduce, to some extent, the losses of Kyoto compliance.

But who will regulate and audit an international market? Another misbegotten, self serving and corrupt offspring of a corrupt UN? Another IPCC? In the aftermath of the oil-for-food scandal, does anybody really believe the UN would run an honest chook raffle? Asserting that carbon trading will produce windfall gains for all is cargo cultism resurrected: the hoax of the decade, or perhaps century.

Planting forests for carbon sinks has become a fashionable stunt for populist politicians. Western Australia's populist Government announced it will plant enough trees to offset emissions from its proposed desalination plant. Recent research from Stamford University says that plants, including forests, produce 30per cent of the world's methane emissions. What about that?

Of one thing we can be certain. If rising atmospheric carbon dioxide really is a problem that threatens civilisation, Kyoto is not the answer. Nor is another populist stunt, renewable energy - unless we ignore the social and economic damage inflicted by an enormous increase in energy prices. Parasitic rent seekers who market windmills and solar panels (and would-be rent-seeking ethanol producers) are beneficiaries of the captive market already delivered to them by mandatory renewable energy targets, so they naturally demand those targets be increased. They may run into a political problem they have not anticipated.

A proposal to establish a wind farm in Denmark, Western Australia, an area much loved and populated by politically correct green nimbies, is being torpedoed by the residents. Consequently, federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell has refused to allocate it any money from the federal renewable energy slush fund, because the green nimbies, including the local Green state parliamentarian, don't want it. Be alert for many repeats of this hypocrisy.

The only economically viable answer to the emissions problem, if indeed it is a problem, is nuclear power, as Ferguson points out. In recent years, Labor has stubbornly truckled for Green preferences, which have helped lower the party's primary vote. But if it wants to remain a major party, Labor should pay more attention to Ferguson and distance itself from a movement that alienates a large body of traditional Labor voters.

Source



Unscientific science teaching is now normal in Australian High Schools

Last year, a group representing Australia's leading scientific bodies signed an open letter arguing intelligent design is unscientific and should not be taught alongside the theory of evolution. The scientists argued that whereas evolution can be tested, teaching science students that a supernatural being was responsible for creation "would be a mockery of Australian science teaching and throw open the door of science classes to similarly unscientific world views - be they astrology, spoon-bending, the flat-earth cosmology or alien abductions".

Unfortunately, for those who oppose ID by arguing that science should only deal with what can be proved or disproved in a rational way, by being tested and open to the rigours of scientific explanation, the horse has already bolted. The reality, as a result of Australia's adoption of outcomes-based education, which includes such fads as whole language, where children are taught to look and guess, and fuzzy maths, where memorising tables and mental arithmetic go out the window, is that Australia's science curriculum is already unscientific.

One of the defining characteristics of outcomes-based education is that learning is no longer based on the traditional disciplines associated with an academic curriculum and the belief that knowledge is impartial and objective. Now, for example, the time available to teach geology may be reduced to accommodate teaching about the environmental damage that mining can cause, a different concern unrelated to basic science knowledge. Applications of science can be given priority over that basic knowledge. Tertiary academics in subjects such as physics and chemistry lament the way first-year courses have been watered down over time and that school science is more about sociology than teaching the structure of the discipline.

Even Geoff Masters, head of the Australian Council for Educational Research and a strong supporter of experiments such as outcomes-based education, accepts that Australia's approach to curriculum is far from perfect. "During the 1990s, considerable effort went into reform of the curricula for the primary and middle years of schooling, resulting in new state curriculum and standards frameworks," he says. "It is not clear that these efforts have improved levels of mathematics and science performance in Australian primary schools."

As noted by the South Australian academic Tony Gibbons in his book On Reflection, much of Australia's school curriculum adopts a relativistic view where science, instead of being based on an objective view of reality, is considered subjective and culturally determined. The South Australian curriculum states: "Viewing experiences, ideas and phenomena through the lenses of diverse cultural sciences provide a breadth and depth of understanding that is not possible from any one cultural perspective. Every culture has its own ways of thinking and its own world views to inform its science. Western science is the most dominant form of science but it is only one form among the sciences of the world." The Northern Territory science curriculum adopts a similar approach; described as a "social-constructivist perspective" and one where "science as a way of knowing is constructed in a socio-cultural context".

While the more traditional view of science is based on the belief that there are some absolutes that can be empirically tested - water boils at a certain temperature, the air we breathe is constituted a particular way - the West Australian curriculum also argues that our understanding of the world is subjective and culturally determined: "People from different backgrounds and cultures have different ways of experiencing and interpreting their environment, so there is a diversity of world views associated with science and scientific knowledge which should be welcomed, valued and respected. "They [students] appreciate that when they make observations, they do so from their own point of view and way of thinking. They recognise that aspects of scientific knowledge are constructed from a particular gender or cultural perspective."

Those familiar with the culture wars in the US, where new-age, politically correct academics argue that Galileo, Newton and Einstein are simply dead white European males and there is nothing superior or privileged about Western civilisation, will be familiar with the argument. As noted by Gibbons: "The implication is that Western science is a limited social construction and that other cultural sciences can make up for the limitations of Western science."

In addition to arguing that science is culturally determined, Australia's curriculum embodies a postmodern, constructivist view of knowledge. Constructivism places the student centre stage by arguing that learners construct their own learning and that more formal, explicit methods of teaching are unwarranted. Constructivists also suggest that learning is subjective as there is no external reality and each one of us constructs our own intensely personal and idiosyncratic view of the world. The result? Learning is defined as engaging and entertaining students and process takes precedence over content. On reading state and territory science curriculum, it is also obvious that Australia's approach is based more on teaching politically correct ideas and values than giving students a rigorous and objective grounding in science as a subject. Whether Tasmania, the Northern Territory, Queensland or South Australia, science as a subject disappears in favour of so-called essential learnings such as: personal futures, social responsibility, world futures and the inner, the creative and the collaborative learner.

Beginning with the national science statements and profiles, developed during the mid '90s, and continuing with current curriculum documents, teachers are urged to make science more girl-friendly, environmentally sensitive, contemporary and activity-based. The combination of ignoring the central importance of Western science, by arguing that it is culturally relative and simply one view of science among many, and defining science by what is politically correct has led to a dumbed down curriculum. As a result not only are boys disadvantaged, as science activities and tests are now more a measure of literacy skills, in which girls do better, but many teachers and academics argue that standards have fallen and that students are scientifically illiterate.

John Ridd, a retired Queensland secondary schoolteacher, whose PhD thesis examined maths teaching at the secondary level, argues: "Syllabi for both maths and science up to year 10 are long on fashionable educational theory, short on content and are pitched at a low academic level." Further evidence of low standards is the performance of Australian students in the 1994 and 2002 Trends in International Maths and Science Study. While Australian students always perform above the international average, they are consistently outperformed by countries such as The Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea.

Of greater concern is that at the year four level, based on a comparison of the 1994 and the 2002 results, Australia's performance remained static and many countries we once outperformed are now above us. Unlike Singapore, where 25 per cent of year four students achieved at the advanced level, there is a related concern that only 9 per cent of Australian students achieved at the same level. Debates about intelligent design and its place in the curriculum are important. Of greater significance is the broader question of how science is taught, or not taught, in our schools and the question of standards.

Source



24 January, 2006

Total NSW government confusion in response to Muslim gangs

First they sack the cop in charge then they bring him back

The former chief of a police unit investigating revenge attacks linked to Sydney's Cronulla riot has been reinstated, to a less senior role. After a meeting with members of Strike Force Enoggera lasting almost two hours, Police Commissioner Ken Moroney said Superintendent Dennis Bray would return to the task force, but would have to answer to the new commander, Ken McKay.

Supt Bray was stood down for telling Mr Moroney there was no video footage of revenge attacks following the Cronulla riot on December 11. Security camera footage was released last week showing a man being attacked on the day after the riot by about 30 men of Middle-Eastern appearance.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting at Mascot police station today, Mr Moroney said: ``I have asked Supt Bray to stay with Enoggera.'' ``I have indicated to Supt Bray and Task Force Enoggera that Detective Superintendent Ken McKay will lead Enoggera. I need Enoggera to achieve further results. ``I need Supt McKay and the whole Enoggera team to go in another direction.''

Members of Strike Force Enoggera had sought Supt Bray's reinstatement, saying they would consider industrial action if their demands were not met. NSW Police Association president Bob Pritchard welcomed Mr Moroney's decision to reinstate Supt Bray as second-in-command of Strike Force Enoggera. ``It's a pity that the commissioner did not accept the recommendations of the task force to reinstate Mr Bray as the commander,'' Mr Pritchard told reporters. ``But the commissioner has realised the need for Mr Bray to be there.''

Source



The leader of the NSW Left discovers conservatism

Sort of

Teachers have ridiculed the announcement by the Premier, Morris Iemma, that it will be compulsory for all schools to play the national anthem at assemblies, as a response to the Cronulla riots. Announcing the creation of "Australian values" units in public primary schools, Mr Iemma vaunted the teaching of "respect" and "responsibility" to the state's youth. But he admitted there was no way of forcing his anthem plan on independent schools.

The president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Maree O'Halloran, described the anthem idea as a reannouncement and window-dressing. Most schools already sang the anthem anyway, she said. The executive director of the Association of Independent Schools, Geoff Newcombe, said: "Many of the independent schools actually do that [sing the anthem] so it isn't a massive change."

Mr Iemma made no apology for his repeated use of the term grubs to describe the gang filmed on CCTV bashing a man in a revenge attack after the riots. "They demonstrated not just criminality . but that underlying lack of respect [for an] innocent, law-abiding citizen [who] should not be subjected to that cowardly thuggish attack by that bunch of grubs."....

Mr Iemma told a gathering at Government House that he wanted "every day to be Australia Day" and he wanted Australian values, such as notions of "decency" and a "fair go" to be taught in the home and at school. He said the five Rs - "reading, writing, arithmetic, respect and responsibility" - should be school policy. Mr Iemma warned anyone out to cause trouble at the beaches on Australia Day to watch out. "We're not backing away - you want to cause trouble on Australia Day, there will be police to meet you, arrest you and deal with you before the courts," he said.

Mr Iemma promised further announcements on affordable housing and community services. This was all part of a plan to target social problems behind gang crime, he said. Asked if they knew the lyrics of Advance Australia Fair, the Premier and the Education Minister, Carmel Tebbutt, began singing the second verse.

"From the beginning of this school year, all government and non-government schools will be expected to play Advance Australia Fair at their regular assemblies,' Mr Iemma said. "Most schools already do this as part of their everyday school life." The policy would not have to be enforced as private schools had agreed to the plan, he said. "Educational policies" to deal with the riots included creating "Australian values" units in public primary schools, he said.

More here



Amazing! Qld. government finds that cutting the number of hospital beds creates bed shortages!

It takes a government to need years to find that out

Health bureaucrats have been ordered to open every available hospital bed as the State Government struggles to overcome the "access block" problem choking emergency departments. The order has come with an admission by Premier Peter Beattie that planners were wrong to downsize major hospitals during redevelopments in the 1990s. Mr Beattie returned from his three-week annual holiday yesterday to issue a 10-point plan to combat statewide doctor shortages in the short term....

It commits $3 million to find ways to ease "access block", whereby the lack of available beds or medical treatment prevents patients from being moved out of emergency departments. "In addition, this week every hospital in Queensland will be instructed by the director-general to investigate how many beds it can open to assist with solving 'access block' across the Queensland health system," the plan says.

Mr Beattie said there was "capacity in the existing hospitals" to open more beds, but admitted his and previous governments had erred in reducing the number of beds in major hospitals. The Opposition said the Government eliminated about 600 beds when it redeveloped the Princess Alexandra and the Royal Brisbane hospitals as part of its capital works agenda in the late 1990s. At the time, the Government said fewer beds would be needed because future health care models would allow more day surgery and extra-mural treatment.

But Mr Beattie yesterday said the patient care model used to determine bed numbers then was wrong. "I think there were major flaws in the model . . . and the advice that we're now getting 15 years later is different to what it was 15 years ago. And I think we should be upfront about that."

More here



A small but significant revival of liberal arts teaching in Australia

Last week's column was a series of bleak reflections on the declining levels of literacy in Australian schools and universities. This column, in contrast, is about some welcome developments in tertiary education - the opening for business of Campion College in Sydney and its new degree course in the liberal arts. What difference will a private, Catholic college with an initial intake of only 30 students make to the Augean stables of the local humanities establishment? Time will tell, of course, but my guess is that it will make a difference out of all proportion to its size and sooner than many expect.

Campion is an overdue and welcome addition to the tertiary sector in Australia. It takes as its models the American and continental liberal arts colleges - Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran and indeed secular - and a modified version of the Great Books Program. The core of the course, amounting to about 70 per cent of the units, is compulsory. It involves close reading of demanding, seminal texts. Classes are small and the tutorial system is geared to ensure more than just a nodding acquaintance with the canon.

It will be the only humanities course of studies in which Google won't more or less guarantee that you pass. Corporate employers and headhunting firms, who tend to be familiar with American liberal arts courses and the calibre of the graduates they produce, will be taking a keen interest in Campion's first cohort. I expect that word of this will get out very quickly among arts students, and that many of them will be wondering whether their degrees from sandstone institutions are overpriced by comparison.

The deans of the various arts faculties will be inclined to sneer at a small, fledgling institution, and to be especially disdainful of its connection with the Catholic Church. Academe in Australia tends to take its own Enlightenment assumptions and particularly its secularism for granted as self-evidently good things. But many of the great universities of the West, including Oxford and Cambridge, were essentially monastic foundations and the idea that contemporary ecclesiastical affiliations could compromise the character and functions of a university would cut very little ice among America's Ivy League.

Campion promises to be a rather more Catholic institution than the Australian Catholic University. Its staff will be expected to swear an oath of fidelity to the Pope and the teaching magisterium of the church, for example. However, the college recognises, as John Paul II expressed it in Ex Corde Ecclesiae: "The right of individual scholars to search for the truth, wherever analysis and the evidence lead them." Relatively unfettered scholarship within the context of a campus dedicated to the ideals of Christian humanism may strike some as strange, particularly if they haven't read John Henry Newman on the subject.

To my mind it is no stranger - and far less inimical to intellectual liberty - than the politically correct pieties and Left-conformity of Australian public universities in general and their humanities departments in particular. What's more, Campion's emphasis on engaging with primary texts means that students will read ancient historians and Renaissance playwrights in their own words, rather than mostly seeing them through a fog of Marxist commentary or a filter of Michel Foucault.

It is only natural that many university lecturers should be appalled and confronted by this sort of back-to-basics educational fundamentalism. After all, it challenges their own pedagogical methods, their scholarship and much of what they stand for as teachers. Still, just imagine how captivating many parents will find it. Campion is designed primarily, though not exclusively, for Catholic undergraduates. They and their parents are likely to have had to live hard, sub-optimal choices all the way to matriculation. For example, many thoughtful Catholics regard the parochial system as at best a second-rate scholastic option and a proven failure when it comes to cultural maintenance and the transmission of faith.

They quite often prefer to send their children to conservative Anglican or Lutheran establishments, where theological modernism is less rampant, or to state schools where the agenda is merely secularist rather than noisily heretical. Many more have gone to endless trouble home-schooling their children and are now on the lookout for a comparably nurturing tertiary environment. For the thousands of parents in those sorts of predicament, Campion will stand out like a good deed in a naughty world. They will note with pleasure that the college offers Latin as an option, that it has hired one of Sydney's foremost church musicians for the chapel and prefers conservative liturgies and traditional devotions.

It's also just about the only place where students might still be encouraged to mount a Gilbert and Sullivan production - The Pirates of Penzance, perhaps - or where there'd be the enthusiasm and expertise to stage Henry Purcell's English opera, Dido and Aeneas.

Traditionally minded parents with no strong religious ties and Anglo-Catholic Anglicans who can't afford American college fees may well be tempted by Campion. More to the point, perhaps, they may feel moved to follow suit and start liberal arts colleges of their own. The establishment of a few more of them would have a cascading effect, akin to the reintroduction of the gold standard.

Reading the course outline for the three-year program, it's hard not to be consumed with envy of the 30 lucky little blighters about to be chosen for the first intake. Six semesters of history, concentrating on religion and culture from antiquity to the present, sounds just the sort of grounding that educated people need. The same goes for the core sequences in literature, philosophy and theology. It's hard to imagine coming out the other end of such a course without a good grasp of the best that's been thought and said since Plato.

Liberal arts has also tended to emphasise the importance of hard science in the curriculum. At Campion you can opt to undertake up to four units of maths and history of science, but biology is compulsory (and a creationist-free zone) along with a course on science and society. Another elective which is likely to prove popular is human bioethics.

It's all a far cry from the chaos of the summer of '68 - ground zero of the revolution - when I matriculated and enrolled at Flinders University. There the arts students had to belong either to the school of language and literature or the school of social sciences. Inspired by some once-modish theory, the system forced us to choose between English or other modern languages and the competing attractions of history as a major. It was almost impossible to manage a joint honours degree straddling the two schools. It was an obvious barbarism and I've heard similar horror stories about other Besser brick universities both at the time and more recently.

Apart from having an admirably integrated classical curriculum, Campion will be a qualitatively different experience from mainstream campus life in other ways. The most striking is class sizes. In many universities these days it's common for first-year lectures to be delivered to 500 students and for tutorials to comprise 20 people. At Campion, in the third year of operation, after a planned influx of international students, there won't be many more than 150 undergraduates. Everyone will know one another and tutorial sizes will never be over 15. The benefits of such an arrangement are obvious. The potential dangers are a tendency to group-think and a claustrophobic atmosphere in which young people can become inordinately focused on the dynamics of a small group.

Campion has residential facilities, but students are also free to make their own arrangements and live off-campus, which should help minimise those risks. Parents of prospective students can go to the web for more information. Before they do, I suppose I should warn them that tuition fees per semester are $6000, or $12,000 a year. For purposes of comparison, it's in the same league as a full-fee place in the arts faculty of the better sandstone universities. FEE-HELP, a Commonwealth student tuition loans scheme, will be available and it works along similar lines to HECS. Students repay their loans through the tax system once they're earning above a threshold income of about $36,000 a year. It's heartening to note in conclusion that Catholic dioceses throughout the country have also come to the party and begun to endow scholarships.

Source



23 January, 2006

Lying propaganda about race being recycled

The ABC, Australia's major public broadcaster, is running tonight a 2003 California program called "Race: The Power Of An Illusion", in an effort to convince us that the evidence of our eyes is wrong. If such people won't believe the evidence of their own experience, it is unlikely that they will believe scientific evidence but the scientific evidence that races do exist in much the same way that people normally talk about them is now abundant. See e.g. here and here. There is also a specific rejoinder to this rubbishy program here



The Muslim terror that the unfortunate West New Guineans are fleeing from

The Federal Government has sought urgent clarification from Jakarta after Indonesian soldiers were blamed for killing four students in West Papua, two days after boat people from the area sought asylum in Australia. The attack, which pro-democracy activists believe was a reprisal for the decision by the 43 people to flee Indonesia, has sparked accusations that Australian immigration officials may have endangered the group's safety.

Activists said Indonesian forces murdered up to four students, who were shot on Friday in the West Papuan village of Waghete. Indonesia said one high school student was shot dead and two were injured. One victim, Moses Douw, is believed to be a close relative of a man among the boat people who landed on Cape York on Wednesday. The group, which has been detained at Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, claimed it was fleeing oppression in Indonesia. Human rights activists and the federal Opposition say Australia should register its utmost concern with Jakarta over the shootings.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said Australia's embassy in Jakarta had asked the Indonesian Government for urgent clarification: "Obviously we've asked our diplomatic representatives to obtain the appropriate report for us." He declined to comment about possible links between the shooting and the boat people.

The Australian West Papua Association said the Government should register its disgust. "We can't have a special relationship with Indonesia that's based on covering up atrocities," spokesman Nick Chesterfield said.

More here



Muslim scum in Australia again

Four swimming pool staff have been beaten in an attack in Melbourne's north. Stunned witnesses said about 30 youths had punched and kicked staff, including a young woman, on the grass at Oak Park Aquatic Centre about 4pm yesterday. One witness, Alex, said families had recoiled in horror at the bashings. "I've never seen anything like it," Alex said. "I thought, 'Not another Cronulla'. "There seemed to be dozens of people involved, with most wading into the staff and people trying to help them. "They all appeared to be Middle-Eastern youths. "It was very upsetting and scary. There were hysterical children everywhere."

Nicholas Burt, leisure manager at Moreland Council, which runs the pool, said the riot had occurred after a male lifeguard had tried to calm two teenagers arguing on the grass embankment. Mr Burt said a third youth had butted in and when the lifeguard had escorted him to his belongings, after asking him to leave, a struggle had broken out. "That's when up to 30 other patrons started to physically attack staff," Mr Burt said. Three male lifeguards and one female security guard had been set upon by the group.

Mr Burt said that amid "blows to the back of the head and around the face", the staff had been driven into the pool's reception area. He said the attack had continued until police arrived. The staff, including one who suffered a smashed cheek, had been taken to hospital for treatment.

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A half-Australian Prince

And a prince in a very secure monarchy at that. Since his mother is Australian, Prince Christian will be entitled to an Australian passport



So high-profile was this christening that bookmakers had offered odds on the baby crying, but no one had thought to bet on the parents breaking down. Denmark's baby Prince Christian Valdemar Henri John did let out a few squeals, much to the delight of those taking the $A1.65 on offer, but it was more of a surprise as proud parents Crown Prince Frederik and Princess Mary also shed a tear. All went to plan as the heir to the Danish throne was christened in the Christiansborg Palace church in Copenhagen yesterday, with the baby protected from the arctic temperatures outside the church by his antique gown of Belgian lace.

There was never any doubt that he would be given the name Christian, which has been alternated with Frederik as the name of the heir to the Danish throne since the 16th century. Valdemar was something of a surprise - a historical name of Danish kings from the middle ages....

But there was a large media contingent present, with the proceedings televised live in Denmark and replayed several times. Among the 340 guests were Mary's sisters Jane Stephens and Patricia Bailey, uncle Jack Maton and his wife Barbara, her bridesmaid Amber Petty and several of her old Australian friends.

Mr Donaldson and his wife Susan Moody were third last into the church, followed by Queen Margerethe and Prince Henrik and then the new parents. Mary made an impression as she stepped out of the limousine - number-plate number one - wearing a white dress with a floral design, a China-blue jacket and a band of flowers into her bunned hair. After taking her seat she whispered to her fidgety son, and as the ceremony neared its conclusion the tears from mother and son could not be held back, while a dewy-eyed Frederik held Mary's hand.

Following the christening, Mary carried three-month-old Christian around the reception to tunes including Gundagai Groove and Mary Galop - an Australian touch to complement the eucalyptus used in flower arrangements inside the church.

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22 January, 2006

Good riddance: A poodle of the Left exits the ABC

The managing director of Australia's major public broadcaster (the ABC) has resigned early because he knew he was headed for the boot anyway. The following editorial from "The Australian" shows that under Russell Balding, the national broadcaster reflected the opinions of some staff and their ideological allies only

While ABC mandarins manoeuvring for opulent offices may notice the resignation of Russell Balding, chances are that few other staff will notice, or care, that the managing director is going. Because for all of his four years in the top job, Mr Balding did not interfere with the way the keepers of the corporate culture ran the ABC - like a student newspaper, selective in its stories, blatant in its bias and utterly opinionated in who its programs should appeal to. Mr Balding failed to ensure the corporation acted according to its charter, which requires it to provide "a balance between broadcasting programs of wide appeal and specialised broadcasting programs". That's because when it comes to entertaining and analysing, the ABC is run by some staff - for themselves and their mates. This is a very small group and they are utterly unconnected to the vast mass of Australians, especially members of the traditional ABC audience who look to the broadcaster for high-quality local and imported entertainment and unbiased analysis.

Consider the evidence. The ABC has abandoned new Australian drama. Only 11 hours - 11 hours! - were broadcast last year. Certainly, ABC apologists argue this is because of inadequate federal funding. Fair enough. But look what Sandra Levy, until recently the corporation's TV chief, chose to screen instead. There are quizzes and contests. They are followed by chat shows where inner-city comedians sneer at everybody who does not support gay marriage and oppose genetically modified agriculture. And while the ABC now hails Kath and Kim, remember that many among the tastemakers in the corporation fought tooth and nail to stop it screening. As an example of how out of touch ABC executives are from what interests and amuses ordinary Australians, that is hard to beat. But the performance of ABC radio does it. Many metropolitan stations are in the hands of 40-something announcers obsessed with their inner-city leftie lifestyles. And woe betide any broadcaster who dares dispute their orthodoxies.

In Sydney, Sally Loane was driven from the microphone last year, apparently for the high crime of attracting a diverse audience rather than rating with the people her bosses socialise with. It is the same in current affairs broadcasting, where the agenda is set not by the big stories that affect the Labor and Liberal parties but by the opinions of presenters on issues that fascinate them. The focus on gender issues, the environment, immigration, the rights of all minorities, but especially asylum-seekers, is all-consuming. It is not that the current affairs agenda is anti-Coalition; ten years ago, ABC commentators were sneering and snarling at Labor ministers. Rather, ABC broadcasters use their programs to score points on issues closer to the heart of Bob Brown than those of their listeners. Thus Tony Jones, who seems to mistake the television program Lateline for parliamentary question time, hammers away at hapless ministers about the needs of Cornelia Rau and the fate of David Hicks, while appearing less interested in the issues that matter to the vast majority of voters: health and education, employment and tax.

That Mr Balding declined to attend Senate estimates this year demonstrates the ABC's ingrained contempt for government, and how the managing director seemed to prefer placating his staff to explaining his organisation to senators. Mr Balding is not entirely to blame for the way the ABC is held to ransom by its staff. His predecessor, Jonathan Shier, failed to clean out the collective and succumbed to his own eccentric management style. Nor does it look as if Mr Balding was ever encouraged to take control of the organisation. John Howard has sought to stack the board with conservatives, notably anthropologist Ron Brunton and Janet Albrechtsen, a commentator for this newspaper.

But under chairman Donald McDonald the board has never demonstrated anything other than a desire to surrender to the staff. And while former long-serving communications minister Richard Alston used to talk tough about the ABC, his complaints were shrill and ill thought-out. Between them, they were never game to try to change the corporation's culture. It does not have to be this way. The ABC's well-organised online service and the community information function met by regional radio demonstrate what an asset the broadcaster can be when it tries. But the ABC will never fulfil its function to inform and entertain all Australians while its agenda is set by staff who will brook no ideas other than their own. The new managing director must take them on by avoiding Mr Balding's fundamental error: despite his title, he may have managed but he never directed the ABC.



How socialized medicine helps the poor

Australia's public hospitals show the way

Surgeons are being prevented from performing operations on poor people in public hospitals because of budget constraints, the Royal Australian College of Surgeons said yesterday. The college made the claim when rejecting Productivity Commission proposals which would overhaul medical training and pass some doctor roles to nurses and other health workers. The commission said the health system was inefficient and needed to be restructured to ease shortages in the medical workforce.

The Australian Physiotherapy Association yesterday backed the commission's report. But Royal Australian College of Surgeons president Russell Stitz said the recommendations would do nothing to deliver extra health workers. "The report does not address the real problems of inadequate funding, duplication, excessive bureaucracy and poor utilisation of current resources," Dr Stitz said. "Insufficient funding means too few operations can be performed and too few training places are available to train enough surgeons of the future. "Surgeons currently working within the public system are prevented from operating on needy patients just to balance budgets."

Dr Stitz said the health system was archaic and impractical. He also said that it would be indefensible to continue to operate under the "current chaos". "Tasks cannot be simply reassigned to other professional groups," Dr Stitz said. "There are insufficient numbers of workers throughout the health system."

More here



Dame Edna Everage honoured: "It's enough to make Edna pull a face: Australians lining up to lick the back of her head. The famous dame from Moonee Ponds and her long-suffering "manager" and alter ego Barry Humphries have been announced as Australia Post's Legend for 2006, joining Don Bradman, Slim Dusty and Dawn Fraser as national icons with their own postage stamp. The Australia Day issue features images captured over 40 years, tracing the evolution of Humphries and Edna - his rise to fame, hers to what she might describe as humble global megastardom. The managing director of Australia Post, Graeme John, said the honour acknowledged Humphries's contribution to Australian entertainment. "For more then 50 years he has helped shape our nation's identity, culture and - importantly - sense of humour with hilarious character creations," he said. "He has entertained and amused generations of Australians and captured the hearts of millions of people around the world through live performances, music, television series, books and films." Dame Edna is Humphries's most enduring creation, enjoying international recognition. "Dame Edna's signature catchcry 'Hello Possums!' has become a typically Australian greeting that's recognised from Moonee Ponds to Marylebone."



21 January, 2006

NSW Police implicitly acknowledge pro-Muslim bias so far

The head of Strike Force Enoggera, set up to investigate the Cronulla race riot, has been relieved of command following claims police failed to arrest those responsible for revenge attacks. The sidelining of acting Detective Superintendent Dennis Bray, announced today by New South Wales Police Commissioner Ken Moroney, comes after public anger at the failure by police to release video footage of a man being bashed by a gang of Middle-Eastern youths. Mr Moroney said he was unhappy Supt Bray had not released the footage earlier, and a replacement commander would take the helm of Enoggera.

"Clearly, there was material there that he could have been releasing and should have been releasing to the general community," Mr Moroney said on Southern Cross radio this morning. "Effective forthwith, Detective Superintendent Ken Mackay ... will assume command of Strike Force Enoggera. "Dennis will return to his ... position as detective chief inspector at Blacktown." Mr Moroney said he wanted the community to help identify the thugs in the video, and promised to make public any more video and audio evidence available. "If there was evidence available to us, we should have been taking the general community into our confidence, as we did with other elements of the Cronulla riot," he said. "What I've instructed is that there be a complete audit of all of our holdings, our audio material ... (and) it's to be released to the general community."

Mr Moroney said he would meet NSW Premier Morris Iemma today to discuss "a range of issues". He said Det Supt Mackay was a "very tenacious" and experienced detective who would do a good job as commander of Strike Force Enoggera.

Source



The Leftist Prime Minister Australia nearly had

Can anybody now doubt that rage and hate drive the more committed Leftists?



One year after he left the Labor leadership, Mark Latham yesterday reminded the public why he was unfit to lead the country. In a classic Latham brain-snap, the former MP with a history of violence threw a punch at a Daily Telegraph photographer, injuring his wrist, and stole the photographer's camera. Mr Latham sped off in his car with the camera - and is believed to have smashed it in his shed. Last night he handed the shattered remains of the camera, worth thousands of dollars, in to Campbelltown police....

His attack on photographer Ross Schultz stunned shoppers in Campbelltown. Mr Latham emerged