Poker machines have damaged Victoria's health and its hospitality industry and have failed to improve tourism or retail jobs, a report commissioned by the State government has found.

It compared Victoria and its 523 pokie venues with Western Australia's single casino and found poker machines had sparked a surge in problem gambling and led people into crime.

Cafes and restaurants were also affected and an initial jobs boost had fallen away.

The Government said it was "committed to learning the lessons" from the report, but would not say what action if any it would take.

(Source: Adelaide Advertiser)

 

A senior staff member at Villawood detention centre has been accused of running a drug trafficking business, and the Immigration Department will not say whether they will conduct any investigation.

The claim is contained in a letter signed by 62 detainees at Villawood detention centre and forwarded to the Commonwealth Ombudsman, on behalf of a man who they say has been moved into maximum security for speaking out about the issue.

The detainees say former Sydney taxi driver Harrinder Kharbanda, 36, has been on hunger strike since he was forcibly removed from his stage two cell on December 19 after trying to take some food into his room.

The letter says he is being unfairly punished for speaking out about the alleged corrupt conduct of a senior staff member at the centre.

"He runs drug trafficking and an illegal CD burning business," the letter said of the staff member.

"He often tries to intimidate the detainees by threatening or assaulting us with the help of those officers who work as a bunch of thugs.

"His corrupt acts are well known among the detainees in stage two and if someone tries to take some legal action, he punishes the detainee by abusing his decision-making power and or fabricating false reports about the person."

The detainees call on the Federal Government to intervene on behalf of Mr Kharbanda, who has spent the past nine months in detention for overstaying his visa.

A departmental spokeswoman would not comment on whether the staff member would be subjected to an internal investigation.

(Source: news.com.au)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"The man who dies rich...dies disgraced".

Andrew Carnegie

 

The Immigration Department has been accused of failing refugees following the death of a chronically ill child less than 24 hours after arriving in Australia.

The family of two-year-old Richard Niyonsaba fled an African refugee camp in November and sought medical treatment in Australia for the child's chronic sickle-cell anaemia.

The Department of Immigration had contracted the Australian Centre for Languages (ACL) to look after the family. The centre said today the caseworker handling the matter had been unaware of the child's condition.

Just 18 hours after the caseworker left the family in a Sydney unit, the toddler began to convulse.

His father had been told to dial triple-0 in case of emergency. However he was unable to speak English or use a telephone.

By the time he got the attention of a neighbour, a Sudanese refugee, the child was dead.

Family friend and member of the Rwandan and Burundian Association, Frederic Naboya, said today African refugees new to the country were not getting the level of care and support they needed from the Government.

"Our community, those people who are coming here, they can't read or write, they've never been to a big city, and landing here in Sydney is a total shock for them," Mr Naboya said.

"They probably need 24-hour case managers. It's tough, we don't want to see people coming and being dumped in Australia."

Lawyer George Newhouse, who is providing advice to the association on the family's case, said the ACL's claim that it was unaware of the boy's condition and had not known he was receiving treatment in Kenya, did not absolve it of its obligations.

"Whether or not the caseworker was told, the child was obviously distressed and in an unwell condition, and the question should have been asked, 'What is the health of all your members of your family?'," Mr Newhouse said.

"Worse than that, there was a file which had information about Richard's medical condition ... which would have explained everything."

ACL managing director Helen Zimmerman said complaints of "a lack of staffing" had emerged from the centre's handling of the matter.

The Independent Council for Refugee Advocacy (ICRA) said the Federal Government needed to return to the old model where community volunteers provided refugees with access to services, rather than contracting out to private companies.

(Source: news.com.au)

 

Treasurer Peter Costello has been accused of lying to Parliament about the impact of the new industrial relations laws.

A Treasury analysis released yesterday concluded that the changes would deliver smaller wage increases for low-paid workers and, in the short-term, would have a negative effect on productivity.

The government has strongly argued the new laws will lead to more jobs, higher productivity and higher wages.

Facing questions in Parliament last month, Mr Costello denied the existence of secret modelling work by Treasury.

Yesterday, Treasury secretary Ken Henry released a 16-page "executive minute", but denied reports that the department had done economic modelling work on the changes.

"The Treasury has never undertaken any modelling of the effects of the Government's workplace relations reforms," Dr Henry said in a statement.

The minute said the new system for setting the wages for up to 1.6 million low-paid workers would mean "minium wages are likely to be lower than they would have been".

Mr Costello denied misleading Parliament, insisting that Treasury had never done any "modelling" work.

"What has been released today is a minute which is not a specially commissioned research or modelling, but gathers together the economic case in relation to the importance of labour market deregulation," he said.

Most economists believe the changes will lead to higher employment, but through lower wages, not because of higher productivity as the Government maintains.

Rory Robertson, an economist with Macquarie Bank, said the workplace changes would enable new workers to be employed at below-award rates.

"It's pretty obvious that there will be downward pressure on the wages of the least paid members of the labour force," he said.

(Source: The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, ABC Online)

 

81% of Australians support multiculturalism, according to a poll.

The AC Nielsen/Age poll found that only 16% of people oppose multiculturalism, with 3% undecided.

(Source: AC Nielsen / The Age)

 

The story beginning

"Homeland Security agents investigated and visited an American student because he requested a book on communism for his course."

has been removed, as it turned out to be a hoax invented by the student.

 

A Sydney radio announcer has attempted to justify the racially-motivated violence in Cronulla.

Brian Wilshire told listeners of his talkback program on the Macquarie radio network last night that (white) Australians should not have to apologise for the alcohol-fuelled riots of last weekend.

Mr Wilshire added that many in Sydney's Muslim Lebanese community were inbred.

"Many of them have parents who are first cousins whose parents were first cousins," he told listeners to his 9pm-midnight show.

"The result of this is inbreeding - the result of which is uneducationable (sic) people...and very low IQ."

Mr Wilshire has apologised. However Macquarie Radio will not confirm whether he will be pulled from his show.

(Source: ABC News Online, news.com.au)

 

A senior police officer who invented a planned 'Bash-a-Muslim Day' was playing a "practical joke or hoax", according to police.

The email from a South Australian police officer was seemingly a response to recent racially-motivated violence in Sydney.

It claimed that Glenelg "might be a good place to stay away from or at least be vigilant as to any tensions in the area...there has also been a call for people to make Friday 'Bash-a-Muslim' day."

Assistant Police Commissioner Tony Harrison said there was no basis in fact for the email.

However he refused to name the officer responsible, and would not say if they had been spoken to or if the matter would be investigated further.

(Source: Adelaide Advertiser)

 

Labels indicating that cans and bottles are recycled are barriers to free trade and should be scrapped, according to a new proposal to be discussed by the World Trade Organisation.

A group of countries have tabled more than 200 objections to "non-tariff barriers" to trade, to be discussed at World Trade Organization talks in Hong Kong next week.

They include a motion from Argentina to remove the triangle logo found on cans and bottles indicating that it is recyclable, and one from Thailand that objects to labelling products that contain more than 1 per cent genetically modified material.

Kenya wants to remove the labels that show whether a product contains recycled content. Thailand also objects to what it sees as "excessive" safety testing on imported foods, such as compulsory testing for toxins in shellfish. And China objects to energy-efficiency standards now being imposed on hot-water boilers and air-conditioning units.

(Source: New Scientist [UK])

 

Cyclones similar to the one that devastated New Orleans could be hitting the east coast of Australia within 50 years, experts have warned.

Scientists from Macquarie University have predicted an increase in natural disasters as a result of global warming.

Geological hazards expert Geoff Humphreys said: "In the next 50 years, with global warming, we are expecting the area of cyclone activity to expand.

"They can come down the Australian east coast and by the middle of the century you might expect places like Brisbane to be impacted by cyclones.

"We have been talking about this for some time but now it seems to be happening."

He said temperature change to the surface of the sea was increasing the frequency and range of cyclones. A cyclone had hit Brazil for the first time since records began.

"This is why so many groups are trying to get governments to take seriously the global warming issue," he said.

Rising sea levels brought on by the melting of the ice caps also meant many cities built next to the ocean were at risk.

Environment Minister Ian Campbell recently commented that the Kyoto protocol, aimed at curbing global warming, was "almost buried" and that the Australian government's decision not to sign had been vindicated.

(Source: Sun-Herald, The Age)

 

The coalition body that governed Iraq spent billions of dollars of Iraqi money on questionable projects, according to a new media report.

When the interim government took control on June 28 last year, the Development Fund for Iraq had little more than $US3 billion left in it. The Coalition Provisional Authority had spent more than $US19 billion of Iraqi funds in 13 months.

Recent UN and US Government investigations found the CPA grossly mismanaged Iraq's money. A US inspector found that $US8.8 billion of Iraqi funds the CPA disbursed to ministries could not be accounted for.

Of the Iraqi money that can be tracked, more than $US1.9 billion was awarded to US companies that did not have to compete for the work.

A UN audit board last month recommended the US repay Iraq up to $US208.5 million for work by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root. It said the work, paid for with Iraqi money, was either overpriced or done poorly. Halliburton, the company US Vice-President Dick Cheney was chief executive of until 2000, is a major donor to the Republican Party. It has won more than $US900 million in Iraqi-funded contracts without competing for them.

US investigators last month charged former CPA officials with fraud. Up to 50 other cases are being investigated.

(Source: The Age)

 

Australian soldiers will being training with an Indonesian unit with a record of human rights abuse.

The SAS will carry out a joint two-week exercise with the Kopassus special forces unit next year.

Australia cut its ties for several years after Kopassus-trained militia killed East Timorese in the lead-up to its independence, fired on Australian soldiers and were linked to the murder and disappearance of political activists in the dying days of former president Soeharto's regime.

There have also been claims Kopassus helped train terrorist groups.

(Source: The Age)

 

A union has been evicted from its offices on several campuses, despite offering to pay commercial rent, in what is alleged to be an attempt by university management to show compliance with the government's anti-union agenda.

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) office at Newcastle University's Callaghan campus received an eviction notice last week.

Chris Game from the NTEU said that "the decision of the Vice Chancellor to lock the union out of its office on Callaghan campus is part of a concerted effort to silence discussion and debate...this decision is aimed at flattering the Commonwealth Minister for Education, Science and Technology, Dr Brendan Nelson.

"Other universities have entered into commercial arrangements with the union, but Dr Saunders will have none of that. He wants to go the extra mile and show how compliant he is by adopting the anti-union mantra of the Government."

The NTEU has offered to pay commercial rent for the space but this was rejected by the University.

Southern Cross University and the University of New England have issued similar eviction notices which become effective at the end of this week.

(Source: The Guardian [Australia])

 

The world has seen the first instance of an entire cultural group displaced by human-influenced climate change, as the inhabitants of a small group of now-uninhabitable Pacific islands are evacuated.

The Carteret Islands have progressively become uninhabitable due to rising sea levels, with increasing flooding, food shortages and water contamination for some thirty years. The inhabitants will be relocated to Bouganville

The islands are expected to be totally underwater by 2015.

Oxford University's Norman Myers estimates that up to 200 million people may be displaced by climate change by 2050.

(Source: Friends of the Earth)

 

John Howard has rejected calls for better vetting procedures for the board of the Reserve Bank, despite revelations that one of the board memebers was the focus of a 14-year investigation by the Tax Office.

When businessman Robert Gerard was appointed by Treasurer Peter Costello in 2003, he made a declaration that he had no outstanding tax issues.

In fact Mr Gerard and his family company, of which he was both chairman and managing director, were the focus of a 14-year investigation by the tax office. The company was found to have engaged in tax evasion.

Mr Gerard has now resigned.

Prime Minister John Howard said that the government would not have asked Mr Gerard to resign, and said that he had been "kicked in the teeth under parliamentary privilege."

Mr Gerard and his companies have donated more than $1 million to the Liberal Party.

Mr Howard rejected calls for more thorough examination of prospective board members on the grounds that "you'll end up dissuading people from being interested in appointments to public positions."

(Source: The Age)