THE FRONT PAGES
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
Australia
Elections
Dig dirt, Turnbull office urges – Malcolm Turnbull’s office has been been advising Coalition press secretaries to demonise special interest groups and attack public servants as fat cats. A leaked email from the Opposition Leader’s office, obtained yesterday by The Australian, also urged press secretaries to feed the perception that politicians were like pigs with their “snouts in the trough” – The Australian
New boundaries make things tougher for Coalition – The final boundaries for next year’s election mean the embattled Coalition has to win several more seats than under the old boundaries, although there has been little change in the swing it needs – Melbourne Age
Immigration
UN puts Rudd policies in spotlight – Kevin Rudd’s mmigration policies are set to come under scrutiny from the United Nations and a leading international human rights group in a move that could affect the Government’s quest to improve Australia’s global standing – Sydney Morning Herald
Law and order
ACC rapped over file on ex-minister – Australia’s elite crime-fighting agency should reform its handling of top secret information, according to an inquiry into the creation and leaking of a file that documented the personal habits and views of a cabinet minister – Melbourne Age
Education
School heads to get more control – State education departments should hand control of school finances and the power to hire teachers to principals and school boards, reversing a century of bureaucratic stranglehold over the running of schools. A federal government report, released to The Australian, argues that the starting point in school governance should devolve decision-making to the school level, allowing principals to respond to the individual needs of the students and their communities – The Australian
School textbook ‘fuels anti- Semitism’ – The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies has asked for the immediate withdrawal of a book that schools use as an HSC text, which it says contains anti-Semitic slurs – Sydney Morning Herald
Principals demand smaller class sizes – NSW primary school principals will press the State Government to reduce class sizes for students in years three to six, following the successful reduction in those for the earlier grades – Sydney Morning Herald
Industrial relations
Qantas hits TWU for strike compo – The nation’s workplace watchdog has joined with Qantas in a bid to have significant financial penalties imposed on a major union and its senior officials for authorising industrial action over security concerns at four capital city airports – The Australian
Development
Police investigate ‘bribe’ linked to asbestos – Victoria Police has been formally asked to investigate allegations of bribery and corruption at the Mercy Hospital site in East Melbourne after a secret recording implicated a prominent developer in a $57,000 ”bribe” offer – Melbourne Age
Infrastructure
Labor claims credit for Howard work – Nerly three-quarters of projects claimed by the Rudd government as evidence of its delivery of major new infrastructure were conceived by John Howard – The Australian
Apologies
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to apologise to Forgotten Australians who grew up in brutal institutions – Sydney Daily Telegraph
Political lurks and perks
MPs pay soars but Senate sitting days to be cut – MPs’ pay has soared more than $40,000 in a decade but the Senate is set to sit for just 50 days next year – Melbourne Herald Sun
Security
Accused terrorist allegedly thanked Allah for Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfires – The shocking claim was revealed in court documents as four men were sent for trial accused of plotting a suicide mission to kill soldiers at an Australian army base – Melbourne Herald Sun
Opinions
Let’s see some real differences in policy direction – writes Malcolm Colless in The Australian as the opposition will face a long spell in the wilderness until it works out what it stands for
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd shelters behind asylum mantra – Dennis Atkins in the Brisbane Courier Mail says trust, conviction and credibility are gold for leaders, which is why Kevin Rudd keeps refusing to apologise for his asylum seeker policies.
Powerbrokers choke growth of our cities – Michael Stutchbury writes in The Australian that Australia’s infrastructure bottlenecks already are destabilising the national economy through rising house prices. This disturbing development risks pushing up interest rates higher in the short term while raising seriouslonger-term doubts about how our cities will accommodate the projected 60 per cent increase in the nation’s population over the next four decades.
We failed the GFC test – says Tim COlebatch in the Melbourne Age because a policy of adding more and more debt is foolhardy.
PM makes no apologies for being unapologetic – Annabel Crabb in the Sydney Morning Herald notes that Kevin Rudd has become increasingly, even defiantly unrepentant.
Wielding the whip on asylum seekers: both sides have done it – Gerard Henderson in the Sydney Morning Herald writes that the task facing Kevin Rudd over asylum seekers is not an easy one. Yet Rudd Labor has demonstrated its ability to run a consistent political line. The Liberal Party, under Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership, has had much more difficulty in presenting a coherent case.
Elsewhere
US health care
Insurers poised to reap benefits from healthcare overhaul – The specifics of the healthcare legislation are still being hashed out on Capitol Hill, and key details will evolve in the days ahead. Even so, there is broad agreement that the final plan will, for the first time, require Americans to buy health coverage, with taxpayer subsidies for millions who cannot afford it. For the health insurance industry, that means millions of new paying customers – Los Angeles Times
BUSINESS
Macquarie takes big hit in Europe – The value of Macquarie Group’s billions of dollars worth of holdings in debt-laden infrastructure funds faces renewed pressure following the sale of a stake in one of its flagship European funds at a discount of nearly 15 per cent to a valuation made just months ago – Sydney Morning Herald
TAC in $2m contract furore – The Transport Accident Commission awarded a $2 million contract to a consulting firm associated with one of its directors without a tender process, prompting conflict-of-interest claims – Melbourne Age
Westpac group executive Peter Hanlon admits shutting down bank branches was wrong – Sydney Daily Telegraph
Investors rush Myer float in $1bn grab for stake – The Australian
ENVIRONMENT
$2bn threat from rising oceans – More than 80,000 coastal buildings in Victoria are at risk and large parts of Western Port are likely to be swamped as climate change triggers rising seas, floods and erosion, a report to Federal Parliament has warned – Melbourne Age
Make evacuation plans – Urgent action to cope with the impact of rising sea levels needs to start now, including improving evacuation routes for coastal communities during extreme storms and flooding. As well, a sweeping federal parliamentary report calls for an overhaul of the building code to make homes more resilient and for the legal liability for future property losses to be sorted out – Sydney Morning Herald
Queensland coastline has perilous future under climate change – Brisbane Courier Mail
Beachfront blitz to curb development – A Federal parliamentary report has flagged new powers that would allow Canberra to block what it sees as inappropriate beachfront developments – The Australian
Industry anger at bluefin tuna cut – The Rudd government has welcomed a decision to drastically slash Australia’s lucrative southern bluefin tuna catch, despite criticism from the fishing industry that it unfairly penalises local efforts to boost fish stocks while letting Japanese overfishing off the hook – The Australian
MEDIA
WSJ editor lowers boom on Google’s news ‘promiscuity’ – Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson has again opened fire on Google, accusing the internet giant of promoting online news reading “promiscuity” – The Australian
LIFE
The punt
Punters are tipped to splurge a record $1.67 billion on the four-day Flemington racing carnival – Melbourne Herald Sun
A tale of two cities
Cut speed to let our cyclists live – Speed limits on some arterial roads should be reduced to 50km/h and all residential areas should be 40km/h, Bicycle SA says – Adelaide Advertiser
Bus driver should be trained in self-defence after vicious assault by cyclist – Sydney Daily Telegraph also is running a poll asking readers: Who annoys you more cyclists or bus drivers?
Real estate
Strong auction clearances give Reserve Bank further reason to lift official interest rate – The Australian reports that strong weekend for property auctions has intensified pressure on the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates.
Fats
Carr spitting chips over the use of ‘killer’ trans fats – Former NSW Premier Bob Carr has declared war on killer cooking fat, and the former premier has his sights on fish and chip shops and charcoal chicken stores. He wants local councils to make take away shops promise not to use trans fats for deep or shallow frying when preparing food in order to get development consent – Sydney Morning Herald
Following is extracted from “Greenie Watch”
The Maldives stunt: Sea level expert’s open letter to the President of the Maldives
Letter below received by email. The author, Professor Dr. Nils-Axel Moerner, is a leading world authority on sea levels and coastal erosion who headed the Department of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University
Open Letter to President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives
Mr. President,
You have recently held an undersea Cabinet meeting to raise awareness of the idea that global sea level is rising and hence threatens to drown the Maldives. This proposition is not founded in observational facts and true scientific judgements, Accordingly it is incorrect. Therefore, I am most surprised at your action and must protest to its intended message.
In 2001, when our research group found overwhelming evidence that sea level was by no means in a rising mode in the Maldives, but had remained quite stable for the last 30 years, I thought it would not be respectful to the fine people of the Maldives if I were to return home and present our results in international fora. Therefore, I announced this happy news during an interview for your local TV station. However, your predecessor as president censored and stopped the broadcast.
When you became president, I was hoping both for democracy and for dialogue. However, I have written to you twice without reply. Your people ought not to have to suffer a constant claim that there is no future for them on their own islands. This terrible message is deeply inappropriate, since it is founded not upon reality but upon an imported concept, which lacks scientific justification and is thus untenable. There is simply no rational basis for it.
Let me summarize a few facts (see Fig. 1, and evidence presented in M”rner, 2007):
(1) In the last 2000 years, sea level has oscillated with 5 peaks reaching 0.6 to 1.2 m above the present sea level.
(2) From 1790 to 1970 sea level was about 20 cm higher than today.
(3) In the 1970s, sea level fell by about 20 cm to its present level.
(4) Sea level has remained stable for the last 30 years, implying that there are no traces of any alarming on-going sea level rise.
(5) Therefore, we are able to free the Maldives (and the rest of low-lying coasts and island around the globe) from the condemnation of becoming flooded in the near future.
When I was president for the INQUA commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution (1999-2003), we spent much effort on the question of present-to-future sea level changes. After intensive field studies, deliberation within the commission and discussions at five international meeting, we agreed on a “best estimate” for possible sea level changes by the year 2100. Our figure was +10 cm ñ10 cm. This figure was later revised at +5 cm ñ15 cm (as given in Fig. 1).
Such changes would imply small to negligible effects. From our sea level curve in Fig. 1, we can directly see that such a small rise would pose no threat for the Maldives. Rather, it would be a natural return to the conditions existing from 1790 to 1970; i.e. to the position before the sea level fall in the 1970s.
The same non-rising sea level story is recorded for all other areas claimed to be under a flooding already in progress; viz. Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Venice (Moerner, 2007b).
Besides, the proposed global trend derived from satellite altimetry has been tampered by a “personal correction” in order to create a rising trend (Moerner, 2008), actually not measured..
Thermal expansion of the water column may affect the ocean level by some centimetres to a decimetre. At the shore, however, the effect is zero (Moerner, 2000, 2005a, 2009a).
So, Mr. President, when you ignore to face available observational facts, refuse a normal democratic dialogue, and continue to menace your people with the imaginary threat of a disastrous flooding already in progress, I think you are doing a serious mistake.
Let us be constructive. Let us discuss available observational facts. Let us continue and extend our sea level project to new sites in the huge Maldivian atoll archipelago. And let us, for Heaven’s sake, lift the terrible psychological burden that you and your predecessor have placed upon the shoulders of all people in the Maldives, who are now living with the imagined threat that flooding will soon drive them from their homes, a wholly false notion that is nothing but an armchair fiction artificially constructed by mere computer modelling constantly proven wrong by meticulous real-world observations.
Your cabinet meeting under the water is nothing but a misdirected gimmick or PR stunt. Al Gore is a master in such cheap techniques. But such misconduct is dishonest, unproductive and certainly most un-scientific.
Stockholm, Sweden, October 20, 2009 Nils-Axel Moerner Head of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University, Sweden (1991-2005) President of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution (1999-2003) Leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project (2000 on) Chairman of the INTAS project on Geomagnetism and Climate (1997-2003) Awarded the Golden Condrite of Merit from Algarve University (2008) “for his irreverence and contribution to our understanding of sea level change”
Not that I automatically reject all this, but I point out that:
a) Professors of geological sciences have gone barking mad before and even published large books.
b) He’s right about the effect of thermal expansion being about 10cm, but melting the ice sheets is a whole another kettle of fish. Or, indeed, allowing them to fall of their continents and float away to melt in small iceberg sized increments.
Anyhoo, not wanting to get into another round of quote the expert, I just wanted to point out that the problems for coastal real estate do not begin when the waters rise up and claim the gold coast – they begin when banks and insurance agents begin to believe that their assets are not going to last 30 years and refuse to issue mortages or insurance. Since you can’t issue a mortgage on an uninsurable property, the latter is just a few freaky storms away. And since the cash price of any real estate is about 10% of purchase, that is a whole lot of rising tide of debt preceding any rise in the waters.
That Moerner letter was odd. I have chronic distrust of scientists that heavily reference their own work, and little else. Then insulting Al Gore? I think his motives are obvious.
I also didn’t understand how the height in the water column could change but the observation at the coast doesn’t change? Call Archimedes stat.
Further, the CSIRO thinks the sea is rising.
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/
But they’re known lefty-crypto-communists hell bent on world domination and destruction by opposing the global oligarchy.