Daily Archives: August 25, 2014

Multiculturalism allows migrants to join Team Australia in their own way and at their own pace, says Tony Abbott.

Australia is an immigrant country and multiculturalism is at the heart of the Australian story, said Prime Minister Tony Abbott this week, while addressing an ethnic media conference in Melbourne.

“I want people to join the team, but there is no Australian test, and the whole point of multiculturalism is to allow people to join the team in their own way and at their own pace,” said the prime minister, who went on to describe his position on multiculturalism as a “very small l liberal, if you like”.

“Except for the indigenous people every single Australian is a migrant, or the descendant of migrants. We should always remember that, particularly when questions are raised about integration and attachments. While those who were born here never had to consciously opt for Australia, every single person who comes here has deliberately, consciously, willingly opted for Australia, he or she has voted with his or her feet for Australia,” said Mr Abbott.

In a wide ranging interview the Prime Minister of Australia amongst others referred to the back down of his government in relation to section 18C of the Race Discrimination Act and the name issue of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, (FYROM). He also committed his support for an expanded export oriented education system, talked about the guiding principles of his foreign policy, clarified certain issues of his new proposed tougher standing on terrorism and indicated that migrants should be prepared to bear the costs of bringing to Australia their elderly parents.

“This is a government which is committed to multicultural Australia and one of the reasons why we decided to drop the proposed changes to section 18C of the Race Discrimination Act was because we don’t want to be needlessly divided.

I made the call in the interest of community harmony, in the interest of trying to ensure that as far as it is humanly possible Australians are pulling in the same direction.

It’s not often governments and Prime Ministers say we didn’t get it right and I’m prepared to accept that on that particular issue we didn’t get it right,” said the Prime Minister.

According to Mr Abbott the three guiding foreign policy principles of his Coalition government are: “We advance our interests, we protect our citizens and we uphold our values.”

Asked about why Australia does not recognise FYROM with its own self proclaimed constitutional name, as other countries do, Tony Abbott said: “It’s a long time since I turned my attention to FYROM as we used to call it in those days. Our natural predisposition is to call countries what they wish to be called, in some instances, for reasons of international diplomacy, we don’t follow the general rule. I’m going to pass on that question. I’ll come back to you”, said the Prime Minister, to the journalist who asked the question.

Speaking about International Education, he described it as a very important Australian export industry and that he would like to see it expanded. Education Minister Christopher Pyne and Immigration and Border Protection Minister Scott Morrison are talking with the sector in order to ensure this can happen he said, whilst emphasising that he would like to see a much greater student exchange program between Australia and other regional countries.

Addressing the issue of possible threats of terrorist acts inside Australia he said that some of the announced extra 630 million dollars that will be allocated will be used to boost biometric screenings in airports, the presence of ASIS abroad and the ability of ASIO to monitor more people in Australia, once they come back from possible trouble spots abroad.

“It is in the interest of every single Australian that we are protected against potential internal terrorist threats. It’s particularly in the interest of our migrant communities that we are protected against potential domestic terrorism, because there are few things that will strain our social fabric as much as a major terrorist event here in Australia. It will strain our social fabric. As Prime Minister my first duty as far as it is humanly possible, is to maintain the safety and the unity of our country,” he said.

“I think it is very important that as far as it is possible, when you come to the new world you are focused to your new home. Naturally, you will cherish what you bring from your old home, but it is the new home and the future rather than the old home and the past which should be our fundamental focus,” he stressed.

Pressed by a relevant Neos Kosmos question, Prime Minister Tony Abbott qualified his words by stating in his concluding remarks that he is not referring to entire communities when he talks about national security, but to individual people “Who have left this country to engage in terrorism abroad” and then come back home.

The Prime Minister was accompanied in his news conference by the Minister for Social Services Kevin Andrews who justified the inclusion of the portfolio of multiculturalism and citizenship in his own Department as a deliberate government policy aiming at providing integrated settlement services to all migrants.

source: Neos Kosmos

Australians enjoy high life expectancy. Source: AAP – Alan Porritt.

Australia’s remote population have death rates 1.5 times higher than those in metropolitan areas – largely due to diabetes and transport accidents.

A report has found that Australian residents born abroad are likely to live longer than those born here. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) compared the death rates of the country’s Australian-born residents to those born abroad in Europe and Asia, as well as other parts of the world.

Asian-born Australian residents had the lowest death rate of the groups, with a 36 per cent lower rate than Australian-born residents.

For Europeans, the death rate is 15 per cent in men and 24 per cent for women.

Despite Australia’s relatively high life expectancy of 82 years, it found some demographical groups were dying earlier than others.

Of those, Australia’s remote population have death rates 1.5 times higher than those in metropolitan areas – largely due to diabetes and transport accidents.

The research found that Australian residents born in England and Ireland showed similar death (and life expectancy) results to Australian born residents, whilst women continue to live longer than men and the death rate among indigenous Australians is twice that of the non-indigenous population.

Source: ABC News

A NSW Liberal MP voted for a controversial council plan to rezone land for a 2000-lot residential development owned by Nathan Tinkler months after receiving a secret $18,000 campaign donation from the businessman.

When Bart Bassett was a local councillor in May 2011, he voted for a new ­residential land strategy for the City of Hawkesbury on Sydney’s north-west fringe. The strategy favoured Mr ­Tinkler’s company, Buildev.

The strategy was approved six months after the coal baron gave $18,000 to Mr Bassett’s successful campaign for the state seat of Londonderry.

The donation was revealed in internal Liberal Party documents tabled at the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Mr Bassett was regularly briefed by Buildev, which in March 2012 made an application to then planning minister Brad Hazzard to give the 180-hectare block high priority “gateway status”.

Mr Bassett, Mr Tinkler and Buildev executives are due to give evidence at the Independent Commission Against Corruption this week and the $18,000 donation is likely to come up.

Mr Bassett is still a member of the Liberal Party sitting in Parliament, unlike nine other MPs who have stood aside or resigned from Parliament in the wake of ICAC revelations about illegal campaign donations.

Mr Bassett did not return messages.

The Buildev campaign to rezone the site in North Richmond known as Yobarnie started in 2008 but suffered a setback about three months before Mr Tinkler made the donation to Mr Bassett’s campaign.

Referred by Kelly

Buildev applied in July 2010 directly to then ALP planning minister Tony Kelly to rezone the rural land for ­residential use, using his power under the Metropolitan Development Program.

While ICAC has found Mr Kelly corrupt in relation to other matters, Mr Kelly decided Buildev’s application was too controversial for him to handle alone, since councillors from the City of Hawkesbury including Mr Bassett had disclosed accepting “less than significant, non-pecuniary” donations from Buildev via their party.

source: afr.com

Palmer United Party Senate leader Glenn Lazarus says it would be “political suicide” for the Government to go ahead with its threat to raise taxes if it cannot get its budget passed.

Yesterday, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann warned that if spending cuts were blocked then “the only alternative to balance the books is to increase taxes”.

Parliament resumes tomorrow after a five-week break marked by meetings between senior ministers and cross-bench senators.

But the talks failed to break the Senate impasse over the Coalition’s plans to cut and change university funding, cut family payments, impose an increase to the fuel excise and a $7 fee on GP visits, X-rays and blood tests.

Senator Lazarus said the Government needed to propose “better” ways to improve the nation’s books.

“It’d be political suicide for the Abbott Government if they did try to introduce more taxes to the Australian public,” he told Fairfax Radio in Brisbane.

“I can’t see that happening.

“We’re very open to ideas, and I just think the Government needs to go back into the party room and sit down with more common sense and come up with better ideas as far as budget measures are concerned.”

The PUP senator, who holds one of eight crucial crossbench seats in the Upper House, instead called for income tax cuts to stimulate the economy.

“We can keep the GST obviously and just reduce income tax,” he said.

“The people of Queensland and Australia having more money in their pocket would spend it more wisely and stimulate the economy.”

Independent accuses Coalition of bullying senators

Independent Lower House MP Andrew Wilkie accused the Government of trying to “bully” the crossbench.

“For the Government now to be trying to bully the crossbenchers in the Senate is completely and utterly unacceptable,” he said.

“Instead of trying to bully the senators, what the Government should be understanding is that they have created a completely unsatisfactory document and they need to go back and redo it.”

But Treasurer Joe Hockey, who has been criticised for his budget sales pitch, said the Government was determined to press ahead and had been “methodically” putting the budget in place.

“Despite the obstructionism of Labor and the Greens, who have offered no solutions of their own, this government is calmly getting on with the job of running the country and negotiating a sustainable budget,” he wrote in today’s Australian Financial Review.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten rejected suggestions the Labor Party had been rendered irrelevant in budget negotiations.

He said the Government was “arrogant” in its approach and had not approached the Opposition over budget compromises.

“They would not dream of talking to us,” he said.

“Labor will vote for sensible measures, as we have, but on these key issues of unfairness Labor must be true to the Australian people.”

Joyce warns debt is like a ‘financial melanoma’

Greens leader Christine Milne also has the votes to dilute the Palmer United Party’s Upper House influence.

She will meet crossbenchers this fortnight to discuss alternative budget savings and to try and find common ground.

But Senator Milne said she was not changing her party’s stance on some contentious measures.

“Tony Abbott’s supposed to be leading some kind of war cabinet in Parliament this week to try and get his budget through,” she said.

“Well he’s very keen on military titles for things, so he should have Operation Drop The Budget, Operation Drop The Co-Payments.”

Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce said while he understood there was concern about budget measures, it would be irresponsible to defer budget savings.

“I understand the concerns people have, I fully understand them, but what is our alternative?” he said.

“We either accept that we’ve got a debt problem and we’ve got to turn it around or we basically say, ‘No, it’s only a small melanoma on our arm and if we just wait long enough it will go away’.

“No, as a financial melanoma, it will kill you.”

source: abc.net.au

Andrei Plekhanov, a researcher at the Scientific Research Center of the Arctic, stands at the entrance to the crater. Photo: AP

In a chaotic world of downed planes, ethnic unrest and missile strikes, international observers settled their attention elsewhere earlier this month. They looked north to Siberia, a land covered in snow and layered in permafrost, where a strange and giant crater had just ripped open the earth. At the time, no one knew where exactly the crater had come from, what was at its bottom, or how it had come to be.

There are sure to be even more questions now.

Two new craters have emerged in Siberia, deepening the giant hole saga. Though not as big as the first crater, which extended hundreds of feet in diameter, these new craters are just as strange.

The original 80-metre wide crater in Siberia. Photo: AP

One of the newly-discovered holes is near the original — in a land referred to by locals as “the end of the world”. It’s around 14 metres in diameter and formed under unknown conditions. Same goes for the other new crater, which has a diameter of 4 metres, a depth of between 61 and 100 metres and was discovered by “mystified” herders near the village of Nosok in the icy Krasnoyarsk region.

“It is not like this is the work of men,” one expert explained to the Siberian Times, which has been hot on the giant crater story from the get-go. “But [it] also doesn’t look like natural formation.”

Even politicians have been drawn by the brouhaha. “I flew by helicopter to inspect this funnel on July 19,” local lawmaker Mikhail Lapsui told the Siberian Times, saying it looks much like the original crater, only smaller, with a small ice lake at its base. “There is also ground outside, as if it was thrown as a result of an underground explosion.”

Locals can’t seem to get their stories straight over what happened, he explained. “According to local residents, the hole formed on September 27, 2013. Observers give several versions. According to the first, initially the place was smoking and then there was a bright flash. In the second version, a celestial body fell there.”

A bright flash? A “celestial” body? Can science help out this mess?

“Undoubtedly, we need to study all such formations,” Marina Leibman, the chief scientist of the Earth Cryosphere Institute, told URA.RU. “It is necessary to be able to predict their occurrence. Each new funnel provides additional information for scientists.”

There’s been no shortage of theories. Hypotheses have ranged from asteroids to an underground missile explosion to global warming, a melt of the permafrost. Scientist Anna Kurchatova, in an interview with the Siberian Times, suggested that melting could produce an effect similar to a champagne bottle when the cork pops, except on a giant scale.

Studies have indeed shown that the Arctic is heating up. Grist reports one paper in the Geophysical Research Papers suggests that the region hasn’t been so hot in the last 120,000 years. Still, even with more information than before on the Arctic region, it remains so distant a land that it can be difficult to get a good read on it.

“For that reason, the Arctic continually surprises scientists,” writes Slate’s Eric Holthaus. “Just like last week.”

source: smh.com.au