Monday, 28 November 2005

Calls for silence at moment of execution, The Australian, 28 November, 2005. Additional reporting. Page One.

Call for silence at moment of execution: [2 All-round First Edition]

Elizabeth Colman, Steve Lewis, Additional reporting by Samantha Maiden, John Stapleton, Padraic Murphy and James Madden.. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 28 Nov 2005: 1.
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As momentum grows for Australians to stop and recognise the execution, John Howard warned Singapore yesterday thatAustralians' anger would linger if Van was executed.
The former Melbourne salesman will be executed on Friday at 6am Singapore time, or 9am in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, 8am in Queensland, 8.30am in South Australia, 7.30am in the Northern Territory and 6am in Western Australia.
Friends Bronwyn Lew and Kelly Ng arrived in Singapore yesterday wearing ribbons and Van's lawyer, Lex Lasry QC, said he would be wearing one when he arrives in Singapore later this week. A campaign for a minute's silence was yesterday supported by church leaders and Liberal backbencher Bruce Baird, with Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and federal Labor deeming the gesture appropriate.

CHURCH leaders and members from both sides of Australian politics have called for the nation to stop and observe a minute's silence on Friday when convicted drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van is due to be hanged.
As momentum grows for Australians to stop and recognise the execution, John Howard warned Singapore yesterday thatAustralians' anger would linger if Van was executed.
The Prime Minister's meeting with his Singapore counterpart, Lee Hsien Loong, during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Malta was thought to be the last hope of clemency for Van, 25.
The former Melbourne salesman will be executed on Friday at 6am Singapore time, or 9am in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, 8am in Queensland, 8.30am in South Australia, 7.30am in the Northern Territory and 6am in Western Australia.
Van's close friends yesterday urged people to adopt the yellow ribbon as a symbol of support for the condemned man.
Friends Bronwyn Lew and Kelly Ng arrived in Singapore yesterday wearing ribbons and Van's lawyer, Lex Lasry QC, said he would be wearing one when he arrives in Singapore later this week. A campaign for a minute's silence was yesterday supported by church leaders and Liberal backbencher Bruce Baird, with Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and federal Labor deeming the gesture appropriate.
"I would certainly at the time it might happen have a moment of reflection," Mr Ruddock said.
Mr Ruddock did not believe the death penalty "in civil society ... has any place".
"I've been a fervent opponent of the death penalty all my life and all my public life," Mr Ruddock told The Australian last night. "I don't think in a civilised society it has any place. I would be very concerned at what I regard as barbaric behaviour."
Mr Baird said he believed all Australians were "deeply disturbed" by Van's story.
"I call on all Australians to observe one minute's silence at 9am on Friday, to express our compassion for this young Australian and our opposition to the imposition of this barbaric sentence," he said.
Uniting Church in Australia president Dean Drayton also supported "a public statement opposing capital punishment".
"The Uniting Church has constantly supported the move worldwide to abolish the death sentence," Dr Drayton said. "The issue is thevalue of human life, even when the person has done wrong."
Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president Francis
Continued -- Page 2
From Page 1
Carroll also supported the minute's silence.
"The community has had an extraordinary interest in this and it is not a bad idea," Archbishop Carroll said. "We are opposed to thedeath penalty in general. We simply don't think it is an appropriate response to crimes."
Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls, who flew to Singapore last week in a further bid to save Van's life, said the silent protest would be an appropriate gesture of support.
"Keeping in mind that he has committed a crime, the Victorian Government opposes the death penalty and supports the idea of a minute's silence," Mr Hulls said.
The calls come as lawyers continued last-minute arguments to have Van's case put to the International Court of Justice.
Professor Donald Rothwell, Challis Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney, yesterday wrote to Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on instruction from Mr Lasry.
Professor Rothwell called on Canberra to ask Singapore again to take the matter to the International Court, saying the nation had accepted the court's jurisdiction in the past.
Mr Howard said that he "specifically raised the issue of the jurisdiction of the (ICJ) and (Mr Lee) made it very clear that Singapore would not change its position".
He emerged grim-faced from his meeting with Mr Lee, his plea for clemency -- and another by New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark -- having failed.
"I can promise you I've tried in all the appropriate ways to persuade them to do otherwise and I regret that I have been unsuccessful," he said.
Van was arrested at Changi airport three years ago while in transit from Cambodia to Australia with 400g of heroin in his possession. He has maintained he agreed to courier the drugs to pay off the debts of his heroin-addicted twin brother, Khoa.
Labor foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said he would "be pausing wherever I am in Sydney for a minute's silent observance ... if Singapore proceeds with this appalling decision to execute Van by hanging".
Mr Rudd called on the Government to "listen carefully to what the lawyers are saying about taking the action to the international court". He said: "If Singapore rejects the jurisdiction of the court, let them do so publicly and explain why."
Kim Beazley called for Mr Howard to give permission for a bipartisan delegation comprised of Mr Downer and Mr Rudd to make a final appeal this week to Mr Lee.
A spokesman for Mr Downer said the appeal would be "superfluous".
Editorial -- Page 9
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Wednesday, 23 November 2005

Happy ending for model, but story still unsold, The Australian, 23 November, 2005.

Happy ending for model, but story still unsold: [1 All-round Country Edition]

John Stapleton, Elizabeth Gosch, Additional reporting: Stephen Fitzpatrick. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 23 Nov 2005: 6.
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UNDERWEAR model and convicted drug user Michelle Leslie had two Cinderella moments on her return to Australia yesterday -- first losing a shoe in a media scrum at Sydney airport followed by a happily-ever-after reunion with millionaire boyfriend Scott Sutton.
Amid continuing efforts by her media manager Sean Mulcahy to sell her story, something even John Howard said yesterday he was opposed to, Leslie arrived in Sydney from Singapore determined to keep her powder dry.
Mr Mulcahy, who was hired by Mr Sutton immediately after her arrest three months ago to handle the media, said Leslie finally met Mr Sutton and her parents yesterday afternoon somewhere on Sydney's northern beaches.

UNDERWEAR model and convicted drug user Michelle Leslie had two Cinderella moments on her return to Australia yesterday -- first losing a shoe in a media scrum at Sydney airport followed by a happily-ever-after reunion with millionaire boyfriend Scott Sutton.
Amid continuing efforts by her media manager Sean Mulcahy to sell her story, something even John Howard said yesterday he was opposed to, Leslie arrived in Sydney from Singapore determined to keep her powder dry.
After a few words to the waiting press at the airport - "I am really tired, the events of the last three months have turned my life upside down" - she was escorted by a team of Protective Service officers into a waiting black BMW, losing a shoe in the process.
Her vehicle was one of three identical cars, which then tried to put the pursuing press pack off the scent.
Leslie, 24, went to the inner-west suburb of Balmain, where she boarded a water taxi in an effort to make her escape.
Mr Mulcahy, who was hired by Mr Sutton immediately after her arrest three months ago to handle the media, said Leslie finally met Mr Sutton and her parents yesterday afternoon somewhere on Sydney's northern beaches.
"It was a very emotional reunion, a lot of tears shed. She's just very glad to be back home," he said.
Mr Mulcahy last night told The Australian his remaining business commitment to Leslie was to sell the story she said would clear her name, "then she'll move on with her career". He said he had received several offers.
But the Prime Minister was counselling Leslie against seeking to profit from her conviction.
"Many Australians, including me, do not believe that she should profit from telling her story," Mr Howard said yesterday.
Last night, New Idea magazine backed away from its negotiations for Leslie's story after federal Justice Minister Chris Ellison warned she should take legal advice before proceeding, given the robust laws that precluded Australians from profiting from the proceeds of crime even if committed overseas.
"Although, like the rest of the media in Australia, we appreciate the interest in this story, New Idea does not pay convicted criminals,"the company said in a statement.
As recently as Monday, the magazine's editor, Robyn Foyster, told The Australian it was waiting on legal advice to clear the way for a purchase.
Commercial television networks are also understood to have ruled out bidding for Leslie's story.
However, media and public relations expert Max Markson praised Leslie's legal and PR team for the way they handled her situation.
"If you have talent like that and the media want the story, the only way you can possibly maintain the exclusivity is by taking them off to a safe house and putting them somewhere," he said.
Mr Markson said the few sentences that Leslie spoke to the media, far from ruining the exclusivity, would only prime the interest inthe story further.
However, celebrity agent Harry M. Miller said the people surrounding Leslie had been talking too much. "My advice to everyone is to shut up."

Also published on news.com.au


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Saturday, 19 November 2005

Payout deal to make Alvarez a millionaire, Weekend Australian, 19 November, 2005.

Payout deal to make Alvarez a millionaire: [1 All-round Country Edition]

Stapleton, John. Weekend Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 19 Nov 2005: 3.

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Ms [VIVIAN Alvarez], who came to Australia in 1984 with husband Robert Young and became an Australian citizen in 1986, was found in a dishevelled state in the northern NSW town of Lismore in March 2001. She was taken to a psychiatric unit before being mistakenly deported. In May this year she was found living in a hospice in The Phillipines.
VIVIAN Alvarez will be a multi-millionaire at the end of her wrongful deportation compensation case, a lawyer said yesterday.
Ms Alvarez flew into Sydney yesterday morning after being wrongfully deported to The Phillipines in 2001 but she said nothing at the airport or at a subsequent press conference.
Instead her high-profile lawyer, former Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld, did the talking.
"A lot," Mr Einfeld said when asked how much the compensation claim was likely to be. "It is very substantial."
"In the millions?" he was asked. "Yes," he replied.
Mr Einfeld said his client had been in constant pain for four years, had suffered brain damage and an "appalling series of traumas", could barely walk, spent most of her time in a wheelchair and would need specialist orthopaedic, psychiatric, neurological and physical care.
"You can't give back someone four years of her life, you can't compensate for lack of freedom", Mr Einfeld said.
Ms Alvarez, who came to Australia in 1984 with husband Robert Young and became an Australian citizen in 1986, was found in a dishevelled state in thenorthern NSW town of Lismore in March 2001. She was taken to a psychiatric unit before being mistakenly deported. In May this year she was found living in a hospice in The Phillipines.
Mr Einfeld said she had little recollection of her two children, a 17-year-old boy who lives with his father and another boy who is in foster care in Queensland.

ORIGINAL:

 John Stapleton 

VIVIAN Alvarez was on a single mother's pension when she was found wandering the streets of Lismore in a dishevelled state. She was picked up and taken to the psychiatric unit of Lismore hospital in 2001.
She is soon, courtesy of the taxpayer and as a result of her mistreatment, to become a multi-millionaire.
Legal fees are also likely to run into the millions - from the lawyers and barristers representing her to their colleagues, the lawyers, barristers and legal assistants from the Department of Immigration.
An Australian citizen since 1986, Alvarez was subsequently wrongly deported back to her country of origin the Phillipines and became a cause celebre for critics of the already scandal ridden Immigration Department.
Recognised by a priest in a hospice for the dying in May, 2005, her lawyers, led by the magisterial former Federal Court justice Marcus Einfeld, refused to bring Alvarez back to Australia until the arbitration process was agreed on, ensuring that her case, with the ready assistance of the media, remained a thorn in the side of the Howard government until it was resolved.
That her legal advisers refused to bring Alvarez back to Australia, and instead were happy to have her housed at an Australian Commission flat in Manila, may at first seem paradoxical but was integral to the success of her legal teams strategy.
As a result of adroit moves by her solicitors, Alvarez is likely to become a multi-millionaire as a result of a hefty compensation payout.
In a win win situation for everyone but the Australian taxpayer, the lawyers themselves are likely to be very well compensed for their part in the drama.
How that deal was done is a story in itself; and shows some extremely clever legal maneouvering and a profound, if cynical, understanding of how the Australian court system operates.
The arbitration process to determine compensation, to be held in private and presided over by former High Court chief justice Sir Anthony Mason, will be conducted in secret, or ``private'' as the lawyers prefer to put it.
Parties to the proceedings have all signed confidentiality agreements.
In other words, a process to cost the Australian tax payers millions of dollars will not be open even to the normal journalistic scrutiny of a court case.
But for every day that passes in this process her legal team, including Einfeld, a ``team'' of barristers and her high profile lawyer George Newhouse, will all be paid their standard fees, which can easily run into thousands of dollars a day.
Her team can expect to fully recover the monies they spent travelling to the Phillipines and making contact with Alvarez and her family.
As Einfeld pointed out at the one and only press conference held since her return - a press conference where his client did not speak a single word - Alvarez would have had almost no chance of obtaining proper compensation if she had returned earlier and been left to struggle through the court system.
For by the time she had mounted a compensation claim through the civil courts, and the case had bounced around the higher courts on appeal, many years could have passed before Alvarez saw a single cent. Meanwhile, already in a wheelchair and allegedly suffering considerable pain, she would have had no means of properly caring for herself, much less mounting a complex legal claim.
Instead of leaving her case to the vagaries of the Australian legal system Einfeld and his team were determined that she would have a Rolls Royce ride through to the compensation dollar.
This ride, as Einfeld was happy to declare, has been made very much easier by the government and especially the Prime Minister's apology and admission of liability.
Folded into this is compensation for an alleged car accident, which arguably led to various injuries and a serious deterioration Ms Alvarez's condition and which was untreated due to her mistreatment and deportation.
Beyond her alleged injuries, there is little proof of the car accident. There was no police report filed, no one came forward to say they had run into a pedestrian and were concerned about her condition, and Ms Alvarez is unable to describe what sort of vehicle may or may not have hit her.
That Ms Alvarez was expriencing problems prior to the alleged accident is evidenced by the fact that the previous month she had failed to collect her son from a Brisbane day-care centre. That child is now in foster care. Another boy, 17, lives with his father.
With so little evidence, it is lucky for Vivian and for her lawyers that the issue of compensation for her car accident has been folded, by agreement, into the compensation claim for wrongful deportation.
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Thursday, 17 November 2005

In boom times, good things come in threes, The Australian, 17 November, 2005.

In boom times, good things come in threes: [1 All-round Country Edition]

John Stapleton, Leticia Makin. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 17 Nov 2005: 5.
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Liberal backbencher Malcolm Turnbull said a strong economy had been fundamental to the turnaround. "The best guarantee that families have and the best encouragement to have children is a strong economy," Mr Turnbull said yesterday at a Sydney conference on demography and generational change.
Mr Turnbull, weighing into another policy area favoured by Treasurer Peter Costello, said an ageing, dwindling workforce created a significant and expensive social problem for the nation's fewer and fewer workers.
The Northern Territory was the most fertile state with 2.24 births per woman, while the Australian Capital Territory was the most unproductive with only 1.64, well below the replacement birthrate of 2.1.
NOT since the end of the post-war baby boom in the mid-1960s have Australia's thirtysomething women been so fertile.
New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal the nation's overall fertility rate rose slightly last year from 1.75 babies per woman to 1.77 on theback of a big increase in births to older women.
Women are waiting longer to have children, with births for 20- to 29-year-old women continuing to decline. The average age for women giving birth to their first child rose to 30.6 years while the median age of first-time fathers rose to 32.8 years.
Last year, 254,200 births were registered in Australia, an increase of 3100 on the previous year and the highest in a decade.
Liberal backbencher Malcolm Turnbull said a strong economy had been fundamental to the turnaround. "The best guarantee that families have and the best encouragement to have children is a strong economy," Mr Turnbull said yesterday at a Sydney conference on demography and generational change.
"The turnaround in fertility is (because of) a combination of sustained economic growth, which gives people confidence to have children, and the Howard Government's very focused family-friendly policies," he said.
"Children are a social good. We all have a vested interest in each other's children."
Mr Turnbull, weighing into another policy area favoured by Treasurer Peter Costello, said an ageing, dwindling workforce created a significant and expensive social problem for the nation's fewer and fewer workers.
The Northern Territory was the most fertile state with 2.24 births per woman, while the Australian Capital Territory was the most unproductive with only 1.64, well below the replacement birthrate of 2.1.
ABS demographer Joanna Forster-Jones said the Government's $3000 baby bonus, which rises to $4000 next year, had yet to be reflected in the statistics.
Sydney mother Penny Pitcairn said that for her friends, three children had recently become a more common number as their financial situation improved.
"I was a reluctant mother, but I gave myself six months to have a baby and ended up loving my first pregnancy and then thinking I could do that two or three more times and afford to do it quickly," Ms Pitcairn said.
The mother of three credits the decision to have children late to the independence she had earned as a career public servant.
"My financial independence keeps me going back to work and I wouldn't want to lose it. It is something that is very important for women these days and it allows me to juggle motherhood and a career better than if I had been younger," she said.
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Wednesday, 16 November 2005

It's for the students, say teachers - IR REVOLUTION, The Australian, 16 November, 2005.

It's for the students, say teachers - IR REVOLUTION: [1 All-round Country Edition]

John Stapleton, Dan Box. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 16 Nov 2005: 8.
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In Victoria, 100 schools closed completely and 1500 others operated on reduced staff levels as 20,000 teachers attended the nation's biggest rally in Melbourne's CBD.
While half the teachers at Ultimo Primary School in inner-Sydney attended the rally, the others remained as a skeleton staff to supervise children.
NSW Opposition Leader Peter Debnam said the decision by 2500 truck drivers and transport workers to block Sydney's M4 motorway yesterday morning was the work of "ratbags".
TEACHERS have denied shortchanging students and parents by attending the national protest, saying the IR reforms could damage education standards.
Many of the nation's 6900 public schools joined the protest, leaving parents to juggle children and work commitments to cope with teachers' morning stop-work meetings.
In Victoria, 100 schools closed completely and 1500 others operated on reduced staff levels as 20,000 teachers attended the nation's biggest rally in Melbourne's CBD.
While half the teachers at Ultimo Primary School in inner-Sydney attended the rally, the others remained as a skeleton staff to supervise children.
Ultimo Primary teacher Melissa Cox said the new IR laws would make our society "even more `have and have not"'.
"It is not just ratbag radicals demonstrating," she said. "It is normal people who want to maintain their way of life."
She said teachers felt their responsibilities to the children very heavily and said they had not been left exposed in any way.
Fellow teacher Vicky O'Reagan said there had been "a long history of intense struggle to enjoy the gains we have made".
"It is unfair for someone to come along and wipe out the struggles we have fought for generations," she said.
Carpenter Peter Fletcher, whose daughter Charlotte, 7, attends the school, said he supported the teachers' decision to protest.
"I've done 20, 25 years of work already so I'm in the back of it, but my kids have another 15 years before they enter the workforce and I'm really worried about the conditions they will face now."
NSW Parents and Citizens Association president Sharryn Brownlee said she had received no complaints about the teachers' stop-work action.
NSW Opposition Leader Peter Debnam said the decision by 2500 truck drivers and transport workers to block Sydney's M4 motorway yesterday morning was the work of "ratbags".
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