Saturday 30 June 2007

Help, not jail, credited for drug victories, Weekend Australian, 30 June, 2007.

Help, not jail, credited for drug victories: [5 Travel Edition]

Stapleton, John. Weekend Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 30 June 2007: 25.
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"If you are standing in the dock, what you want is options," he says. "Addiction is a sickness of the mind. I am pleading for greater recognition that addiction is an illness."
He says Australia's success in tackling its high levels of drug use now need to be consolidated. "One of the lessons I hope can be learnt from Australia's experience is that other countries don't have to get into such a severe situation before they act," he says.
"You lose the ability to even wash yourself, to do all the normal things," he says. "There are people dying because they can't get into rehabilitation, there are waiting lists or they just don't know there are ways out. There needs to be more effort to get people into recovery."
THE dramatic drop in illegal drug use by Australians over the past decade -- more marked than in any other country in the world -- has been praised by a top international expert as a lesson from which other countries could learn.
United Nations drug authority Antonio Costa, executive director of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime based in Vienna, ended a visit to Australia last week during which he attempted to understand the reasons behind the drop, talking to everyone from recovering addicts to the Prime Minister.
At the end of his trip he visited a rehabilitation centre, We Help Ourselves, in central Sydney.
Australia's use of marijuana, heroin and amphetamines reached epidemic proportions in 1998, with 20 per cent of the population using illegal drugs and surveys showing some of the worst addiction rates in the world.
Since then there has been a 5 per cent drop, with rates continuing to trend sharply downwards. The level of heroin use in the community has dropped from 0.8 to 0.2 per cent of the adult population, and heroin overdoses have dropped from a peak of more than 1100 in 1999 to fewer than 400 today.
Costa, the world's leading guru on drug prevention programs, says a report on Australia's success story, Heading In The Right Direction, will be available within the month.
"What we are asking is why drug use in Australia has seen such an impressive drop," he says.
He says court diversion programs, which offer addicts the choice of being treated like criminals or sent to rehabilitation centres, have taken many drug users out of the criminal justice system.
"If you are standing in the dock, what you want is options," he says. "Addiction is a sickness of the mind. I am pleading for greater recognition that addiction is an illness."
Costa says countries that have successfully battled high addiction rates have one thing in common -- they pour large sums of money into rehabiliation services and treat addiction as a medical rather than law and order problem.
He says Australia's success in tackling its high levels of drug use now need to be consolidated. "One of the lessons I hope can be learnt from Australia's experience is that other countries don't have to get into such a severe situation before they act," he says.
At the We Help Ourselves centre many recovering addicts are insistent that the country needs more detoxification and rehabilitation services, and that waiting lists are still way too long.
A 31-year-old Adelaide man says his use of heroin and ice had spiralled out of control, leaving him depressed to the point of suicide and living on the streets. He became so frightened of what he felt sure was his impending death that he sought help.
"You lose the ability to even wash yourself, to do all the normal things," he says. "There are people dying because they can't get into rehabilitation, there are waiting lists or they just don't know there are ways out. There needs to be more effort to get people into recovery."
Executive director of We Help Ourselves, Garth Popple, says a significant factor in turning Australian drug use around has been the unprecedented $1.5 billion in funding provided through the National Drug Strategy over the last decade. "Access to detoxification and rehabilitation services has been the key," he says.
Doctor John Herron, Chairman of the Australian National Council on Drugs, says thousands of lives have been saved. "The visit to Australia by the world's leading drug expert shows we can be proud of our record," he says.
"Tackling major traffickers has dried up street supplies of drugs, at the same time as a substantial increasing in treatment availability has led to many people seeking help and returning to productive lives."
TABLE: DRUG USE
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Friday 29 June 2007

McKew ready to stare down PM - KEY MARGINAL, The Australian, 29 June, 2007. Picture Renee Nowytarger.



McKew ready to stare down PM - KEY MARGINAL: [6 NSW Country Edition]

Stapleton, John. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 29 June 2007: 4.
Show highlighting
Labor takes heart from the Liberals' attempt at ambush marketing. The poster is a sign the Prime Minister's marginal and ethnically diverse electorate of Bennelong, in Sydney's north, will be closely fought.
"Right across Australia there is a mood for change," Mr [Kevin Rudd] said. "They have seen this Government going a bridge too far: on industrial relations, on Iraq."
"I can win this election," she said. "That is not an arrogant statement. I am not alone. This is a target marginal seat. Having such senior Labor figures here -- we've never had the Labor leader open the campaign in Bennelong before, for example -- shows the Labor Party is taking this seat very seriously.

A BEVY of Labor heavyweights from Kevin Rudd to national president John Faulkner had to walk past a massive poster of John Howard to get to yesterday's campaign launch for star recruit Maxine McKew.
The almost 2m-high poster has been staring at Ms McKew from a vacant shopfront ever since she opened her office in the northwest Sydney shopping precinct of Eastwood last month.
Labor takes heart from the Liberals' attempt at ambush marketing. The poster is a sign the Prime Minister's marginal and ethnically diverse electorate of Bennelong, in Sydney's north, will be closely fought.
"Maxine is running a proactive campaign and clearly the Prime Minister is worried," a Labor spokesman said yesterday.
An ebullient Ms McKew grinned and gripped her way through her packed office yesterday, thanking everyone from her campaign workers to the many supporters who had shown up. These included MSG, the mainly Chinese Maxine Support Group, representing the largest immigrant group in the electorate.
A day earlier, the census had revealed that Bennelong was the only Liberal-held seat in the top 20 by proportion of people who speak languages other than English at home. Bennelong's non-English speakers account for 36.3per cent of the electorate -- more than double the national average of 15.8 per cent.
More than half of the electorate (58.8 per cent) was either born overseas or has an immigrant parent, compared with an Australia- wide 40.5 per cent.
The Mandarin-speaking Opposition Leader declared the Bennelong office and campaign open and praised Ms McKew for her courage in taking on the nation's second-longest-serving leader in a seat he has held since 1974.
"Right across Australia there is a mood for change," Mr Rudd said. "They have seen this Government going a bridge too far: on industrial relations, on Iraq."
He said the campaign to oust the Howard Government would take place on every street and in every suburb of the nation.
Ms McKew said the changing nature of the electorate meant she had a strong chance of winning Bennelong.
A swing of just 4 per cent, or about 3000 votes, would see her oust the Prime Minister.
"I can win this election," she said. "That is not an arrogant statement. I am not alone. This is a target marginal seat. Having such senior Labor figures here -- we've never had the Labor leader open the campaign in Bennelong before, for example -- shows the Labor Party is taking this seat very seriously.
"I am greatly encouraged."
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Thursday 28 June 2007

PM's heartland loses WASP-ISH sting, The Australian, 28 June, 2007. Page One. Additional Reporting.

PM's heartland loses WASP-ish sting: [6 NSW Country Edition]

Imre Salusinszky, George Megalogenis, Additional reporting: John Stapleton. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 28 June 2007: 1.
"Mr [JOHN Howard] might be making a big deal out of his relationship with the Chinese community now, when his seat is marginal," Mr Li said. "My question would be, where was he in 1996 when our community really needed strong leadership from the Prime Minister to speak out against [Pauline Hanson]?"
"We liked him," he says. Mr [Oliver Yap] says his two adult children, who work in finance and advertising, are "both very smart because of the good education they've received here".
"We are not as confident as other races," he says. "We always work very hard, and earn as much as possible, in case something happens. We are worried if the economy is no good, so we look for somebody who can run the country and manage the economy. Mr Howard has done a good job."

Full Text

JOHN Howard may not have changed his stripes during the 33 years he has represented Bennelong -- but Bennelong has.
Once part of Sydney's north shore WASP heartland, the electorate has become a magnet for upwardly mobile Australians from first- and second-generation immigrant backgrounds, particularly Chinese and Koreans.
Exclusive figures compiled by The Australian, based on data from the 2006 census, show that Bennelong has become the only Liberal- held seat among the top 20 in the nation for residents who speak a language other than English at home.
At 36.3 per cent, the number of non-English speakers in Bennelong is more than twice the national average of 15.8 per cent.
Well over half of Bennelong residents (58.8 per cent) were either born overseas or have parents who were, compared with 40.5 per cent nationwide.
On the face of it, this should be great news for high-profile Labor challenger Maxine McKew, especially after a redistribution last year reduced the Prime Minister's margin to 4 per cent. Mr Howard has had a notoriously fraught relationship with the Asian community, courtesy of his 1988 comments about Asian immigration levels and a perception he was too slow to distance himself from Pauline Hanson. But to assume he cannot put up a decent fight against Ms McKew in Bennelong's Asian communities would be once more to underestimate the man.
"I don't know much about politics but I like John Howard," says Katherine Song, 51, who arrived from South Korea with her husband and two children in 2000 and runs a discount fashion business in Eastwood.
"For the economy, he has been a good man," she said. "I am very happy, my children got a better education."
But local lawyer Justin Li, 25, said that while Mr Howard may be popular with recent arrivals, it was different for those who could remember his record.
"Mr Howard might be making a big deal out of his relationship with the Chinese community now, when his seat is marginal," Mr Li said. "My question would be, where was he in 1996 when our community really needed strong leadership from the Prime Minister to speak out against Pauline Hanson?"
Oliver Yap, 54, who runs an
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estate agency in Epping with his wife Tracy, met Mr Howard earlier this month at a special meet-and-greet the Prime Minister organised for the Chinese business community.
"We liked him," he says. Mr Yap says his two adult children, who work in finance and advertising, are "both very smart because of the good education they've received here".
"We are not as confident as other races," he says. "We always work very hard, and earn as much as possible, in case something happens. We are worried if the economy is no good, so we look for somebody who can run the country and manage the economy. Mr Howard has done a good job."
Ms McKew spent yesterday afternoon campaigning at Marsden High School, in the electorate's heart of West Ryde. The school caters for 46 different languages.
"In 1974, when John Howard took the seat of Bennelong, it was an overwhelmingly monocultural area," she told The Australian.
"It is now a vibrant ethnic mix and you see that in the shops and suburbs all over Bennelong."
Shane Easson, number-cruncher-in-chief for the NSW Labor Party, says the new numbers are definitely good news for Ms McKew and points to the impact of new arrivals on Labor's vote in the state seats inside Bennelong.
"It is a big mistake to assume that these new groups are Labor voters, but they are getable," he says.
"They are less WASP-ish. The people they have replaced tended to vote two-thirds Liberal."
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Monday 25 June 2007

River divides water winners, losers, The Australian, 25 June, 2007. Page One.




































































River divides water winners, losers: [3 All-round Metro Edition]

Stapleton, John. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 25 June 2007: 1.
"They resent it," he said. "Young blokes with families have big debtsand no cash. They should waive the fees."
"State Water, who bill us, are a government utility under enormous pressure from Treasury to make a profit," he said. "That money is being gouged out of farming families."
Head of the Murray Darling Basin Commission Wendy Craik, responsible for water allocations to NSW, Victoria and South Australia, said water storages were in a "terrible state" despite the rain, and the news from them was "not good".

Full Text


THEY can see each other across thetranquil reaches of the Murray River, where they have farmed for generations. They have endured the same droughts and prayed for the same rains.
But farmers on the Victorian and NSW sides of the Murray -- who will both get a zero allocation of irrigation water this year -- will be treated very differently by their state governments. More than 10,000 farmers on the NSW side of the river have just been hit with bills of $15,000 or more for irrigation licences, while their Victorian neighbours have been given $5000 each.
The inequity has prompted cries of pain from NSW farmers, many of whom have had no crop income this year or last, and who are not expecting cheques for the current crop until next year.
At Ballymeade, a 1400ha property near the NSW village of Bunnaloo, in the southern Riverina, owners Bob Caldwell, 79, and his son Robert Caldwell, 50, have just received a $20,000 bill.
Mixed farmers, the Caldwells rely on combining dry-land and irrigated crops, supplementing their income with fat lambs. "We need irrigation to keep our farming operation going," said Bob Caldwell.
"We can't survive without it. The Government is being pretty unfair."
Robert Caldwell said many neighbours felt they were being forced to pay for inefficient bureaucracy.
"They resent it," he said. "Young blokes with families have big debtsand no cash. They should waive the fees."
The man who has just sent out the "massive" water bills to 2000 farming families, general manager of Murray Irrigation George Warne, said NSW farmers were acutely aware of the benefits enjoyed by Victorians.
"State Water, who bill us, are a government utility under enormous pressure from Treasury to make a profit," he said. "That money is being gouged out of farming families."
When John Howard announced the national water plan last November, at a time of heightened
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From Page 1
concern over the drought, he called on the states to "consider waiving or rebating the water charges".
Premier Steve Bracks heeded the call, just before the Victorian election. Labor holds a number of crucial rural seats, and farmers in the state express satisfaction.
North of the border, Premier Morris Iemma never had a chance of winning rural seats on the rich floodplains of the Murray, and is now disliked more than ever.
Federal Water Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday repeated calls for the charges to be dropped, but he has been ignored.
NSW Water Minister Phil Koperberg said it was a principle that farmers pay the cost of river water. "I sympathise with farmers and rural communities doing it tough ... decisions on water allocations are very difficult."
Victorian Water Minister John Thwaite said the $5000 rebates were meant to the ease the burden of drought.
In the late 1990s, Labor governments in both states ruled that farmers should cover the costs of running the rivers, including the maintenance of dams and the expenses of the irrigation companies and public servants administering water policy. The charges were never popular, and in recent years, they have started to bite harder.
Despite the best start to the wheat crop in a decade and excellent commodity prices, north of the Murray there is little optimism. Farmers feel costs such as water licensing fees are hampering their recovery.
Head of the Murray Darling Basin Commission Wendy Craik, responsible for water allocations to NSW, Victoria and South Australia, said water storages were in a "terrible state" despite the rain, and the news from them was "not good".
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Tuesday 19 June 2007

Tears for five lost in a storm, The Australian, 19 June, 2007.



Tears for five lost in a storm: [1 All-round Country Edition]

Stapleton, John. The Australian; Canberra, A.C.T. [Canberra, A.C.T] 19 June 2007: 5.
Mr [Jarrod Newman] provoked laughter and tears as he told of Mr [ADAM Holt] and Ms Bragg's love for their children and each other, recalling stories about the "full-on" little girls and the "top little bloke" [Travis Bragg].
"`Oy! What's going on?' That's how Adam answered the phone," he said. "He went by a number of names -- Mr Trouble, Gentle Giant. The truth is he was an absolute champion -- champion father, champion friend, awesome person."
Sharon Bragg, mother of sports-mad Travis, sobbed as she spoke of her son's ceaseless energy. "Travis was just a joy," she said. "He loved all his family, soccer, cricket, union, AFL. He also loved his school, and he loved his sister."

Full Text


ADAM Holt had a habit of calling "Pick up your handbag" when friends and family started whingeing.
At his funeral yesterday, family friend Jarrod Newman said: "There goes the handbag."
Hundreds of mourners jammed into the Hillside Chapel at the Palmdale Lawn Cemetery on the NSW central coast for the funeral of Mr Holt, 30, his partner Roslyn Bragg, 29, their daughters three- year-old Madison and two-year-old Jasmine, and Ms Bragg's nephew, nine-year-old Travis Bragg.
The five were killed when a fissure opened up on the Old Pacific Highway during wild weather at Somersby on June 8, and their car plunged 40m into a swirling torrent below. They were victims of the worst storm to hit the east coast in more than 30 years.
Mourners were urged to "shed tears that they are gone" but "smile because they have lived". The five coffins were covered with floral tributes in a sign of how the local community had rallied.
Both the Holt and Bragg families are large. When the service began and ended with a favourite song, Shannon Noll's Shine, many wept.
Mr Newman provoked laughter and tears as he told of Mr Holt and Ms Bragg's love for their children and each other, recalling stories about the "full-on" little girls and the "top little bloke" Travis.
"`Oy! What's going on?' That's how Adam answered the phone," he said. "He went by a number of names -- Mr Trouble, Gentle Giant. The truth is he was an absolute champion -- champion father, champion friend, awesome person."
Ms Bragg was dropping Mr Holt off for his night shift at a Somersby factory when the ground literally opened up beneath them.
Sharon Bragg, mother of sports-mad Travis, sobbed as she spoke of her son's ceaseless energy. "Travis was just a joy," she said. "He loved all his family, soccer, cricket, union, AFL. He also loved his school, and he loved his sister."
Family friend Steve Clark spoke of Roslyn Bragg's tomboy upbringing around Dubbo, where she would boast of being able to "shoot the balls off a blowfly". Later in life her love of pool and a good party earned her the nickname "crazy Ros". She moved to the central coast four years ago to settle down and start a family.
The Reverend Matt Watt, who conducted the service, said the dash that appeared between the five's all too short years showed that "it doesn't matter, the cars and cash -- what matters is how we live".
"Realise this dash may only last a short while," he said.
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