Tuesday 31 July 2007

Welfare, Debt, Credit, Bureaucracy and Betrayal: the Howard Years, Dads On The Air, 31 July, 2007.

Welfare, Debt, Credit, Bureaucracy and Betrayal: the Howard Years

DateTUESDAY, JULY 31, 2007 AT 10:30AM
Julie Owens MP
With special guests:
This was a particularly good show, so don’t miss it. The New Hampshire Commission on the Status of Men is the only such organisation in the world and a pointer to how the Australian Government could address its chronically institutionalised anti-male bias.

As well Julie Owens, the Labor MP for Parramatta, talks knowledgeably about why the so-called Howard battlers have turned so viciously against the government. Just like separated dads, the battlers feel utterly betrayed by the Howard government. They were encouraged by the government’s rhetoric and the $7,000 first home buyers grant to get into a mortgage and now find themselves drowning in debt and living on credit. The claim that interest rates would be kept low has turned out to be as hollow as much of the government’s other rhetoric.

As well we have a brief call from Tony Miller from Dads in Distress, a self-help organisation with meetings around the country which continues to do a marvellous job saving the lives of distraught men and mopping up the mess of our family law and child support systems. Tony is pleased to announce that at the last minute his organisation has been given funding sufficient for it to survive over the next four years through the actions of the Minister for Families Mal Brough.
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Monday 30 July 2007

And the loser is: Sydney's APEC pull, The Australian, 30 July, 2007.

And the loser is: Sydney's APEC pull: [1 All-round Country Edition]

Stapleton, John. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 30 July 2007: 7.
Show highlighting
Meanwhile, an argument has erupted over comments by Australia's ambassador to APEC, senior DFAT bureaucrat David Spencer, who claimed Sydney's hotel rates had risen "100-fold" and a "shitfight" had broken out between various countries and their delegations over which hotels to stay in.
The APEC taskforce distributed an email to hotel operators over the weekend distancing itself from the comments, saying they had been "thrilled with the level of support and professionalism of all hotel operators we have dealt with".
APEC organisers are at a loss to explain why Sydney has proven such an unpopular destination, with delegate numbers about a third lower than expected.
About 6000 delegates, including government and business leaders from 21 countries, had been forecast to attend the event in September, as well as 1500 journalists from around the world.
But it has now been announced that only 4000 delegates and 1000 journalists will arrive.
A spokeswoman for the APEC taskforce yesterday said organisers were puzzled as to why Sydney was out of favour, but added that it was common for numbers to fluctuate in the lead-up to such a large event.
"We based the figures, and our negotiations with the hotel industry, on information provided by the previous hosts," she said.
"But it is difficult to predict the final number. We haven't yet done the in-depth research necessary to understand why these figures are lower than we expected."
The number of delegates is down from the previous three APEC meetings, in South Korea, Vietnam and Chile.
In Sydney, about 25,000 hotel nights have been booked but 37,500 had been reserved.
More than 2000 luxury rooms in central Sydney are expected to be placed back on the market.
"Regardless of how you cut it, this will still be the largest gathering of economic leaders ever hosted in Australia, including George Bush from the US, Vladmir Putin from Russia and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe," the spokeswoman said.
Meanwhile, an argument has erupted over comments by Australia's ambassador to APEC, senior DFAT bureaucrat David Spencer, who claimed Sydney's hotel rates had risen "100-fold" and a "shitfight" had broken out between various countries and their delegations over which hotels to stay in.
The APEC taskforce distributed an email to hotel operators over the weekend distancing itself from the comments, saying they had been "thrilled with the level of support and professionalism of all hotel operators we have dealt with".
The email said the taskforce disagreed with the claim rates had gone up 100-fold because APEC visitors were a captive audience.
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Thursday 26 July 2007

Hunting in Packs, A Critical Look at the Media, The South Sydney Herald, July, 2007.



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Tuesday 24 July 2007

Jessica's happy, but it's not all good news for Seven, The Australian, 24 July, 2007.

Jessica's happy, but it's not all good news for Seven: [2 All-round First Edition]

Michael Bodey, Amanda Meade, Additional reporting: John Stapleton. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 24 July 2007: 3.
Show highlighting
"The fact is, she's not pushing anyone aside," Mr [Peter Meakin] said of [Jessica Rowe]. "If there are any complaints, I haven't heard them, and there's no cause for complaint because she's not taking anyone's job. She's only going to be doing it part-time, she wants to ease back into it."
Mr Meakin admitted [Ian Ross]'s contract had yet to be renewed. "Ian is under contract until the end of the year, and we want him to stay with the network and we'll be negotiating with him really soon," he said. "Jessica hasn't been slated for that 6pm role. We are well aware of the fact other people on our staff will have ambitions when Ian retires. There's no need to think Jessica jumped the queue."
THE imminent arrival of newsreader Jessica Rowe at the Seven Network has led to tension in the station's Sydney newsroom as it prepares for Ian Ross's will-he-or-won't-he contract negotiations with the top-rating 6pm news service.
Seven's director of news and current affairs, Peter Meakin, denies Rowe's appointment as a part-time anchorwoman will come at the cost of anyone else's job, but The Australian understands Seven CEO David Leckie has made no move to renew Ross's contract, which expires in four months.
Mr Leckie is known to be a fan of Rowe, telling people he finds her charming and funny.
Tensions in the Seven newsroom are high, despite staff being forewarned by news director Chris Willis of the former Nine and Ten personality's recruitment. Staff are tetchy as several aspiring readers jockey for the plum Sydney prime-time gig on Ross's retirement.
"The fact is, she's not pushing anyone aside," Mr Meakin said of Rowe. "If there are any complaints, I haven't heard them, and there's no cause for complaint because she's not taking anyone's job. She's only going to be doing it part-time, she wants to ease back into it."
Ross has catapulted Seven to number one in the important Sydney market, and kept it there for more than two years.
Mr Meakin admitted Ross's contract had yet to be renewed. "Ian is under contract until the end of the year, and we want him to stay with the network and we'll be negotiating with him really soon," he said. "Jessica hasn't been slated for that 6pm role. We are well aware of the fact other people on our staff will have ambitions when Ian retires. There's no need to think Jessica jumped the queue."
While former Dancing With The Stars finalist Chris Bath has been nominated as Ross's number two, her hold on filling his seat in Sydney in the event he leaves this year is not assured.
Rowe appeared relaxed yesterday as she and six-month-old daughter Allegra awaited the return of her husband, Peter Overton, at Sydney airport.
Of her new job as a newsreader and competitor on Seven's ratings powerhouse Dancing With the Stars, she said: "It's going to be exciting, just good fun. All I am thinking about is a whole fresh start, that's what this is all about."
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Muslims, Jews allied over burial plot plight, The Australian, 24 July, 2007.

Muslims, Jews allied over burial plot plight: [1 All-round Country Edition]

John Stapleton, Sanna Trad. The Australian; Canberra, A.C.T. [Canberra, A.C.T] 24 July 2007: 7.
Show highlighting
"It is scary for old ladies and young kids to go out there, it is not a nice atmosphere," Mr [Wasim Raza] said. "For a lot of families, thehusband is buried at Rookwood, the wife is buried 40km away. The families are being split in death. It is very distressing."
"I am only dealing with the Lebanese community," he said. "I estimate there are between 20 and 30 bodies a month being flown out of Australia, including the Egyptians, the Turks, and all the other Muslim communities.
"Rather than burying their loved ones in an isolated place like Riverstone, Muslim families prefer to send their loved ones back to their home countries."
MUSLIM families faced with a chronic shortage of cemetery plots in Sydney are finding it cheaper to take the bodies of loved ones back to the Middle East for burial.
As many as 30 bodies are being flown to the Middle East each month after the city's major cemetery, Rookwood, gave away its last Muslim plot in February, leaving the Islamic community in crisis over where to bury its dead.
Muslims were the first to run out of burial space at the cemetery in Sydney's western suburbs. But the same problem is facing theJewish community and smaller Christian denominations, which have joined with the Muslim community to lobby the state Government and Department of Lands, without success.
Despite the shortage of plots, significant tracts of Rookwood remain vacant. Uneven distribution of land in the past has left Catholics and Anglicans with enough burial spaces for decades to come.
The secretary of the Muslim Cemetery Trust at Rookwood, Wasim Raza, said the issue was causing a great deal of distress to Muslim families.
He said that apart from flying bodies to the Middle East, the only other alternative was for people to bury their loved ones at Riverstone cemetery on the northwestern outskirts of the city.
Mr Raza said it was a religious obligation for Muslims to visit the graves of their loved ones and to maintain them in good condition. He said this would not be possible at an isolated and decrepit cemetery far from the community.
"It is scary for old ladies and young kids to go out there, it is not a nice atmosphere," Mr Raza said. "For a lot of families, the husband is buried at Rookwood, the wife is buried 40km away. The families are being split in death. It is very distressing."
Lakemba Travel manager Omar Yasine said his company first began getting inquiries a year ago, and he was now flying five bodies a month back to Lebanon.
He said it cost about $12,000 to bury a Muslim in Sydney whereas he could fly the body home to Lebanon and guarantee an appropriate burial for under $8000.
"I am only dealing with the Lebanese community," he said. "I estimate there are between 20 and 30 bodies a month being flown out of Australia, including the Egyptians, the Turks, and all the other Muslim communities.
"Rather than burying their loved ones in an isolated place like Riverstone, Muslim families prefer to send their loved ones back to their home countries."
Lebanese Muslim Association president Tom Zreika said finding somewhere to bury their dead was a big problem for the community. He said they were co-operating closely with the Jewish community and those from the smaller Christian denominations to solve theproblem.
"It is funny, but we have become mates with the Jewish in our most dire moment because they are in exactly the same boat," he said.
Vic Alhadeff of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies said the Jews, Christians and Muslims had worked together to locate suitable land near Bowral, south of Sydney. However, the NSW Government had rejected their proposal without coming up with an alternate site.
A spokesman for NSW Lands Minister Tony Kelly said the Government was investigating future cemetery sites within the Sydney basin as a long-term solution. He said there was still space in the general cemetery if Muslims did not mind being buried with people of other faiths. He said Muslims also had the option of purchasing land in private cemeteries.
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Monday 23 July 2007

Harry's broom sweeps all before it, The Australian, 23 July, 2007. Additional Reporting.

Harry's broom sweeps all before it: [6 NSW Country Edition]

Steven Swinford, Additional reporting: John Stapleton. The Australian; Canberra, A.C.T. [Canberra, A.C.T] 23 July 2007: 5.
Show highlighting
Even as tired youngsters leafed through pages to discover the outcome of the showdown between the boy wizard and his nemesis, bookmaker Ladbrokes was cutting the odds on there being an eighth [Harry Potter] novel from 16-1 to 10-1 after a flurry of stake money. And [JK Rowling] is 1-4 to become a dame in the New Year honours list.
For one special night, normal bedtime was cancelled as children were permitted to plough through torture, seven deaths and the final, fatal confrontation between Harry and the wicked Voldemort. The ending should remain a prize for readers who have read all 608 pages.
"This is our single most successful book ever. Kids were dropping to the floor the minute they got it, just to read it; they didn't want to wait. It is an astonishing phenomenon."
SO it's goodbye Harry Potter ... or is it?
A chorus of electronic tills, the biggest one-day sale of any book and a predicted damehood for author JK Rowling set the seal on themost popular series of novels in history.
Even as tired youngsters leafed through pages to discover the outcome of the showdown between the boy wizard and his nemesis, bookmaker Ladbrokes was cutting the odds on there being an eighth Potter novel from 16-1 to 10-1 after a flurry of stake money. And Rowling is 1-4 to become a dame in the New Year honours list.
For one special night, normal bedtime was cancelled as children were permitted to plough through torture, seven deaths and the final, fatal confrontation between Harry and the wicked Voldemort. The ending should remain a prize for readers who have read all 608 pages.
It is almost certain Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has outstripped its predecessors in sales.
In Australia, an unprecedented 350,000 copies were estimated to have walked out the doors of delighted booksellers over theweekend.
Borders marketing manager Josy Shaw said sales across 20 stores nationally were 2 1/2 times what they had been for the opening days of the last Harry Potter book, which in itself had been a remarkably good seller.
There were long queues in most stores around the country, some taking hours to clear.
"The pre-orders were five times the last one; we knew it was going to be big," Ms Shaw said.
"This is our single most successful book ever. Kids were dropping to the floor the minute they got it, just to read it; they didn't want to wait. It is an astonishing phenomenon."
In Sydney, about 1500 Potter fans rode two steam trains from the city centre to a mystery destination to collect their books.
In Karachi, a book launch was cancelled while police defused a car bomb outside a shopping mall. In Paris, more than 200 fans waiting outside The Red Wheelbarrow bookshop sang the Hogwarts school song to music played on the shop's piano.
British bookseller WH Smith said the book was leaving its stores on the first day of sales at the rate of 15 copies a second.
In the US, the book's publisher produced a record 12million copies for sale. Amazon, the online bookstore, said that pre-orders from customers had hit 2.2 million copies.
Rowling surrounded herself with 500 children dressed as wizards and witches for her swansong, a midnight reading at the Natural History Museum in London.
Sophie Stoll, 15, from Halesowen in the West Midlands, said: "When she started reading, the whole hall fell silent. It was eerie; everyone was listening to her in awe."
But some had their eye on the main chance: by noon on Saturday, three copies of the book that Rowling had signed were for sale on eBay.
Editorial -- Page 17
Media on Monday -- Page 34
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The long and winding road to citizenship, The Australian, 23 July, 2007.

John Stapleton.
THEY may have been born overseas to Australian mothers, but for tens of thousands of people scattered around the world and born before 1949, that wasn't enough for them to become Australian citizens.
Now, the remaining historical sexual discrimination has been swept away and those who have been denied for decades are eligible to become citizens.
Clive Pillinger, born to an Australian, Kathleen Pillinger, in Bristol, 170km west of London, spent a lifetime falling between the gaps in Australia's citizenship laws.
The 62-year-old has just picked up his papers granting him Australian citizenship by descent.
For him, the commencement this month of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 -- which evolved out of several government inquiries into expatriates -- marks the end of a long and emotional journey.
From an early age, Mr Pillinger dreamed of going to Australia to live and migrated to Australia in his early 20s as a "pound stg. 10 Pom". He arrived in Sydney by boat in 1968 and quickly found work as a signwriter.
But he went back to Britain in 1970 to visit his parents. By the time he got to New Zealand, he realised he had made a mistake in not getting a return visa to Australia before he left.
Mr Pillinger never lost his desire to become an Australian citizen. "There were many times over the years when I felt very down about this and thought it would never happen," he said.
Some of the now-elderly people who were denied access to citizenship were born to Australian brides who were serving overseas during World War II. Others were born while their mothers were travelling or working overseas.
Today, children born abroad to an Australian-born, Australian- citizen parent, either mother or father, may be registered as Australian citizens by descent.
But, until 1970, historical sex discrimination in Australian law meant that Australian-born women could not pass on their Australian citizenship to their overseas-born children. Such children had to have an Australianfather.
Legal changes introduced in 1970 to redress this allowed only a brief opportunity for people to take out citizenship. Age restrictions also stopped many from taking out Australian citizenship.
Several thousand US-born children of World War II Australian brides born before 1949 will now be entitled to apply for Australian citizenship by descent.
Expatriate support group Southern Cross has campaigned long and hard for the changes and is now advertising widely to alert potential citizens to the changes.
Co-founder Anne MacGregor said the changes were "significant and long overdue". She estimated that about 50,000 people who had lost their Australian status in various ways, the vast majority of whom had been born in Australia, would now be eligible to resume their citizenship.
A further 30,000 born abroad of an Australian mother before 1949 would also now be eligible; as would another 15,000 born to parents who had forfeited their citizenship before their child's birth by becoming foreign citizens.
Southern Cross volunteer Jacqui Mowbray said many of the affected people felt Australian but had never been able to get their feelings acknowledged by government.
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