Friday, 28 September 2007

Deadlys present a positive indigenous image, The Australian, 28 September, 2007.








Deadlys present a positive indigenous image: [6 NSW Country Edition]

Stapleton, John. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 28 Sep 2007: 8.
Co-presenter Rhoda Roberts said the Deadlys were like a mix of the Arias and the Logies, and were "incredibly important" for indigenous people.
"This is recognition amongst the community of sports and arts communities of major new talent," she said. "It shows the positiveness of our people across many industries and highlights their achievements."
"Things have changed but there is still a long path to tread," he said. "There are people who are willing to fill the void, and I am one of those."

Full Text


ALTHOUGH there are an increasing number of indigenous faces on the nation's sporting fields and television screens, separate Aboriginal awards are still justified to counteract the tidal wave of negative media coverage.
Participants in this year's National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards -- known as the Deadlys -- yesterday said the awards presented the positive face of the community at a time when the media was highlighting alcoholism and child abuse in remote communities.
The awards were presented at a high-spirited celebration at the Sydney Opera House last night.
Recipients included boxer Anthony Mundine as Male Sportsperson of the Year, basketball player Rohanee Cox as Female Sportsperson of the Year and actor Luke Carroll, who has appeared in numerous television productions including Home and Away, All Saints, Heartbreak High and The Flying Doctors.
Mundine, as modest as ever, said he was one of the greatest athletes Australia had produced and among the upcoming generation of indigenous kids there would be some as bold, as brassy and as talented as him. "I want to be the king of kings, I want to be the greatest fighter," he said.
"The Deadlys are a great concept for Aboriginal people. They are positive, a big difference to the regular rubbish way they are portrayed. My people are in a state, we lack self-esteem.
"All that is portrayed in the media is that we are no-good child- molesters and alcoholics. That is what the kids think they are.
"There are kids out there with the same talent, brashness and bravado as me.
"It is a matter of making them believe in themselves."
Co-presenter Rhoda Roberts said the Deadlys were like a mix of the Arias and the Logies, and were "incredibly important" for indigenous people.
"This is recognition amongst the community of sports and arts communities of major new talent," she said. "It shows the positiveness of our people across many industries and highlights their achievements."
Carroll said the Deadlys were a great opportunity to showcase what indigenous Australians could achieve.
"Things have changed but there is still a long path to tread," he said. "There are people who are willing to fill the void, and I am one of those."
Co-presenter Joey Williams, a player with the South Sydney Rabbitohs rugby league club, said he had fulfilled the dream of almost every Aboriginal boy in the country -- to become a professional footballer -- and it was important to show that achievement was possible.
Other winners included musicians Sharon-Lee Lane and Dan Sultan, Jessica Mauboy from Australian Idol, Kev Carmody, and Jimmy Little.
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Thursday, 27 September 2007

$150,000 planting gamble withers to dust - ELECTION 2006, The Australian, 27 September, 2007.

$150,000 planting gamble withers to dust - ELECTION 2007: [1 All-round Country Edition]

John Stapleton, Asa Wahlquist. The Australian; Canberra, A.C.T. [Canberra, A.C.T] 27 Sep 2007: 4.
"He hasn't seen anything but drought," Mr [Greg Whiteley] said.
Mr Whiteley admits he would reconsider leaving "before our assets were completely eaten".
"That keeps them (their financial institution) off our back, but it doesn't come up with the money to plant the crop, the $150,000 odd that it costs us," he said.

Full Text

THE sky was overcast above Warren in central western NSW yesterday, and there was hope of rain overnight.
But for many farmers in the district, it is all too late.
For wheat and cotton farmer Greg Whiteley, 52, it doesn't matter anymore if it rains all week. His 1500 hectares of wheat is dying in the paddock.
At this time of year, if things were going well, his fields would look like a lush green table top; instead, the cracks in the rich, grey loam soil are clearly visible and the wheat is yellow or dead.
Next to his failed wheat crop, the ground where he would have planted cotton is bare. And, although he continues to pay the state Government for his water entitlement, the irrigation channels are empty.
Mr Whiteley is the fifth generation of his family to farm in the area. In 2001, his son, Tim, finished university and came home to work on the farm.
"He hasn't seen anything but drought," Mr Whiteley said.
One or two years of drought were manageable, he said, "but then if you have five or six years in a row, you are chewing into your equity.
"This one is going to be pretty difficult to roll over, and I think I am fairly representative."
Autumn brought good rains. The Whiteleys, like most other grain growers, planted big. "We had good prospective prices for our cereals," he said.
"The long-term weather forecast was good. We were convinced we were going out into a La Nina, so everybody went to the races and tried to back the winner on the last race and it has come unstuck big time.
"It would be easy to throw my hands in air and take the generous package that John Howard announced.
"But if my great-grandfather or grandfather in the Depression had done that, I wouldn't be here.
"If I didn't have a 27-year-old son that is university-trained and working with me, it would be reasonably tempting.
"But he has put a lot into the operation the last seven years."
Mr Whiteley admits he would reconsider leaving "before our assets were completely eaten".
Last year, he qualified for exceptional circumstances drought funding, in the form of an interest-rate subsidy.
"That keeps them (their financial institution) off our back, but it doesn't come up with the money to plant the crop, the $150,000 odd that it costs us," he said.
The Whiteley farm, lies west of the Newell Highway, which runs from Goondiwindi to Tocumwal.
The highway is the dividing line this year between those crops that survived, to the east, and the disastrous season to the west.
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Tuesday, 25 September 2007

Examining Misandry, Dad s On The Air, 25 September, 2007.

Examining Misandry

DateTUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2007 AT 10:30AM
With special guests:
  • Dr. Paul Nathanson and Dr. Katherine Young, authors of two very important books that uncover the underlying contempt for men and boys in our culture today: Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture and Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men.
  • Simon Hunt, from Parents Against Institutionalised Child Abuse. A unique voice in the Australian Fatherhood movement by dint of refusing to shut up. Hunt has distilled the problems with the Family Law system down to one key issue: equal time parenting after separation - the solution that removes the problem.
  • Sue Price, from the Men’s Rights Agency, talking about the bizarre news that the Child Support Agency has been given an award for it’s work in the area of suicide prevention!
Click to read more ...
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Saturday, 22 September 2007

Crunch time for towns as wealth dries up, Weekend Australian, 22 September, 2007.

Crunch time for towns as wealth dries up: [1 All-round Country Edition]

John Stapleton, Asa Wahlquist. Weekend Australian; Canberra, A.C.T. [Canberra, A.C.T] 22 Sep 2007: 10.
"We haven't had good general rain since 2000," said Mr [Ashley Wielinga]. "This year we are facing a totally failed grain crop. Farmers are putting their stock out on the wheat crops or baling it for hay. We are now heading into a scenario we've never seen before. We have a lot of vacant houses and shops are not trading well.
"There is very little work around. The drought is impacting seriously," she said. "The population is diminishing. People are worried. They're not making any money and are worried about having to put off employees."
Pat Irving, a member of [WARREN]'s Country Womens Association, said the drought was "impacting like mad".

Full Text

WARREN, in central-western NSW, was once a happy town. Happy and rich.
For more than 100 years Warren was a centre of the merino wool industry and in recent decades benefited from irrigation and advances in dryland farming.
But the town is now in decline, with hundreds of people having left over the past two years.
Almost all of the businesses in the centre of town are struggling.
It is a story that is being played out in once wealthy towns across Australia.
Warren Shire Council general manager Ashley Wielinga said the town had been the vibrant centre of an agricultural-based economy and had weathered many difficulties.
But without a cloud in the sky and widespread failure of the winter wheat crop, along with no water for cotton, this year is proving particularly disastrous.
"We haven't had good general rain since 2000," said Mr Wielinga. "This year we are facing a totally failed grain crop. Farmers are putting their stock out on the wheat crops or baling it for hay. We are now heading into a scenario we've never seen before. We have a lot of vacant houses and shops are not trading well.
"A number are looking at retrenching employees. We are heading into crunch time."
Mr Wielinga said much of the seasonal farm work had been done by contractors or seasonal farm workers, many of whom had been forced to leave town.
Chamber of Commerce head Nancye Marsh said many businesses were suffering.
"There is very little work around. The drought is impacting seriously," she said. "The population is diminishing. People are worried. They're not making any money and are worried about having to put off employees."
Pharmacist Carolina Siufi said people were definitely stressed.
"It is affecting everyone in town," she said.
"You can see people are stressed, depressed. This is a lovely town, a happy town. It is hard to see it so quiet."
Kate Hocking, 67, who was minding her granddaughter's mixed store, Native Nuts Nursery, said: "Just look at the till: that is how bad it is. It is a waste of time opening the door. I have taken $69 for the whole week."
Pat Irving, a member of Warren's Country Womens Association, said the drought was "impacting like mad".
"The younger families are leaving town to get jobs and you aren't going to get them back," she said.
"Warren was a very rich town. Now there are a lot of families with just women and children, because the men have had to go to the major towns for work."
Farmer Greg Whiteley said Warren "has traditionally been lucky, because we have an economic base of dryland agriculture -- a grazing component and an irrigation component".
But the crops failed this year for the fifth year in a row, there's no grass for grazing and there has been no irrigation water for three years.
Farmers planted big on the autumn rains, and the promise of rain, but winter was dry.
"Basically in a line west of the Newell Highway, from Moree through to slightly west of Wagga, that is where the big acres are, that is where the drought was the hardest," Mr Whiteley said.
"This one is going to be pretty difficult to roll over."
ABARE this week halved the outlook for the NSW grain crop.
Nationally, the winter cereal crop has been reduced from 37million tonnes, to 25 million.
Sheep numbers have fallen by 5per cent over the past year. Since the beginning of the 2002-03 drought, sheep numbers have fallen 21per cent. Cattle numbers have also fallen, by 600,000 or 2.1 per cent over the past year.
An unprecedented 23,000 farm families are receiving drought income support, and the federal Government is spending more than $26 million a week to provide it. For the first time, the entire states of NSW and Victoria are eligible for federal drought support.
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Thursday, 20 September 2007

Not happy, John: battlers' home truths The Austtralian 20 September 2007.




http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/news/not-happy-john-battlers-home-truths/story-e6frg6no-1111114459342

Not happy, John: battlers' home truths

"FOR Sale" signs dot the front yards of the classic suburban houses in Cranebrook, in the heart of the electorate of Lindsay in far western Sydney.
The residents of this marginal seat have one simple message for any politician who claims there is not a housing affordability crisis: "Get out in the real world."
But they don't put it that politely.
Lindsay, one of the "Howard battler" seats the Liberals need to keep in order to retain government, is held by outgoing member Jackie Kelly.
But many people who once voted for John Howard - who was urged this week by his own MPs to address the problems of housing affordability - are now struggling to pay their mortgages.
Mitch Sard, 43, lost his job two years ago and he and partner Sondra have four children. He is now paying $736 a fortnight on mortgage repayments while receiving a single parent's pension of $750 a fortnight. His situation has deteriorated to the point where he is selling up and heading to South Australia.
"The last interest rate rise just pushed me over the edge," he said. "I've been borrowing money off my parents. A lot of people are selling around here because of the mortgage rate rises - they've just pushed it too far."
Linda Avery, 37, has been living in temporary accommodation for the past two months after being forced to sell her home because she could not meet the payments.
"John Howard has no idea what's happening out here," she said. "My husband has started earning $1000 a week, and still we can't get any savings behind us. To anyone who thinks there isn't a housing affordability crisis, have a look at the real world."
Troy Terry, 32, a police officer, said he and his wife Kerry were working three jobs between them, and alternating day and night shifts so they did not have to pay childcare for their three children.
He said their mortgage repayments had gone up from $505 a week three years ago to more than $580 a week now.
The increasing cost of the mortgage as well as rising gas, electricity, petrol and grocery bills were hurting them financially.
"The politicians should get off their massive wages and see how we cope," Mr Terry said.
"It's not just affecting young people like us, but older people as well," he said. "We have older people in our street who are really struggling with the mortgage. They're suffering because of all the rubbish from the politicians. When we bought three years ago, there was no drama, we could pay the mortgage. But if we sold our house now, we'd lose $30,000 to $40,000 - and the repayments have gone right up."
Many shopkeepers at the Cranebrook Shopping Centre said it was obvious people were suffering as a result of rising costs.
Co-owner of Pepe's Pizza Pasta Bar Gail Shahrouk said business was down by more than half.
"It's all happened this year and it has been dramatic," she said. "The whole centre is quiet."
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Wednesday, 19 September 2007

Abuzz over a bee virus, The Australian, 19 September, 2007

Abuzz over a bee virus: [1 All-round Country Edition]

Leigh Dayton, John Stapleton. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 19 Sep 2007: 26.
Show highlighting
FEDERAL Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran has dismissed calls from a US senator for an immediate ban on the export ofAustralian bees after research suggested they could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of bees in North America.Australian honey bees were singled out by US scientists as the possible carriers of a virus linked to the disappearance of large numbers of bees, a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder.
CSIRO bee pathologist Denis Anderson dismissed the claims reported earlier this month in the journal Science as unsubstantiated and based on poor methodology. "There's something fishy going on here," he said about the unwillingness of the co- authors and thejournal editors to respond to scientific criticism. "Someone's not telling the truth."
FEDERAL Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran has dismissed calls from a US senator for an immediate ban on the export ofAustralian bees after research suggested they could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of bees in North America.Australian honey bees were singled out by US scientists as the possible carriers of a virus linked to the disappearance of large numbers of bees, a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder.
CSIRO bee pathologist Denis Anderson dismissed the claims reported earlier this month in the journal Science as unsubstantiated and based on poor methodology. "There's something fishy going on here," he said about the unwillingness of the co- authors and thejournal editors to respond to scientific criticism. "Someone's not telling the truth."
The scientific squabble escalated into a potential trade row late last week after Pennsylvania senator Robert Casey called for a halt to imports of Australian honey bees into the US.
But Mr McGauran said the disorder was not found in Australian bees and more research was required before conclusions could be reached about its origins.
"Any trade restrictions imposed by the US on the basis of its recent research would be inconsistent with America's international trade obligations because there is insufficient scientific evidence to justify such action," he said.
The disorder is blamed for devastating losses of upto 23 per cent of all beekeeping operations during 2006-07.
Experts meeting in Melbourne last week said a ban would cripple Australia's burgeoning bee export business, already worth nearly $5 million a year in US sales.
In the Science report the multidisciplinary US team claimed they had genetic evidence linking CCD to a recently discovered bee virus called Israeli acute paralysis virus. They suggested IAPV arrived in the US on Australian bees, imported to bolster already flagging colonies.
They argued Australian bees did not show the disease because, unlike the US, the country is free of the varroa destructor mite that reduces bee fitness and may be a factor in colony collapse.
Senator Casey wrote to the USDA just as the agency's own Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service ruled there were no grounds to halt imports of Australian queen bees and worker bees.
The USDA will fund a five-year $US4.5 million project to follow up the contested findings. Scientists would retest colonies affected and unaffected by CCD in the US and Australia.
Word count: 396
Copyright News Limited Sep 19, 2007
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Monday, 17 September 2007

Nothin' so lonesome as a pub with no pokies, The Australian, 17 September, 2007.


Nothin' so lonesome as a pub with no pokies: [2 All-round First Edition]

Stapleton, John. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 17 Sep 2007: 7.
Show highlighting
Unbeknown to the Scuttis, the legislation passed by the NSW parliament in 2001 meant the poker machine entitlements adhered to the licensee of a hotel rather than to the landlord. In many cases, including the Scuttis, those entitlements were worth more than the hotel itself.
"We bought the hotel with four machines and now we have none," she said. "To buy them back would cost us $800,000. If city pubs can't survive without poker machines, how do they think we in the country can?"
Gino Scutti said the pub acted as the town's only social centre and if they were forced to close their doors it would be devastating. "The Government gave out the poker machine entitlements to hotels so they could survive and it has had the opposite effect," he said. "It is killing us. It's a bloody mess."

BRING back our pokies, declare the citizens of Carrathool, NSW. The poker machines were central to their local pub's viability and without them it is in serious danger of closing down. That means their town, like hundreds of other tiny rural townships, faces losing its only social centre.
While politicians and social workers around the country wrestle with the issue of problem gambling, in small communities across NSW the problem is not too many poker machines but too few.
Australia's two prime ministers in waiting, Kevin Rudd and Peter Costello, have both expressed their distaste for poker machines. But in many a rural centre, thelocal pub is not viable without them.
A bizarre anomaly in the NSW Gaming Machine Act passed in 2001 inadvertently created a trade in poker machine entitlements, now worth up to $250,000 each. The trade has seen a wholesale transfer of poker machines from country pubs -- which were granted the right to have them in the 1990s to allow them to compete with clubs -- to larger centres.
When Gino and Sharon Scutti purchased the Family Hotel in Carrathool for $240,000 in the 1990s it had four poker machines. Now the poker machines are gone and the historic 1880s pub is worth a fraction of what they paid.
Unbeknown to the Scuttis, the legislation passed by the NSW parliament in 2001 meant the poker machine entitlements adhered to the licensee of a hotel rather than to the landlord. In many cases, including the Scuttis, those entitlements were worth more than the hotel itself.
The people the Scuttis leased their hotel to sold the entitlements to the machines for a reputed $400,000 -- and left the keys to the pub at the local police station. It was all perfectly legal.
Court action by the Scuttis and dozens of other hotel owners did not go their way; a NSW Supreme Court hearing determined the entitlements attached to thelessee and not to the landlord and the High Court refused to hear an appeal.
And the tiny town of Carrathool, off the main highway on the flat dry plains near Hay in southern NSW, population 40, lost its poker machines. Where they were is nothing but an empty patch of carpet.
Sharon Scutti said since public liability had made halls too expensive for groups to hire, country pubs were now the central meeting place in most rural areas. The poker machines helped attract enough people to make them viable and to sponsor the local bushfire brigade and a sports club.
"We bought the hotel with four machines and now we have none," she said. "To buy them back would cost us $800,000. If city pubs can't survive without poker machines, how do they think we in the country can?"
Gino Scutti said the pub acted as the town's only social centre and if they were forced to close their doors it would be devastating. "The Government gave out the poker machine entitlements to hotels so they could survive and it has had the opposite effect," he said. "It is killing us. It's a bloody mess."
Former NSW gaming minister Richard Face, who was minister when the Gaming Machines Act 2001 was passed, said senior government figures had ignored his warnings that the legislation was poorly written.
A spokesman for NSW Gaming Minister Graham West said the legislation, including the trade in poker machine entitlements, was under review.
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