Thursday, 26 February 2009

Workers blue as Chesty Bond defects to China, The Australian, 26 February, 2009. Page One.



Workers blue as Chesty Bond defects to China

Stapleton, John. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 26 Feb 2009: 1.
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"The manufacturing is all going to China, there's no point in supporting Bonds," said Maryanne Metcalf from the Wollongong Bonds factory.
About 1200 jobs would be lost from the factory floor: 233 in western Sydney, 83 in the NSW Hunter Valley, 207 in Wollongong, 56 at West End in Queensland, and in Victoria, 255 from Holeproof at Nunawading and 298 from the Hosiery at Coolaroo.

SOME cried, others were outraged, but nearly all were shocked that the great Chesty Bond would now get all his clothes made in China.
The decision by Pacific Brands to shut seven factories in NSW, Queensland and Victoria left 1850 workers wondering how they will find work in a downturn.
"The manufacturing is all going to China, there's no point in supporting Bonds," said Maryanne Metcalf from the Wollongong Bonds factory.
"Bonds don't deserve their dinky-di Aussie reputation, not after this. We have lost our jobs.
"I have kids and a mortgage, the lot, it affects us all."
Textile union NSW secretary Barry Tubner said workers were disgusted at the way the company had made the announcement to the stock exchange before talking to their employees.
About 1200 jobs would be lost from the factory floor: 233 in western Sydney, 83 in the NSW Hunter Valley, 207 in Wollongong, 56 at West End in Queensland, and in Victoria, 255 from Holeproof at Nunawading and 298 from the Hosiery at Coolaroo.
There will also be 650 redundancies among non-manufacturing employees spread across the business.
Full report -- Page 4
Business -- Page 17
John Durie -- Page 26
Credit: John Stapleton
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Clothes workers feel stitched up as jobs cut, The Australian, 26 February, 2009. Picture Amos Aikman.


Clothes workers feel stitched up as jobs cut

Stapleton, John. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 26 Feb 2009: 4.
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WORKERS described their reactions in simple terms. Some were "shocked", others "stunned" or "gutted" on hearing the news thatPacific Brands would cut 1850 of their jobs in the next 18 months.
"Bonds is an Australian brand and you expect it to keep going," he said. "They installed six new machines just before Christmas; and they pulled the plug today."
"We have young people who have just started out with their families and mortgages," he said. "They are disappointed. It is very bad news."

WORKERS described their reactions in simple terms. Some were "shocked", others "stunned" or "gutted" on hearing the news thatPacific Brands would cut 1850 of their jobs in the next 18 months.
As union officials held what they described as an unproductive meeting with management at the Bonds factory in western Sydney, workers of the seven factories to close in NSW, Victoria and Queensland wondered how they would find work in a downturn.
Father of two John Bracun, 45, who started at Bonds when he was 19, was shocked that the Wentworthville factory and all its 233 jobs were to go.
"Bonds is an Australian brand and you expect it to keep going," he said. "They installed six new machines just before Christmas; and they pulled the plug today."
Peter Basto, 62, said that while he was close to retirement age, he was worried about others.
"We have young people who have just started out with their families and mortgages," he said. "They are disappointed. It is very bad news."
Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union NSW secretary Barry Tubner said his members felt gutted by the decision.
He said they were disgusted at the way the company -- makers of Bonds, KingGee, Yakka and Berlei -- made the announcement tothe stock exchange before talking to their employees.
The 74 mostly women workers at the KingGee factory at Bellambi on the NSW south coast were in tears after they learnt they were to lose their jobs.
Maryanne Metcalf, from the Wollongong Bonds factory, said they were on a morning tea break when the announcement came that all 207 of them were to lose their jobs.
"Everyone was just silent, they just looked at each other, stunned, absolutely stunned," she said.
"The manufacturing is all going to China, there's no point in supporting Bonds. Bonds don't deserve their dinky-di Aussie reputation, not after this. We have lost our jobs. I have kids and a mortgage, the lot, it affects us all."
About 1200 jobs will be lost from the factory floor; 233 at Wentworthville, 83 at Cessnock in the NSW Hunter Valley, 207 in Wollongong, 56 at West End in Queensland, 255 from Holeproof at Nunawading in Victoria and 298 from Hosiery at Coolaroo, also in Victoria.
There will be 650 redundancies among non-manufacturing employees spread across the business.
TCFU national secretary Michele O'Neil said the union did not accept that the closure of seven factory sites was necessary, claiming several brands continued to be profitable.
"This is a devastating blow to these workers and their families, this industry and Australia," she said.
Ms O'Neil said Pacific Brands had received $17 million in government assistance in the past two years yet appeared to think they had no obligation to keep jobs in Australia.
Pacific Brands chief executive Sue Morphet said the company was launching a new strategy known as Pacific Brands 2010, to restructure their business after a 2.9 per cent drop in sales. She said closing most of the Australian clothing manufacturing operations, discontinuing small labels and selling off properties, including the large site at Wentworthville, was the only responsible course and would save $150 million a year.
Business -- Page 17
John Durie -- Page 26
Credit: John Stapleton
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Tuesday, 24 February 2009

D'Arcy's attack on swimmer not excessive: magistrate, The Australian, 27 February, 2009.

D'Arcy's attack on swimmer not excessive: magistrate

Stapleton, John. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 27 Feb 2009: 6.
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During sentencing submissions in Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court yesterday, magistrate John Favretto said it was clear D'[Arcy] had shown little self-control when drinking alcohol, but there was provocation.
D'Arcy, 21, has pleaded guilty to recklessly inflicting grievous bodily harm on [Simon Cowley] in a Sydney bar in March last year. Theincident led to D'Arcy being dropped from the Olympic team.
The court has heard Cowley slapped D'Arcy in the face during an altercation, and D'Arcy responded with a punch that left Cowley with fractures to his jaw, eye socket, cheekbone and nose.
NICK D'Arcy broke the jaw, eye socket, nose and cheekbone of fellow swimmer Simon Cowley in a bar fight, but he was not necessarily using excessive force, a Sydney magistrate said yesterday.
During sentencing submissions in Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court yesterday, magistrate John Favretto said it was clear D'Arcy had shown little self-control when drinking alcohol, but there was provocation.
"It was a case of self-defence, there is no doubt about that," the magistrate said. "It is just the level of response. He is a young man, a very fit young man. It is not that he necessarily used excessive force ... sometimes it's how the punch is thrown."
Mr Favretto said "young people in particular seem to need to prove their manhood, and they do that physically and violently instead of walking away".
D'Arcy, 21, has pleaded guilty to recklessly inflicting grievous bodily harm on Cowley in a Sydney bar in March last year. The incident led to D'Arcy being dropped from the Olympic team.
The court has heard Cowley slapped D'Arcy in the face during an altercation, and D'Arcy responded with a punch that left Cowley with fractures to his jaw, eye socket, cheekbone and nose.
D'Arcy's lawyer, Richard Jankowski, pleaded with the court not to give his client a custodial sentence.
Last week, Cowley, 28, said he had been in constant pain and remained fearful of being attacked in public places.
Mr Jankowski said D'Arcy had demonstrated contrition and remorse over the punch.
Prosecutor Peter Aitkin said the court should impose a custodial sentence, not necessarily one of full-time custody. Options could include a suspended sentence. He said D'Arcy should at least continue undergoing counselling and supervision for anger management and alcohol abuse issues and could be banned from drinking alcohol altogether.
Mr Favretto said D'Arcy was not an alcoholic with a criminal history or a record of violence or mental illness, but a young man displaying poor impulse control.
He said an order preventing D'Arcy from drinking at all would be setting him up to fail, and such issues should be best left to theexperts.
Mr Favretto will hand down his sentence on March 27.
Credit: John Stapleton
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Monday, 23 February 2009

ETS to butcher farm output and earnings, The Australian, 23 February, 2009.




ETS to butcher farm output and earnings

Stapleton, John. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 23 Feb 2009: 4.
"We're at the end of the line. We can't pass it on but everything will be passed on to us -- the cost of electricity, transport, any fodder you've got to buy, it's all likely to rise.
"The ETS will send some people to the wall. I'm sure a lot of bush people have large debts after floods and droughts. Things are tight enough as they are."
"The biggest threat to agriculture over the next half century is not climate change, it is climate change policy," Mr [Mick Keogh] said, adding that the ETS had the potential to do profound and long-lasting damage to the sector.

Full Text


THE nation's agricultural output would be slashed by $2.4 billion a year by 2020 under Kevin Rudd's carbon pollution reduction scheme.
Losses to the farming sector would balloon to $10.9 billion a year by 2030, driven by production declines of more than 25 per cent in the beef and wool industries, a report by the Centre for International Economics has found.
The forecasts are based on the federal Government's White Paper assumption that agriculture will have to pay for its emissions by 2016.
The study, prepared for the Australian Farm Institute in conjunction with Australian Wool Innovation and Dairy Australia, finds the sheepmeats, pork and dairy sectors will also be hit hard, with production drops by 2030 of 21 per cent, 10.4 per cent and 8.1 per cent respectively.
Producers will experience a big rise in ETS-related costs even before agriculture's inclusion in the scheme because of increased energy, fertiliser and transport costs, the study finds.
The increased cost of Australian products is expected to cause export volumes to decline. Exports of beef and sheep are projected to decline by 14 per cent and 10 per cent respectively by 2030 if agriculture is included in an emissions trading scheme.
David Pearce, of the Centre for International Economics, said the research body had been surprised by the size of the fallout expected to hit the livestock-based industries of beef, sheepmeat, wool and dairy.
"There is a cost increase for the cropping industries but nowhere near as big as for the meat-based," he said.
"One of the key things we show is that agriculture will be affected by the scheme whether or not it is a participant.
"Parts of agriculture are energy intensive; they use inputs which involve energy, fertilisers, chemicals; they also use a lot of transport in order to shift commodities around the country."
Peter Heelan, 52, who runs cattle at his Ulcanbah Station, 90km from Clermont in central Queensland, said he knew one thing about the Prime Minister's ETS: it was going to cost him money, which could not be worse timed following the floods and droughts that had hit rural Australia in recent years.
"Everyone in the bush is hoping the ETS will go away," Mr Heelan said.
"We're at the end of the line. We can't pass it on but everything will be passed on to us -- the cost of electricity, transport, any fodder you've got to buy, it's all likely to rise.
"The ETS will send some people to the wall. I'm sure a lot of bush people have large debts after floods and droughts. Things are tight enough as they are."
Australian Farm Institute head Mick Keogh said the report showed the impact of the emissions trading scheme would be far greater than the projected slowdown under the unlikely worst case scenarios developed by Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
"The biggest threat to agriculture over the next half century is not climate change, it is climate change policy," Mr Keogh said, adding that the ETS had the potential to do profound and long-lasting damage to the sector.
"Even the most conservative projection of 9 per cent reduction in the beef industry by 2020 represents $1.5 billion reduction in output, which would lead to a significant loss of job opportunities and major changes to regional economies," Mr Keogh said.
"That would amount to a massive change in rural communities."
Credit: John Stapleton
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Australians in dark on emissions effort, The Australian, 23 Febrary, 2009




Australians in dark on emissions effort

Stapleton, John. The Australian; Canberra, A.C.T. [Canberra, A.C.T] 23 Feb 2009: 4.

Abstract

"Most people think by doing their bit in the household they will reduce Australia's emissions," Dr [Richard Denniss] said.
"While most people understand that emissions trading creates a cap above which emissions can't rise, it also createsa floor below which emissions can't fall."
"It seems like a dangerous strategy," Dr Denniss said. "With such a complex proposal, the Government should think back to the political difficulties John Hewson faced when he couldn't explain simply what impact a GST would have on the price of a birthday cake."

Full Text

MOST Australians have no idea how Kevin Rudd's emissions trading scheme will work, and do not realise individual efforts will make no difference to stopping climate change.
More than three-quarters of Australians believe that if they reduce their household emissions, the nation's total emissions would go down.
Polling to be published by the Australia Institute this week found almost 90per cent of respondents believe households and individuals should be able to contribute to reducing national greenhouse emissions.
More than 70 per cent of of the 1000 randomly selected people polled believe their actions, such as turning off light bulbs and putting insulation in their roofs, have contributed to a reduction.
Australia Institute executive director Richard Denniss said the polling, conducted this month by Research Now for the paper Zero Sum Game, showed massive public confusion about the way emissions trading would work.
"Most people think by doing their bit in the household they will reduce Australia's emissions," Dr Denniss said.
"But the fact is once emissions trading comes in, every tonne of emissions saved by households simply frees up an extra permit that will allow big polluters to increase their emissions.
"This is because emissions trading relies on a fixed number of pollution permits being in circulation at any point in time.
"While most people understand that emissions trading creates a cap above which emissions can't rise, it also createsa floor below which emissions can't fall."
Dr Denniss said Kevin Rudd did not appear to understand his own scheme.
He said the Prime Minister appeared to mislead parliament recently by claiming that, in spending $4billion on insulating 2.2million homes as part of his economic stimulus package, greenhouse emissions would be reduced by 49million tonnes.
In fact, under an ETS all it would do was transfer these emissions to large polluters, Dr Denniss said. He said the Government appeared to be relying on the public's lack of understanding to build support for the scheme.
"It seems like a dangerous strategy," Dr Denniss said. "With such a complex proposal, the Government should think back to the political difficulties John Hewson faced when he couldn't explain simply what impact a GST would have on the price of a birthday cake."
The Australia Institute polling also found that about half the population believes big polluters should pay for the costs of climate change.

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Saturday, 21 February 2009

Reducing footprint 'waste of time', Weekend Australian, 21 February, 2009.

Reducing footprint `waste of time'

Stapleton, John. Weekend Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 21 Feb 2009: 6.
"Individual efforts to reduce energy use will have absolutely no effect on the level of Australia's emissions," he said. "The least understood feature of the ETS is that the more effort households put into reducing their energy use, the more spare permits they are freeing up for the big polluters. It is a zero-sum game."
"Nothing an individual does will make any difference," he said. "Individual actions like replacing globes, installing insulation and solar water heaters and collective actions like Earth Hour will be to no avail."
"We spent all this money and it reduced Australia's emissions, but once an ETS comes in, other people like us won't be able to make a difference as other sectors of the economy would just increase their emissions by the same amount as individuals reduce theirs. It doesn't make sense," she said.

Full Text


THE millions of well-intentioned Australians turning off light bulbs, installing insulation in their ceilings and solar panels on their roofs, cycling to work or buying low-emission cars are wasting time and money.
Commentators from both sides of the climate debate have criticised the emissions trading scheme proposed by the federal Government as being ineffectual.
Under the scheme, the more individuals save on their emissions the more corporate polluters such as coal stations and aluminium smelters are allowed to emit.
The left-leaning Australia Institute and pro free-market think tanks the Institute of Public Affairs and the Centre for Independent Studies all condemned the ETS this week.
Australia Institute head Richard Denniss said an ETS had almost no friends, either within industry or among economists and green groups.
"Individual efforts to reduce energy use will have absolutely no effect on the level of Australia's emissions," he said. "The least understood feature of the ETS is that the more effort households put into reducing their energy use, the more spare permits they are freeing up for the big polluters. It is a zero-sum game."
A spokeswoman for Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said every Australian should help reduce carbon pollution and contribute to meeting Australia's emissions reduction target.
"Improving energy efficiency in our homes will position Australia to set even more ambitious carbon pollution reduction targets in the future," she said.
But Mr Denniss dismissed these claims: "If Minister Wong is genuinely proud of her system, she should honestly and simply explain to the public that for the next 12 years at least, nothing they do to reduce their emissions will have any impact."
Chartered accountant and member of the lobby group Sandbag Climate Campaign, Jeremy Burke, said people would feel betrayed by an ETS.
"Nothing an individual does will make any difference," he said. "Individual actions like replacing globes, installing insulation and solar water heaters and collective actions like Earth Hour will be to no avail."
Reserve Bank board member and economist Warwick McKibben said the problems with an ETS were well known and the rest of the world was already moving away from such schemes.
John Humphreys, research fellow at the CIS, said that by cancelling the House of Representatives inquiry this week the Government was shutting down debate. "It's a shame; it is an important debate," he said.
"Under the ETS as it is designed if you do reforms in your own home it allows the electricity companies to sell those permits to another carbon emitter."
Tracey Tipping, 32, who sells environmentally-friendly products online, has done everything possible to reduce her emissions. She and her husband have installed energy-efficient light bulbs in their home and bought carbon offsets for their car. The couple recently spent almost $20,000 after rebates on their solar panels and hot water system, reducing their already lean electrical consumption by 80 per cent.
"We spent all this money and it reduced Australia's emissions, but once an ETS comes in, other people like us won't be able to make a difference as other sectors of the economy would just increase their emissions by the same amount as individuals reduce theirs. It doesn't make sense," she said.
Credit: John Stapleton

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