Aboriginal alcoholism worsening: inquiry

ALCOHOLISM in Aboriginal communities is bad and getting worse, says the chairwoman of a federal inquiry into the issue.

After hearings in Alice Springs and Tennant Creek, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Indigenous Affairs is in Darwin conducting its inquiry into the harmful use of alcohol by indigenous communities.

Chairwoman Sharman Stone says the feedback from communities is that the situation is dire.

"An overarching message is things are getting far worse than they've been before ... People now are desperate about finding a solution to these problems," Dr Stone told AAP.

"As a woman said to us in Tennant Creek yesterday, 'our young people are getting angrier and too many people are dying'.

"And that's just an appalling situation in a developed country like Australia - one of the richer countries in the world - to have this circumstance for its indigenous population."

Homelessness and housing pressures are a key factor in explaining why indigenous people drink to excess, the inquiry heard on Wednesday.

Indigenous people are highly mobile but often have trouble finding somewhere to stay when they come to cities such as Darwin to attend events, to see family or to seek work, and end up putting stress on relatives and overcrowding properties.

Those who end up in the long grass, or sleeping rough, are usually the problem drinkers, said Toni Vine Bromley, CEO of NT Shelter.

She said accessing the NT rental market was difficult enough before taking into account the obstacles Aboriginal people from remote areas might face when moving to towns.

The NT has 15 times the national average of homeless people, 30 to 40 per cent of which are children aged under 18.

Young disadvantaged women who drink during pregnancy are having babies with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, and the inquiry is looking at its prevalence and whether it should be declared a disability.

Dr Stone called it a form of "cultural genocide".

"(Brain-damaged children) who will never be able to learn like others, who will probably end up incarcerated as soon as they reach adult status, who will be more likely to suicide, more likely to be victims of violence and to perpetrate violence - that is a tragedy for any community," she said.

Dr Stone also said she was disappointed the NT government would not permit its employees, such as the police and doctors, to give evidence to the inquiry, but rather would submit a "whole of government report".

"It's an inquiry loaded with politics and emotional stress for a lot of people, because the Australian population as a whole has a major problem with alcohol consumption," she said.

Hearings will continue in Darwin on Thursday.

17.52 | 0 komentar | Read More

Mine application filed despite concerns

A COMPANY under administration has applied to restart and expand work at a Blue Mountains mine rejected previously due to "unacceptable environmental impacts," environmentalists say.

Coalpac Pty Ltd on Wednesday put a development application to mine 315 hectares of the Ben Bullen Forest, near Lithgow, on public display, the NSW Nature Conservation Council said.

"It is very disappointing that Coalpac has been permitted to submit new plans to destroy a significant area ... that the Office of Environment and Heritage has recommended should be protected in a conservation reserve," the group's chief Pepe Clarke said.

NSW planning minister Brad Hazzard last October referred himself to the state's corruption watchdog over allegations of a conflict of interest relating to the mine.

Media reports at the time claimed his chief of staff, Kath McFarlane, failed to disclose owning properties near the previously proposed coal mine extension, which was rejected by the planning department.

It was abandoned despite the support of Treasury and Trade and Investment, which was in favour of 150 direct jobs being created.

The allegations, Premier Barry O'Farrell said, were "baseless."

In 2010 a report commissioned by then-premier Bob Carr found the mine had caused hundreds of cliffs to collapse, damaged Aboriginal rock art and polluted drinking water supplies.

Comment is being sought from the government.

17.52 | 0 komentar | Read More

BP Brisbane workers weigh up their futures

DREW McQueen knew his two decades at BP's Brisbane oil refinery were coming to an end.

The 53-year-old crane rigger is one of 355 workers who will lose their jobs when the Bulwer Island plant ceases production in mid-2015.

The Pinkenba site in Brisbane's north will stop refining 102,000 barrels a day, ending half a century of history.

It will instead be used to store jet fuel, leaving another 300-plus contractors out of work.

The closure of yet another oil Australian refinery has energy experts predicting the end of a local industry within a decade, as Asian refineries continue to produce much higher volumes more efficiently.

The news also follows Holden and Toyota heralding the end of local car making by 2018, and a string of retrenchments at Qantas and throughout the resources industry.

Mr McQueen, who still has a teenage daughter to support, knew there was bad news before Wednesday morning's announcement.

"There's always been talk of closing these joints. Today we hear about it," he told AAP outside the front gates.

"I've been here 20 years. I've had a good run."

Fellow crane operator John, who is also in his mid-50s, said the news gave him "a bit of sadness" after seven years at the plant.

He is now weighing up whether to leave Brisbane to find work.

"I'm in a situation where I don't particularly want to do that but if it arises, then it's something I will have to eventually look at," he said.

Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Queensland secretary Rohan Webb said the retrenched workers were "quite shell shocked".

"We're seeing massive job losses across the state so the employment opportunities for these workers are going to be somewhat short," he told reporters.

Addressing reporters on site, the Bulwer Island refinery's managing director Tim Wall said much higher production volumes in Asia were to blame, stressing Australia's carbon tax wasn't responsible.

"There's a very large difference between the operating costs of a 100,000-barrel-a-day refinery compared to a refinery ... in India that's operating at over a million barrels a day," he told reporters.

Australia has just four refineries left, including BP's Kwinana plant near Perth.

BP Australasia president Andy Holmes said its West Australian refinery was not yet earmarked for closure but declined to commit on its future.

The future is considered marginal for Brisbane's other refinery at Lytton, run by Caltex, and the other refineries in Geelong and Melbourne.

Energy analysts including Credit Suisse's Mark Samter and State One Stockbroking's Peter Kopetz believe the end of local refining may be less than a decade away.

BP's latest announcement follows Caltex closing its Sydney refinery during the second half of 2014 and converting it to an import terminal.

BP's latest announcement also comes just four months after the company sacked 300 workers at its Australian headquarters in Melbourne.

The Bulwer Island refinery was built in 1965 by Amoco and bought by BP in 1984.

17.52 | 0 komentar | Read More

Cancer risk for 1000 Fukushima children

A GROUP of children exposed to higher radiation levels from the Fukushima nuclear accident faces a slightly higher risk of thyroid cancer, UN experts say.

However, there would be no measurable rise of cancer in the Japanese population overall, the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) said in its final report on the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

About 1000 children who were evacuated from the vicinity received a radiation dose of up to 80 milligrays.

"If we are honest, we must say there is a chance that a few of these children will have received thyroid doses which are high enough that sometimes in the future, thyroid cancer can develop," said German expert Wolfgang Weiss, who co-ordinated the UNSCEAR investigation.

For the study, more than 80 scientists from 18 countries analysed the radiation levels to which people in Japan were exposed, and the likelihood that the rate of cancers affecting the thyroid, blood, breasts or other organs will rise.

The Japanese people were rightly concerned, UNSCEAR chairman Carl-Magnus Larsson said.

"Based on this assessment, however, the committee does not expect significant changes in future cancer statistics that could be attributed to radiation exposure from the accident," he said on Wednesday.

17.52 | 0 komentar | Read More

PM labels PUP 'one man personality cult'

Labor MP Jason Clare (pic) says the coalition will regret its pre-election attacks on Clive Palmer. Source: AAP

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott has taken another swipe at Clive Palmer, dismissing his political outfit as "a personality cult for one person".

Mr Abbott has repeatedly accused Mr Palmer of trying to buy seats in parliament in a bid to further his own interests.

And on Wednesday, he asked what it meant for democracy when candidates were "a proxy for a minor party that is a personality cult for one person".

"It's something for voters to ponder in the lead-up to Saturday," he told ABC radio in Perth on Wednesday during the West Australian Senate election campaign.

On the party's appeal, Mr Abbott said: "I think there is a certain novelty value and obviously there has been a massive, massive, massive advertising spend.

"So far, the gentleman in question has spent - presumably from his own money - far more than the combined spending from both the Liberal Party and the Labor Party," he said.

But Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek, also campaigning in Perth on Wednesday, said it was up to each party to determine how much was spent on a campaign.

"We believe in a democracy," Ms Plibersek said.

"As long as a political party declares all its donations, as long as it abides by the rules, they've got every right to spend the money they raise."

Despite the Greens being the second biggest spenders in the re-run WA Senate election, leader Christine Milne said the party wanted to see expenditure on campaign ads capped in light of the Palmer United Party ad blitz.

"This is the first time in Australian politics where we've had a rich individual being able to so manifestly influence the vote," she said.

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said his party's ad spending was different to PUP's because the funds came from a large amount of small donations.

Mr Palmer said PUP's advertising cash splash was his personal money to do with what he wished.

He said he had only spent a third of what the Liberal Party did at the 2013 federal election.

"No matter how much money you spend on advertising, if you have a bad idea people won't vote for you," Mr Palmer told Network Ten.

If PUP wins a WA Senate seat on Saturday, it will have three members on the upper house crossbench after July 1.

17.52 | 0 komentar | Read More

Search for MH370 could drag on: Houston

Authorities are in a race against time to locate the black box in the Malaysia Airlines plane wreck. Source: AAP

AS Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak prepares to travel to Perth to thank those searching for Malaysia Airlines flight 370, Australia's former defence chief has warned the operation could take a long time.

Mr Najib will arrive on Wednesday and stay until Thursday, visiting the RAAF Pearce air base to the city's north, the departure point for the seven-nation search effort.

Danica Weeks - the wife of missing Perth passenger, Paul Weeks - visited the air base on Tuesday, prompting Air Chief Marshal Houston to urge the mother-of-two to come to the new Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre near the West Australian parliament for a full briefing.

He also passed on his personal phone number to her.

Air Chief Marshal Houston is leading the centre, which has taken over from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in co-ordinating the search and distributing information about it.

He said the operation would be pursued with vigour, but with no objects pulled from the Indian Ocean identified as being from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, it could drag on for weeks, maybe months.

"I have to say in my experience - and I have got a lot of experience in search and rescue over the years - this search and recovery operation is probably the most challenging I have ever seen," he told reporters in Perth on Tuesday.

The last known position of the plane was a long way away from the area being examined and until some debris was found to narrow down the search, it "could drag on for a long time".

"I say that because the starting point whenever you do a search and rescue is the last known position of the vehicle or aircraft.

"In this particular case, the last known position was a long, long way from where the aircraft appears to have gone.

"We've been searching for many, many days and so far have not found anything connected with MH370."

Air Chief Marshal Houston said it was not known what altitude and speed the aircraft was travelling at and authorities were relying on the best information available.

"I think at this stage that it's very important to pursue all the leads," he added, as 10 planes and nine ships, some with helicopters, resumed the search.

He also said updated information about the pilot's final words provided some "clarity".

The pilot was originally reported as signing off: "All right, goodnight".

But it emerged on Monday that he had actually said: "Goodnight Malaysian three seven zero".

"The last communication was more formal than what was reported some weeks ago," Air Chief Marshal Houston said, and declined to comment further.

Defence Minister David Johnston said about a week remained to find the plane's black box, given the satellite "pinger" had about 30 days of battery life and the aircraft vanished on March 8.

"It depends on the temperature of the water and water depth and pressure as to how long the battery power will last," Senator Johnston told ABC radio.

He said it would take two or three days for the Australian naval vessel Ocean Shield, which has been fitted with a pinger locator, to reach the search zone, some 1850km west of Perth.

17.52 | 0 komentar | Read More

Aust students equipped to tackle problems

AUSTRALIAN students are relatively well-equipped to face the modern world, with new international test results showing they're better problem solvers than expected.

Australia came ninth out of the 44 countries examined in the Programme for International Student Assessment's 2012 problem solving tests.

The tests look at how well 15-year-olds can solve problems they have never encountered before, where there isn't a learned, routine solution.

Questions included working out how to use a virtual MP3 player they'd never seen before, buying train tickets from a machine and using GPS and traffic information to decide travel routes.

Students in Australia performed much better in problem solving than those in countries with similar average results for maths, science and reading.

The best students in maths also had excellent problem-solving skills, the results released on Tuesday showed.

It suggested this meant that in Australia top maths students have access to the kinds of learning opportunities that are also useful for improving their problem-solving skills.

Particular strengths for Australian students were exploring, understanding and representing problems and formulating hypotheses about them.

But their weaknesses lay in planning and executing solutions.

In general, Australian students performed better than expected on problems where all the information needed is given at the start and doesn't change, known as static tasks.

About one in six got top level results while a similar number were at or below the bottom level.

Singapore, Korea and Japan topped the countries tested.

In Singapore, nearly one in three students achieved top results - twice as many as in Australia.

Some 85,000 students around the world took part in the problem-solving tests.

PISA says testing students' skills in tackling real-life problems helps them and their teachers and schools identify better ways to give young people the skills they'll need to be employable in the 21st century.

17.52 | 0 komentar | Read More

Bushfire threatens homes in small Vic town

An out-of-control bushfire is threatening homes in the small Victorian town of Narrawong. Source: AAP

RESIDENTS whose homes are threatened by a fast-moving bushfire near the small Victorian town of Narrawong have been warned to leave.

An emergency warning has been issued for the blaze in Victoria's southwest and a relief centre has been set up in the town and community meeting held for residents.

The fire has already burnt through more than 270 hectares.

It is travelling in a southerly direction from Golf Course Road, Mt Clay State Forest and towards Mt Clay fire tower, a Department of Environment and Primary Industries spokesperson says.

Residents in the vicinity of the bushfire have been warned they should leave now, before conditions become too dangerous.

The message applies to residents in the vicinity of Blackers Road, Devlins Road, Beavis Road, Brabender Lane, Kerrabrae Road and Angelino Road.

Community meetings were held at the Narrawong Hall and Portland Civic Centre on Tuesday night and a relief centre has been set up at the Portland Civic Centre.

Several roads have been closed and should be avoided.

17.52 | 0 komentar | Read More

Palmer company coughs up carbon tax bill

Clive Palmer says Queensland Nickel's $36 million carbon tax bill has been paid. Source: AAP

QUEENSLAND Nickel has paid its overdue carbon tax debt of nearly $7 million, but the company owned by federal MP and mining magnate Clive Palmer is not out of the woods just yet.

The Clean Energy Regulator has confirmed that on Tuesday it received a payment from Mr Palmer's company Queensland Nickel for $6.8 million.

The payment was for the company's outstanding $6.1 million carbon tax debt to June 2013, plus 20 per cent interest a year through to the end of the year.

This clarification from the regulator backs Mr Palmer's insistence earlier on Tuesday that he'd already authorised the payment. But the regulator also said the amount it received did not include the interest accrued on the debt since December 31, and Queensland Nickel still had more cash to cough up.

"A further debt in the amount of $2.27 million fell due in February 2014 at the end of the final surrender period," a spokesperson for the regulator told AAP in a statement on Tuesday evening.

"The Clean Energy Regulator will continue to pursue the debts using appropriate means, including payment plans and court proceedings."

Queensland Nickel also confirmed it paid around $6,815,000 to the regulator on Tuesday, reducing its carbon tax liability as of December 31 to zero.

A statement from the company said as an exporter trading in international commodity markets, Queensland Nickel could not pass on the costs of the carbon tax to its customers.

"Queensland Nickel's international competitors are not plagued by the same high level of carbon pricing," the statement read.

Mr Palmer earlier said the payment was authorised to be made this week, well before the April 5 deadline imposed by the regulator.

But he did not know exactly when the authorisation was made, but denied it was done at the very last minute.

"Do you pay your tax months in advance?" he told reporters in Perth on Tuesday.

"Most people will pay their tax just before it's due and that's what our company's decided to do."

He said Queensland Nickel would continue with its High Court challenge to the legal validity of the carbon pricing scheme.

17.52 | 0 komentar | Read More

Palmer plans 'anonymous' news website

Clive Palmer is planning a news website containing anonymous posts by professional journalists. Source: AAP

A NEWS website filled with anonymous editorial written by journalists is being set up by wealthy businessman and federal MP Clive Palmer.

After lodging a trademark for The Australian Times last year, the Palmer United Party leader continues to toy with the idea of taking on media mogul Rupert Murdoch in the same spirit as his bid to break the nation's political duopoly.

He said it should go live before the end of the year.

"I'm setting up a website - I haven't got time to do it at the moment - called News on News," Mr Palmer told AAP in Perth, where he was campaigning on Tuesday for Saturday's re-run West Australian Senate election.

"I'm trying to get the editor of one of the newspapers to be the editor of it.

"And I'm trying to have it so that news (reporters) worldwide can log on and post an anonymous article - what's happening in Cincinnati, what's happening in Australia - all over the world.

"You might be a journalist who for some reason can't run a story, you can go and put it on News on News."

Mr Palmer said he still avoided speaking with News Corp Australia, saying he was often denied a right of reply, but still thought its journalists were largely nice people just following orders.

"There's only a point talking to a journalist if you get some fair coverage. You might get 10 per cent fair and that's still worth putting your point of view. But if you get zero coverage, you're only talking to them because they're looking for a headline."

17.52 | 0 komentar | Read More