Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Tue 30th Oct Todays News

Happy birthday and many happy returns Narelle Huffadineand Paul Marji. Born on the same day, across the years. Remember, birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.

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Boastful Gillard gets poll-axed

Piers Akerman – Tuesday, October 30, 2012 (4:21am)

LABOR and its broadcast arm, the ABC, were last night still crowing about Monday’s Newspoll which had the ALP level pegging with the Coalition 50-50 after preferences had been distributed according to the split at the 2010 election.
Unfortunately, the weekly Essential Report, out around midday, didn’t reflect the same trend.
It showed the Coalition ahead, 54 per cent to Labor’s 46 per cent, on the two-party preferred vote, in essence continuing the Coalition’s 53 to 47 per cent lead, recorded over the previous two weeks.
Newspoll has been dodgy in recent months.
But that didn’t stop Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her ministers hitting the airwaves from dawn to make the extraordinary claim that Newspoll reflected an endorsement of her government’s policies.
The Newspoll result was also viewed as a dampener to Kevin Rudd’s vision of a triumphal return at some stage in the not too distant future.
According to Newspoll, Labor’s primary vote was up from 33 to 36 per cent, and Coalition support down from 45 to 41 per cent. The Greens’ primary vote was unchanged on 10 per cent.
On Sky News yesterday, Gillard, after making the usual nonsensical disclaimer about never commenting on polls, commented that she thought “there is a contrast in Australian politics. It’s between Labor’s plan for the future and the opposition lacking any plan.”
She should have kept her mouth shut.
Anyone who attends anything other than an inner-city ALP branch meeting at the moment would be scratching to find a single person who thinks the current government has achieved anything or is capable of achieving anything.
All the Labor-Green-Independent minority government has done in recent months is tell more porkies and make more extravagant promises about policies which it says will come in the future – a long way into the future.
Most of Gillard’s plans are at least 13 years out – around 2025.
None of them are funded.
One thing about Australians is that they generally like to give people a fair go and one of the things that has come through loud and clear is that the Opposition leader Tony Abbott has been sledged by the femocrats and Emily’s Listers who occupy the government benches.
Watching Gillard defend the textual misogynist Peter Slipper and attack Abbott was a surreal experience. Orwellian.
Yet the extremist feminists who surround Gillard cheered as if there was some truth in her shrill claims.
Gillard’s position on the family is well known.  She is opposed to the traditional concept of marriage – or at least she was in the Year of the Lesbian which she promoted as a student leader.
It is difficult to know exactly what Gillard stands for as she claims she was young and naive when she was 30, yet she still acts like an adolescent student leader emotionally.
Getting to know Gillard is a challenge. She has announced that she will be the “real Julia” so frequently that how can one be sure which Julia is the real deal.
Abbott is right there in front of your eyes. Too much of him, according to those who find surf life savers’ budgie smugglers offensive, though perhaps they are protesting too much.
One of the only true remarks Gillard made yesterday was when she backed away from supporting the Budget surplus she and Treasurer Wayne Swan had staked their careers on.
No-one ever believed it, not the way these reckless spendthrifts were tossing the borrowed cash out of Canberra.
Now even they are starting to realise it is time to back track.
Why they bother, who knows? More to the point, who really cares?
The carbon tax lie was not a one-off. The phony surplus is in the same league.
A prudent politician with any experience would not boast about one poll, as Gillard and her crew of incompetents did yesterday.
But prudence is in short supply in the Labor Party these days.
We are watching a prime minister who stands for nothing, who has achieved nothing, clutch at straws and try to convince the public that she is a person of substance.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

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Gillard misogyny weapon shoots blanks

Miranda Devine – Tuesday, October 30, 2012 (5:57pm)

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THERE are two types of females in this world: the “woman’s woman” and the “man’s woman”.
The latter adores men and is an incorrigible flirt. At a party she will be the one talking with the men, preferring their company to that of any woman. She will never observe the quaint “BBQ rules” that frequently divide Australian social gatherings down gender lines.
She regards attention from men as more important than the regard of women.
A woman’s woman loves men just as much but, for the most part, she abides by a loyalty code to her own sex, which holds that the best way to ruin a good friendship is to compete for the attention of men.
Most women are somewhere along the continuum between the two extremes, and women can move in and out of each camp as they grow older, and depending on circumstances.
But in the current high-octane climate of political misogyny and sexism it is worth noting that the woman who occupies the highest political office in the land, our first female prime minister, lauded as a latter day Boudicea, the patron saint of feminists, appears very much like a man’s woman.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But a man’s woman doesn’t resort to false claims of sexism and gender victimhood. She appears to know that her sex has been an asset in the climb to the top, and that it is her refusal to be treated as a lesser creature that has earned the respect of men and smoothed her way.
This is especially so in a very blokey environment, such as the union-dominated Labor Party.
The tension between the ALP’s macho culture and Emily’s List feminism, which has infiltrated the party with demands for affirmative action quotas and ideological purity on abortion, makes a man’s woman even more sought-after by male colleagues as a talisman of gender equality. It is not hard to wrap such men around the proverbial little finger with feminine adulation, flattery and harmless flirtation.
This is a legitimate, though unspoken, path to power. No path is pretty and men and women make use of whatever they have.
But women’s women are sometimes the targets of unsisterly enmity.
In her lively new book, Tales from the Political Trenches, ABC journalist turned one-term Labor MP Maxine McKew recounts bitterly how Gillard patronised and ignored her when she served as her parliamentary secretary.
It is venom of a kind that would have a male branded a misogynist, as is the fashion of the moment.
McKew describes Gillard as “punitive and scolding”. She, “never included me in wider discussions or sought out my views on any of the substantive areas. I never shook the feeling that Gillard saw me as an irritant.”
She writes of Gillard’s “girlish giggles”, her “lack of generosity towards me her pattern of condescension and the way her office had locked me out of some important policy development”.
And later: “The photos of the country’s first female prime minister standing beside Governor General Quentin Bryce suggested a new era of girl power ... But it was a deceptive image.”
McKew was a Kevin Rudd loyalist, so she may not be an altogether reliable witness to Gillard’s sisterliness.
But the point is that when any woman whips out the misogyny card, she’s lost the argument, and a man’s woman knows that better than anyone, because she hunts with the beast.
That is why Gillard’s misogyny speech seemed inauthentic, even apart from its context. Despite her raised voice and flapping hands, despite the direct language, whinging about sexism is not her way, and she must be fair-minded enough to know it was a fraud. She’s a doer, not a complainer.
She’s a pragmatist who will take any weapon that comes along. But sexism will end up shooting blanks, despite any short-term damage it does to Abbott.
That is what a forensic examination of Newspoll tells us, and I am indebted to Dennis Shanahan of The Australian for his analysis.
When asked if they thought Abbott has behaved in a sexist way towards Gillard recently, 45 per cent of people said no and 16 per cent had no answer. Fewer - 39 per cent - said he had been sexist.
Females were more likely to see sexism. But even then, they were split evenly, 43 to 41 per cent, the difference within the 3 per cent margin of error. More men (48 per cent) thought Abbott had not been sexist than thought he had (35 per cent).
The youngest people, aged 18-34, were least convinced, with just 33 per cent agreeing Abbott was sexist and 45 per cent saying he wasn’t.
As the inheritors of a politically correct world, they are more alert to fakery.
The truth is that while Abbott comes across as a blokey bloke who would fit right in to the ALP, he also comes across as a woman’s man, one who adores women.
His six-month paid parental leave scheme is one example of how women would fare under his policies, particularly those least respected by Emily’s Listers, women who want to put family before career, at least in the early stages of childrearing.
“Maternity leave schemes are better thought of as a means of encouraging more women to keep the most traditional role of all, that of a mother” wrote Abbott in his 2009 book Battlelines.
“It’s the fact that so many mothers and mothers-to-be can’t afford to give up work that makes a national paid maternity leave scheme necessary.”
He also sees the baby bonus, not as middle class welfare but as a tax refund, “a benefit based not on need but on the contribution (parents) are making to Australia’s future”.
This is a message that will be very attractive to Australia’s women. And that is why Labor is working so hard to cast Abbott as a woman-hater.

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CRUCIAL FRANKENSTORM UPDATE

Tim Blair – Tuesday, October 30, 2012 (12:22pm)

One thing that makes smoking really difficult is a hurricane.

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Labor changes mind after 1000 die

Andrew BoltOCTOBER302012(4:35pm)

What’s the difference between a conservative and a Labor minister? In this case about six years and 1000 deaths:
The Australian Government is planning to introduce legislation that would excise the entire mainland from Australia’s migration zone as part of efforts to stop asylum seeker boats…
At the moment, asylum seekers who reach the Australian mainland by boat can’t be transferred offshore for processing, unlike those who arrive in excised territories like Christmas Island…
It is similar to a plan put forward by the former Howard government in 2006, which Labor bitterly opposed at the time…
In 2006 as an opposition MP, (Labor’s now Immigration Minister Chris) Bowen described the Howard government’s plan as a “hypocritical and illogical bill” with no redeeming features.
“If it is passed today, it will be a stain on our national character,” Mr Bowen said then.
“The people who will be disadvantaged by this bill are in fear of their lives and we should never turn our back on them.”
Bunch of hypocrites. Since Labor relaxed the border laws in 2008, some 1000 people have died at sea, lured to their deaths, and taxpayers have had to hand over around $6 billion.
Mr Bowen said at the time that if the legislation was passed, an incoming Labor government would repeal it.
Meanwhile, 17 boats with 620 people on board have arrived in just the past week. 

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Broken promises made by Gillard before the last election

Andrew BoltOCTOBER302012(2:16pm)

And today I can assure every Australian that their Budget will be back in surplus in 2013.
Status: being broken. Promise no longer made. Figures suggest a multi-billion-dollar blowout.
And it is as disappointing to me as it is to millions of Australians that we do not have a price on carbon… But first we will need to establish a community consensus for action. If elected as Prime Minister I will re-prosecute the case for a carbon price at home and abroad. 
Status: broken. No consensus sought or reached. A carbon tax introduced against the public’s wishes.
There is another question on which I will seek consensus and that is the proposed Resources Super Profits Tax. Australians are entitled to a fairer share of our inheritance, the mineral wealth that lies in our grounds. They are entitled to that fairer share.
Status: being broken. Tax introduced that failed to raise a single dollar in its first three months.
On the question of asylum seekers can I say this; I can understand that Australians are disturbed when they see boats arrive on our shores unannounced.... I am full of understanding of the perspective of the Australian people that they want strong management of our borders and I will provide it.
Status: broken. Boat people arrivals now at record levels, at 2000 a month.
I’ll bring the Budget to surplus in 2013 ...  The Budget is coming back to surplus in 2013.
Status: being broken. Government no longer promises a surplus.
… we will cut taxes for all businesses in this country… [Abbott] wants to put company tax up.  I want to put it down. 
Status: Broken. Company tax not cut. Taxes effectively lifted instead in last week’s MYEFO. 
...we will recognise the first Australians in our Constitution.  
Status: broken. Promise postponed indefinitely.
There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.
Status: broken. Tax imposed.
Gillard’s ‘cash for clunkers’ scheme… Old car owners will score a $2000 rebate if they buy a new fuel-efficient vehicle, under a “cash for clunkers” scheme announced by Julia Gillard today. 
Status: broken. Scheme scrapped.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard is defending Labor’s climate change credentials, including the much-ridiculed plan for a citizens assembly. A re-elected Gillard government would appoint 150 randomly-selected Australians to assess published climate science and policies to combat the impact of climate change, such as an emissions trading scheme. 
Status: broken. Scheme scrapped.

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Gillard no longers promises her surplus

Andrew BoltOCTOBER302012(1:35pm)

For the second successive day, Julia Gillard yet again fails in Parliament to repeat her former guarantee of a Budget surplus this financial year. She just slimes the Opposition Leader instead.
Gillard used to have no problem at all in promising what she cannot deliver:
JULIA GILLARD: Well the better economic plan for the future is about bringing the budget to surplus in 2013. We’ll do that....  I’m going to get the budget to surplus.... I’ll get the budget back to surplus in 2013.
JOURNALIST:  If you don’t make a, get the Budget back in to surplus in 2012-2013, this is a question to both of you, the cameras are on – will you resign?
PM:  (laughs) The Budget is coming back to surplus, no ifs no buts it will happen
Moderator David Speers: I think, Prime Minister, that Peter is seeking some sort of guarantee if you don’t get the budget back into surplus in three years, what happens? Do you sack the Treasurer, do you take personal responsibility?
Julia Gillard: It’s happening, David. Failure is not an option.
Speers: If it doesn’t? If it doesn’t?
Gillard: Well, failure is not an option here and we won’t fail.
That Mr Abbott couldn’t tell you when the Budget would come back to surplus. Well I can:  the Budget will be back in surplus in 20113 if I’m re-elected, if my Government is re-elected on Saturday.
...the Budget’s coming back to surplus.  There’s no credible analysis on our economic plan that it won’t come back to surplus
PM: The budget will be back in surplus in 2013 as promised
The Government is returning the budget to surplus in 2012–13, on time and as promised, with surpluses growing over the forward estimates.
JULIA GILLARD, PRIME MINISTER: What we’ve done instead is swum strongly against the tide and delivered a budget surplus.
“The budget will return to surplus,” Ms Gillard told reporters...
Julia Gillard is the most dishonest and incompetent Prime Minister I can recall. 

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Play it while you’re allowed

Andrew BoltOCTOBER302012(1:24pm)

Faith & Gasoline’s Reality Hurts is imspired by some recent things that still make me cross.
The band’s Facebook page.

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Alan Jones has the last laugh

Andrew BoltOCTOBER302012(12:20pm)

MRN’s 2GB was the highest rating station in Sydney, increasing its audience share by 0.3 percentage points to 14.5% share. Alan Jones’ breakfast show jumped 0.5 points to 17.3% share.

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How Labor splashed billions against a wall

Andrew BoltOCTOBER302012(11:10am)

...the government is committed to the line that, had it not been for the massive injection of government spending at the time of the global financial crisis, Australia would have gone the way of other developed economies: into recession with higher unemployment… In one year, between 2007-08 and 2008-09, real government spending rose by 12.7 per cent, or $44 billion....
I don’t think the results of the paper authored by Emma Aisbett, Markus Brueckner, Ralf Steinhauser and Rhett Wilcox, entitled Fiscal Stimulus and Household Consumption: Evidence from the 2009 Australian National Building and Jobs Plan, will be making Wayne Swan’s day.
The paper is one of the outputs of an Australian Research Council Linkage grant on estimating the impact of fiscal stimulus on household expenditure. The project was awarded to the Australian National University this year, with the partner organisation being the Australian Treasury....
The bottom line of the paper is that the direct payments made to households by the Australian government in early 2009 - the Tax Bonus for Working Australians - had no discernible effect on consumption, at least of non-durables. Additionally, the impact of the announcement that payments were to be made had only a small and transient impact....
The authors use a novel methodology that was available to them because of the decision by the Australian Taxation Office to make the payments on a randomised basis by postcode across a period (five weeks). It was not logistically possible to make the payments all at once… The authors were able to match data on consumption of non-durables by postcode with the information on the timing of the households receiving the tax bonus. In this way, they could use correlation analysis to answer the question: did the payment of $8bn to nearly nine million taxpayers have a noticeable effect on consumption?…
The main result of the ANU paper is summarised by the authors in the following way: “The household consumption response to the bonus payment is insignificant. It is also quantitatively small. For example, the average household, which received a payment of $900, spent in the week of receipt of the payment an additional $1 on non-durables or less than 1 per cent.”
UPDATE

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Labor fixes more of its own misogyny

Andrew BoltOCTOBER302012(7:24am)

Labor’s smearing of Tony Abbott as a “misogynist” has created several rods for its own back. There was Labor’s defence of a real misogynist in Peter Slipper, and then the failure of several ministers to protest when a union comedian told a vile “joke” about Tony Abbott’s female chief of staff. Now it must reverse the decision to put a female minister below a male Parliamentary secretary on a Senate ticket: 
Parliamentary secretary for sustainability and urban water Mr Farrell said today on ABC Radio that he would cede the No.1 spot on the ticket to Finance Minister Ms Wong.
He said he had discussed the matter with Prime MInister Julia Gillard last night.
Clowns.
(Thanks to reader Who Will Ask The Questions.) 

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Gillard tosses Nauruans a few gold coins

Andrew BoltOCTOBER302012(7:18am)

Julia Gillard first misrepresented and slimed Gina Rinehart, but now demonstrates Rinehart’s argument with her hypocrisy:
NAURUANS recruited to work at Australia’s reopened detention centre in the Pacific are being paid as little as $4 an hour, up to 10 times less than the Australian citizens working alongside them in kitchens, as guards, cleaners and as maintenance and office workers.
Last month, Julia Gillard was critical of billionaire Gina Rinehart’s suggestion Australians must compete with Africans prepared to work for $2 a day, saying it was “not the Australian way to toss people $2, to toss them a gold coin, and them ask them to work for a day”.
(Thanks to reader Peter.)

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Former Justice Kirby: in Gillard’s position, a citizen should have called police

Andrew BoltOCTOBER302012(6:29am)

In my opinion, if the AWU scandal and Julia Gillard’s actions as a solicitor had been fully known and investigated at the time, it would have become impossible for Gillard to even stand for election for the Labor Party:
JULIE Bishop: I refer the Prime Minister to her press conference on 23 August where she answered questions regarding the establishment of a slush fund for the re-election of union officials in the name of the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association. Was the Prime Minister aware, at the time she assisted in the registration of the association in Western Australia, that the relevant law specifically precluded the registration of an association for the purpose of providing personal profit or benefit to individuals?
Julia Gillard: We have had the Deputy Leader of the Opposition ... asking about events 17 years ago.

Bishop: This goes to a press conference on 23 August this year ... She has not answered that question.
More questions to answer. Retired High Court judge Michael Kirby, September 20: 
QUESTION from audience: Look, there are plenty of people in the legal profession that seem to have moral compass deficit disorder. If a lawyer naively helps a friend to set up a slush fund, and then subsequently finds that the friend has used it to misappropriate half a million dollars, is there a legal or moral obligation for the lawyer to report that to the police, the knowledge of that matter?

Kirby: It sounds as though it’s getting a little bit close to a real live problem and I know it could be presented as hypothetical, but I sort of have got very, very strong antennae and I can sniff out a real live problem pretty well. (Audience laughter). And I’ve gone out of the business of giving legal advice, but generally speaking, in our sort of society, if a person is aware of a serious crime and doesn’t report it to the police, that is what we call misprision of a felony; if there is a felony, you have to report it, it is a citizen’s duty. Now that law might have been modified in Victoria and other states, you’d have to look that up, but that’s the way the law generally operates.”
Then High Court justice William Deane, Baker v Campbell, 1983: 
MOREOVER, if the (doctrine of legal professional) privilege were confined to disclosure in judicial (or quasi-judicial) proceedings, it is difficult to explain why, logically, the lawyer who fails voluntarily to disclose the wrongdoing of his client to the appropriate administrative officer does not, in the absence of some particular justification, stand guilty of the offence of misprision of felony.
Hedley Thomas and Paige Taylor discover more about the fall guy who then solicitor Julia Gillard assured her partners seemed like the kind of investor who really did have $100,000 to play with - $100,000 that actually came from her boyfriend, using money he’d scammed (unknown to Gillard, she says): 
A UNION official’s claims that he was a stooge at the time sham transactions were made with a slush fund that Julia Gillard helped establish in 1992 are supported by internal documents.
The documents show that Ralph Blewitt, who has admitted to fraud with the slush fund, the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association, was even regarded as an “imbecile” by his AWU colleagues in Perth.
One of Mr Blewitt’s fellow AWU officials at the time, Sue Ellery, described him as an “idiot” and a “sexist pig” in documents filed in the Western Australian Industrial Relations Commission in 1993…
The documents from 1993 were well known to Ms Gillard, then an industrial lawyer for Slater & Gordon, as they were evidence in a legal case in which she was representing Mr Blewitt. ..
Mr Blewitt has told The Australian that he took his instructions at the time from Ms Gillard’s then boyfriend, Bruce Wilson, who had moved to Victoria to be AWU secretary and appointed him to run the Perth branch from early 1993.
Mr Blewitt, who has pledged to provide information to authorities in return for indemnity from criminal prosecution, added that he was a “useful idiot”, and loyal to Mr Wilson at the time.
Ms Gillard’s view of Mr Blewitt—made when she was being questioned on September 11, 1995 by Slater & Gordon’s senior partner, Peter Gordon, during an internal probe into fraud claims and the slush fund—was that while he was boastful, it had “all made, you know, relatively sort of sensible sense that there was this man who had some money”, which he used to buy a $230,000 Melbourne investment in March, 1993.
About $100,000 from the fund went into the Melbourne property, bought in Mr Blewitt’s name for Mr Wilson’s use.

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Don’t credit the sceptics, whatever you do

Andrew BoltOCTOBER302012(5:59am)

Warmist scientist David Karoly, last heard of sneering at a trivial error by Alan Jones, seemsvery loath to credit blogger Steve McIntyre and his readers for discovering the data error which forced his latest alarmist paper to be withdrawn.
(Thanks to reader Rocky.)

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Will Gillard lecture South Australia like she did the Liberal states?

Andrew BoltOCTOBER302012(5:39am)

JULIA Gillard has issued a rallying cry to Queensland’s Labor faithful, urging them to use the public anger about Campbell Newman’s job cuts to campaign against Tony Abbott…
She urged the crowd to tell voters Australia would see more cuts based on those rolled out by the Queensland government.
“Newman’s Budget razor is Tony Abbott’s curtain raiser,” she said. 
In NSW 10,000 public sector jobs had gone; in Queensland, 25,000.

‘‘That’s how the Liberals roll,’’ she said.

‘‘Tony Abbott will do to the APS what the state Liberals are doing to their public services. Because first term conservative governments are like that.’’
But what does Julia Gillard say when the South Australian Labor Government cuts public service jobs, too?

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The Asian paper: a great blast of nothing

Andrew BoltOCTOBER302012(5:16am)

Terry McCrann on the Gillard Government’s Blank Paper on Asia:
[Its author] is former treasury secretary Ken Henry, [whose] more famous quote was his “go hard, go early and go to households” advice to then-PM Kevin Rudd in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis…
Henry’s belief in the great wisdom and efficacy of his advice, apparently lives on, as an interesting sentence in the White Paper all-too-revealingly shows.
Extolling Australia’s great economic strengths, Henry attributes it to good decisions made over decades; “including Australia’s world-beating actions to avoid the worst impacts of the Global Financial Crisis.”
World-beating? Isn’t that a tad effusive, Ken? ...
The opening sentences of the executive summary pretty much captured the flavour of the White Paper, and told you all you needed to know about its content.
“Asia’s rise is changing the world. This is the defining feature of the 21st century - the Asian century. These developments have profound implications for people everywhere.”
What, did Henry buy the sentences at banality template central?…
OK, grant the necessity of stating the basic reality. But it’s followed by statement after statement after statement of the bleeding obvious. We need to “build on our strengths,” do even more to “develop our capabilities,” we need “highly innovative, competitive Australian firms,” etc etc etc.
But the really good stuff is when you get really shallow into the paper, to the 25 national objectives for, what else, 2025. Get it? Get it? It’s a good thing the ideas didn’t run out at 24…
They’re not so much targets, as pick-a-number wish lists, mixed up with utterly fatuous advice, delivered with all the pompous certainty that could only come from an ivory tower, and a Canberra one at that.
Business leaders have warned the Gillard government against imposing a quota on Australia’s top 200 publicly listed companies that would require one-third of board members to have “deep experience” in Asia.
The call was made in the government’s Asian Century white paper for boards by 2025.Don Argus, a former BHP Billiton chairman, dismissed any notion of quotas, which he said could inadvertently hurt boardroom skills.
“I wouldn’t compromise on skills,” said Mr Argus… ."You’re starting to get to a doctrinaire state when you start dealing with quotas and that sort of stuff. If you don’t get the right skills you’re not getting the right input.”
REALISING the education ambitions contained in Julia Gillard’s Asia white paper could cost billions of dollars, with a leading vice-chancellor predicting the government would have to find an extra $10 billion a year in research funding if it were to double the number of Australian universities in the global top 100.
The goal of bringing the four priority Asian languages into Australian school classrooms could also be a significant expense, with key Asian education research groups predicting it would require thousands of extra teachers and cost billions of dollars…
As Ms Gillard and new Asian Century Minister Craig Emerson began selling their vision for Australia to unlock the gains of Asia’s burgeoning middle class, the states lashed out at the federal government’s decision to link Gonski funding to the teaching of Asian languages.

Dr Emerson said yesterday the states would be denied education funding under the $6.5bn Gonski funding model if they did not supply the teachers needed to provide all students with the ability to access at least one “priority” Asian language…

The three biggest Coalition states reacted angrily to Dr Emerson’s comments on school funding, with Victoria accusing the government of blackmailing them, NSW questioning how more reforms could be tied to the “mythical” Gonski funding, which has yet to be negotiated with the states, and Queensland saying the plan was “light on detail”.
(Thanks to reader Peter.)


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