Headlines Sunday 25th May

Our Chinese gooseberry
Piers Akerman
MANDARIN-SPEAKING Prime Minister Kevin “Ku Lewen” Rudd turned up on Chinese television last week expressing the nation’s sorrow at the losses suffered during the recent devastating earthquake.
This gesture was followed by a doubling of Australia’s disaster relief contribution from $1 million to $2 million, courtesy of Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith.

It also came with the addition of $1 million from the West Australian state Government and a pledge of support from WA billionaire Andrew “Twiggy’’ Forrest, who farewelled the first shipment of iron ore from his Fortescue mine to China last weekend.

The disaster relief contribution comes on top of the Australian Government’s official aid to China channelled through AusAID which, in 2006-07, was running in excess of $34 million but which, with other regional programs and through other departments, took the total overseas development aid to around an estimated $46 million.

Mr Rudd, whose son-in-law is Chinese, possibly has family considerations to think of but it is becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile Australia’s aid budget to China, even though it is of obvious strategic importance to our economy.

As China is a significant donor to a number of dubious nations, is Australian aid merely being “churned’’ or used to plug gaps, enabling the Chinese to distribute their largesse in Africa, the Pacific, North Korea and even to the Burmese junta and reap the political and economic benefits flowing from such generosity?
===
How not to argue against censorship
Andrew Bolt
Michelle Grattan trots out the hoariest of objections to censorship:

IT’S rather ironic that Kevin Rudd should be declaiming in the furore surrounding the Bill Henson exhibition while Rudd’s nephew, Van Thanh Rudd, is caught up in a controversy involving claims of “censorship” of another variety.

What? It’s ironic that Rudd is against the stripping and photographing of 13-year-old girls when he’s (apparently) not against the censorship of political art?
===
Yet another Rudd inquiry, but more punitive
Andrew Bolt
Never has so much bluster and so much money been spent on a political witchhunt that delivered so very little. And now Labor hopes to once more flog that dead horse:

LABOR is set to relaunch investigations into the AWB wheat-for-weapons scandal.

If Kevin Rudd actually had more to offer than spin he’d consider this stunt a monumental waste of time and money. But with Alexander Downer said to be keen on returning to front-bench duties, can Rudd resist the temptation to try to fit him up?
===
So young to change her sex
Andrew Bolt
I can’t help but wonder if this is a “cure” to a problem with more obvious causes
===
Tunnel vision
Andrew Bolt
As if Melbourne isn’t already choking on its traffic:

DIVISIONS within the Victorian Labor Party over Sir Rod Eddington’s east-west tunnel proposals have put pressure on the State Government to delay its response…
===
Australians heading north for cut-price nip 'n' tuck surgery
Thousands of Australians are heading overseas for cheaper cosmetic surgery holidays, with the strong dollar, budget flights and bargain surgery fuelling the boom.
===
Harry Potter star murdered in London
A teenage actor the upcoming Harry Potter movie has been murdered in London.
===
Taxes on petrol could be eased
There are calls for an end to the double-tax on petrol.
===
Aboriginal affairs: Brough labels Rudd un-Australian
Abduction attempt: 11-year-old girl escapes stalker
===
Army confirms rebel leader is dead
THE head of Colombia's Marxist FARC rebels, Manuel Marulanda, alias Sureshot, is dead, the country's army announced today.
===
Protests over China's 'shoddy' schools
ABOUT two dozen parents of children killed in China's earthquake staged a rare protest today demanding justice over shoddy school construction they blamed for the deaths of their children.

The parents, many of them clutching framed photos of their dead offspring, held the demonstration on a highway leading out of the quake-devastated town of Mianzhu, an AFP correspondent witnessed.

"We are complaining about the shoddy quality of school buildings and we need justice from the government," Yang Fuyong, 38, said.

Yang's daughter Guiyun, who was in sixth grade, was one of 129 students that he said perished in the collapse of the primary school in the nearby town of Wufu.