Headlines Thursday 12th March 2009

'Quiet' German teenager kills 15 in school rampage
A 17-year-old gunman, described as a quiet boy with a liking for guns, opened fire inside his former high school in southwestern Germany on Wednesday, killing 15 people before turning the weapon on himself....
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Orkopoulos whistleblower claims govt is punishing her
The woman sacked after blowing the whistle on pedophile MP Milton Orkopoulos is protesting outside NSW Parliament House, saying the government is punishing her.
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Questions over Labor donors' development deal
Questions have been raised about a $250 million development deal between the NSW government and big Labor party donors.
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Crowding blamed for teenager's rape
A teenager has allegedly been raped while in custody, after he was was forced to share a cell because of overcrowding.
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You'll have to pay back your bonus: Costello
Former treasurer Peter Costello has warned once again the cash handouts from the economic stimulus package will have to be paid back....
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Housing prices set to skyrocket: report
There's plenty of land to build on, but a report says that is unlikely to stop housing shortfalls and prices from skyrocketing over the next 20 years. ..
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Police seize video of Stewart confrontation
Police have seized a video of Brett Stewart that reportedly shows the Manly star in a confrontation with his alleged victim's father....
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Australia prepare for SA clean sweep
Australia's triumphant Test team have arrived in Cape Town after a night of partying to celebrate their remarkable series win over South Africa....
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NAB job losses inevitable: broker
A broker's report says job losses at National Australia Bank Ltd (NAB) are inevitable, amid reports the bank will announce retrenchments when it delivers a strategy update on Thursday....
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Underbelly 3 being penned
As Underbelly 2 rakes in TV viewers, writers are turning their attention to the Australian underworld of the 1980s and 1990s for a third instalment. ..
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Man smashed with gun during home invasion
Gunman kills 10 in small town Alabama
100 charges laid in one of Australia's worst animal cruelty cases
Victorian police fudge crime figures
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NSW hospitals: A shameful disgrace
It's almost boringly repetitive - but the ongoing crisis in the NSW hospital system should not be forgotten, according to Alan Jones.
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No room for idiocy in a harsh economic climate
Piers Akerman
CLIMATE Change Minister Penny Wong has increased the Rudd Government’s carbon footprint exponentially with the release of her 374-page emissions trading scheme legislation.
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IT’S ALL HAPPENING
Tim Blair
The ABC’s Lisa Millar intervews globey warmiest Will Steffen:
Will Steffen, it seems that the science is saying that what we thought was happening is definitely happening and it’s happening a whole lot faster than anyone thought.
I think she thinks it’s happening.

UPDATE:
Although a majority of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is either correctly portrayed in the news or underestimated, a record-high 41% now say it is exaggerated. This represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject.
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MOO TAX MOOTED
Tim Blair
Europeans aim to turn cattle into cash cows:
A cow tax of €13 per animal has been mooted in Ireland, while Denmark is discussing a levy as high as €80 per cow to offset the potential penalties each country faces from European Union legislation aimed at combating global warming.

The proposed levies are opposed vigorously by farming groups. The Irish Farmers’ Association said that the cattle industry would move to South America to avoid EU taxes.

Livestock contribute 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases believed to cause global warming, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. The Danish Tax Commission estimates that a cow will emit four tonnes of methane a year in burps and flatulence, compared with 2.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide for an average car.
There are around 31 million cows in Australia. If they were taxed at the proposed Danish rate, we’d be looking at a total annual haul of $4,898,000,000.
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KINGDOM DISUNITED
Tim Blair
Islamic extremists shout abuse at British soldiers. Supporters of the soldiers respond:

It’s something of a contrast to earlier events.
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OBAMA WHITEWASHED
Tim Blair
Big news in the Age and SMH:
A right-wing pundit has been caught red-handed manufacturing controversy after claiming US President Barack Obama’s Wikipedia page was being whitewashed, in a scandal that fooled big news outlets including Fox News.
The fellow seems to be some kind of low-level Net identity. It’s not as though either the Age or SMH would ever manufacture controversy about an American politician …
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Your taxes, their stimulus
Andrew Bolt
The farce of the stimulus-that-couldn’t continues. Chinese workers aren’t the only foreigners getting the most benefit from Rudd’s billions:

BARBARA TOKLEY was grateful, if a little embarrassed, to receive $1400 from the Rudd Government as part of its stimulus package to bolster the Australian economy. The trouble is, she is not an Australian citizen, she has not lived here since 1969, and she has spent every cent stimulating the New Zealand economy…

The office of the Minister for Families and Community Services, Jenny Macklin, confirmed that the stimulus bonus went to 69,000 overseas pensioners in December… A Centrelink manager told a parliamentary committee that - based on a figure of about 60,000 pensioners overseas - it could amount to $75 million.
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The warming show the ABC should have made
Andrew Bolt
Keith Orchison on yet more ABC warming propaganda:

ABC television’s Four Corners program on carbon permit trading on Monday was the classic missed media opportunity and shows yet again how the in-built biases of key editorial staff prevent the corporation from doing a really good job of informing the Australian community…

There is a far better program waiting to be made. It would start with the fact Kevin Rudd and co came to office thinking global warming policy was a big free hit over the Coalition. What they didn’t understand was that John Howard and his cabinet had spent most of a decade wrestling with the concept and kept finding it unworkable in Australia’s trading mode.

It would continue by appreciating that a whole slew of ministers—Martin Ferguson, Lindsay Tanner, Wayne Swan, Kim Carr and Simon Crean among them—had been exposed in their first year in office to the realisation that the Government has a tiger by the tail, with a million jobs in play and price shock impacts that stretch well beyond trade-exposed heavy industry to direct (energy bills) and indirect (grocery bills) costs for the community, and on to the farms because of price rises for chemicals, transport and energy…

It would point out that the situation was difficult before the global economic tsunami swept in; now it is much, much worse. There is an air of panic in government over this issue. Witness the fiasco of the House of Representatives inquiry that wasn’t. Why has Rudd moved Greg Combet in behind Wong?

And that’s a good program even if the ABC keeps its ban on mentioning the world hasn’t actually warmed for a decade, and sea levels haven’t risen for more than two years.
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Rudd pushes China the wrong way
Andrew Bolt
Dan Ryan of Hong Kong’s Lion Rock Institute wonders what Kevin Rudd is up to:

AN abridged version of the notorious The Monthly article in which Kevin Rudd blames the financial crisis on neo-liberalism has just appeared in The South China Morning Post, raising eyebrows and questions in Hong Kong.

In particular, what exactly was Rudd trying to achieve?....Was it to satisfy the intellectual exhibitionism of the author or was the article a too-clever-by-half underhand critique of Hong Kong itself?

For what Rudd surely knows is that Hong Kong, more than any other place in the world, embodies the economic liberal tradition he has chosen to pillory. Indeed, Hong Kong can claim to be the birthplace of modern economic liberalism.... It was here that Milton Friedman came in his famous “Free to Choose” series to popularise to the public in the US and Britain how and why free markets work. And perhaps most importantly, from Australia’s long-term perspective, it was here in Hong Kong that mainland China turned—and still turns—to guide its own economic liberalisation.

If the intention was to critique Hong Kong ,,, why not do it forthrightly? ...The answer I think is that there is far more political mileage to be gained in firing up the old brigade by labelling people such as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and John Howard “free market fundamentalists” and not so much by attacking good old Hong Kong…

Could it be though that the real audience was not Hong Kong but mainland China? If this is the case it seems rather misguided and potentially harmful to the direction that Australia wants to see China head. For what Rudd must understand—yet gives no real sense of in his essay—is that the economic liberalisation that China has undertaken was not inevitable, is by no means complete, and is not irreversible.
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Gillard too much even for unions
Andrew Bolt
It seems even unions agree Julia Gillard’s changes to awards could cost jobs:

PAY rises for thousands of workers in the nation’s struggling retail and hospitality sectors could be deferred for up to five years, as unions concede the need to minimise cost pressures on employers during the economic downturn. Confronting employer claims that the Rudd Government’s proposed revamp of award conditions for low-paid workers would cost jobs, union officials said yesterday they were prepared to spread the pay rises over five years to help business.

I doubt the concessions will be enough:

Bringing the states’ different awards into line under a national arrangement will be “a nightmare” for small restaurants in South Australia, said Sally Neville, CEO of the SA Restaurant and Catering Association.

“About 55 per cent of the workforce is casual, and the cost increase for wages in South Australia is expected to be 16 per cent,” she said. “For business averaging a 3.8per cent profit to suddenly incur the cost—you will see job cuts, full-time staff working longer hours, and the end of expensive Sunday shifts.”
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Why are we going to this hate-fest?
Andrew Bolt
Opposition Foreign Affairs spokeman Julie Bishop is right - there is no way the Rudd Government should go to the UN’s latest group hate against the West and Israel:


The Australian Government should not attend the United Nations Durban Review Conference, to be held in Geneva on 20-24 April, due to the obvious potential for a repeat of the anti-Semitism that marred the first Durban conference..

The Australian Jewish News is even more adamant:

The US has joined Israel and Canada in pulling out. Some European countries have also indicated they are considering not attending the conference in Geneva… Robert Goot, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and Philip Chester, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, both called on Australia to follow the US.

The US State Department agrees the draft document of the UN conference is clearly anti-Israeli, and suggests it is also biased against the West and its freedoms:

Sadly, however, the document being negotiated has gone from bad to worse, and the current text of the draft outcome document is not salvageable… It must not single out any one country or conflict, nor embrace the troubling concept of “defamation of religion.” The U.S. also believes an acceptable document should not go further than the DDPA on the issue of reparations for slavery.

So why is the Rudd Government so eager to go to such a festival of hatred against our values and allies? Writer Alan Gold is right - because a refusal to attend might offend Muslim and African countries whose UN votes Kevin Rudd is unnaturally eager to have:

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith hasn’t yet announced whether Australia will attend the review in Geneva. Much is at stake. Australia is a leading contender for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council and boycotting may affect how we are viewed at the tables of the world body.

How shameful a sell-out. As if it wasn’t enough that to toady for UN votes this Government has already voted for two anti-Israeli resolutions in the United Nations that the Howard Government wouldn’t support, and has now resumed aid even to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

And if you doubt that this UN conference could be as loaded and viciously anti-Western and anti-Israeli as I suggest, read its draft declaration here - a document created under the supervision of a Preparatory Committee chaired by Libya with the help of co-chairs including Iran and Pakistan, as well as a rapporteur from Cuba. (Yes, you couldn’t write a farce this absurd.)

Here are just some of the most alarming excerpts, which emphasise the sins of the West above those of the rest, blame colonialism for Third World failures, elevate “Islamophobia” above other forms of racism, propose legal restrictions on criticism of religions and Muslims in particular, single out only Israel for (extreme) criticism, recommend reparations for colonialism and (particularly colonial) slavery, accuse Israel of torture and collective punishment; attack moves by the West to protect itself against Islamist terrorism, and suggest the deletion of a reference noting the Holocaust wiped out a third of the world’s Jews.

You’d never guess from this document that in recent decades the worst genocides have been in Africa, the most savage terrorism has been launched by Islamists, the worst ethnic cleansings have been in Africa and Asia, and the people most likely to kill for their faith are Muslims:
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That was no interview, Laurie
Andrew Bolt
No Liberal leader can expect a fair interview from the Canberra press gallery, a few exceptions aside. But Laurie Oakes - in his ill-tempered badgering of Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull on Sunday - made two statements that struck me as particularly unfair - even hypocritical or plain misleading.

Here’s the first:
It is your job to critique the government and Prime Minister, as you say. But why have you involved the Prime Minister’s wife? Why have you apparently attacked Therese Rein?

That “apparently’’ is the only hint Oakes gave that he knew his statement of fact was actually false. He can read as well as I can and in fact knew that this - in toto - was what Turnbull had in fact said of Kevin Rudd’s wife:

I congratulate the Rudds, especially Therese Rein, on their success. Their business grew into a very substantial one in Australia and as other countries followed the Australian approach, grew there as well exporting the expertise developed by them when they seized the opportunity created by Howard’s decision in 1998. But what are we to think of the wealthiest Prime Minister Australia has ever had, a man greatly enriched by the privatisation and outsourcing of government services, standing up again and again to denounce the very policies from which he and his family have profited so extensively.

Oakes is no fool and would have read those words as I did. Not as an attack on Rein, whom Turnbull congratulates, but on her husband’s arrant hypocrisy. Why did he misrepresent what Turnbull had in fact said?

But here is the other criticism Oakes levelled at Turnbull:

People are focussed on (jobs) and I think they are surprised the Liberal Party doesn’t seem to be; you seem to be focussed on the elephant (Peter Costello)...

Really? Who in that interview was in fact focussed - like the public - on jobs, and who was obsessing about Costello? Here are Oakes’ first five questions to Turnbull in his interview:

Question 1:

Look, as you know, I always try to be tactful but I am going to have to talk about the elephant in the room, the elephant that’s always in the room wherever you go, its name is Peter.

Question 2:

You say you’re not interested, but after Peter Costello’s big week in the media, The Australian ran a story very prominently saying that most Liberal MPs now believe the Treasurer is positioning himself to take the leadership from Malcolm Turnbull. Are you spooked?

Question 3:

(After Turnbull replied he was just interested in jobs) Not just yours?

Question 4:

Let’s get rid of the elephant quickly then. Did you or did you not offer Peter Costello the shadow treasurer’s job when Julie Bishop was about to fall on her sword? Peter Costello’s people say that you lied about that?

Question 5:

Well a final elephant question then… If the Coalition wins the next election, assuming you are still leader and Peter Costello is still in the Parliament, will you offer him a job in your Cabinet, and which one?

Then came the question about Rein - and the misrepresentation - followed by two more on Rein, and an attack on Turnbull’s wealth. It took until the ninth question before Oakes asked Turnbull about the thing he’d attacked Turnbull for not focussing on - the economy:
Well, let’s look at the big issue, the economy… On this element, one of the criticisms of you is that you’re inconsistent.

Get the feeling sometimes that someone is out for a cheap gotcha? Not actually interested in hearing of alternative policies, even at a time of crisis? And how often Turnbull tried in answer to discuss what even Oakes himself agreed was what really mattered:

As Australians are losing their jobs… there is nothing of less interest to Australians than gossip about personalities and political games. So I’m not interested in that. I am focussed on jobs, jobs, jobs.... I’m concerned about jobs… I am concerned about jobs. Let me tell you a story about the real world.... let’s focus on the real issues that confront Australia. ... Laurie, again, I don’t want to go there. You know, we’ve been around this bush so many times, let’s focus on jobs....

The remaining 10 questions were entirely devoted not to discussing Opposition policies, but Turnbull’s alleged inconsistencies. Here is a flavor of how far back Oakes dug (or had Labor dig for him) to try to find some trivial contradiction:

But you, Malcolm Turnbull, who doesn’t believe in talking down the economy, told Neil Mitchell in March last year, a year ago...

A year ago?

The inconsistencies are pretty mind boggling.

Well, no, they aren’t. Check the full transcript below. What is truly mind boggling is that is what passes for an interview of a Liberal leader by perhaps the most prominent member of the Canberra press gallery today.
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Not proof, but a reason to doubt
Andrew Bolt
Do we really feel as safe now in Victoria as the police statistics claim we should? News today hints there may be a reason for that disparity:

TOP cop Simon Overland has denied the massaging of crime stats is a widespread issue after a damning Ombudsman report…

The investigation into crime statistics and police numbers tabled in State Parliament today found that some police misused recording procedures “to make it appear that more crime has been successfully solved than is actually the case’’.

Chief Commissioner Overland denied there was a systemic problem with distorted clearance rates, but said the Ombudsman’s report related to an isolated incident.

“As best I can tell there is one instance that they’re talking about,’’ Mr Overland told reporters....

Some offenders arrested and processed had unrelated, unsolved offences for which no one had been arrested added to their file, to “clear up’’ crime rates, the report said.

It is true, there is no evidence of systemic rorting of the figures. But my faith in the integrity of the police statistics was shaken severely when I discovered the former Chief Commissioner had misled us - no doubt unintentionally - when she assured us that the crime rate among African refugees was not higher than for everyone else:

Not so, said Nixon: ”Those Sudanese refugees are actually under-represented in the crime statistics.”

She was silent on the crime rate among Somalis, but repeated: “The young Sudanese who actually come into custody or dealt with us, only really make up about 1 per cent of the people we deal with . . . (W)hat we’re actually seeing is that they’re not, in a sense, represented more than the proportion of them in the population.”....

The crime rate among these refugees was in fact anywhere between four and eight times higher than that for the rest of us, despite VicPol’s apparent attempts to have fewer Africans charged or prosecuted.

A complete audit of police figures, and an examination of the effect on those figures of police and court protocols in dealing with minorities, might help clear the air.
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Extorting cash for the Left
Andrew Bolt
Hal GP Colebatch is right, of course:

THE Government’s proposed compulsory charge of up to $250 for each university student to pay for guilds, clubs and societies will raise about $200million a year. Much of this money can be expected to find its way to the Left to subsidise political campaigns…

The ALP and the Left would not have fought so hard against voluntary student membership and pushed so hard for compulsory fees to be restored if they did not believe that their ideological allies on campus would benefit very substantially and student guilds would revert to their former roles as cadre-generating institutions for the Left.
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Yet another Obama pick quits. Good
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama loses yet another pick - this time Charles Freeman, who has asked not to be named chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

It’s astonishing that a man so harsh on Israel and so fawning to terrorist groups should have been considered for this sensitive post in the first place. What on earth was Obama thinking? And what does the chaos of his attempt to pick a team say about his ability to govern?

UPDATE

Another sign of the chaos:

The British Government is finding it “unbelievably difficult” to prepare for the G20 summit because no one in the US Treasury department is answering their calls, Britain’s top civil servant Gus O’Donnell has said… Amid the worst global economic crisis in decades, the Cabinet Secretary said Number 10 was having trouble even getting in touch with key personnel at the US Treasury.

No wonder:

Every key position within the Treasury, with the exception of secretary Timothy F. Geithner, remains vacant or awaits confirmation.

(Thanks to reader Carlos.)

UPDATE 2

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, is treating air force planes as her private jets, and Defence officials are politely asking that she stop. How odd, though - a Leftist with a sense of entitlement.
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Killers for their God
Andrew Bolt
It’s a bit hard to portray Guantanamo prisoners as all innocent people, victims of an unjustified Islamophobia, and cowering under the brutal heel of their jailers, when five of them boast like this:

Five men charged with plotting the September 11 attacks say the charges against them are “badges of honor” and that killing Americans was an offering to God, in court documents released Tuesday.

The charges filed by US authorities were “not accusations,” the five detainees held in Guantanamo wrote in the document filed with the US military commission.

“To us they are badges of honor, which we carry with pride,” the detainees said, adding: ”We are terrorists to the bone. So many thanks to God.”

The detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, have previously said in court proceedings they planned the attacks and wanted to plead guilty to charges of war crimes.

Barack Obama has promised to close the jail that houses these men. So what next with them?

UPDATE

Meanwhile, a British battalion returns from Afghanistan, where it protected Muslims from Islamist terrorists and totalitarians, and is welcomed by Luton’s newest citizens:

A group of around 20 men in traditional Islamic dress held up banners and placards that read: “Anglian Soldiers Butchers of Basra”, “Anglian Soldiers Criminals, Murderers Terrorists” and “Baby killers”.

As the battalion, which is nicknamed The Poachers, reached Luton Town Hall the small group shouted and yelled “Terrorists” and “Anglian Soliders Go to Hell.” The protestors then had to be protected by police as angry supporters of the soldiers turned on them shouting: “Scum” and “No surrender to the Taliban.”

UPDATE 2

One day the public reaction to British jihadists is going to get very ugly indeed - but only because the Government did not react itself to an extreme provocation. Here’s another clip of that protest to show what I mean:

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Isaac Newton would fail for impiety
Andrew Bolt
No, the purpose of science classes is not to teach students the scientific method:

A HIGHLY regarded international test run by the OECD has been accused of ideological bias for eliciting students’ beliefs about the environment and sustainable development, rather than knowledge of the underlying science of issues such as greenhouse gases and acid rain…

PISA is conducted in Australia by the Australian Council for Educational Research. Its chief executive Geoff Masters said the purpose of science courses was to develop a concern for the environment in students…

On environmental sustainability, students were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with statements that included making regular emission checks a condition of using a car, and producing electricity from renewable sources as much as possible even if it increased the cost. Agreement was taken as students having a stronger sense of responsibility, which PISA says is correlated with better scores in the science test.

Once science was an enemy of dogma. Now dogma is science. Reason is in retreat.
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All they want is peace, they say
Andrew Bolt

One day a Jew turned up in Malmo to play some tennis…