Headlines Monday 20th April 2009

Shots fired during Chubb Security money depot robbery
Shots have been fired and a gang of thieves have escaped with cash after a hold up at a supposedly secure money depot on Sydney's north shore this morning.

'Chaos' before asylum boat explosion
Dramatic footage of last week's fatal boat explosion has been released, as defence sources reveal the refugees panicked when they mistakenly thought they were being abandoned at sea.

Don't be a Tweet: Telstra's new rulebook
Telstra has released a set of guidelines on the use of Facebook and Twitter by its employees, the first major Australian company to officially react to the rise of social networking sites.

Qantas denies bankruptcy rumours
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce concedes Jetstar has limited capacity to relieve its parent of profit pressure.

Lapthorne's body 'weighed down': autopsy
Backpacker Britt Lapthorne's body was immersed in water from the time she went missing in Croatia and her body was weighed down, a Victorian autopsy has found.

Wong defends govt's border protection
The opposition should spell out its policies on asylum seekers if it wants to attack the Rudd......

O'Farrell slams NSW power bill hike
A move to slug NSW electricity customers with the cost of an infrastructure upgrade has been......
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THEY BLEW IT UP
Tim Blair
An ABC report confirms West Australian Premier Colin Barnett’s petrol-dousing allegation:
Senior Government sources have confirmed to the ABC that asylum seekers on board a boat that exploded last week had doused the deck with petrol as a threatened act of sabotage.
It’s an ABC report, however, so here’s the inevitable spin:
But the ABC has been told the asylum seekers doused the boat in petrol to try and force the navy to let them land in Australia and not turn them back to Indonesia.
Why the “but”? It’s as though the ABC feels there’s a mitigating factor here in the killing of five people by throwing petrol around. And the spin continues:
However, it is understood the explosion was an accident.
No. It was a predictable consequence of dousing a boat with petrol. An “accident” would involve, say, a leaking petrol container. The incident off Western Australia’s coast apparently involved a deliberate act.
Some senior Government sources have described it as a threat gone tragically wrong.
Again, no. It was an act, not a threat.

UPDATE. The SMH’s Phillip Coorey:
Earlier, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, called on powerful friends to dispute Malcolm Turnbull’s claims and back the Government’s assertion that the recent rise in asylum seekers was due to rising global instability, not policy changes.
It’s “friend”, singular – Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

UPDATE II. Government panic.

UPDATE III. An Australian man, believed to be of Middle Eastern origin, is wanted for questioning over people-smuggling. This would be a fellow Kevin Rudd wishes would rot in hell.

UPDATE IV. This sounds even less like a mere threat:
Petrol is believed to have been introduced into the bilges of an asylum-seeker boat minutes before it exploded last Thursday, killing five of those on board.
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FIFTEEN MURDERS PER DAY
Tim Blair
In the first three months of the year, 1,395 Pakistanis were killed in 1,842 terrorist attacks. At that rate Pakistan’s terror death toll will overtake the toll from Hurricane Katrina by the end of April. By the end of 2009, we could be looking at double the toll from the World Trade Center attacks.

It’s probably something to do with Presbyterians.
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SOMETIMES IT’S JUST ABOUT THE VOICE
Tim Blair
Susan Boyle’s celebrated British talent show appearance (more than seven million YouTube views) results in a swarm of PC email for Nation columnist Patricia Williams:
The first email about Susan Boyle was forwarded to me by a friend who works for a human rights organisation. Her message fumed that Boyle had been “disrespected as a woman”. The second email came from a retired neighbour who was unnerved by the ageism on display from Simon Cowell and the other judges. The third was from a vegan who despises the cosmetics industry for experimenting on animals and was delighted that Boyle hadn’t worn a speck of make-up that anyone could tell. The fourth was from a law school classmate who saw her success as the apotheosis of a just order, the fifth from an Indian friend who deemed it a liberatory moment for persons of low caste.
Basically, Miss Boyle can really sing. And she seems a nice person with it.
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COQ AU VAN
Tim Blair
Sweary chef Gordon Ramsay, allegedly concerned about carbon, turns out to be something of a carbon criminal:
Dishes such as pork belly, coq au vin, braised pig cheeks and orange and bitter chocolate tart are prepared in bulk and then transported in plastic bags by unmarked vans to several of his London restaurants.
The unmarked vans are a nice touch. But will lack of insignia be enough to elude the EPA?

UPDATE. At least Ramsay isn’t hauling spam. This may help during the sentencing phase.
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YOUR TAXES AT WORK
Tim Blair
“I was just watching TV when I noticed an advert that has been rolled out by the Federal Government,” emails reader Bigmac. “It is all about getting people to switch to digital TV.

“The most interesting thing about this ad, which explains how to get digital channels, is that I was watching One HD at the time – a purely digital channel that is not simulcast in analogue.”
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THEY’LL RENAME IT WHEN THE WARMING IS FIXED
Tim Blair
Degrees in global warmenology are now available from the University of the Sunshine Coast.

UPDATE. Warmening degrees may not be worth much in the US, where doubt continues to grow:
Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity, the lowest finding yet in Rasmussen Reports national surveying. However, a plurality (48%) of the Political Class believes humans are to blame.
The political class is always the last to catch on.
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OBAMA BOOKED
Tim Blair
The book Hugo Chavez gave to Barack Obama: Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, by Eduardo Galeano (currently available from $11.87 at Amazon). The book both should read, since it perfectly describes Chavez and his kind: Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot, by Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner and Alvaro Vargas Llosa. A bargain at $10.20.
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THIS WOMAN IS COMPLETELY OUT OF HER MIND
Tim Blair
Janeane Garofalo continues her study of conservative brains:

Direct quote:
Their limbic brain, we’ve discussed this before, the limbic brain inside a right-winger or a Republican or a conservative or your average white power activist, the limbic brain is much larger in their headspace than in a reasonable person and it’s pushing against the frontal lobe.

UPDATE. Via cuckoo in comments:
A strident critic of George Bush, she says that such was her angst during his presidency, she severely damaged her teeth from incessant grinding.
It’s a limbic jaw problem. In the same piece, Janeane boldly declares: “I won’t pander to a fearful ethos.”

UPDATE II. “Good Lord,” writes Aristocracy of Grunts. “I have a Fearful Ethos sitting opposite me right now, and let me tell you, the temptation to pander to it is immense.” Be strong, friend. One day at a time.
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HE SEES ALL
Tim Blair
This week I handed the column over to my personal spirit guide, Mystic Trev, who answers all reader questions
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PRESUMED GUILTY
Tim Blair
The police state continues to grow under Bushitler’s … er, that new guy’s dictatorial rule:
Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. The move, intended to help solve more crimes, is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent.

Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts. But starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will collect DNA from detained immigrants — the vanguard of a growing class of genetic registrants.
A former county prosecutor is quoted: “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.”
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The Minister for Speeding
Andrew Bolt
Rann cannot be serious:

South Australian Premier Mike Rann says he will not be asking the state’s Road Safety Minister to resign because of more than 30 traffic offences he received in the past. Tom Koutsantonis is reported to have been clocked for speeding at least 27 times over the past 15 years.

This truly is the age of the seeming, not doing.
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What did the PM know and when did he know it?
Andrew Bolt
The ABC backs up a claim initially denied by the Rudd Government:

The ABC also understands the Federal Government received advice from the Australian Federal Police that Labor’s policies on border protection and refugees would lead to more boat arrivals.

But (Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen) Smith refused to be drawn on whether the AFP had advised the Labor Government that its policies could lead to a surge.

This was the Government’s claim two days ago, after News Ltd papers first raised this allegation:

Immigration Minister Chris Evans said he had not received a warning from the AFP that the new policy was making Australia a target.

“I haven’t received such advice,” he said.

But Senator Evans also said he would not tell the media about advice given to him.

The Rudd Government’s spin is being exposed. What else won’t they tell you?
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Rudd withholds the truth
Andrew Bolt
The Rudd Government maintains its bizarre blackout on the explosion that killed five boat people, refusing to trust the public with information its ministers privately admit is true:

A senior government source said investigators believed petrol was introduced into the boat’s bilges, rather than the deck, as has been widely reported. The bilges are a boat’s lowest compartment situated below the deck, an ideal place for a vapour cloud to form.

“It seems pretty clear it was a petrol explosion,” the source said. ”We believe it was a closed-deck, in-board explosion, possibly deliberate.”

Yesterday, the Government maintained a tight blackout on the incident....

The Government is treating the public with contempt, withholding facts in case voters jump to the right conclusions. What else would such a deceptive, spin-spin-spin Government not tell you about, say, global warming?

UPDATE

Government sources tell the ABC the same story told to The Australian - the story that the Government won’t tell the public directly:

Senior Government sources have confirmed to the ABC that asylum seekers on board a boat that exploded last week had doused the deck with petrol as a threatened act of sabotage.

“Threatened” act of sabotage. Tim Blair is right: the ABC cannot help but spin-spin-spin, too.

And these simultaneous leaks, both generating stories relatively easy on the Government, seem suspicious to me. Is this yet more spinning from Rudd - to both get the story out there and take the heat off him, but also maintain the appearance of purity by officially staying silent to protect the boat people from “demonisation”?

Of course, none of this farcical media manipulation would be deemed necessary if the Rudd Government didn’t think Australians were racists, panting to sink the boot into refugees. A majority is being demonised.

UPDATE 2

Yet another confirmation, this time to the Daily Telegraph, and tending to dispute the claims by the ABC and David Marr that this was just an “accident”:

“SCENES of chaos” erupted aboard the doomed asylum seeker boat after refugees mistakenly thought they were being towed back out to sea, it was revealed last night.

Defence sources said a lack of navy interpreters caused a fatal misunderstanding among the sick and malnourished asylum seekers that led to Thursday’s tragedy. They confirmed for the first time that the desperate men had spread petrol over their boat as they feared they were being abandoned…

And lit it?

UPDATE 3

David Burchill is right:

Here, perhaps, lies the thread that helps explain why Labor’s senior spokespeople have looked so thoroughly discomfited during the past few days ... For if there’s one dark and unmentionable fact about the events of 2001 (Tampa and “children overboard") and the Labor Party, it is that this was when a significant number of idealistic Labor figures fell headlong out of love with the Australian people and even with democracy in general. Some prominent Labor figures (including one who was soon to be elected party secretary) wondered aloud whether Australians were not fundamentally ill at heart. Others privately uttered dark comparisons with the supine citizens of Nazi Germany.

The good ministers are fearful, I suspect, not of the events themselves but of what they anticipate to be the public reaction to them. Yet, for a government at the height of its popularity, and with a PM at the peak of his, surely these are memories and impulses to be avoided at all costs. Electorates will forgive their governments many things, but they are generally unwilling to forgive an implication of moral contempt.
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No trigger for early election
Andrew Bolt
Glenn Milne says the Rudd Government may not have its threatened trigger for a double dissolution, after all:

(Health Minister Nicola) Roxon made the point that the re-introduction of the “same” alcopops legislation gave the government a valid trigger. Listening to all this was the shadow attorney-general, George Brandis SC.

Quietly last week he went to the Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans, and asked for a written opinion on whether what Swan and Roxon had planned would meet the constitutional requirements for a “double”, as it’s known.... After careful comparison of the Government’s first alcopops bill and its proposed second set of bills, Evans concludes they do not meet the requirements of the relevant section of the Constitution, s.57.

Evans’s key point to Brandis was this: “Identity of text (between the bills) may not be sufficient. It may be persuasively argued that the bills again presented would have to be identical in legal effect, otherwise they would not be the same bills.

“In construing the section, the High Court is likely to have regard to the substantive effect of legislation, rather than its mere form. Clearly, in the scenario apparently now postulated, the second set of replacement bills would not be identical in legal effect to the bills originally rejected on March 18.”

In lay terms it means the alcopops tax is probably a dead Constitutional duck as a double dissolution election trigger in its current form. - This may be mere wishful thinking. In fact, it is only a legal opinion and irrelevant in the event. - ed.
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Durban boycotted - belatedly
Andrew Bolt
The right decision, albeit made later than it should have been:

The Australian Government has decided not to attend a United Nations anti-racism conference in Geneva this week.

The Durban Review Conference is supposed to work towards reducing racism, xenophobia and discrimination. But it has been mired in controversy since the 2001 meeting saw Israel and the US walk out over anti-Semitic comments made by some delegates.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says he has decided not to go to the conference because he is concerned it will again be used to air offensive views.

“Regrettably, we cannot be confident that the review conference will not again be used as a platform to air offensive views, including anti-Semitic views,” he said in a statement. “Of additional concern are the suggestions of some delegations in the Durban process to limit the universal right to free speech.”

It says something sick about the UN that a conference to fight racism is actually a conference to promote it. So what was Australia waiting for before finally pulling out of a farce it should have repudiated many weeks earlier? Here’s an announcement for the day before:

The United States will boycott next week’s United Nations conference on racism in Geneva because of “objectionable” language in the meeting’s final document, the U.S. State Department said on Saturday.

Kevin Rudd hoped to make his stand (and placate a furious Jewish consituency) only after others had made it first, in the hope that he’d thus be forgiven more easily by the African and Middle Eastern countries that he’ll need for his UN ambitions.
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Trying again under softer Rudd
Andrew Bolt
Turned back by John Howard, they try their luck with softer Kevin Rudd:

THE 47 asylum seekers on the boat that exploded off Ashmore Reef had been turned away from Australian waters before..., investigators believe.

Most of those aboard had been living on the Indonesian island of Lombok since being turned back on a boat bound for Australia in 2001, defence sources say. Since then the mostly Afghan men have established small businesses on Lombok, where they have been waiting for an opportunity to have another attempt at coming to Australia, the sources say.

Rudd’s cynical spin is falling apart. First, why, after eight years in Lombok, do these boat people (clearly not fleeing imminent danger) try their luck again only now, after Rudd weakened our immigration laws?

Then there’s this:

Defence sources have also told The Sunday Age it was likely the men never paid people smugglers for their voyage to Ashmore Reef but arranged Indonesian fishermen to take them in the wooden boat that exploded, killing five men and injuring 31 others, a dozen of them critically.

So how cyncical, how baseless, how blatantly diversionary was this outburst from Rudd?

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Friday launched a vicious attack on people smugglers, describing them as the “vilest form of human life”.

What people smugglers?

UPDATE

David Marr on Insiders blames the deaths on ... John Howard. Really, this bloke is shameless. You’ll never guess Marr’s reasoning, so let me explain it. Marr claims that these poor people obviously didn’t realise Kevin Rudd had relaxed John Howard’s harsh regime, and still thought Howard’s cruel policy to turn back boats still applied. That’s why they spread petrol on their boat and accidentally (Marr asserts) set it alight when they were intercepted by our navy, to prevent being turned away again. Ergo: Howard is to blame.

Ingenious. Floridly imaginative. And spectacularly ignorant of facts like this:

Mr Rudd said a Labor government would take asylum seekers rescued from leaking vessels to Christmas Island, but would turn back seaworthy boats.

To repeat:

KEVIN Rudd has taken a tough line on border security, warning that a Labor government will turn the boats back...

Marr is deceived - or deceiving.

UPDATE 2

Marr does it again. What caused boat people to think we’re soft isn’t Labor going soft, but the Liberals saying they’d gone soft.

UPDATE 3

Reader Kevin catches Marr out on a contradiction that betrays his “when-in-doubt-blame-Liberals” reflex:

Watching Marr early in the show, he made he point that the refugees had poured petrol all over their boat because they had not heard the message that they would not be towed back to Indonesdia as they would have under that terrible John Howard… Later in the show, he says that the “What caused boat people to think we’re soft isn’t Labor going soft, but the Liberals saying they’d gone soft” Either these people were aware of the “softening” of the policy or they were not. Marr cannot have it both ways. His only position seems to be blame the Liberals (current and former) at all cost.
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Fast spending is not wise spending
Andrew Bolt
The waste in Kevin Rudd’s quick-quick spending spree is scary:

BILLIONS of dollars are being wasted in the State Government’s haste to spend the Commonwealth building fund, schools say.

Primary school principals have complained about being quoted $2 million for prefabricated buildings supplied through the NSW Department of Education. Quotes viewed by The Sun-Herald show the buildings could be constructed locally for half the price.
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Pell’s killer argument
Andrew Bolt
The vilification of the Pope and Cardinal George Pell over their stand against condoms and AIDS seems to me driven less by reason than religion - whether the green one or the atheistic. Pell here replies - without the abuse so typical of his more “moral” critics - not just by quoting studies, but by getting to the heart of the issue, in my (non-Christian) view:

Other studies support my claim that condoms encourage promiscuity and irresponsibility… Pope Benedict was right to point out that the human dimension in sexual activity is crucial. We are not automatons, slaves to animal instinct. Education campaigns focusing on fewer partners, less casual sex and less use of sex workers have been key to reducing infection rates…

To blame Catholics and Pope Benedict for the spread of HIV/AIDS requires proof that while people are ignoring the first, essential Christian requirement to be chaste before and within marriage, they are slavishly obedient to a second requirement not to use condoms. I doubt anyone thinks that is realistically the case.
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Dr Jeckyl and Mr Rudd
Andrew Bolt
Josh Gordon:

THERE’S a yarn doing the rounds in a state bureaucracy about a recent meeting between Kevin Rudd’s chief of staff, Alister Jordan, and a group of senior public servants.

The meeting was plodding along fine, so the story goes, until Rudd himself stormed in and proceeded to loudly berate Jordan before striding out, stunned silence ringing in his wake.

Jordan is probably one of the hardest working blokes on the planet, so to be yelled at in front of a bunch of bureaucrats by your boss who also happens to be the Prime Minister would be difficult to cop.

The feeling was that Rudd had stretched the rules of normal polite behaviour by interrupting the meeting, failing to acknowledge others in the room and openly humiliating Jordan, the most senior staffer in the Government.

That’s putting it mildly. Gordon is no doubt right to say that for now the public doesn’t much care - and nor should it much - that Rudd in private is a rude, nasty, foul-mouthed, self-centred arrogant man who is high-handed with underlings. It’s what he does for voters than counts most.

But if you were wondering why the bureaucracy is leaking against Rudd - and will do so more in future - bear this private Rudd in mind.
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Coins, Mummies and Statues Point to Cleopatra Tomb
BURG EL-ARAB, Egypt — Egypt's top archaeologist made his version of a sales pitch Sunday, presenting 22 coins, 10 mummies, an alabaster head and a fragment of a mask with a cleft chin as evidence that the discovery of the lost tomb of Mark Antony and Cleopatra is at hand.
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Bacon Blowtorch Cuts Through Steel
Here's how to fry your own bacon — and the pan it's cooking in too.

Popular Science columnist and author of "Mad Science" Theodore Gray has built what he calls the "Bacon Lance" — a complex arrangement of pork that, when coupled with a blast of pure oxygen, can cut through steel.

As Gray explains, regular "thermal lances" are bundles of iron and magnesium pipes that, when lit as oxygen is pumped through them, release huge amounts of heat — or, as he puts it, thermal energy.

He realized that certain foodstuffs might work as well. So he took several slices of prosciutto — "a superior engineering grade of meat" — rolled them around fiberglass rods and baked them overnight. Then he bundled those, wrapped more prosciutto around it and baked that.

An additional layer of fresh prosciutto for insulation, and the Bacon Lance was ready.

Attached to a high-pressure blast of pure oxygen and lit, the meat weapon did quite well in cutting through a baking pan.

A vegetarian option, hollow bread sticks packed inside a cucumber, didn't work as wonderfully, mostly because the bread burned too quickly.

"The pressure-containment capacity of a standard cucumber is remarkable," Gray added.