Israeli forces storm Jerusalem's holiest shrine, firing stun grenades to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing Palestinian protesters in a fresh eruption of violence in the Holy Land's most volatile area.
Young men killed by firing squad
SOMALIA'S hardline al Shabaab insurgents executed two young men in public yesterday after telling a crowd in a rebel-held port that they had confessed to spying.
Karzai Challenger Backs
'Dramatic' Troop Increase
Top challenger in hotly disputed Afghan election calls for 'dramatic increase' in troops to ensure security
Rudd 'just like Howard' on asylum seekers
RELIGIOUS leader says PM's policy towards boatpeople is a case of "out of sight, out of mind". - ridiculous, the policies are totally unlike. Mr Howard's policy was fair and decent, while Rudd's is cold and heartless. - ed.
White House 'Campaign' Against Critics?
Obama engaged in 'PR campaign' to penalize health reform critics, reps from two industry groups say
Twin Blasts Rock Baghdad
Car bombs strike Iraqi capital, killing 165 and injuring scores in apparent strike on government offices
'Hero' pilot drowns after saving others
A PILOT who made an emergency landing to save his passengers died during his good deed.
Hundreds of hay bales will make their way to Australian households carrying some unexpected artwork, after a vandal with a sense of humour transformed them into happy logos
Customer details sent offshore
FEDERAL Government urged to stop banks sending customers' personal details overseas.
Dead whales may be luring monster shark
FEARS a 5m long white pointer lurking off the coast may be feeding on whale carcasses.
Fidel Castro's sister worked for the CIA
THE younger sister of Fidel and Raul Castro collaborated against her brothers' rule in Cuba.
Road rage maniac bashes bus driver
A CYCLIST illegally riding in a transit lane followed a bus, jumped on at a stop and then bashed the 64-year-old driver.
Child's severe burns untreated for weeks
PARENTS who left their four-year-old daughter's severe burns untreated have been jailed.
Paddock burials to solve cemetery crisis
BURIAL sites on privately owned land are being considered to address a critical shortage of cemetery space. - NSW Govt is inept and in policy freeze. This is a mistake of their making. - ed.
Moran shoeless and shirty in prison
A LOVE of the high life is taking its toll on Judy Moran, with the crime matriarch outraged over her downmarket prison conditions.
Asbestos payout crisis as $1.8bn runs out
THE $1.8 billion fund set up by James Hardie to pay asbestos victims is running out, allowing the corporate giant to delay payments to the dying.
Family home a shrine for slain Lins
THE Lin family home will be transformed into a shrine for the slain members to mark 100 days since their deaths.
Tween star Noah Cyrus sparks outrage by wearing a 'dominatrix' inspired Halloween costume. Can you pick the nine-year-old? - Halloween is on soon. Any criticism is hyper. - ed.
=== Comments ===
10 Reasons for Moral Outrage
Rev. Bill Shuler is pastor at Capitol Life Church in Arlington, Virginia.
Moral outrage is the intersection of morality and deep seated convictions. As Americans our decision to speak out or remain silent, act with conviction or step back, will create the world our children will inherit.
Were it not for moral outrage America would be under British rule and the Emancipation Proclamation would never have been penned. Moral outrage, by its very definition, is the intersection of morality and deep seated convictions. The following are 10 reasons for moral outrage:
1. Our forefathers acknowledged our creator God in the Declaration of Independence, but we are forbidden to acknowledge him in our public schools.It has been said that all that is needed for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. Ultimately we will be judged not by our titles or bank accounts but by something far more sacred. Future generations hang in the balance. Whether we speak out or remain silent, act or step back will create the inheritance we bequeath.
2.Our entertainment industry glamorizes sexuality yet is held unaccountable despite the rising rate of out-of-wedlock teenage pregnancies.
3. Moral relativism continues to reign in our public schools even though a nation reaps the results of such relativism with unprecedented greed on Wall Street.
4. 39.8 million people live below the poverty line in America -- over 14.1 million of them are children -- yet close to 100 billion pounds of food is wasted each year.
5. There have been over 50 million abortions since Roe vs. Wade became the law of the land with the vast majority being for no other reason than simple birth control.
6. Darwinism is taught as fact while Creationism is excluded from the American classroom.
7. More Christians were killed for their faith in the 20th century than in the entire history of Christianity.
8. A cross erected in 1934, at a WWI memorial site in the Mojave Desert, is currently at the center of a debate over whether or not its presence violates the Constitution.
9. The Ten Commandments have been taken from our court houses.
10. The community of faith is, in large measure, quiet and complacent.
===
GREEN IS BAD
Tim Blair
Another sign that the most costly scientific delusion in history is losing public support:
Susan Butler, the Macquarie Dictionary editor, said the environmental concerns had joined the internet and the global financial crisis this edition as great generators of words. ‘’But it’s not all positive for the environment. ‘Greenie’’ in its early stages had positive and negative connotations … these days ‘greenie’ has mostly negative connotations,’’ she said.Can’t imagine why. Maybe this has something to do with it:
Parents have accused early childhood centres of “greenwashing” their children by burdening them with the responsibility of saving the world.They’ve been tormenting children for years. Over nothing.
Tots as young as three have sent letters to Kevin Rudd about their passion for green living and asked companies to reduce their packaging …
But experts have called for caution in teaching children about climate change because of the potential for fear, anxiety, frustration, anger and despair at catastrophic events.
===
ROLL THE PRESSES
Tim Blair
Newspapers everywhere are laying off staff or shutting down, but one journal in Denver is actually hiring:
What’s even more surprising is the role the paper is looking to fill: a marijuana reviewer.
Deadlines could be an issue.
===
NO SPIN ZONE
Tim Blair
An inconvenient question:
So, where are the hurricanes of 2009, Mr. Gore?
Yeah, Al. Bring ‘em on. James Wolcott can’t wait forever. Gore recently spoke at an environmental journalists’ conference:
Al Gore: China gets urgency of climate crisis from Elsa Wenzel on Vimeo.
Al Gore: China gets urgency of climate crisis from Elsa Wenzel on Vimeo.
Sayeth the Goracle: “The Chinese people consistently are at or near the top in terms of awareness of or sense of urgency about the climate crisis … China’s role is rapidly moving towards the positive side.” Really? Doesn’t look like it.
===
GET OFF MY LANE
Tim Blair
Magda Szubanski should never have apologised.
===
POWER AND ECONOMY
Tim Blair
Thanks to a rules loophole you could drive a truck through, a beautiful result looms:
The two thirstiest, most powerful cars in the field are on track to win the Global Green Challenge, an environmentally focussed fuel economy run from Darwin to Adelaide.How can this be? It’s all due to government experts:
Two of the fastest cars ever produced in Australia – the HSV Maloo R8 and Ford Falcon XR6 Turbo – are first and second in the 14-car “Eco Challenge” field.
They’re on track to beat a fleet of fuel misers and even an electric car, which must be followed by a fuel sucking truck that’s likely to use as much fuel as six of the fuel misers fighting for line honours.
The event ranks teams according to their fuel use in comparison to the official, Government-supplied rating that goes on the fuel label.It turns out that government economy ratings aren’t friendly to massive V8s and turbocharged dual-cam sixes, handing them a huge advantage. Holden’s monster V8 – aided by the highway-based course – is pulling figures up to 64 per cent better than listed. One car is notably absent:
Cars that use less than their claim as a percentage will be crowned the green car winners.
Despite the surplus of frugal fuel misers, Australia’s greenest car, the Toyota Prius, is not in the event.A possible reason for this: under highway conditions, the Prius is just a heavy four-cylinder car hauling around unemployed batteries. Its hybrid capacities mainly kick in during low-speed urban running.
It’s understood organisers offered Toyota significant incentives to compete in the Challenge, but the maker declined repeated approaches.
===
SYMBOL OF FEARLESSNESS
Tim Blair
Following a recent Obama-worship piece by Anne Davies, reader Infidel Tiger commented:
In other news - Michelle Obama: Too pretty?NYT columnist Charles Blow answers the call:
Michelle Obama is the coolest first lady ever ...You don’t say.
I could pile on platitudes here about her professional accomplishments, or explore to what degree she is redefining the role of women, or predict how she will be viewed by historians in the pantheon of her predecessors. I could, but I won’t. That’s not my bailiwick.
But I will say that she seems particularly suited to these times. She provides a certain authenticity and clarity of self in a time of uncertainty, projecting a casual grace onto a world of amplified anxiety. She has become a powerful symbol of fearlessness, refinement, frugality and frivolity, managing to be both fun and serious simultaneously. She’s genuinely human.
Mrs. Obama is redefining my concept of a first lady, and I like it.
===
KILL AND CHILL
Tim Blair
“A cull of Australians or Americans would be at least 60 times as productive as one of Bangladeshis.” Just another caring column from a pro-death British greenist. Over in Boston, a fellow Gaia guy plans a temperature cull:
Simon Hare and his family are embarking on a bold experiment in green living: a winter with no heat.Make a third batch and she can wear them. A number of readers are unimpressed:
Their modest, two-story cottage in Roxbury will be warmed by the sun, the body heat of Hare, his wife Damiana, and his 16-month-old daughter Lulu, and even the heat thrown off by its energy-efficient appliances …
“You make it really efficient; you design your house to do your work for you,’’ Hare said. “On a February day of 6 degrees, if it’s getting cool, we can heat the house by making a second batch of pancakes for my daughter.’’
• “If this is the mentality behind the green movement, shutting off the heat with a baby in the house, I think I’ll pass.”
• “These people are lunatics!”
• “The journalist who wrote this piece ought to alert social services.”
• “This guy should be arrested.”
• “wow...no heat with a baby who is unable to vocalize when she is cold.”
• “As her heart stops so does this project.”
===
THEY NEED HELP
Tim Blair
Shannon Love on those bogus Limbaugh quotes and the stooges who fell for them:
What does it portend for American non-leftists that a wide and powerful swath of the American left apparently believes it quite credible that a major media figure with an audience in the tens of millions looks back fondly on slavery and approves of political assassination? What draconian methods could those leftists rationalize using if they really believe they are fighting people with such values?Good question. Read on.
===
THE BELIEFS OF GRADY HOGAN
Tim Blair
An otherwise unimpressive event is made newsworthy by a visitor from Maine:
About 150 people have gathered for a rally in Times Square as part of a series of demonstrations around the world calling for action on global warming …That’s about it, so far as a news angle goes. The tiny Times Square rally – 150 people in NYC is proportionally equivalent to just 80 or so in Sydney – was part of Saturday’s global 350 debacle, which would’ve attracted more people if it had been a celebration of Chevrolet’s beloved small block V8. Naturally, the New York Times covered it, with a piece containing six times as many words as there were demonstrators (similarly low turnouts were observed worldwide). In other NYC news:
Bates College student Grady Hogan came down from Maine to attend the rally. He says he believes global warming will cause more destruction in his lifetime than any other issue.
Vanity Fair yesterday took some of the deepest staff cuts at Condé Nast, but Editor Graydon Carter didn’t deliver the bad news himself.Excuse me? He “jetted off”? Can this be the same Graydon Carter who published annual green editions of his boring celeb journal? The same Graydon Carter who insisted:
Although Carter was said to have been at his restaurant, The Monkey Bar, Wednesday night, he was a no show in the office yesterday because he had jetted off on a vacation yesterday morning.
“Of most pressing concern to all world citizens is global warming.”It’s a pressing concern until you need to get out of town. He didn’t even stick around for the climate change rally.
UPDATE. Reader Dan F. emails: “Just FYI, I got my undergraduate degrees from Bates. Used to be a fine school – very difficult to get into, very tough place in terms of grades. Has probably been ruined by now … sigh ...”
===
HO CHI MING-MING-MING
Tim Blair
My mother is a Vietnam veteran – well, in the sense that she’s actually been there, unlike certain other ‘Nam vets. Holiday snaps from her recent visit include a Saigon street scene:
This must be one of the finest scooter cities on earth. Even Kuala Lumpur isn’t as scooter-intense.
===
CANADIAN CIGARETTE CAPERS
Tim Blair
Victory in Quebec:
The Federal Court has ordered a recently imposed smoking ban outside of federal prison buildings must be lifted.Defeat in Ontario:
Nineteen Quebec inmates serving lengthy federal sentences argued this month that a complete smoking ban introduced in federal prisons in 2008 was a violation of their rights.
A 48-year-old truck driver from London, Ont., has been fined for smoking at work – the cab of his rig.The fine: $305.
Ontario Provincial Police pulled over a truck on Highway 401 near Windsor on Wednesday when the driver was seen smoking.
===
How Rudd deceived you twice
Andrew Bolt
When Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey said much the same obvious thing, Kevin Rudd accused him of making “deeply divisive, disgusting remarks”. So what will Rudd say now that the Tamil community agrees with Tuckey:
A SENIOR member of the Australian Tamil community says former Tamil Tiger fighters are definitely among the influx of boatpeople to arrive on our shores.Rajakulendran correctly argues that, unlike Muslim terrorists, Tamil Tigers have no fight with Australia, even though their organisation has been listed as a terrorist group in more than 30 countries, and assassinated a former Indian Prime Minister. Yet are we really in the business of offering save haven to defeated armies or terrorist groups?
Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations secretary Victor Rajakulendran said the high proportion of young men on the boats, coupled with the risks faced by the Tigers in Sri Lanka, made it certain some arrivals were members of the defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam....
“There will be definitely, definitely they will be in these boats,” he said. “The ex-combatants are in danger in Sri Lanka so they will have to flee somewhere.”
Oh, and an update on another piece of Rudd spin.
Remember how the Rudd Government pretended its new Indonesian Solution - taking boat people it had just rescued back to detention in Indonesia - was in fact just a humanitarian arrangement to rush a sick girl to the closest treatment?
(Immigration Minister) Senator Evans says the deal was struck based on the welfare of a sick child. “The child is receiving attention on the ship and so that treatment is occurring, but yes the agreement was based on concern for the child, a humanitarian agreement if you like, to disembark the passengers in Indonesia,” he said.The girl and the other 77 Sri Lankans was rescued by an Australian patrol ship, the Oceanic Viking, on Sunday a week ago from a boat they’d reportedly sabotaged themselves. It took until Tuesday for Indonesia to agree to this “humanitarian” deal to take in the sick girl - and the others. But it’s not until today that the Oceanic Viking will land the boat people in Indonesia - eight days after the rescue, and six days after Rudd announced an Indonesian Solution that was allegedly all about rushing a little girl to treatment:
Late yesterday a meeting between Indonesian immigration, police and foreign affairs officials was co-ordinating the arrival of the Viking passengers, including a 12-year-old girl requiring medical assistance.This is not just more Rudd spin. It’s outright deceit.
A police source said the ship would arrive at 10am local time (2pm AEDT) in the port of Kijang, where the asylum-seekers would be loaded on to buses for the 30-minute drive to Tanjung Pinang.
UPDATE
If their side has a Pacific Solution, that’s evil. If your own side has an Indonesian Solution, your outrage magically disappears:
KEVIN Rudd’s “Indonesia solution” has been given the provisional thumbs-up from key players in the refugee lobby, who say intercepting asylum-seekers in the archipelago could save lives.This is what Rudd’s Indonesian Solution looks like:
And contrast the refugee lobby’s praise of Rudd to its demonisation of Howard for doing much the same thing. “Hypocrites” seems too mild a word.
UPDATE 2
Gavin Atkins says the true rise in the number of boat people under Kevin Rudd has been underplayed:
The number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia on unauthorized boats has increased by more than 3000 per cent for 2008/09, according to the Department of Immigration’s Annual Report which is to be tabled in Parliament this week.UPDATE 3
The more than 30-fold increase on the previous reporting period sinks the government’s argument that the rise in asylum seekers by boat has been driven by relatively small increases in asylum seeker numbers around the world…
The figures, which have not yet been made public, but were obtained by Asian Correspondent, show that 799 people arrived on unauthorized boats in 2008/09 compared to 25 people in 2007/08.
As I said in the initial post above, Tamil Tigers have no fight with Australia. But that’s not to say that ends any concern about importing them when ethnic tensions here seem high enough already:
Police say the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka triggered a violent home invasion in Sydney last night, which left two men in hospital with acid burns.
Up to five men broke into a home at Westmead in the city’s west just before midnight. Two men were hiding in a bedroom but the invaders found them and threw acid at their faces. One of the men was also stabbed in the stomach and had his ankle broken, he is in a serious but stable condition at Westmead Hospital…
Earlier in the day, five people were arrested over a brawl between a pro Tamil group and supporters of the Sri Lankan government in Wentworthville. The brawl involved up to 100 people in a shopping centre carpark.
===
So where’s the sex ledger?
Andrew Bolt
The Chief of Navy says this column of mine - over the three petty officers accused of running a “sex ledger” - is “misleading, emotive and inaccurate”.
Read on for Vice Admiral Russell Crane’s full response, but try to find in it an actual rebuttal of anything I actually wrote, or an explanation for what stunned me most - that the navy didn’t kill the most damaging allegation against these men when, as Crane himself told a Senate hearing last week:
It is important to note that at no stage in this process did Navy ever suggest that a sex ledger existed.Note also that Crane did not challenge during that hearing an assertion repeatedly put to him by the Opposition’s defence spokesman, David Johnston:
I can give you the name of the ADFIS inquiry officer who told these men that within two days they knew there was no ledger, no sex scandal.But to Crane’s response:
===
Consensus grows
Andrew Bolt
Professor Bob Carter counts the ways in which the claim that man is heating the world dangerously actually fails:
For instance, should you wish to test (as the IPCC should) the idea that “human carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming”, then there are several ways that that can be done.Climatologist Roy Spencer, in charge of a team monitoring satellite data on warming, agrees:
The result, long ago, has been the falsification of the dangerous human-caused warming hypothesis. Failed tests include: that global cooling has occurred since 1998 despite an increase in carbon dioxide of 5%; the lack of detailed correlation between the carbon dioxide and temperature records over the last 100 years; consideration of cause and effect timing of past carbon dioxide and temperature levels in ice core records; the absence of the model-predicted temperature hotspot high in the tropical troposphere; the low sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide forcing as judged against empirical tests; and the demonstrable failure of computer GCMs to predict future climate.
I contend that the belief in human-caused global warming as a dangerous event, either now or in the future, has most of the characteristics of an urban legend.Climatologist Roger Pielke Sr, former chairman of the American Meteorological Society Committee on Weather Forecasting and Analysis, doubts most scientists believe the world is warming and man is the most to blame:
In the coming month, we will be presenting another article that documents that the AP authors are erroneous in their claim “that the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is occurring and that the primary cause is a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal.”UPDATE
No wonder believers are trying to stifle debate:
A POLITICAL row has broken out over a Derby Conservative councillor’s decision to show a climate change-sceptic film in the city’s council chamber.UPDATE 2
The new film, Not Evil Just Wrong, is a documentary which suggests evidence of global warming is inconclusive and that the impact climate change laws will have on industry is much more harmful to humans than beneficial. It is a direct challenge to Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, (which) was shown to councillors in Derby during Labour’s control of the authority in 2007....
Labour councillor Ranjit Banwait, who is vice-chairman of the council’s climate change commission, called for the resignation of its Conservative chairman…
“They’re setting an incredibly dangerous precedent. They’re peddling a viewpoint which disputes what scientists have already proved about the state of the planet...”
First Britain’s Science Museum rigs a poll (and the evidence) to scare the public into backing a mad plan to “stop” global warming, and then blames a plot by evil sceptics when its poll still comes up with the “wrong” result:
A poll by the Science Museum designed to convince the nation of the perils posed by climate change has backfired after being hijacked by sceptics.UPDATE 3
The museum’s Prove It! website, which is designed to influence politicians at the Copenhagen climate summit in December, allows members of the public to pledge their support, or lack of it, to the environmentalist cause. But so far those backing the campaign are out-numbered nearly six-to-one by opponents.
By Saturday, 2,385 people who took the poll said “count me out” compared to just 415 who said “count me in”, after being asked whether they agreed with the statement: “I’ve seen the evidence. And I want the government to prove they’re serious about climate change by negotiating a strong, effective, fair deal at Copenhagen.”
The website, which accompanies a major new exhibition at the venerable South Kensington museum, claims to offer “all the evidence you need to believe in climate change”.
Christopher Booker has a new book out to explain how the warming “consensus” was manufactured, and how it’s now falling to pieces.
===
Howard unleashed
Andrew Bolt
John Howard rightly damns as undemocratic the argument for a bill of rights, and defends the notion of cultural identity - and our version of it. A rare video, in today’s times, of a leader speaking frankly as he wisely finds, free of spin or timidity.
===
What Mandela should have said
Andrew Bolt
Denis Sassou-Nguesso, the president of Congo-Brazzaville, has written another book of his musings, complete with a gushing foreword by Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president:
In President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, I recognise a man who is not only one of our great African leaders ... but also one of those who gave their unconditional support to our fighters’ demand for freedom, and who worked tirelessly to free oppressed peoples from their chains and help restore their dignity and hope.Two small problems with this praise, however. First, Sassou-Nguesso first shot his way to power.
Second, Mandela says he’s never read nor endorsed this book, and the foreword is a fake.
===
Rudd out of sorries
Andrew Bolt
The prime minister who once said sorry for what didn’t happen, now refuses to say sorry for what has:
Kevin Rudd makes no apology on The 7.30 Report on Thursday for his latest verbal tic:
I ACTUALLY believe in a big Australia. I make no apology for that.With journalists at Murray Bridge on October 14:
I MAKE no apology whatsoever for adopting a hardline approach when it comes to illegal immigration activity.In Launceston on October 13:
I MAKE no apology whatsoever for working as closely as I need with our Indonesian friends and partners.In Washington on September 20:
I MAKE no apology for either the content of my conversation, or the robustness with which I expressed my views.On June 3 in Canberra:
I MAKE no apology whatsoever for being conservative in our projections.In a May 28 press conference:
THIS is a hard-working government, I work hard, I make no apology for that.On The 7.30 Report June 16, 2008:
IT’S a tough business being in government. I make no apology for that.===
Psst. Rest of world no better, and probably worse
Andrew Bolt
David Burchell finds the 7.30 Report unusually informative in an accidental way, as the lower classes are once more savaged for ruining our reputation:
The 7.30 Report leaped back into the fray of our revisited asylum-seekers debate the other week with an urgent, heartfelt and thoroughly editorialising story about those poor exhausted Sri Lankans aboard the leaky fishing vessel. As it happens, this report was followed - with that same wonderfully swift incongruity - by a lengthy, jolly and rather doting interview with the grand grey eminence of Australian cultural snootiness, the veteran comedian Barry Humphries, creator of those Dadaesque buffoons Dame Edna, Barry McKenzie and the rest. The mood-shift was a bit of a challenge. And yet for once - entirely by happenstance - the juxtaposition seemed to make logical sense.
After all, to whom if not Humphries do we owe the seeds of our characteristic cultural anxiety about how others will view us as a nation, an anxiety which, at times such as these, produces unhelpful instincts and helpful ones in nearly equal measure?
To whom do we owe that eminently Humphries-esque distaste for the great army of dull-witted, closed-minded, benighted suburbanites out there, on the unready shoulders of whom our fragile national reputation always seems to rest? Why is it that in Australia - otherwise that most relaxed and egalitarian of countries - at times like these, so many of our great cultural lions are as arch and condescending as the habitues of an old-style London’s gentleman’s club at closing-time? Why, it’s the work of Humphries and his contemporaries, the old suburban-loathing Anglophiles, of course.
===
All those billions wasted
Andrew Bolt
What a scandalous waste of the nation’s treasure. Kevin Rudd shovelled out up to $80 billion in stimulus spending, yet little went on what was needed:
BUSINESS is demanding federal and state governments plan and invest in a new wave of infrastructure reform to avoid port bottlenecks, city congestion, urban water shortages and bad freight systems choking off Australia’s next era of economic prosperity.But with the money gone, the Government’s next big plan is for a colossal tax on emissions that the Business Council warns could cut off our power:
A major report for the Business Council of Australia paints a stark picture… (and says) only 14 per cent of the Rudd government’s recent stimulus packages had been for real “economic” infrastructure because most projects were not ready to start quickly enough.
The report recommends the Council of Australian Governments takes over from the Rudd government’s Infrastructure Australia advisory body… The report says IA had not had time to do a proper audit before recommending $22.5 billion of major economic infrastructure projects funded in the May budget, had not released cost-benefit analyses for the projects it had recommended, (and ) had not chosen projects based on “any deep assessment of overall need"…
It is scathing of one of those projects - the $43bn national broadband network - saying it had been announced without cost-benefit analysis and that “based on the supporting material made publicly available so far, it is not yet clear whether a government-backed NBN is the right way forward for Australia”....
The future “priority projects” identified by IA have received $8.7bn from the commonwealth, at least $50bn short of their total cost, and were unlikely to get a lot more since the Building Australia Fund has been spent, the commonwealth has promised severe spending constraints as part of its stimulus “exit strategy” and the state infrastructure spend is slowing.
“We cannot be certain we can maintain electricity reliability, given the nature of the rebuild required in our electricity sector during the transition to a lower carbon economy ... the commonwealth needs to ‘buy’ additional protection for system security through the CPRS compensation package,” it says.
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