Managing director of Ebono Institute and major sponsor of The Generator, Geoff Ebbs, is running against Kevin Rudd in the seat of Griffith at the next Federal election. By the expression on their faces in this candid shot it looks like a pretty dull campaign. Read on
The dream of a traffic-jam defying flying car has come a step closer as Massachusetts-based firm Terrafugia presented their prototype ‘Transisition’ car plane which has completed a successful test flight of a street-legal airplane. Source: AFP
DRIVERS hoping to slip the surly – and traffic congested – bonds of Earth moved a step closer to realising their dream, as a US firm announced the successful test flight of a street-legal plane.
Massachusetts based firm Terrafugia said their production prototype Transition car-plane had successfully carried out an eight-minute test flight, clearing the way for it to hit the market within a year.
“With this flight, the team demonstrated an ability to accomplish what had been called an impossible dream,” said founder Carl Dietrich.
Terrafugia argues that the Transition offers unparalleled freedom of movement, with a range of 787km and without the need to che2.3m as a car, it fits into a normal-sized garage, before unfurling an 8m wingspan.
To take advantage, would-be owners will need to have both a driver’s and pilot’s licence – with a minimum of 20 hours of flying time.
This is a push to eliminate weekend and overtime penalty rates. Unions fought hard in the past to negotiates these rates.
Shorten to take on big banks over weekend pay
Richard Willingham
April 3, 2012
Bill Shorten … “The government cannot just stand by and hear large banks making very, very large profits and just simply acquiesce to their demand that people, low-paid workers, take a cut in their penalty rates on the weekends just to satisfy an unargued case.” Photo: Penny Bradfield
THE Workplace Relations Minister, Bill Shorten, has invited the big banks to sit down with the government to discuss award rate changes but promised to protect low-paid workers from a ”wage cut by stealth” from banks that were making record profits.
Mr Shorten was responding to a submission from major banks to a review of award rates in which they call for the definition of ordinary hours to be extended to include Saturday and Sunday in a bid to ”promote flexible and efficient modern work practice”.
Mr Shorten said he would be pleased to meet the chief executives, as well as the Finance Sector Union, to discuss why they want to extend ordinary hours to weekends and the consequence that would have on workers.
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”If they just want to use the ordinary time extension, which was traditionally just Monday and Friday, and extend it to seven days a week … absent any other proposition to compensate people, this is a wage cut in stealth,” he said.
”And this is not a wage cut for the CEOs on several million dollars a year, this is potentially a wage cut for people – part-time workers, women workers, people who earn $40,000-$50,000 a year.
”The government cannot just stand by and hear large banks making very, very large profits and just simply acquiesce to their demand that people, low-paid workers, take a cut in their penalty rates on the weekends just to satisfy an unargued case.
”I just don’t accept the view of the world which says that productivity is gained by the CEO and the company making more profits and the employee having their pay cut.”
The Commonwealth Bank said it supported the extension of ordinary hours because it recognised employees in banks, building societies and credit unions already worked at weekends as part of their regular schedule and the change would reflect that reality.
”We have made no application to change penalty rates in the industry award and, even if we had, those changes would have absolutely no impact on the penalty rates paid to Commonwealth Bank employees,” a spokesman said.
The Coalition declined to comment other than to say the review should be allowed to run its course.
The Greens workplace spokesman, Adam Bandt, said banks were making record profits and that staff who worked at the weekend were entitled to fair penalty rates.
”The Greens accept that we’re in a seven-day economy, but weekends still remain the time for family, friends, sport and other social activities. People who work on weekends should be properly remunerated,” he said.
The Finance Sector Union national secretary, Leon Carter, yesterday said the banks’ push was a precursor to cutting the pay of low-paid finance workers.
Retail groups said it was inevitable that banks, like many other sectors of the economy, would look to employ more staff at weekends, as the working week changed from Monday to Friday to seven days.
Russell Zimmerman, the executive director of the Australian Retailers Association, said it was inevitable the banks were coming under the same cost pressures other retailers had – because they were now running their outlets on Saturdays and in some cases on Sundays.
He said the answer to these cost pressures was, ultimately, the removal of penalty rates altogether for all sectors needing weekend workers. The association has recently pushed for a halving of the penalty rate on Sundays for retail workers, so that it is, like Saturday, time-and-a-half rather than double time.
All early election talk has assumed a newly elected Coalition would face a hostile Senate. But what if current opinion polls are correct and the Labor government will suffer a landslide defeat at the next election? Is there a possibility of the Coalition winning effective control of the Senate through a normal half-Senate election?
In short, it is a chance, but the odds on it happening are long.
Monday, April 2 2012This is highly contraversial, Some may be willing to work and get the Holiday Penalty Loading. Major Grocery Chain Stores open on Boxing Day. It should be up to individual stores, whether or not they open. There is an injustice here.
NSW Opposition Leader John Robertson, who accepted the petition on Monday, described the move as an insult to retail workers.
All retailers in NSW will be allowed to open on Boxing Day under new trading laws to be introduced into parliament.
Mr Robertson said the reforms meant workers would be forced to front up on Christmas to help stock stores.
“This is probably one of the most vicious and nasty attacks that this government has perpetrated on working people in NSW,” he told protesters outside Parliament House on Monday.
“It’s an attack on your right to spend time with your families.”
Premier Barry O’Farrell last week said workers could not be forced to work on public holidays.
But Mr Robertson says casual workers who say no to shifts on those days will have shifts cut or be let go.
“Anyone who has worked in retail … knows that if you’re a casual if you just don’t turn up or say you’re unavailable suddenly the shifts just disappear and you have no job,” he said.
“You can be forced to go to work on those days and it’s completely outrageous.”
He said the government had gone back on its commitment to looking after families.
“It’s an absolute insult to anyone who works in retail to now discover that Barry O’Farrell is playing lip-service to your opportunity to spend time with your families.”
Retail industry worker Galadriel Cladwell said workers would feel pressured.
“Casuals are afraid not to work on public holidays because they’re afraid the following week they’re not going to have any shifts,” she said.
“And family in my book comes first all the way.”
Mr Robertson said he would present the petition to the parliament once it reaches 10,000 signatures.
A new study contrasting ocean temperature readings of the 1870s with temperatures of the modern seas reveals an upward trend of global ocean warming spanning at least 100 years. The research shows a .33-degree Celsius (.59-degree Fahrenheit) average increase in the upper portions of the ocean to 700 meters (2,300 feet) depth. Modern data is derived from the international Argo program.
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