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Fraud Squad detectives with Strike Force Carnarvon, which was set up to investigate allegations of inappropriate practices within the union, are now considering the contents of the report.
Small business owner, entrepreneur and broadcaster, Angela Vithoulkas, is Living Sydney’s Lord Mayoral candidate in the upcoming City of Sydney council elections. Picture: Cameron Richardson Source: The Daily Telegraph
RESIDENTS and ratepayers will be paid up to $100 a day to sit on a citizens’ jury and provide their views on major City of Sydney projects under a radical plan to hand decision-making back to the community.
Up to 40 people from a cross-section of the city community will be randomly selected to join the juries, funded from council coffers, and will have real power to decide large projects such as cycleways.
The plan will be launched today by cafe owner Angela Vithoulkas, who is standing against Clover Moore for the lord mayoralty, and heads the seven-member Living Sydney ticket in next month’s local government elections.
Citizens’ juries already are used at Canada Bay and have been proposed to guide major state infrastructure projects.
Ms Vithoulkas, 46, said yesterday the juries would be selected and run – at arm’s length from council – by the newDemocracy Foundation, started by Transfield director Luca Belgiorno-Nettis with the aim of improving the democratic process.
THE citizens’ juries proposed for major projects in the City of Sydney will be outsourced to an independent research organisation called the newDemocracy Foundation.
“The jury system is a community engagement plan we will implement immediately (on election),” Ms Vithoulkas said.
“We want to give power back to the community, to assess and make decisions and choices on the issues that affect them.
“The community is unhappy about the present consultation process, where decisions have a pre-determined outcome.”
Ms Vithoulkas, who has run Vivo Cafe in George St for the past 10 years, said she believed the city cycleways would never have been built if citizens’ juries had been in operation. “We would want to hear voices from all parts of the community,” she said.
“And that could be on a development application, a transport issue, or cycleways.”
Under the plan it is expected jury members would attend five to seven meetings and have access to council staff, documents and external experts.
A citizens’ jury is likely to cost $10,000 to $12,000 for each project, with an annual budget of several hundred thousand dollars factored in.
Ms Vithoulkas said a council controlled by Living Sydney would pledge to act on the views and findings of the community juries.
“We need a more open and transparent system … we need to bust open the Clover club,” she said.
“People should be a lot more involved in decision-making before problems arise.
“We will apply the jury model to some public decisions and people will get involved when they see we are passing to them genuine authority.”
Living Sydney claims the City of Sydney has $530 million available in its bank account and yet more money could be freed up by eliminating waste and inefficiency.
MORE than 1000 RailCorp middle managers and back office workers have applied for redundancies in a rush of applications since Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian signalled she wanted to get rid of 750 bureaucrats.
A “reform team” is now determining which positions are most appropriate to make redundant “without impacting day-to-day operations”.
It is the first tranche in 3000 to 4000 redundancies the minister is hoping to create in the 15,000-employee organisation. A Booz and Company report for the government found that, compared with other rail systems around the world, RailCorp was mass- ively overstaffed.
The government believes RailCorp has four times as many senior bureaucrats for the size of its workforce than the former RTA, and 20 times more than the Department of Education.
“There have been more than 1000 formal expressions of interest received for redundancies,” a Transport for NSW spokesman said.
“The RailCorp reform team is determining which positions are the most appropriate to be made redundant.
“The government is pleased with progress to date and is committed to driving real improvements for customers and eliminating back office inefficiencies. RailCorp costs $10 million a day to run, with costs rising three times as fast as the number of passenger journeys. That is unsustainable.
“Each of these 1000 are from the sector that we mentioned will be targeted – back office middle management.”
Ms Berejiklian announced the redundancies in May and said at the time the move was about “fixing the trains”.
The minister predicted there would be a “scare campaign” from unions warning of further job cuts but said she was determined to carry out her agenda. Cuts to mainstream RailCorp staff are expected to begin when the government negotiates an enterprise bargaining agreement it has with the unions which the former Labor government put in place until 2014.
Under that agreement, the minister is not permitted to summarily sack staff.
Earlier this year Ms Berejiklian said: “We are a global city, we need a 21st century rail organisation. Unfortunately a lot of practices have been around 50 to 60 years or longer. We want to turn RailCorp into a modern organisation. One example is there are restrictions as to what train staff can do versus what platform staff can do.
“What we keep getting told is guards aren’t allowed to get on the platform.”
In the June budget the government foreshadowed 15,000 public service job cuts over four years through natural attrition or redundancies on top of the RailCorp cuts.
Oklahoma senator Jim Inhofe, a prominent climate sceptic, told the committe: ‘The global warming movement has collapsed.’ Photograph: Axel Schmidt/AFP/Getty
Drought, wildfires, hurricanes and heatwaves are becoming normal in America because of climate change, Congress was told on Wednesday in the first hearing on climate science in more than two years.
In a predictably contentious hearing, the Senate’s environment and public works committee heard from a lead scientist for the UN’s climate body, the IPCC, on the growing evidence linking extreme weather and climate change.
“It is critical to understand that the link between climate change and the kinds of extremes that lead to disaster is clear,” Christopher Field, a lead author of the IPCC report and director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institute for Science, said in testimony.
“There is no doubt that climate has changed,” he went on. “There is also no doubt that a changing climate changes the risks of extremes, including extremes that can lead to disaster.”
He later told the committee that those climate-related disasters would have profound effects on industry and agriculture.
Field was the first IPCC scientist to appear before the committee since February 2009. It was a time when there was real optimism about prospects for action on climate change under the new Obama Administration.
By Wednesday, however, it was universally acknowledged there was no prospect of moving climate change legislation through Congress. There was also little chance the scientists’ presentations would persuade the most prominent Republican climate contrarian, Senator Jim Inhofe, who told the committee: “The global warming movement has completely collapsed.”
Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who chairs the committee, also noted she had deliberately avoid calling any administration officials or government scientists.
The Republican’s campaign against Obama’s green agenda, with their attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency and his clean energy loans, would make their presence a political distraction, she indicated.
But Boxer told reporters before the hearing she had faced growing pressure from the public to air the issue of climate change. The Republican-controlled House has turned down 15 requests from Democrats for a similar hearing.
Field, in his testimony, warned that the devastating extremes of the last year could soon become routine.
“The US experienced 14 billion-dollar disasters in 2011, a record that surpasses the previous maximum of 9,” he said. “The 2011 disasters included a blizzard, tornadoes, floods, severe weather, a hurricane, a tropical storm, drought and heatwaves, and wildfires. In 2012, we have already experienced horrifying wildfires, a powerful windstorm that hit Washington DC, heat waves in much of the country, and a massive drought.”
He went on to make a point of warning Texans that the future of farming and ranching could be put in jeopardy because of climate change.
The committee also heard from James McCarthy, a Harvard oceanographer and IPCC author, who warned that sea-level rise was occurring about three times faster than scientists believed even a decade ago.
The hearing quickly veered off course from reviewing the latest climate science to the intractable politics surrounding climate change in America.
In one of the liveliest exchanges, Bernie Sanders of Vermont continued his effort to take down Inhofe for his statements that climate change is a hoax and a conspiracy.
Sanders asked the scientists on the panel for their opinions on some of Inhofe’s more notorious assertions – that climate change is a hoax, that the planet is actually in a state of cooling, and that such environmental concerns were a conspiracy by the UN, Al Gore, and Hollywood.
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A report for the US military contains a recommendation to expand America’s defence presence in Australia by massively expanding a base in Perth for a US aircraft carrier and supporting fleet.
Comparable cost estimates in the past have ranged from $1 billion to create a nuclear-capable homeport for a carrier at Mayport in Florida to $6.5 billion for similar capability in Guam
The plan is included as part of one of four options set out in a report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), commissioned by the Department of Defence.
US military report recommends basing carrier strike group in Perth.
The report’s authors will give testimony before Congress’s Armed Services Committee on Wednesday in the US.
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The CSIS was directed to consider how the US military could undertake the “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific region announced by President Barack Obama last year in response to China’s increasing influence.
The third option in the report – formally titled US Force Posture Strategy in the Asia Pacific Region: An Independent Assessment – details moving a US carrier strike group to the HMAS Stirling base in Perth.
The strike group would include a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, a carrier air wing of up to nine squadrons, one or two guided missile cruisers, two or three guided missile destroyers, one or two nuclear powered submarines and a supply ship.
“Australia’s geography, political stability, and existing defence capabilities and infrastructure offer strategic depth and other significant military advantages to the United States in light of the growing range of Chinese weapons systems, US efforts to achieve a more distributed force posture, and the increasing strategic importance of south-east Asia and the Indian Ocean,” says the report.
“Enhanced US Navy access to Her Majesty’s Australian Ship Stirling (submarines and surface vessels) is a possible next phase of enhanced access arrangements with Australia,” it says.
“HMAS Stirling offers advantages including direct blue-water access to the Indian Ocean and to the extensive offshore West Australian Exercise Area and Underwater Tracking Range, submarine facilities including a heavyweight torpedo maintenance centre and the only submarine escape training facility in the southern hemisphere, and space for expanded surface ship facilities, including potentially a dock capable of supporting aircraft carriers.”
The report suggests the US could also consider building airport facilities to support “bombers and other aircraft”.
It suggests other initiatives could include “increased US support for Australia’s ailing Collins class submarine replacement project” and “full Australian participation in US theatre missile defence”.
The other options consider how the US military could direct its “force posture” to the region with different levels of military power.
Option one lays out a plan for using existing forces where they are now stationed. Option two describes how the military could operate given the increases already planned for. Option three, which includes the build-up in Australia, presumes an increased force, and option four lays out plans for a decreased force.
The Defence Secretary, Leon Panetta, has already stated he plans to increase the US naval presence in the region from 50 to 60 per cent of the total force.
The report says such a fleet in Perth would be a “force multiplier” and estimated it would provide the equivalent military benefit of having three similar groups based outside the region.
“HMAS Stirling is not nuclear carrier-capable,” the report says. “This forward-basing option would require significant construction costs. Comparable cost estimates in the past have ranged from $1 billion to create a nuclear-capable homeport for a carrier at Mayport in Florida to $6.5 billion for similar capability in Guam.”
Option three also proposes basing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drones and aircraft in either Australia or Guam.
According to the report the carrier base would “present some operational constraints” because of Perth’s southern location, “further from trouble spots in the Western Pacific than Guam, and further from the Middle East than Diego Garcia”.
But it says the distant location could also be a benefit by putting it beyond the increasing range of China’s defences.
It said the option was “subject to important variables” including how well the new US Marine presence in Darwin was welcomed by the local community and whether bipartisan support for the increasing military ties between Australia and the US could be maintained.
The study notes that Australia’s strategic history “is one of a close alignment with a ‘great and powerful friend’”.
It says public support for the US alliance is at an eight-year high, with “87 per cent of Australians regarding it as important for Australia’s security and 74 per cent considering the United States as Australia’s most important security partner over the next 10 years.
“While not mainstream, anti-Americanism is prevalent among some elite circles, particularly in academia, parts of the media, and the fringes of the trade union movement and politics,” it says.
“Australia is unique among America’s allies in having fought alongside the United States in every major conflict since the start of the 20th century,” the report notes.
A spokesman for the CSIS said the think tank was unable to comment on the report until after some of the report’s authors testified before the Senate Committee on Armed Services tomorrow, Wednesday US time.
The paper criticised the US Department of Defence for failing adequately to articulate the new Asia Pacific strategy, nor detailing how it would manage the change in the face of budget constraints.
In a statement the Armed Services Committee’s chairman, Senator Carl Levin, said he agreed with comments made by the US Secretary of Defence, Leon Panetta, that “efforts to strengthen alliances and partnerships in the Asia-Pacific to advance a common security vision for the future is essential to the US strategy to rebalance toward the region”.
In a cover letter to the report written by the CSIS president John Hamre to Mr Panetta, Mr Hamre writes: “We found a strong consensus on this overall objective within the Department, in the policy community generally, and especially with allies and partner countries.”
The proposal met a lukewarm reaction in Western Australia with the Premier, Colin Barnett, saying it would never happen.
“I don’t think there’s any possibility of that happening,” he said. “I don’t think you could squeeze a nuclear aircraft carrier into Cockburn Sound.”
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