PARLIAMENT RESUMES- WILL THEY SORT OUT THIS MESS AND SAVE LIVES?
Grave fears for 67 asylum seekers
Updated: 10:26, Tuesday August 14, 2012
There are grave fears that 67 asylum seekers may have drowned trying to reach Australia after leaving Indonesia in late June.
Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare says authorities became aware of the missing boat on the weekend.
‘The information that I have from Customs is they have checked a list of names they’ve received of people that were potentially on that boat and there’s no evidence those people have arrived in Australia,’ he told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.
‘So we now have very grave fears for the safety of those people.’
Mr Clare said the missing boat proved that ‘while politicians fight, people die’.
Labor has backed an expert panel on asylum seeker policy which recommends processing arrivals on Nauru and Papua New Guinea as was done under the previous coalition government’s Pacific Solution.
Legislation to allow offshore processing will be rushed into parliament on Tuesday.
Mr Clare used the latest missing boat as an example of why MPs and senators should back the bill.
‘We’ve got people missing at sea as we speak, this is no time for politics,’ he said.
‘We’ve got to pass laws to stop people dying.’
The expert panel suggested offshore processing combined with a doubling of Australia’s refugee intake could deter people from making dangerous sea voyages.
With these large chains owning petrol outlets, hotels, poker machines and hardware stores how can they be stopped ? Long gone are the friendly corner shops where you could put your groceries on tick.
A new report by Master Grocers Australia has accused supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths of deliberately killing off their smaller competitors.
Master Grocers Australia, which represents smaller operators, says Coles and Woolworths are saturating the market and opening oversized supermarkets to squeeze out local competition.
The body says the evidence is now in and the Federal Government and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) have to act.
In Australia, about $8 of every $10 spent on groceries ends up in the tills at Coles or Woolworths.
The Australian groceries market is one of the most concentrated in the world, and local retailers in towns like Toowoomba in Queensland struggle to deal with the competition from huge retail chains.
Locals say Toowoomba is drowning in a deluge of Coles and Woolworths supermarkets, pubs, hardware and liquor stores, petrol stations and discount outlets.
Debbie Smith, the owner of Foodworks Supermarkets Toowoomba, says Woolworths and Coles own five supermarkets each in the town.
“Toowoomba has about 100,000 people,” she said.
“There are approved plans to build another one for Coles and another one for Woolies, so within two years they’ll be six of each.”
Ms Smith is a rare breed, running one of the few independent supermarkets left in town.
She says it’s not just the number of supermarkets that Coles and Woolworths have opened, but the size of them that has killed the smaller operators.
“There are plans approved to put 3,500 square metres for Coles 800 metres from this store,” she said.
“We had 220 customers send letters of objection to the council during appeals process but to no avail. Do we need another one? No we don’t. Are we going to get another one? Yes we are.”
Master Grocers Australia, which represents players like Foodworks and IGA, says this scenario is being repeated across Australia.
“This behaviour by the chains is really putting at risk the loss of retail diversity, choice for consumers and true competition,” chief executive Jos de Bruin said.
In its report, Master Grocers Australia says opening oversized and unprofitable supermarkets is a deliberate strategy from Coles and Woolworths to wipe out competition.
This behaviour by the chains is really putting at risk the loss of retail diversity, choice for consumers and true competition.
Master Grocers Australia CEO Jos de Bruin
“They can sustain oversized supermarkets running at losses by cross-subsidising, and what we mean by that is a range of other businesses which draw their profits and run these loss-making stores for as long as they care too,” Mr de Bruin said.
‘Locals devastated’
Part of the strategy, Master Grocers Australia says, is for the supermarket giants to target marginal areas.
The picturesque town of Bright sits in the foothills of Victoria’s snow country.
Its 2,000 residents are proud of the community they have built.
But many say since Woolworths came to town two years ago, local producers and retailers have been devastated.
A total of 23 local businesses have been put up for sale or lease, and those still operating are suffering.
“The pharmacy is down by 30 per cent and the newsagency down by 25 per cent. The local diary is down by 30 to 40 per cent and has no opportunity to supply Woolies other than a small amount of milk produced – the rest of it is sourced centrally,” Bright Super IGA manager Nick Cooke said.
Mr Cooke says his IGA has lost half its sales and had to lay off half of its staff.
He believes the main problem is that Woolworths was allowed to open a supermarket that is much larger than is actually needed.
“When permit was approved there was already two supermarkets in town, more than adequately servicing the demands that existed,” he said.
If you open a new store in a new market that by definition would bring more capacity to the market than the market needs because it was fully saturated, the fact that a new store will lose money in its early days is normal commercial behaviour.
So to meet the test of being against the Act, being anti-competitive, means it has to be behaviour that will deliberately damage competition.
ACCC chairman Rod Sims
“The new Woolies is 2,500 square metres and that equated to 50 per cent excess capacity and unfortunately the smaller independent supermarket closed down and now we’re still at excess of 40 per cent.”
‘Great anxiety’
The Master Grocers Australia report is calling for the Federal Government and the ACCC to overhaul competition and planning laws.
“What we have seen are oversized supermarket development in a number of regional and country townships where some of the codes and regulations haven’t been adhered to, the planning principles haven’t been adopted, and it has caused great anxiety,” Mr de Bruin said.
The Federal Opposition believes there is merit in the report and says it sharpens the case for a review of competition laws.
“It identifies some clear pressure points and impacts on innovation in our economy, how if we don’t have proper competition laws and a pro-competitive environment, innovation suffers,” Bruce Billson, the Opposition spokesman for small business competition policy, said.
“That’s not good for consumers, not good for choice, and not good for the Australian economy in the long run.”
The Opposition wants to arm the ACCC with more powers to stop any market power abuse.
The ACCC says it will look at the claims of oversized supermarkets on a case-by-case basis.
“If you open a new store in a new market that by definition would bring more capacity to the market than the market needs because it was fully saturated, the fact that a new store will lose money in its early days is normal commercial behaviour,” ACCC chairman Rod Sims said.
“So to meet the test of being against the act, being anti-competitive, means it has to be behaviour that will deliberately damage competition.”
‘Consumer need’
A representative for Coles and Woolworths has rejected the Master Grocers report and all its findings.
“This is a report long on accusation and short on facts. This is a report generated by an organisation that is effectively another supermarket chain,” Australian National Retailers Association chief executive Margy Osmond said.
The association says Coles and Woolworths only open supermarkets on consumer need, not to knock out the competition.
“I think this is a bizarre accusation, that any business would set up to lose money,” Ms Osmond said.
“These are big public companies. They have shareholders to account to, there is no way they’re opening stores to lose money.”
The supermarket giants say they continue to invest significantly in Australia and employ hundreds of thousands of Australians.
Growth is a choice, not our destiny Vancouver Sun Now, most of this population growth is not coming in the developed world. Europe and Japan are actually shrinking in natural growth and the United States is barely holding its own. The less developed world is exploding both in numbers and in carbon use … See all stories on this topic »
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has backed an independent report on asylum seekers, telling Labor MPs this afternoon that the government should adopt all the recommendations in the report.
An expert panel lead by former Defence Chief Angus Houston has recommended that Australia process asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, and that the Malaysia people swap should be “built on further” before anyone was sent to Malaysia.
The expert panel on asylum seekers, Michael L’Estrange, Angus Houston and Paris Aristotle, have handed their recommendations to the government. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
It is understood that Ms Gillard and Immigration Minister Mr Bowen have told a special Labor caucus meeting in Canberra that the government should adopt all 22 recommendations in the report.
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It is also understood caucus has agreed and Ms Gillard is due to address the media later today.
The Greens have rejected the offshore processing recommendations while Coalition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison has called on the government to reopen processing centres on Nauru and Manus Island.
The Houston panel, which Ms Gillard appointed in June to help break a political deadlock on the issue, released its report earlier this afternoon.
It also recommended that Australia’s humanitarian program be increased immediately to 20,000 places a year (from the current 13,750), with a consideration of an increase to 27,000 within five years.
Air Chief Marshal Houston told reporters in Canberra that the review had been a “challenging” task and that there were no simple solutions. He said the recommendations were “an integrated set of proposals”.
He said that the panel “fiercely defended” its independence, and Ms Gillard had made it clear it had free rein to run its review.
“We’ve taken everything on its merits,” he said.
When it came to the Coalition’s policy of turning boats back, Air Chief Marshal Houston said that he had a lot of appreciation of the associated legal issues, given his Defence background. But the panel had also taken expert advice on the matter.
“Right now we believe that the conditions do not exist to be able to turn boats back,” he said.
He said that the panel had briefed Ms Gillard as well as Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, the Greens and the independents on their findings.
He said the group, which included former diplomat Michael L’Estrange and refugee expert Paris Aristotle, wanted to see policy that was “hard-headed but not hard-hearted”.
The former Defence chief said the independent panel had been “deeply concerned” about the loss of life at sea.
From late 2001 to June 2012, 964 asylum seekers and boat crew have been lost at sea while en route to Australia, he said. Of these, 604 people have died since October 2009.
“To do nothing is unacceptable,” he said.
He added that it was in Australia’s national interest to co-ordinate better with regional and source countries.
He said that panel believed that a “no-advantage” principle should apply “whereby irregular migrants gain no benefit by choosing the circumvent regular migration mechanisms”.
Air Chief Marshal Houston said that the large backlog in the special humanitarian program also needed to be addressed.
The panel recommended that a strategy to “significantly” increase resettlement places provided by Australia to war-torn countries in the Middle East and Asia region be developed.
Legislation to support regional offshore processing should be introduced into the Parliament immediately, it said, and processing centres should be established in Nauru and Papua New Guinea immediately.
The existing Manus Island processing facility, in Papua New Guinea, was last used in the Howard government era – as was the processing centre on Nauru.
Air Chief Marshal Houston said that onshore processing was “seeing a very big pull” towards Australia.
He said the panel’s recommendations would cost $1 billion annually but most of this would be offset by savings, drawn from a reduction in border control and customs costs that have ballooned with the influx of boats.
More than 7500 people have arrived in Australia by boat since the start of the year. This compares with about 4500 people for the whole of 2011.
“Unless we do something different … the problem is just going to get worse,” he said. “Onshore processing encourages people to jump on boats.”
Air Chief Marshal Houston said that the panel had looked at temporary protection visas. He said they would not be needed in Nauru or PNG, but a form of the visa may be required if vulnerable people needed to come to Australia.
The people-swap deal with Malaysia should be ”built on, not discarded” but the panel warned that, if it was to work, protection measures and safety guarantees for the fate of asylum seekers sent from Australia to Malaysia were needed.
The panel believed these measures ”did not currently exist but could in the future”.
The report has already had the thumbs-up from independent MP Rob Oakeshott.
“Briefing with former CDF complete. Good strategy proposed. Time to get on with it, and for the Parliament to pass appropriate legislation,” Mr Oakeshott posted on Twitter.
Mr Morrison encouraged Labor to ”get to work” on reopening the asylum seeker centres on Nauru and Manus Island.
The Coalition frontbencher said the Houston report endorsed the spirit of temporary protection visas and supported the Howard government view that family reunions were a pull factor.
He said the panel had dispelled the ”nonsense” view that boats could not be towed back to sea, but ducked the issue on the panel’s recommendation that the current settings were illegal and unsafe to do so.
Mr Morrison offered bipartisan support and any necessary assistance in reopening both processing centres, but made it plain the Coalition viewed the report as a ”greenlight for Nauru and Manus Island and a red light for Malaysia”.
He refused to answer whether he supported the full suite of recommendations – with the exception of the Malaysia proposal – saying the opposition would make a full response when the government delivered its own reaction.
Greens leader Christine Milne said her party was disappointed that the panel had not listened to expert advice and was going back to the “bad old days” of offshore processing on Nauru and Manus Island.
“What is coming to the Parliament is a proposition that we take away human rights, that is a proposition that John Howard put forward,” Senator Milne told reporters in Canberra today.
“The Greens will not be party to something which is cruel to people,” she said.
Senator Milne welcomed the recommended increase in Australia’s humanitarian intake, which is something the Greens have been calling for.
She said it was “clearly the best thing to do” and that it reduced the pressure on people to get on boats.
She also said that the panel’s position on Malaysia – calling for greater human rights protections – vindicated the Greens’ opposition to the Malaysia deal.
Among the panel’s other recommendations was a call for immediate bilateral co-operation on asylum seeker issues with Indonesia.
There should also be an increase in the allocation of resettlement places available to Indonesians under Australia’s humanitarian program, enhanced co-operation on joint surveillance, law enforcement and search and rescue co-ordination.
The panel said Australian laws that jailed Indonesian minors who crewed on the unlawful boat voyages needed to be reviewed.
Australia should continue to develop its relationship with Malaysia, including a greater number of refugees to be accepted from the country into Australia.
The humanitarian program and Australia’s onshore and offshore processing ”components” should be reviewed within two years.
Air Chief Marshal Houston noted that the issues the report dealt with had been “swirling around” in the Australian community for a long time.
“There are very few new ideas in this arena,” he said.
Water Matters Distribution Listwatermatters@ris.environment.gov.au
Aug 10 (3 days ago)
to watermatters
Dear subscribers,
Please find the link to issue 20 of Water Matters below.
This issue of Water Matters features a story on the Wurrumiyanga community of Tiwi Islands receiving a fluoridated water supply thanks to a new water infrastructure project as part of the National Water Security Plan for Cities and Towns; and a brief update on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
Women work at a paddy field at the village of Bamundangi, eastern Nepal. Photograph: Dipendu Dutta/AFP/Getty
Most of Nepal‘s agriculture is undertaken by women, but research tailored to their needs is lacking. “We need new technologies that can reduce the drudgery for them,” said Devendra Gauchan, agricultural economist and chief of the socioeconomics and agri-research policy division at the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (Narc).
Agriculture supports the livelihood of more than 60% of the rural population in Nepal, but most farmers, regardless of gender, stick to the manual practices that have been common for centuries, and seldom use mechanical equipment.
Women have traditionally been involved in agriculture, but the scale and range of their responsibilities has increased. “Feminisation has been rapidly enhanced in recent years due to the massive migration … from rural areas, mostly of men,” said Gauchan.
Around nine in every 10 people who have left the country – whether permanently or temporarily – are men, according to the most recent census in 2011 (pdf).
A survey by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in 2010 revealed that around 3% of households headed by women used mechanical equipment, compared with 8% of those headed by men.
“The demands of women and men are different and we need to consider that in agriculture research,” said Shreeram Neopane, executive director of local initiatives at Biodiversity, Research and Development, an NGO based in Pokhara, about 200km (124 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu.
The Institute for Integrated Development Studies (pdf), a thinktank in Kathmandu, recently noted that agricultural research and training could cut poverty, “if it generates and disseminates technologies, which are specifically targeted at the problems of poor farmers, including women farmers, who, because of the gender division of labour, have different technology needs from men”.
Such research should focus on inventing small equipment and machines that would mechanise farming, from sowing to harvesting and post-harvest processing, suggested Dhruva Joshy, former executive director of Narc.
For example, the traditional way of husking finger millet, a small staple grain, with a pestle and mortar is labour-intensive and time-consuming, and a dehusking machine could significantly save time and energy, said Bhag Mal, a consultant to the Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutions in Bangkok, Thailand.
Researchers need to keep in mind the different aspects of agricultural production that are of particular concern to women, said Neopane. In choosing rice varieties, for example, men care more about increasing yield and production, while women also consider taste, smell and the ease of threshing and cooking. Recognising the needs of women could result in a “higher rate of uptake of a technology, and more benefit from the technology for the family”.
Although women would benefit most from a boost in agriculture research, Gauchan pointed out that few researchers in Nepal are women – in 2009 only 10% of public agriculture researchers were women, up just 1% from 2003, according to the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute (pdf) and Narc in 2011.
The FAO (pdf) found that 98% of the total female labour force were engaged in agriculture in 2010, while the UN Environment Programme noted that women performed six times as much agriculture work as men.
Despite contributing 35% to the national gross domestic product, investment in agriculture (pdf) accounted for just 2% of the government’s 2009 budget, with less than 0.2% going to research.
Rural women in Nepal are less educated than men, with only about one year of formal schooling each on average, according to an analysis by the FAO in 2010 (pdf). The success of any new invention therefore depends on the empowerment of women, and on their training and access to information, said Gauchan.
“Even if new technologies arrive, they do not reach many places. Only the smarter women have access, but women living in rural corners do not,” said Radha Nepal, a farmer and chairwoman of the community maize seed production committee in a village in Palpa district, in the southern Terai region bordering India.
“If women’s knowledge was enhanced – if manure, seed and pesticide were made available, with the necessary tools – then women could do all the agriculture work themselves.”
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