Author: Neville

Labor’s political dysfunction reaches new heights

Date March 21, 2013 – 6:38PM Category Opinion 595 reading now

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Lenore Taylor

Chief Political Correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald

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Rudd ‘s critical decision – no challenge

Kevin Rudd refuses to run for the leadership of the Labor Party, saying he ‘takes his word seriously’.
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One thing the Labor Party is supposed to be good at organising is a political assassination. Even their opponents assumed that.

Before the Labor caucus even met on Thursday afternoon the Liberal Party had released an ad featuring the man who triggered the showdown – Simon Crean – bagging out Kevin Rudd, obviously preparing for the return of the former leader. The tag line… ”Labor, it’s a farce”.

After this debacle, with an election just six months away, the Rudd ”camp” must surely be folding their tents.

But the Liberals didn’t know the half of it. When the caucus met, the plotters found they didn’t even have a candidate. This wasn’t farce, it was a comedy horror show like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

Labor’s political dysfunction had reached levels unprecedented even for a party that has spent much of the last three years tearing itself asunder.

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Its dysfunction was so profound it had to scramble on the floor of the House of Representatives to win crossbench support and avoid a no confidence motion – which would have precipitated an early election – all because of a leadership challenge that never happened.

It had to stare down the no confidence motion against the Prime Minister in the Parliament when everyone knew it was considering an internal no confidence motion against her in the caucus room just hours later.

The former leader Crean had to call for the leadership ballot before Rudd had agreed to be a candidate in order to try to sway some undecided votes because the party had been bogged in leadership dysfunction ever since the last showdown over a year ago.

Reversing the normal situation where the incumbent has to be blasted out of the job, in the modern ALP people apparently have to try to blast a challenger in.

There wasn’t a convincing case, even at the beginning. Right after saying he was calling for a spill because the party needed to end the stalemate and have some decisive leadership, Crean chastised Rudd’s indecision.

”He can’t continue to play the game that says he is reluctant or he has to be drafted. I know the party will not draft him,” he said. And so it was. They didn’t. And he wasn’t, for the simple reason that the desperate tactic had not delivered the numbers.

And of course the whole thing happened in a week when Labor was forced to abandon the bulk of its media reform laws after a ridiculously rushed and bungled process.

The one speck of silver lining for Labor is that the leadership stalemate must surely be over now. After this debacle, with an election just six months away, the Rudd ”camp” must surely be folding their tents.

But only after another extraordinary spectacle of Labor self-harm.

As Crean said Labor can’t win the election from the position they are now in, and ”I do not believe that the position we find ourselves in, in the polls, for example, is just due to destabilisation. I think it is due to a number of decisions which obviously in hindsight should have been approached differently.”

The Liberals will be making their next batch of ads already.

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Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/labors-political-dysfunction-reaches-new-heights-20130321-2gimz.html#ixzz2OACttODh

Crean calls for spill of Labor leadership

Date March 21, 2013 – 1:12PM 189 reading now

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Dan Harrison

Health and Indigenous Affairs Correspondent

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Labor Minister Simon Crean voices his frustration with the leadership speculation. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Simon Crean has asked Prime Minister Julia Gillard to call a spill of the Labor leadership.

Mr Crean said: “Something needs to be done to break this deadlock . . . for once and for all.”

”I am asking her to call a spill of all leadership positions,” Mr Crean told journalists in Canberra. ”I will not be standing for the leader. I will be putting myself forward in the leadership team for the deputy leader.”

Mr Crean, who is the Arts Minister, said former prime minister Kevin Rudd had no alternative but to stand for the leadership. He said he would be supporting Mr Rudd.

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Asked if Mr Rudd had enough support to become leader, Mr Crean said: ”I wouldn’t be doing this if I did not believe there was the mood and the need for change within the party.”

”It seems to me the party . . . is in a stalemate position,” he said. ”Something must be done to resolve this issue once and for all.”

”We can’t win from the position we’re in in the polls,” he said. But he said Labor’s woes were not only about leadership.

”People have got to believe that we have conviction. What we have to do is to take people with us. That means being prepared to argue the case.”

Mr Crean said that when he informed Ms Gillard of his decision she had told him she would not be calling a spill.

He said the caucus needed to act ”expeditiously, decisively and conclusively”.

”I am urging Mr Rudd to put his name forward in the interests of breaking the deadlock.”

He said he would resign from the ministry if Ms Gillard won a leadership ballot.

More to come

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Ian McDonald gave ‘hot property’ to mate

Amy Dale, Court Reporter
The Daily Telegraph
March 21, 2013 11:29AM

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Ian Macdonald

Former NSW Labor minister Ian Macdonald. Picture: Adam Taylor Source: The Daily Telegraph

DOYLE’S CREEK was “an $100 million mine” but none of that money went to the state because former minister Ian Macdonald signed it away without a competitive tender, a corruption inquiry has heard today.

ICAC is investigating the decision of the former resources minister to give the “hot property” Doyle’s Creek mining licence to his friend, the former CFMEU national president John Maitland, an a group of investors with no competitive, open tender.

Mr Macdonald allegedly decided to grant a direct allocation because Doyle’s Creek Mining wanted to have a training mine a the site, but this was a decision that went against department and industry advice.

The corruption inquiry has been told Mr Maitland made a profit of $15 million within three years, after an original outlay of $165,000. Other investors made similar windfalls.

Alan Coutts, the former deputy director general of the primary industries department, has given evidence about his opposition to Mr Maitland’s proposal.

Under cross examination from Mr Maitland’s barrister Jeremy Kirk, Mr Coutts said there were a number of objections to the idea, including that there wasn’t broad support from the mining interest off the safety council to have a training mine at that site.

“A colleague said to me that this is an $100 million mine,” Mr Coutts told the inquiry.

“Unless you put it out for competitive interest, how do we know what this mine is worth?”

Mr Coutts agreed that direction allocation on exploration licences can be done, but it “depends on the size of the resource and whether it required infrastructure.”

ICAC was told the feeling within the mining industry was “not very much in favour of a training mine…(operated) under the CFMEU.”

The inquiry continues.

NBN builder drops NT work to focus on WA, SA

By business reporter Emily Stewart and staff, ABCUpdated March 20, 2013, 9:43 pm

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One of the four major construction partners responsible for rolling out the National Broadband Network has pulled out from the Northern Territory.

Syntheo, a joint venture between Service Stream and Lend Lease, had been responsible for network building in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia.

Syntheo’s appointment as the Territory’s NBN contractor followed delays in the promised rollout timetable for the fibre network in parts of Darwin due to difficulty in finding a contractor.

It was revealed in Senate Estimates last month that the company was having trouble reaching its targets.

In a statement to the ASX, Service Stream says it will “hand back the remainder of its design and construction activities in the NT.”

It will continue to work with NBN Co in Western and South Australia.

Service Stream has also been forced to cut its financial year 2013 earnings guidance to $20 million and its share price fell 42 per cent to 22 cents by 3:45pm (AEDT).

A spokesman for the National Broadband Network says NBN Co will step in and directly employ subcontractors to do the required work in the Territory.

The Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says Syntheo’s withdrawal from the Northern Territory may speed up the company’s work in other parts of Australia.
“This will enable the NBN Co to take direct control of the rollout in the Northern Territory, allowing Syntheo to concentrate its resources on the rollout in western Australia and South Australia, bringing high-speed broadband to Australians in these states sooner,” he said.

Greenland’s Peripheral Glaciers Contributing More To Sea-Level Rise Than Previously Thought
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Greenland’s peripheral glaciers, those that are not directly connected to the primary ice sheet, are contributing much more to global sea-level rise than was previously thought. Researchers discovered that these peripheral glaciers, while only making up 5-7 % of total ice coverage on the land mass, are causing up to 20% of the rise in sea level created by the Greenland’s melting.

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This new finding is important as it should lead to more accurate predictions of how Greenland’s ice sheet will behave in the future, and affect sea levels.

The research was done “using lasers which measure the height of the ice from space, and a recently completed inventory of Greenland’s glaciers and ice caps.” With these, the researchers “were able to determine changes in the mass of those ice bodies, separate from the main ice sheet.”

“It also showed that the contribution to sea-level rise from the glaciers of Greenland separated from the ice sheet makes up around 10% of the estimated contribution of the entire world’s glaciers and ice caps, and that contribution is higher than expected.”

Lead author Dr. Tobias Bolch, from the University of Zurich, says, “The melting of ice on Greenland is known to be one of the major sources for global sea-level rise. Beside the large ice sheet, there are thousands of peripheral glaciers which are not connected to the ice sheet or can be separated from it due to the existence of ice divides. The area of those glaciers is about 50 times higher than the ice cover of the European Alps. Consequently, it is important to investigate not only the ice sheet but also these local glaciers.”

The new research found that glaciers that had no connection or weak connections to the primary ice sheet “contributed to around 30 Gigatons (Gt) of water per year to sea level between 2003 and 2008.”

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“When they added in glaciers which had some link to the ice sheet, but which were still distinct from it in the way they flowed, this figure increased to up to around 50 Gt per year. This yearly figure represents more than half the water contained in one of Europe’s largest lakes, Lake Geneva.”

“The study gives more detail to the make-up and stability of Greenland’s glaciers showing that mass loss is highest in the warmer south east of the land mass and lowest in the colder north.”

“It also shows that the loss of ice is about 2.5 times higher for those separate glaciers than for the ice sheet, leading to the 15-20% figure.”

Dr. Bolch says, “The other 80-85% comes from the ice sheet. The new figure for the local glaciers is higher than expected. It matters because the ice loss with respect to the area is significantly higher than of the ice sheet. This means that the local glaciers react faster with respect to climate change. This information will help to improve the predictions of the future contribution of Greenland’s ice to sea-level rise.”

Image Credits: Landsat ETM; image editing: Tobias Bolch (University of Zurich)

Read more at http://planetsave.com/2013/03/20/greenlands-peripheral-glaciers-contributing-more-to-sea-level-rise-than-previously-thought/#KFKcB3hvlt3eBbkY.99

Senate approves NDIS legislation

AAPMarch 20, 2013, 6:41 pm

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The Senate has given the federal government the go-ahead to set up the National Disability Insurance Scheme, including launch sites that will begin in July.

Landmark legislation passed the upper house on Wednesday, subject to the lower house agreeing to government and Greens’ amendments.

Parliamentary secretary Jan McLucas said the scheme would end the “cruel postcode lottery” of disability care.

“(The NDIS) will transform the lives of people with disability and their families and carers,” she told the Senate on Wednesday.

“For the first time they will have their needs met in a way that truly supports them to live with choice and dignity.”

Liberal frontbencher Concetta Fierravanti-Wells earlier said the coalition had enthusiastically supported each milestone towards establishing the NDIS.

But she reaffirmed the opposition’s call to set up a bipartisan parliamentary committee to oversee its implementation.

This was rejected.

When fully operational the scheme is expected to cover 410,000 Australians with disabilities and cost upwards of $15 billion a year.

So far, the federal government has chipped in $1 billion over four years for the first phase of the scheme, which sets up launch sites in four states covering 26,000 people from July, and in the ACT from 2014.

The contribution falls short of the $3.9 billion the Productivity Commission said was necessary over the next four years.

Launch sites will be established in the Hunter region of NSW, covering 10,000 people, and in Victoria’s Barwon area covering 5000 people.

South Australia will have a state-wide trial covering 4800 children, while Tasmania’s trial will cover 1000 young people aged between 15 and 24.

The ACT’s launch site covers the whole territory and 6000 people aged under 65.

Earlier this week, the federal government quietly rebranded the NDIS as Disability Care Australia.

The Senate approved government amendments about disability advocacy, UN conventions on disability and the membership requirements of the NDIS advisory council.
The Greens secured support for an amendment for the NDIS agency to do advocacy work in areas broader than the scheme.

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