Author: Neville

Pyne attacked over reform calls

Date January 30, 2013 – 10:31AM 57 reading now

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Judith Ireland

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Christopher Pyne Photo: Andrew Meares

Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne has pledged to increase parliamentary question time if the Coalition is elected later this year but the government says he is a serial wrecker of question time who has no credibility on the issue.

Mr Pyne, who is manager of opposition business, is calling for a half-hour backbench question time – on top of the existing question time – to give backbenchers the opportunity to ask ministers questions about their local electorates.

”One of the fair criticisms of question time is that the frontbenchers on both sides feature and often local issues that many backbenchers would like to raise never get a look-in because of border protection or economy, cost of living, job security, etc dominating frontbench questions,” he told ABC Radio before a speech on Wednesday at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Mr Pyne will outline ”practical changes” that he says would make the Parliament a ”better place”, among them greater independence for the Parliamentary speaker.

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”I think that we do need a little ”i” independent speaker, one that stays outside the party room in the way that [former speaker] Harry Jenkins did and tries to exercise a genuine independence,” he said.

”What’s happened with the speakership over the last two years has been a farce under Julia Gillard where it’s been used as a shiny bauble in order to attract support as it was with Peter Slipper. This has been wrong. It’s reduced the role of speaker and also damaged the Parliament and it’s time to put an end to that.”

Rules governing proceedings would also be strengthened to allow MPs to be challenged while speaking on bills, and parliament would sit for more days a year, The Australian Financial Review has reported.

Mr Pyne was kicked out of parliament four times in the second half of last year for offences such as “continual abuse of standing orders” and “persistent interjection”.

He has also been pulled up by Speaker Anna Burke for interrupting, using a prop, not resuming his seat and ignoring her calls

Labor frontbencher and current Leader of the House Anthony Albanese said the Coalition was not serious about parliamentary reform.

He said they had tried to ”wreck parliament to bring down the government”, and accused Mr Pyne of being an ”imposter”.

”What people will do is look at what they say should happen in Parliament and then look at how they behave on the floor of the House of Representatives,” he told ABC radio.

He said the opposition disrupted the operation of Parliament at every opportunity.

”They suspended standing orders on 72 occasions, which led to a loss of some 409 questions in question time,” Mr Albanese said.

Mr Albanese recalled how Mr Pyne and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott had run out of the chamber to avoid accepting Craig Thomson’s ”tainted” vote last year, which showed ”their contempt for proper processes”.

Mr Abbott told reporters in Melbourne on Wednesday that it was important that Australians could ”once more watch their Parliament without embarrassment.”

”It is important that Christopher be given his chance today to talk about the kind of reforms that we would like to see made in the Parliament,” the Opposition Leader said. ”In the end though, it is the Prime Minister who sets the tone of the Parliament who determines whether people can watch the Parliament and feel proud of our country.”

With AAP

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Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/pyne-attacked-over-reform-calls-20130130-2djrs.html#ixzz2JPZbQ1PB

Insurance companies warned about fire services levy

ABCJanuary 30, 2013, 10:33 am

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Insurance companies are being warned they face fines of up to $10 million if they continue to charge customers for Victoria’s fire services levy (FSL).

The levy, which pays for fire services, has been paid by home owners as part of their insurance premiums.

But from July it will be collected by councils through their rates.

Victoria’s Fire Services Levy monitor, Allan Fels, is writing to all insurers requesting information about the way they intend to remove the charge from their premiums.

“We’re going to call on them to explain to all consumers and businesses exactly what they’re doing about the levy,” he told.

“They have to be honest about that because there’s a $10 million fine for misleading the public on that point.”

Fels is concerned that the FSL will be taken off the premiums as a line item, but will sneak into the lump sum of insurance.

Previously only people who bought insurance paid the fire levy and under the new system where everybody pays, the price of insurance is expected to fall.

Meanwhile, the Victorian Government has set aside $53 million to help smooth the transition to the system for charging the fire services levy based on local council rates.

The money will help the local councils implement, administer and collect the new levy and pay for costs associated with the running of Mr Fels’ office.
State Treasurer Kim Wells says the new property-based levy is the biggest state-based tax reform in decades.

Sea change: the Bay of Bengal’s vanishing islands

Rapid erosion and rising sea levels are increasingly threatening the existence of islands off the coast of Bangladesh and India
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John Vidal in Cox’s Bazar

The Guardian, Tuesday 29 January 2013 12.12 GMT

Disappearing world … a project for climate refugees near Cox’s Bazar, as people have been forced from islands such as Kutubdia in the Bay of Bengal. Photograph: Salman Saeed

Schoolteacher Nurul Hashem lives in a grass hut set among coconut palms and pine trees, yards from a pristine beach on the sparkling Bay of Bengal. It sounds idyllic, but he longs to return to the island of Kutubdia, 50 miles away, where his family home has been swallowed by ever-rising tides and is now out at sea under several feet of water.

To make matters worse, the local government, which welcomed him when he arrived three years ago, wants him and thousands of other families who have fled to the coast from the island, to make way for an airport and hotel developments.

Kutubdia is one of many islands off Bangladesh and India affected by increasingly rapid erosion and some of the fastest recorded sea-level rises in the world. These “vanishing islands” are shrinking dramatically. Kutubdia has halved in size in 20 years, to about 100 sq km. Since 1991 six villages on the island of fishermen and salt workers have been swamped and about 40,000 people have fled. Like Hashem, most have relocated to the coast near Cox’s Bazar.

“The sea water is rising every day,” says Hashem, who calls himself a climate refugee.

“We lost everything. We are not happy, because we must move again. Climate change is making thousands of people homeless.”
Kutubdia’s cyclone shelter, which doubles up as a school. Photograph: Salman Saeed
The 80,000 people left on Kutubdia all expect to follow Hashem. “The land here used to be 1km out to sea,” says Mohamed Rashed from the village of Qumira Char. “We lost mosques, a school, shops, farms. We are scared of the sea now. Gradually it comes closer to our homes. When we sleep, we are scared. Every year the tide rises more and comes in further. Next year this village may not exist.”

Rashed moved his house on to a new three-metre high concrete embankment in 2008, but the high tides and tidal surges now top the barrier.

“God knows how long this village will last. If it gets worse I will have to go to the mainland. We know the end is coming,” says fisherman Jakir Hossain.

At the current rate of erosion Kutubdia will be off the map within 30 years, along with dozens of other coastal islands. Sandwip, near Chittagong, covered 600 sq km 50 years ago. It is now a tenth of the size, its area having halved over the past 20 years alone. Further north along the Bay of Bengal, 12 islands – home to 70,000 people – are said by the Bangladeshi government to be “immediately threatened” by the rising seas; 90 others in Indian waters, collectively housing more than 4 million people, are said to be at real risk. Sagar island is expected to lose at least 15% of its area in the next eight years, and may yet suffer the same fate that befell the island of Lohachara, which in December 2006 became the first inhabited island known to be lost to rising sea levels.
A fishing village on Kutubdia island. Photograph: Salman Saeed
Scientists attribute the disappearance of these islands to a combination of natural and possibly manmade events. The villagers say they are victims of climate change, but there is no reliable sea-level data in Bangladesh. However, sea surface temperatures in the Bay of Bengal have significantly increased, which could theoretically have caused the expansion of water. In addition, more intense cyclones and higher tides have also been observed, while increased flows from some of the giant rivers that flow into the Bay of Bengal may also be contributing.

“There is a close correlation between the rate of sea-level rise and the sea surface temperature,” says Sugata Hazra, head of oceanography at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University.

No scientific monitoring of sea-level rise has been done on Kutubdia, but increases of nearly 8mm a year have been recorded over 20 years at Cox’s Bazar. This is nearly three times the average for Bangladesh and up to five times the worldwide average sea-level rise.

“Land has always been lost to erosion in the Bay of Bengal, but this is now becoming exacerbated,” says Saleemul Huq, senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London.

“There has been a step change in the numbers who have had to move and the rate of erosion is higher than in the past. Whether it is climate change is not clear, but this can be seen as the beginning of a trend which is expected to grow exponentially.” .

Predicted sea-level rises of up to a metre over the next century would inundate the homes of millions of people. At the present rate of 8mm a year it may only take about 25 years to raise levels 20cm, enough to permanently waterlog and destroy the land and drinking water of as many as 10 million people in the south of the country. A one-metre rise along the only partly defended 450 mile (720km) Bangladeshi coastline would result in nearly 20% of the country being submerged and 30 million more people being displaced. A recent report prepared by Jadavpur University and the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) estimates that a million of the 5 million people living in the delta will become climate change refugees by 2050.

“We are staring catastrophe in the face,” says Moqbul Ahmed, team leader with Coast, a social group working with climate-affected communities and refugees on Kutubdia and elsewhere. “They lose everything they have and they cannot recover when their land is washed away. They have no option but to migrate from the islands but they have no money, and when they leave they have no schools or hospitals. They have no work and no future.”

On Kutubdia, islanders say they do not need scientists to tell them that the annual sea-level rise is far more than 8mm. “We reckon its twice that at least,” says Hashem. “The sea used to be much further away. We had to move our houses 300 yards in 2008, but the water now comes to the house. We have nowhere left to go. If we had any money we would go to Cox’s Bazar or Chittagong. All we can do is fish. We cannot protect ourselves. So we stay. Our life is with the sea.”

Disrupted sleep linked to disrupted memories

AM
By Will Ockenden
Updated Tue Jan 29, 2013 9:57am AEDT

Photo: The study found younger people who got a good night’s sleep did much better than older subjects. (Peter Macdiarmid: Getty Images)

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Map: United States
A bad night’s sleep often leads to a bad day, and it may also hamper the ability to store memories, especially in older people.

Scientists have known for a while that as people age, the ability to create new memories gets worse.

Now a study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience has found disruptions in sleep are hindering the creation of new memories.

The University of California Berkeley’s Bryce Mander is one of the study’s authors, and he says older people experience profound disruptions in their sleep and profound disruptions in their memory.

“If it’s true that sleep is a contributing factor to poor memory and aging, then it’s also something that can be targeted, unlike other factors,” he said.

“If you have a stroke or you have some other pathology, you can’t really reverse that.

Audio: Listen to Will Ockenden’s report (AM)

“But there are ways to target and enhance sleep and make sleep better, so that may be a more hopeful target for future studies and future interventions.”

Dr Mander says by tacking sleep problems, older people may again be able to retain information in the way that younger people can.

“You find their ability to retain memories, to retain facts that they had learnt before sleep, would be more like a younger person’s,” he said.

“They would probably not be fully restored in terms of their memory but I would expect that their memory would be better than it currently is.”

In the experiment, the scientists took a group of younger and older people, and gave them a list of words to remember.

They then put them in a lab where they slept the night. In the morning they had to recall the words.

Matthew Walker, another one of the researchers, says the younger people who got a good night’s sleep did much better.

“Because of that lack of deep sleep, the older adults were not able to essentially hit the save button on what they’d learnt the day before,” he said.

The challenge for scientists now is finding a way to help people sleep better so memories can be retained.

“Now we understand what’s going on we can start to translate that knowledge and that science into applicable practical questions, such as ageing and dementia,” Dr Walker said.

“Only when we’ve characterised our understanding of what goes on when the brain is working well can we then importantly ask questions of what’s going on when the brain is not working well.

“That’s the novelty of this study, I think, which is taking now what we’ve learned and starting to move it over into applicable questions in disease and ageing.”

Topics:sleep, sleep-disorders, health, brain-and-nervous-system, neuroscience, united-states

First posted Tue Jan 29, 2013 9:40am AEDT

Prime Minister Julia Gillard tipped to announce big spending cut

By Malcolm Farr, National Political Editor
news.com.au
January 30, 201312:00AM

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The Gillard Government is hunting for money to cover extra education funding. Picture: Kym Smith Source: The Daily Telegraph

The Gillard Government is hunting for money to cover extra education funding. Source: Herald Sun

THE Government will soon pre-empt its May Budget by announcing a significant, single cut in spending which could see reductions in welfare payments or industry support.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard today will foreshadow the cuts and commit the savings to “key Labor priorities”.

The Government, hit by shrinking revenue, is hunting for money to cover extra education funding and pay for further steps in creation of its National Disability Insurance Scheme.

“This year we will make the tough, necessary decisions to ensure our medium-term fiscal strategy is delivered, and our centrepiece plans for Australian children and Australians with disability are funded, in this new low-revenue environment,” Ms Gillard is expected to tell the National Press Club.

She also will pledge to combat job insecurity, particularly in the manufacturing sector where hundreds of workers have been retrenched as the high Australian dollar makes our exports expensive.

And Ms Gillard will also confirm that in April she offer premiers more money for education in return for higher quality teaching and learning, new powers for principals, and new transparency on results.

The Prime Minister and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott will be making their first NPC addresses for the year this week with both hoping to set the issues and tone of the election campaign expected late in the year.

Ms Gillard will match Mr Abbott’s “five pillar economy”, announced at the weekend, with five of her own. She believes that while the Government can’t direct rein in the Australian dollar, it could improve the prospects of local industry by improving competitiveness and economic diversity.

“So we can and must focus on increasing skills, building a national culture of innovation, rolling out the national broadband network, investing in infrastructure, improving regulation and leveraging our proximity to and knowledge of a rising Asia into a competitive advantage,” her speech is expected to say.

The Government will release its Industry and Innovation Statement and respond to a taskforce report on manufacturing as part of its bid to make jobs more secure.

Ms Gillard said policies would involve “backing Australian firms to win work at home, win business abroad, and create new jobs and growth, above all through co-operative innovation, through firms and employees, researchers and governments all working smarter together”.

Her speech will outline “substantial new structural savings that will maintain the sustainability of the Budget and make room for key Labor priorities”.

“Our record of cutting wasteful programs, in line with our Labor values and purpose, is already strong,” she is expected to say.

“The dependent spouse tax offset, the tax breaks for golden handshakes, tax concessions on super for high income earners, the millionaires dental scheme and fringe benefits loopholes for executives living away from home … all gone.

“The private health insurance rebate is means-tested: something many said could never be achieved.

“This year we will make the tough, necessary decisions to ensure our medium-term fiscal strategy is delivered, and our centrepiece plans for Australian children and Australians with disability are funded, in this new low-revenue environment.”

The Opposition wants the Prime Minister to provide more detail on the economy.

Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey said Ms Gillard should use the speech to “reveal the true state of the Budget” following the Government’s retreat from guaranteeing a surplus for 2011-12.
And Mr Hockey suggested some questions to be put to the Prime Minister:

Will the Prime Minister explain to the Australian people how she intends to keep her promise of paying off net debt by 2020-2021 given that would require surpluses of almost $30 billion a year from 2016-2017?

How can (Treasurer) Wayne Swan and Julia Gillard claim to be lower taxing than the Howard Government when they have announced 27 new or increased taxes and when their total call on the community including taxes, borrowings and dividends – is the highest in recent times?

How can Wayne Swan and Julia Gillard talk about a decline in Government revenue when this year they are estimated to receive over $70 billion more revenue than the last Budget of the Howard Government?

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Your say: Ipswich mayor attacks insurance industry

ABCUpdated January 30, 2013, 9:53 am

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Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale has accused the insurance industry of trying to evade its responsibilities in the wake of disasters like the floods in Queensland and New South Wales.

Last night the Insurance Council of Australia’s Rob Whelan told Lateline that governments should spend millions of dollars on more efficient infrastructure to protect flood-prone towns.

Councillor Pisasale has told ABC News Breakfast that is just an exercise in trying to shift the blame.

“Instead of facing up to their responsibilities, what this bloke’s doing is [saying] let’s take it away from our customers and hit and blame local government,” he said.

“We’ve spent millions and millions and millions of dollars on flood mitigation and all councils are struggling, and yet insurance companies, all we see is the huge profits getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

“This guy was here in 2011 when our city was inundated… trying to defend the profits of insurance companies, and refused to pay millions and millions of profits to young people and families that were hit by floods.”

“We had to fight and fight and fight, and in actual fact we had to bring Bill Shorten in, and the Federal Government, to start reforming.

“They had all these hidden clauses all over their policies. This is how they do it. I’m glad he’s brought it up because this is a fight for the next generation. No young person will be able to afford insurance.

“Ask Rob how much money insurance companies have put up their premiums, and I’m talking about people not in flood areas. I live at the top of the hill and my premium went up $3,000… mate, it’s happened all over the place.”
What do you think about how insurance companies respond to disasters? Have your say.