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Showing posts from April, 2005

Wonderful Double Standards - The case of Koongarra's uranium

It was depressing to read in this morning's papers that there is now but one person classified as a traditional owner of the land which contains the Koongarra uranium deposit in the Northern Territory. When I started working for the grand father of that sole survivor we would have 40 or 50 people at meetings under the trees considering whether they wanted mining on their land. And mining they certainly did want despite the desperate efforts of do-gooder environment groups to stop them exercising their right to determine their own future. Unfortunately for those now departed after a life of abject poverty, Labor Governments stuck to their absurd three mines policy and the mine that would have delivered the traditional owners a taste of economic security was vetoed. Unfortunately the arrival of the Howard Government coincided with a low point in uranium prices so there was no pressure to give belated approval. Not that the environmental groups stopped agitating. The traditional ow

Changing the Guard - John Howard preparing to retire?

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Wednesday, 20th April 2005    - Richard Farmer   There is little doubt in my mind that John Howard is planning his orderly retirement as Prime Minister. For a start he is engaging in an orgy of international travel which is not at all surprising. If you want to be remembered as a major player on the international stage you have to tread the boards in foreign parts as well as having foreign leaders starring in your own political theatre. Then there is the fascinating spectacle of John Howard taking the rap for the decision to blatantly abandon a key part of last year’s re-election strategy. Substantially increasing the Medicare safety net will cause considerable anger and that anger will grow as the months go by. A Prime Minister considering yet another term in office would have flicked the announcement to his Treasurer or his Finance Minister. Instead the PM is doing the decent thing by his successor in the hope, perhaps, that the anger will depart with him. The third

A Stupid Defence - no personal responsibility for criminal behaviour

Wednesday, 20th April 2005    - Richard Farmer   There is something wonderfully refreshing about the Indonesian legal system. Defence lawyers do not go into attempts to shift the blame from their clients with long descriptions of deprived child hoods and years of abuse. They just make statements of the obvious. Like today when the counsel for two of those arrested as heroin couriers described them as: “Stupid. Just stupid.” The point was to disassociate the two from any involvement in the planning of the attempt to import heroin into Australia. They were simply simple couriers without the intelligence to understand the risks they were taking let alone develop the strategy to be an importer. The lawyer’s advice to her clients was that spilling the beans was the only way to avoid the death penalty. No wonder the Australian Federal police were happy enough for their Indonesian colleagues to make the catch. It will avoid three or four years of listening to Sydney criminal lawyers

Adelaide's Extraordinary Guessing Game - Who is the alleged pedophile?

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Tuesday, 5th April 2005    - Richard Farmer   In the ranks of the South Australian Parliamentary Labor Party is a member described in a fax sent to 100 media organisations by two voluntary workers for an independent MP as being a pedophile. That independent MP, one Peter Lewis, just happened, until he resigned yesterday, to be the Speaker of the lower house. Now the Labor Government is attempting to have legislation passed to temporarily suspend parliamentary privilege to prevent Mr Lewis or anyone else from naming the alleged pedophile. Hence the great guessing game as the good burgers of Adelaide try to work out whom is being referred to. It is impossible not to have considerable sympathy with the Labor MP tangled up in this affair. The faxed statutory declaration apparently contained no evidence about the offence allegedly committed and past police investigations uncovered nothing untoward. Yet the Labor Government is going to extraordinary lengths in the attempt to

Start an Organisation and Give Yourself a Title

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April 2005    - Richard Farmer   Former minor level military officers who leave the army with a huge chip on their shoulder generally find it hard to have their views taken seriously in the debate about Australia's defence policy. Give that same officer a grand title with an independent sounding organisation and those same views come blasting out of radios and appear on televisions and in newspapers all over the nation. So it was this morning when Australians woke to find Neil James, the executive director of the Australian Defence Association, giving them the opinion that the nation's Sea King helicopters should have been replaced years ago. He was the media's darling as journalists desperately sought to find somebody, anybody, to talk about Saturday's tragic helicopter crash on Nias Island. Now the opinion of Mr James might well turn out to be absolutely correct but expertise in the subject was not the reason his views were being sought. Today's