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Saturday, 21st February 1998
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[The Canberra
Column] [Economic
Rationalism]
Day
by day reports on the Constitutional Conventional reports by Peter
Mackay
Australian elite troops disappear in the desert
The Special Air Service (SAS) troops landed in Kuwait yesterday after being stopped by US Bureaucrats from landing there earlier.
Second-rate Australians are totally disposable so it seems. While the American forces come and go with ease, the Australians had to stay on the island of Oman until they were summonsed by the US military.
The team of one hundred and ten men moved into a secret location in the desert waiting for commands to go and search and save US pilots shot down over Iraq.
An Australian defence force official said yesterday, "They will link up with the US and UK troops. We are not prepared to discuss what their ultimate locations might be or their task from this point on."
Asked if SAS troops killed in any conflict would be replaced the official replied, "That's a difficult hypothetical question to answer. I imagine not."
The Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, yesterday flew to Baghdad in a last ditch effort to get Saddam Hussein to comply with the UN Resolutions demanding that the palaces be made available for search for biological or chemical weapons of war.
If his quest fails the US are poised to hammer Hussein and his people into submission - and if a pilot is shot down the SAS will be there to save them.
Indonesian food riots spread as the International Monetary Fund "plays with lives".
Yesterday food riots spread throughout Indonesia as the situation worsened in what was, just weeks ago, a stable country... stable until the big money end of town came to rape and plunder the Asian money basket - leaving the IMF to stuff things up completely.
When reading the comments below remember that we have signed military agreements with Indonesia that commit Australians to going in to restore order...
Officials of the International Monetary Fund, trying to head off a nasty confrontation with Indonesia's President Suharto, said yesterday they are assuring him that he can pursue a plan to fix the value of the nation's currency against the U.S. dollar -- provided he meets certain conditions.
But an American economist who strongly advocates the plan and is advising the Indonesian president said the IMF's conditions appear to be unacceptable.
The IMF and Suharto have reached an extraordinary impasse over how best to stem the financial crisis afflicting Indonesia, the world's fourth-most-populous country.
The 182-nation IMF last week threatened to suspend Indonesia's $43 billion bailout because Suharto, frustrated that the rescue plan has failed to reverse a disastrous slide in the Indonesian rupiah, has begun to seriously consider establishing a "currency board" -- a radical change in monetary policy that would put an absolute priority on maintaining a fixed rate of exchange for the currency. The IMF argues that Indonesia's economy is too weak to make a fixed exchange rate credible.
The conflict is threatening to turn Suharto into something of an international economic pariah -- a turn of events that could seriously damage the global effort to restore investor confidence in Asia's troubled economies.
This week, Suharto has taken an even more defiant posture by firing the independent-minded head of Indonesia's central bank and replacing him with an official who favours a currency board, and his apparent choice of a controversial cabinet minister, B.J. Habibie, as vice president also is causing private hand-wringing among IMF and Clinton administration officials.
In an apparent effort to give Suharto a face-saving way out of the standoff, the IMF is stressing that it would be willing to support the creation of an Indonesian currency board at some point.
"We have said all along that a currency board under certain circumstances is an appropriate thing to do, and it may well be that it is appropriate for Indonesia as well -- once those preconditions are satisfied," said Bijan Aghevli, a senior IMF official. "But those preconditions are not satisfied at this stage."
Indeed, in a private letter that IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus wrote Suharto last week threatening to suspend the bailout, he agreed to consider supporting a currency board for Indonesia, but only after the battered Indonesian banking system had been dramatically strengthened and the government's credibility with financial markets re-established.
The fund argues that Indonesia is in no position to establish a credible currency board now because, for one thing, it would be unable to pump money into cash-starved banks. Under the rules of a currency board, the government's power to print new money is severely restricted.
Aghevli said the IMF position hasn't changed, but when asked if the fund is playing down its threat and emphasising its willingness to eventually support a currency board, he replied: "Well, obviously, we are not trying to pick fights. It is in everybody's interest to make things work."
But Steve H. Hanke of Johns Hopkins University, a fervent advocate of currency boards who is advising Suharto, said in a telephone interview from Jakarta yesterday that Suharto agrees with his view that there should be no delay in establishing a currency board.
"We won't agree to that," Hanke said of the idea that a currency board might be introduced after a few months. "When you're in a currency crisis, you have to stabilise the currency. That is the only precondition for getting something done."
Hanke said he believes Indonesia should adopt the economic reforms that the IMF has mandated, "but the point is, you've got to stabilise the currency first."
Aboriginal law supplants Australian law - saving Yunupingu from jail.
Well, there are now two sets of law recognised in Australia.
In a landmark decision in Nhulunbuy yesterday Magistrate Anthony Gillies dismissed charges against the chief of the Northern Land Council, Galarrwuy Yunupingu saying he had assaulted a cameraman "in fulfilling his responsibilities imposed on him as an Aboriginal elder".
Gillies said that the photographer, Michael McRostie, had broken the law of Yunupingu's people, the Yolngu, by photographing two naked Aboriginal children sitting on their father's knee on a beach near the Gulf of Carpentaria town on Nhulunbuy.
McRostie's crime was not getting Yunupingu's permission first - as the senior elder of the land.
Gillies said that Yunupingu demanded McRostie pay $50 compensation for breaking the law - then grabbed the camera and removed the film when he refused to pay.
"He was enforcing Yolngu law. He had witnessed a transgression. He was dealing with that transgression on the spot," said Gillies.
"I am satisfied that the defendant acted honestly, reasonably and within the discretion of Yolngu law and that he had acted on an honest belief that he was entitled to do what he did."
Yunupingu was delighted saying that the magistrate's decision had proved that Yolngu law and European law could co-exist.
One of Yunupingu's tax-payer paid legal team, barrister Ron Levy said that the case was a landmark because it was the first successful case in Australia which recognised that after the High Court's Mabo decision Aboriginal law was "one of the sources of laws in Australia" - along with statute and English Common Law.
Late yesterday the Northern Territory Chief Minister Shane Stone dismissed the possibility of traditional Aboriginal law co-existing with Australian law as "gibberish and nonsense".
What next one wonders? A new Aboriginal currency perhaps.... with the joke we have in our banking system this could be a sensible idea! See story below.... but before you do look how the other half of the "Aboriginal Industry" live:
Aboriginal elder "Mr 15%" Charlie Perkins buys big
Remember the man who debated Pauline Hanson on Kerry-Anne Kennerley's Midday show? Mr 15% - sometimes known as Charlie Perkins - a greedy Aboriginal elder a great defender of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and feeding off ATSIC like the proverbial "pig in the trough".
Perkins has a small amount of Aboriginal blood flowing through his veins, but this has not stopped his attempts to "get rich quick" using the Aboriginal lever.
Remember the story about Sancave Pty Ltd? Owned by Perkins, has an agreement with Aboriginal organisations in north-west Queensland to take 15% of any benefits the groups receive.
MIM Holdings Limited partners in the giant copper-gold mine with Savage Resources Limited told the Australian Stock Exchange at the time that the Au$120 million sought by Sancave was to ensure no native title claim was made on the mine or its water supply.
Well now Mr Perkins appears to be "cashing in" on his money making schemes. While Aborigines, he supposedly represents continue to live in absolute squalor Perkins lashed out and paid a record price for a home in the Sydney suburb of Newtown. A cool Au$1.125 million.
The new Perkins mansion is a five bedroom stately home called Brockleigh - it was built in 1885 and features a salt water pool, outdoor spa, marble fireplace, heated oregon wood floors, 16 seat dining room and views of Botany Bay. Outside there are landscaped gardens, a terraced bar-b-que area and a large fountain.
In true political style Perkins said that 'his wife had been the buyer.
"It has nothing to do with me - it's my wife's property.
"She (Eileen) has a company and she does these sort of things (buys, renovates and sells property).
"It (moving to Brockleigh) is the culmination of 36 years (of marriage), doing up houses, saving money and being frugal.
"We don't go out much, we don't smoke or drink and I've worked all my life," Perkins said...
Yeah sure and pigs really do fly.
Conman Peter Foster finds prison life 'tough'.
Peter Foster is going to lodge a complaint about his treatment at a Brisbane watchhouse after he was forced to sleep on the floor.
Foster, who conned millions of people in the 1980s, was arrested earlier this month in Melbourne. His lawyer, Sean Cousins, said that Foster had not been given proper treatment for his injuries sustained during his arrest.
And talking about conmen... how about Skase's latest antics....
Christopher Skase's bodyguards were under instructions to throw back the court papers being served on the millionaire conman living on the Spanish island of Majorca.
When investigator Susan Garnett arrived at Skase's mansion she had to use a megaphone to try to rouse the reclusive millionaire before throwing the papers over the high wall surrounding the home... all she succeeded in doing was raising the ire of local police and Skase's security guards who threw the documents back over the wall.
Garnett, a commercial agent for London corporate investigators Richard Day and Wilson said that she was concerned for her safety after being advised that anyone else who harassed the Skase's would risk "summary arrest". She said that her room and car were searched by local police after she had attempted to serve the papers on Skase.
After her affidavit was tendered to the courts Justice Graham Hill ruled that agents could simply post the documents to Skase through the mail.
Affirmative action "On The Ropes" in Texas
Remember Proposition 209? The anti-politically correct resolution decided by popular vote in California? Seems like the disease is spreading slowly through the USA as the mainstream Americans realise what Australians are apparently blissfully unaware about... the power of minority groups representatives in powerful committees - dictating and undermining the balance of our democracy.
Extract from the Washington Post:
Michael Greve stages lawsuits as if they were theatrical productions, so when he began a legal assault on affirmative action, little was left to chance.
With his partners at Washington's Center for Individual Rights, Greve searched hard for a test case that would land in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, widely considered to be a conservative bench. He then sought plaintiffs at the University of Texas Law School, which he had studied for months and thought was vulnerable to attack. And he was meticulous about finding a lawyer to argue the case, recruiting Theodore Olson, a pricey Washington lawyer known for winning before the Supreme Court.
The planning paid off in 1996 when judges concluded in Hopwood v. State of Texas that UT's Law School could not use race as a factor in deciding which applicants to admit, a decision that hit higher education like a runaway bus. Enrollment of underrepresented minorities in medical schools across the country, for instance, has since dropped more than 10 percent -- a decline that civil rights leaders largely attribute to Hopwood.
Affirmative action is now on the ropes, and the Center for Individual Rights, a conservative public interest law firm, has done much to put it there. Expert in both swaying juries and spinning the press, the group has helped to make "racial preference" sound like a pair of dirty words. Its tactics are shaped by a belief that the national debate about affirmative action will be fought not just with facts and legal arguments, but also with media savvy and shrewd marketing.
Making the
news" -
The growing allegations of misuse of public moneys by Queensland state members of parliament is reaching crisis proportions with the issue now becoming a destructive slanging match between the National Party and the Australian Labor Party. The wounds are starting to go quite deep - with obvious misuse of the public trust and public moneys being revealed as the combatants turn on each other time and again.
In the latest revelations "shreddergate" Premier Wayne Goss' staff were uncovered by Premier Rob Borbidge as "big spenders" in the early 1990s. With entertainment expenses set at just $250 per month a former Goss staffer, Dennis Atkins, now a senior journalist at The Courier Mail spent over Au$1,500 in just 30 days (between Jan and Feb 9 1994).
While, in just twenty days another Goss staffer, Russ Morgan, spent Au$3,196 on lunches at leading Brisbane restaurants.
On the back foot for a change the investigative reporter, Atkins, said, "It was all signed off on the ministerial expenditure unit and it was all above board." I wonder how he would report on this if the shoe was on the other foot?
In an interesting development Atkins' daily column at the bottom of the letter to the editors page in the Courier Mail is replaced by a bunch of ads.... obviously the journalist had some backside covering to do on the phone!
But the really big news is Bob Gibbs, this Australian Labor Party State MP represents the seat of Goodna, literally 20 minutes drive from the heart of Brisbane. One of the perks for MPs who have too far to travel is a rent-free, air conditioned suit (fully maintained by cleaning staff) which includes all the mod cons, you know, subsidised silver service dining room, pool, sauna and squash courts.... seems like Goodna is "too far" for Gibbs to drive.
Gibbs has been living in one of the suits, estimated to cost tax payers Au$150 per night, since separating from his wife Brenda, a Labor senator, in June 1996.
Now Gibbs is on a backbenchers salary of Au$82,000 pa and receives another Au$27,000 electoral allowance on top... Former Labor speaker Jim Fouras said that his understanding was that the suites were provided only to non-metropolitan members "to have somewhere to stay when down on parliamentary business or when Parliament was sitting".
Gibbs comment, "It is a case of 'Let he without guilt throw the first stone'. Beware, I'm capable of rolling a boulder."
Seems like the suits have been used for a number of purposes. The new Department of Primary Minister's, Marc Rowell (National Party), daughter stays at her fathers unit on a regular basis while Frank Tanti (National Party) spent the past two Christmas holidays with his family (wife and two adult children) at the units.
"I don't make a big fortune out of this job," was Tanti's comment when questioned about his holiday use of parliamentary flats, "If I have to spend most of my holidays with the four of us bunked down in beds or sleeping beds to get some time together then so be it. A lot of people have to start realising we are bloody working 18 hours a day.
"In a way I'm saving tax payers money... I mean I'm allowed to have a holiday. There are facilities there I can make good use of. But the pool is too cold. I have not tried out the squash courts yet and the sauna doesn't work. It's definitely not the Hilton.
"If you want to really dig into other people, I know of one Labor member on my floor who has a university student staying in his room. But I'm not going to dob people in."
Of course, the ALP's deputy leader, Jim Elder, who is also separated and living with a young woman uses the units as well... He said that he has stayed in his suite over the past few weeks for personal reasons... but claimed long work hours kept him there anyway. Guess we have just tracked down Tanti's "student allegation".
All in all the state of Queensland politics is sick, corrupt and in need of a backwash. Let us hope that Pauline Hanson's One Nation can bring an element of decency back into the parliamentary privileges that have been so abused by the tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum of politics.
Subject: One Nation
Dear Pauline and Company,
In America we have a contemporary saying that came to mind after reading
your speeches online: "You go girl!"
You are a wise woman and exhibit the bold clarity that much of the "civilised"
world has given over to political correctness. If you are ever in need of
inspiration, pick up any work from Ayn Rand. As an online friend said to
me yesterday: "What Dagny did for the railroad (in Rand's Novel 'Atlas Shrugged')
Pauline is doing for Australia".
Even though my vote does not count in your country, I will take up your battle
online.
Best Regards,
Ron Joseph
Alabama, USA
Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan At the Catholic
University Leuven,
Leuven, Belgium, January 14, 1997
Here is an extract on how our banking system works...
Let me begin with the fundamental observation, that a nation's sovereign credit rating lies at the base of its current fiscal, monetary, and, indirectly, regulatory policy. When there is confidence in the integrity of government, monetary authorities--the central bank and the finance ministry--can issue unlimited claims denominated in their own currencies and can guarantee or stand ready to guarantee the obligations of private issuers as they see fit. This power has profound implications for both good and ill for our economies.
Let us remember that since Australia signed the Financial Services Industry Agreement (FSIA) under Paul Keating in 1995 - when Kim Beazley was Finance Minister - 86% of Australia's banking ownership has gone offshore.
The banks can simply "make money or not make money available". Money drives our country - when those banks are foreign owned it follows that they (foreign investors) have got Australia by the short and curlies. If we don't perform to their standards they simply pull - not a pleasant experience.
Who sold us out? The Labor party and the Coalition through International Treaties not debated in Parliament.
This is what Bob McMullans said about the FSIA in 1995: "The financial services agreement will directly benefit Australian banks, insurance companies and securities traders." Note Australian voters do not matter... never have, never will for these career stooges of the internationalists.
Another perfect day in paradise.
Have a good one.
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