Today's Headlines
an Aussie's viewpoint on Australia's first daily Internet newspaper.
Since October 1995


This on-line paper is now archived for perpetuity in the National Library of Australia

Thursday, 29th January 1998
Associated links:
Search entire news archive by day
Search entire news archive by text
Definitive Lifestyle Guide to over 5000 Australian webs
Global Web Builders Gold
The Kid's Locker Room
World Wide Websters


Links to the MAI

Queensland State Election website


Archive of weekly features: [The Canberra Column] [Economic Rationalism]


International:

Hanson's Today-Tonight interviews

Pauline Hanson had her interview with Channel 7's Today Tonight yesterday at 1pm.

The secret OECD deal, MAI, that she has brought into the public arena has caused such a stir that the programme has decided to extend their coverage of MAI and the show will now include interviews with others and be televised next week after the interviews have been completed.

In the meantime Pauline Hanson is expected to debate Australian Democrat Senator Stott Despoja over the policy of taking children sixteen and under off the streets after midnight.

Politically correct Despoja who first issued the challenge has tried, since, to back out of the debate after realising that the overwhelming majority of Australians fully support Hanson's viewpoint that children under 16 have no place on the streets after midnight.

Money, money, money

Just a thought.

You know there is something terribly wrong when we throw billions of Australian dollars in supporting Asian currencies but when it comes to supporting Australians washed out by floods in the Northern Territory town of Catherine and the Queensland town of Townsville over the last few weeks the "money" cupboard is bare.

The Prime Minister has promised to visit the Catherine area with his wife to view it first hand. Wacky-doo!

In the meantime an appeal has been made to the people of Australia to dig deep into their pockets "and to be very generous" to cover the tens of millions of dollars in costs that the floods have brought to the affected regions.

Money can be donated to the Katherine Flood Appeal through any branch of the Commonwealth bank or by phoning 1-800-811-700, but why should Australians have to do this?

The interest alone on the billions of dollars given to Asian countries to support their currencies late last year would already amount to tens of millions of dollars, but hey, the International Monetary Fund control our country's till and the till remains firmly locked when it does not suit the new world order.

As I said, just a thought.

The waterfront in chaos again thanks to the Maritime Union

The National Farmers Federation (NFF) are so sick and tired of the slack, incompetent performance of members of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) working on Australian wharves that they have set up their own stevedoring companies, P&C Stevedores, which has sub-leased a third of the stevedoring docks run by The Patrick Company.

The Patrick Company is one of Australia's largest stevedoring companies. Last night Patrick Chairman, Chris Corrigan, said that his company could not continue to lose money (Au$500,000 per month) because of the inefficient methods employed under the MUA. He welcomed the NFF's efforts to break the MUA's hold in the docks.

The ugly face of unionism, the MUA's John Coombs, who used his international contacts to upstage the training of Australian soldiers as wharfies in the Middle East last month, put his tribe of overpaid misfits into battle ready mode.

Today we had images of MUA members interfering with staff from P&C Stevedores trying to go the dockland area that they have sub-leased from The Patrick Company.

Coombs has said that he will use "whatever means possible" to protect the jobs of his union (and his own, of course).

Somehow I think this is one battle that Coombs will not win. About time!

Wealthy lenders after their pound of (Indonesian flesh).

Extract from Washington Post:

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Jan. 27—Foreign investors and bankers cheered today's announcement of new plans to address Indonesia's banking and debt crises, raising hopes that Indonesia has averted a threatened collapse of its financial system.

But the plans leave a number of thorny issues unresolved, ranging from relatively narrow worries over how exactly they will work to broader fears about Indonesia's political stability. And the moves raised fresh concerns that the international rescue of Asia's troubled economies will bail out wealthy lenders and borrowers, helping them avoid the full consequences of foolish business decisions.

Indonesia's currency, the rupiah, rallied after this morning's double-barrelled announcements by the government and the International Monetary Fund, which is leading a $43 billion effort to rescue Indonesia.

News Limited's master blaster of unethical diatribe targets Hanson once again

The man who writes fear and loathing against mainstream Australians was at it again in the Courier Mail today with the article reproduced below. Last year he wrote that infamous article "Pauline shows her contempt for youth".

Now he says and I quote, "extraordinary video testament (by Hanson) which might have looked good had it appeared posthumously.." The only thing extraordinary in this case is that the Editors of Rupert Murdoch's inept, unethical papers can stoop this low and get away with it.

"Looked good had it appeared posthumously".... well that sums up Sweetman, a sick, slanted, Labor stooge who has nothing better to do than peddle trash to newspapers who, as mentioned above, jump on his bigotry because of their master's voice and direction. What a sick thing to say.... what a sick thing to print....

Other comments to note are

"You’d have to wonder how long someone like Pratt, MP, would be prepared to march behind Hanson’s sagging flag.

"She ultimately might be a victim of her own success and be fated to be a follower rather than a leader if One Nation doesn’t fragment into a grab bag of angry old men and women."

In one statement the old furphy that One Nation is dying is hurled out by Sweetman and then he expresses that One Nation will be successful (if it does not fragment).... I wish he would make up his mind. Of course Sweetman's view of fact and fantasy is lost in his personal prejudice against Ms Hanson which leads me to just one conclusion that he should go and see a shrink about his problem.

His comments about Dorothy Pratt, a stalwart One Nation supporter, are aimed at trying to isolate her from the party... transparent sort of stuff I know but very revealing in revealing the unethical manner in which News Limited operate.

By the way I think a more relevant title to this trash would be "Pen-pusher's paltry prejudice"

Political prejudice Pauline’s peril - Terry Sweetman

Pauline Hanson uncovered a rich load of prejudice while she was stumbling around Oxley and she managed to refine it into a healthy parliamentary majority.

However, she is wide open to a spot of claim-jumping - and I think she knows it.

Why else would she have felt the need to blast off a few warning shots into the scrub which, unfortunately for her, ricocheted and hit her plumb square in each foot?

After a time of blissful silence, she came out with her extraordinary video testament which might have looked good had it appeared posthumously but was plain dumb when it hit the airwaves while she remains alive and bitching.

Then she came out with her churlish attack on Cathy Freeman and Young Australian of the Year Tan Le.

She might have got away with the shot fired at Tan Le but attacking Freeman’s appointment as Australian of the Year was like pouring scorn on motherhood.

Her arrogance in assuming that this appointment were some kind of personal snub aimed at her was nothing short of breathtaking.

Even so, a selection that loudly and proudly proclaims to the world that Ms Hanson’s view do not represent those of mainstream Australia could bring nothing but good.

Hanson’s shrill and narrow-minded views have brought considerable embarrassment to Australians at home and abroad and have had a significant impact on the economic fortunes of the country, particularly in the area of selling our educational expertise.

Between them Freeman and Tan Le have arguably contributed much more than Ms Hanson, whose major achievement thus far seems to have been driving a wedge between Australians.

They arguably are more representative of modern Australians than are Hanson and her time worn prejudices.

Hanson’s attack was the most inept political action of the year and possibly the most damaging. (I know the year is but a pup but she did have some stiff competition from the Labor Party conference in Hobart and the wild men of the National party.)

Potentially One Nation candidates dropped back a few metres when Hanson appeared as a video angel but they backed right off when she hopped into Freeman.

And none shied off quicker than Dorothy Pratt, the One Nation candidate for the state seat of Barambah, who wisely thought the Australia Day awards were wonderful.

Pratt is indelibly tarred with the One Nation brush but, from what I have seen of her on television, she seems a pretty good candidate for that neck of the woods and is worth a few bob on the tote.

Sitting member Trevor Perrett has his own problems and there is little to suggest that the people who sent Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen to George Street for so many years have suddenly lurched to the left.

You’d have to wonder how long someone like Pratt, MP, would be prepared to march behind Hanson’s sagging flag.

Quite a few ambitious candidates and back-room string pullers have hitched their fortunes to One Nation and some of them, at least, must be smarter and more presentable than Hanson.

No matter where they come from, all parties hanker for public respectability and they’re unlikely to get it from Hanson.

She ultimately might be a victim of her own success and be fated to be a follower rather than a leader if One Nation doesn’t fragment into a grab bag of angry old men and women.


Making the news" -
an indepth exposé of media and political collusion at the highest possible levels in Australia.


email the editor

You say:

Multilateral Agreement Fears

Most people didn’t know anything about the infamous Multilateral Agreement on Investment. After Pauline Hanson blew the whistle, the Government said it would not be signed before being debated in Parliament. Like the United Nations treaties which Australia has signed and which never saw the light of day, I suppose.

Assistant Treasurer Rod Kemp’s spokeswoman denied there was any secrecy surrounding Australia’s involvement in the agreement but said that the Government could not go into great detail on the negotiations. Why not, if it is not secret?

She said there was no question that Australian labour or environmental standards would not be lowered as a result of the MAI. What a classic case of obfuscation. What did she mean? I read that as confirmation of my worst fears. Multinational companies operating in the 29 OECD countries will be able to override national laws which impede their ability to make the sort profits to which they think they are entitled.

Australian chamber of Commerce and Industry chief Mark Patterson said that the industry had been consulted extensively. I move around the industry a fair bit and I have not heard anyone mention this far-reaching proposal. Does he mean consultation with the multinationals” Why should they object to their own agenda?

C E Clark, managing director, Argus Australia Pty Ltd, Beenleigh

Subject: Channel 7

Dear Sir or Madam,

This is personal comment to the Editor and Ms.Hanson.

I have watched the today tonight on Channel 7, on 28/01/97, as per the info in News of the Day. No interview of Ms.Hanson, not even a mention, what up ? Please advise when it will be screened. It is very important that every body knows about it.

Let's be honest about it, there is no need to waste money on future of Australia, there won't be need for a president, or for that matter a prime minister or monarchy, we will be ruled by the powers which will control the MAI, which will be able to over-rule whatever our elected government will say, if it suits them, the investors will be able to bring labour from Asia, at slave rates of pay, and our people either will work for those rates, or wont have a job.

Please ask Ms.Hanson to inform the people, even if it means to do so by rising it in Parliament.

The ALP and Coalition should not have the power to sign our rights away without referendum.

I wonder if the government and the opposition passed the law about the guns, because they were afraid that the people would use the guns against government if they sign the MAI agreement without a referendum, and not because of the massacre.

Attached please find extract from News of the Day.

Highest regards,

Richard Borowski

Personal trivia, from the global office:

Another beautiful day in paradise.

Have a good one.


Return to Australian National News of the Day

#



Web development, design, and storage by Global Web Builders - Email: global@gwb.com.au

See GLOBE International for other world news.


anotd