No Gold Stars for Wayne Swan

Interest Rate Cut is no Gold Star for Treasurer

Terry McCrann
Daily Telegraph
4 October 2012
Pg.57

Wayne Swan is claiming no, demanding credit for the Reserve Bank's interest rate cut. 
In quivering fear of being lashed again by the Treasurer's tongue, I'm willing to accede. Take it Wayne, take all the credit for:

• THE resources boom coming to a
screeching halt;

• IMPORTANT parts of the
economy, such as housing and retail,
operating under great stress; and

• AN overvalued Aussie dollar
shredding manufacturing and
making life tough for tourism
operators that depend on overseas
visitors.

Take the credit, please Treasurer.When a wood duck waddles but thinks it's a rooster strutting, who am I to stand in its way?

There's a surreal perception about interest rates which has taken hold in Australia, that our Treasurer in the full flowering of his unknowingness continually embraces and projects.

This is that an official interest rate cut is the Reserve Bank sticking a gold star on the economy and putting an even bigger one on the Treasurer's exercise book, as if he were still at primary school.


Well done, young Wayne!

In Wayne's World, the US and European economies and their respective finance ministers, must have gold stars stuck all over the place, awarded for cutting their
rates all the way to zero.

Does Wayne sincerely believe that the US and European economies have been delivering
gold star performances?

At its most basic, a cut in the official rate, is completely value free. It is certainly not a gold star; both it and indeed an increase in rates, is just the RBA doing its job.

That is, the RBA is adjusting rates to respond to what is happening in the economy or being done to the economy, to best deliver sustained low inflation growth in the economy.

But more specifically, a cut in rates to the levels we are now at, is tellin us two big and disturbing things:
That either the economy is grinding to a stop or we are headed for a big problem next year. Or some combination of both.

Does our Treasurer really want to take "credit" for that? Especially when the RBA's decision is completely non-judgmental. It's not blaming the Treasurer for anything. Not even irresponsible fiscal policy.

The RBA has determined that inflation is not going to rear its head in any would send the prices of imports up  sharply. But even with some fall which the Reserve Bank would like to see but which it is not going to try to trigger the inflation threat would remain minimal.

While it does not see the economy grinding to a halt, the RBA is considerably less convinced than the Treasurer that everything is coming up roses.

Some sectors of the economy could do with a boost from lower rates; and the economy overall could benefit. In short, it was able to cut, so it cut. And given all that,there was no point in waiting.

Does it also mean we are headed for a, to put it gently, "big problem"?

No, not necessarily. But the RBA can see plenty of threats out there. Europe will remain
mired in a mess at best, and could always trigger a GFC-like "event". The US is struggling to come out of stall speed.

And the most important of all,China is a riddle. A worrying riddle, if not yet a disturbing one.
None of this is the Treasurer's fault. Just as the RBA's prudence is  not his gold star either.

UPDATED Four Little Aussie Girls ordered back to Italy forcibly removed by Family Court from Mother and family Shocking Video

Mother of four girls ordered back to Italy clings to AFP car as her daughters are taken away

Kate Kyriacou, on Flight EK433 

The Courier-Mail

October 04, 2012 12:01PM

THE plane carrying the four sisters ordered back to Italy has landed in Singapore for a brief stopover.

UPDATE

The girls looked miserable but were quiet as they were escorted off the plane ahead of other passengers.

The two older girls appeared to have been separated from their younger sister ALL were travelling with minders. The children are travelling on flight EK433, which stopped at Singapore en route from Brisbane to Dubai. A second leg will then take them to Rome.

Earlier, The Courier-Mail reported how the girls cried for their mother, cried for home and begged uniformed officers to let them go.

As the four sisters at the centre of an international custody ruling were last night dragged screaming onto Emirates flight EK 433 to Dubai, uniformed officers were forced to lift and drag the girls to get them to the plane.

Passengers at gate 75 watched on in alarm as up to a dozen federal officers were used to move the girls to the nearby Emirates lounge to await boarding.

"Let me go, I want my mum, I want my mum," one of the younger girls wailed, each arm held securely by a federal officer.

The girls were led out one at a time, the eldest sister escorted up an escalator restrained by four police officers.

"Let me go, I want to go home," the hysterical girl screamed.

Later, as they moved her back past waiting passengers, the screaming girl begged to be released.

"Please let go. You're hurting me. I don't want to go."

The officers holding her by the arms were forced to drag the girl when she used her feet to stop their progress.

Passengers stared as the girls were led up a nearby escalator, many murmuring the scene was "awful" and terrible.

Others, visibly distressed, made phone calls to recount the terrible scene to loved ones.

"I really would be very concerned about them and I think there might be a risk that they try to abscond" - leading child psychologist fears stressed sisters are a flight risk.  

Last night, it was reported that the mother of the four girls clung in desperation to the rear of an Australian Federal Police unmarked car as it drove away with three of the girls inside.

Just hours later, all four girls were taken straight to Brisbane International Airport and through a special high-security entrance.

Two cars arrived at the private entrance and two young girls struggled as they were pulled from a dark-coloured Ford Territory by several men in suits at 8.43pm.

The second car  its occupants unknown  pulled out of sight behind a roller door.

Earlier, their mother collapsed in the road sobbing, the end of a day of unfathomable anxiety and stress, as her children were driven away.

The Courier-Mail also witnessed one of the girls trying to escape from the rear of another car before she was restrained by one of two male officers in the vehicle.

They had just detained the girl after she tried to flee the apartment where they found her and her sisters.

She banged on the rear window of the vehicle as it drove off, tearfully crying out that she wanted to talk to the journalist.

The four girls had spent their last hours of freedom together waiting in fear at the home of an elderly family friend.

They watched the TV news as they waited for the knock on the door that would signal their deportation.

This final refuge for the girls, who spent weeks in hiding with their great-grandmother this year when the court first ordered they be returned, was a unit in a retirement village on the Sunshine Coast.

The normally tranquil surrounds were yesterday evening a scene of tears, anxiety and defiance.

The eldest girl spoke briefly to The Courier-Mail but was too fearful of the consequences for her mother, who the court has banned from talking to the media, to give any information.

"I'll get my mum in trouble, I have to go," she said.

The woman looking after them, a close friend of their great-grandmother, said all the information the girls had about their fate was coming from the media.

"All we're knowing is what's on the news," she said, her voice trembling with emotion.

"We watched the five o-clock news, the four-thirty news and the six o'clock news," she said.

She said they were expecting police to come and detain them any minute.

 "We're just waiting for the police and they haven't come and I don't know why they haven't come," she said.

She predicted police would have a fight on their hands when they arrived.

"We're not going," one of the girls said.

The woman said she had agreed to mind the girls as all of the family was at the Family Court in Brisbane.

"They're the loveliest little girls, they've been very good, but they're very anxious and they just want to see their mum, and I just want their mother to come. I don't want to give them over until their mother comes."

A close friend of the girls' mother told The Courier-Mail the looming prospect of being returned to Italy against their wishes had made the girls anxious and withdrawn in recent days.

The friend, who has been close to the family since their arrival in Australia two years ago, saw the girls on Saturday for a barbecue after they had been on a camping trip with their mother.

"They were withdrawn, clingy, very cuddly, it was Mummy this and Mummy that," she told The Courier-Mail.

"Even a holiday didn't make any difference.

"It's been emotional turmoil for the kids and for their mother. They don't know whether they're Arthur or Martha.

"What do you expect from little kids being taken away from their Mum?"

The friend said the girls loved their father but didn't want to live with him.

Their mother had "never once influenced her kids in any single way or brainwashed them against their father", she said.

"This whole thing is unfair.

"Let the Australian people know that these girls have never had a choice from the beginning, it's been all about the Hague and it's been all about everybody's wishes but theirs."

The removal of the girls would take a heavy toll on their mother, she said.

"I'm getting someone to watch my kids tonight because I need to be with (the mother)."

Initial reporting - Tuck Thompson, Mark Solomons

Judge to mum: Go to Italy with your girls

A JUDGE sending four Italian girls home against their wishes "sincerely hopes" their distraught mother will return with them after their father agreed not to lay criminal charges.

Dogs by Name, Dogs by Nature,the Canterbury Bulldogs one season forward ten backwards in one afternoon.

Bulldogs' major sponsor offers up bizarre defence of Mad Monday abuse

Paul Crawley
The Daily Telegraph
October 04, 2012 12:00AM

FOR the past five season Todd Greenberg has spent his every waking moment trying to drag Canterbury's damaged reputation out of the gutter - but by the time his major sponsor finished an interview on Radio 2GB yesterday, the Bulldogs were back in the dark ages.

In what might go down as the most bizarre defence of bad behaviour in the history of rugby league, Gary Johnston from Jaycar Electronics came up with an outrageous attempt to justify the sexist comments that were aimed at a Channel 9 female reporter at the Bulldogs' now infamous Mad Monday celebrations.

Gary Johnston (L) from Jaycar Electronics and Bulldogs CEO Todd Greenberg (R)

"If a woman walks into some bars in Sydney, she will be ogled, she will be treated as an object and that's the way it is. She doesn't have to walk into those bars," Johnston said near the end of an interview with Ben Fordham.

This all happened shortly after Greenberg handed in his report into the investigation that followed comments directed at Channel 9's Jayne Azzopardi on Monday.

But while Greenberg was refusing to talk about the specifics of his findings, the bloke who helps pays the bills was live on air and digging himself a hole.

Now remember, the comments screamed from an unidentified person through a window at the club's Belmore HQ on Monday included:

"THERE are some ladies here to stick their heads in your pants";

"Suck me off you dumb dog"; and

"I want to go and punch you in the face."

But asked by Fordham if he was defending the comments, Johnston basically said they were only in strife because of their profiles and this was all the fault of Channel 9.

"What they are saying was disgraceful but if two private people were in a pub at a urinal talking about the barmaid's dress or something like that, this would never get reported," he started.

"It is only an outrage because these people have got some sort of celebrity status. I'm not making an excuse for what they said, what they said was terrible. But they had just went through the day before an absolutely excruciating grand final. They were given the day off to relax and let their hair down and Channel 9 did not respect that.

"They were not invited there, they parked themselves across the road like a peeping tom and used a highly-sensitive microphone to record conversations which they were not privy to."

But when Fordham explained the comments actually came through an open window and were yelled towards the female journalist, Johnston continued his defence.

"OK Ben, let's analyse this,' he said. "First of all they have no video footage of anyone doing this so they didn't stand at the window and yell at this woman." He then added: "Nobody seems to be focusing on the fact that technically Channel 9 probably broke the law."

Johnston quoted the law: "I will read it to you. This is from the attorney-general website. You cannot install, use, maintain or cause to be used a listening device to overhear, record, monitor or listen to a private conversation."

Fordham explained that wasn't the case at all: "It wasn't a private conversation. They were yelling it out a window and at this female reporter. That is here your argument disappears. It was not a private conversation, they were yelling it out to try and intimidate someone who was just there doing their job."

Eventually, Fordham attempted to end the interview but Johnston pleaded: "Ben give me one more minute."

And then he ended the interview with this: "What they said was outrageous but they are only young blokes and in every pub in Sydney you can come across that language and it doesn't make it right, it just makes it the reality of what it is.

"If a woman walks into some bar in Sydney, she will be ogled, she will be treated as an object and that's the way it is. She doesn't have to walk into those bars."

Fordham finally interjected: "What? What? Gary, are you serious? You are saying when a woman walks into a bar, so if my wife and some of her colleagues were to go out tonight and have a drink, they can expect someone to say s ... me off you dumb dog?"

 ........and in the interests of balance for what has been a pretty good year for the Dogs after the invocation some years back of the "NO Dick Heads" policy by Greenberg.


Gentlemen Bulldogs fans put players to shame

Miranda Devine
Daily Telegraph
Tuesday, October 02, 2012 (7:46pm)

UP the Storm. F*ck the Bulldogs”, taunted some gloating Storm fans to a group of dejected Bulldogs supporters on Sunday night at ANZ stadium.

The Bulldogs fans, muscular young Lebanese-Australian men in blue and white jerseys, G-Star jeans and Nike TN sneakers, with ornately shaved hair styles and some sporting Arabic chin beards, might have looked menacing. But they behaved like perfect gentleman and ignored the provocation.

There was not a hint of any unrest among the sea of blue and white, crammed into the stadium, hailing from the most multicultural, most Muslim, and most criticised section of Sydney.

Bulldogs fans would have to be the most maligned rugby league followers on planet earth. But Sunday’s Grand Final was a credit to them.

They bore their disappointing loss with grace and good humour, which defied the aggro image that has afflicted them for years.

They may have been channelling the spirit of former Bulldogs hero Hazem El MAsri, who last week was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Western Sydney for his service as a leader of the Arabic community.

You don’t want to overplay El Masri’s influence, but role models are important. Which is why it was such a shame that the players let themselves, and their fans down, with some disgraceful remarks to a female Channel Nine reporter during Mad Monday celebrations at Belmore Oval.

Player resentment of a “gotcha culture”, inside and outside the media, ready to destroy their careers for off field misdemeanours, is understandable. But foul sexual slurs are no answer.

When Bulldogs management deals with the offending players, they might also consider ways to ease the pressure.

Keeping them holed up away from the media in contravention of NRL regulations after the game may have been an attempt to protect them from themselves. But clearly it wasn’t enough.