No more dole, Tony Abbott warns the under-30s

21/04 The Australian | TONY Abbott has proposed banning the dole for young people in a bid to fill the massive skills shortages in the resources sector.

The Federal Opposition Leader raised the controversial idea during a two-hour meeting with senior resources industry leaders in Perth on Monday night, The Australian newspaper reports.

He said that cutting dole payments to people aged under 30 would take pressure off the welfare system and reduce the need to bring in large numbers of skilled migrants to staff mining projects in Western Australia and Queensland.

Rudd's tax Trojan Horse

20/4 Business Spectator | The premiers and the prime minister are pretending to talk about health reform for the cameras this week, but they are actually talking about John Howard’s reckless decision in 1998 to give the states all of the GST ... Kevin Rudd’s health reform plan is a Trojan Horse to reverse it. He could have simply exposed the way in which the states have wasted the GST and gone straight to a referendum, but obviously he felt that was too risky. Better to talk about hospitals and try to pressure the premiers politically.

This morning the politics are finely balanced. Unable to publicly resist health reform, the key premiers (Victoria, NSW and WA) have fallen back on the idea of pooling 30 per cent of the GST so they can control it. Anything but letting the feds keep it.

The states, meanwhile, are in breach of contract. They have ignored the bargain struck in 1998 to cut small state taxes like payroll tax and stamp duty, and have instead used the money to grow fat.

Specifically, they have blown the GST on employing public servants. A recent study of state budgets by the Institute of Public Affairs reveals that expenditure on employment and remuneration of state government employees has gone from $43 billion in 2000, when the GST introduced to $78 billion in 2009, an increase of 78 per cent or 8 per cent a year.

Hawke, Howard to debate economy

20/4 Business Spectator | Former prime ministers John Howard and Bob Hawke will for the first time go head-to-head in a debate when they meet in Sydney on Wednesday to argue their views on the global economy.

Mr Howard and Mr Hawke, two of the nation's longest-serving leaders, are expected to thrash out issues such as international terrorism, employment, and the global financial crisis.

They will share the stage at the 5th Oxford Business Alumni Forum, one of Australia's premier thought-leadership events, to front a 200-strong audience of movers and shakers in business.

It will be the first time they have met for a formal debate.

The Free2Believe Project

Free2Believe is an association of Australians concerned about the erosion of religious freedom. This project is sponsored by the National Civic Council of Australia, a non-profit organisation that has promoted religious freedom and family values for over three decades.

Bartlett Greens deal a breach of integrity, faith with voters

Nick Overton | Tasmanian Premier David Bartlett’s offer of a ministry to the Greens is a blatant breach of integrity and a breach of faith with the electorate, the Australian Christian Lobby said today. “If voters can’t depend on commitments given as unequivocally as David Bartlett’s during an election, how on earth can they trust the government this failure of integrity produces,” ACL’s Tasmanian Director Nick Overton said.

You can't teach ethics without referring to Christianity

Jim Wallace | With our nation having just played host to a big atheist convention trumpeting the intellectual superiority of unbelief, many may well be wondering why we still bother gazetting an extended long weekend to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For future generations this perplexity will grow if the NSW Government, dancing to the tune of intolerant secularists, has its way in our schools.

For more than 100 years, Scripture classes in schools have provided an avenue for children to learn about the Bible, the person of Jesus and the ethic that has underpinned societies such as Australia's.

This is entirely appropriate. No serious historian – regardless of whether or not they are religious — doubts the formative influence of Christianity, its ethics and values on the legal, cultural and political development of Western civilisation

Rudd promises to halve waiting times

11/4 News.com.au | AUSTRALIANS would wait no more than four hours for medical attention in hospital emergency departments under an ambitious bid by the federal government to halve existing waiting periods.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will today announce a $500 million injection for emergency departments, but only if the states sign up to his health reform plan, News Ltd and Fairfax newspapers say.

Under the new target, public hospitals will be required to ensure people are admitted to hospital, referred for follow-up treatment or treated and discharged within four hours.

Government figures show about 600,000 people each year - or one in three patients - wait for more than eight hours in emergency departments before being seen.

Two-thirds wait for longer than is clinically recommended before they receive medical attention

NSW Govt urged to clarify conflicting comments about school Scripture

Lyle Shelton | The Australian Christian Lobby today called on the NSW Government to urgently clarify conflicting comments from the St James Ethics Centre as to whether ethics class will be offered in competition with Scripture in schools.

A February 8 letter from the Centre’s Teresa Russell to parents and carers of year five and six students at a school participating in the NSW Government’s up-coming ethics class trial contradicts comments made by the Centre’s head, Dr Simon Longstaff, in the media this week.

Faith Under Fire!

Action: please email your Upper House members asking them to not support the Equal Opportunity Bill 2010 because it:

1. Places an onerous burden on faith-based organisations, including Christian schools, to justify to a government agency how, when and why religious adherence and conformity to moral standards is an ‘inherent requirement’ in employing staff; and,
2. Grants the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission (VEOHRC) seemingly coercive powers of investigation to conduct an inquiry without having received a complaint, and with perhaps little accountability.

Will a church-run charity be able employ a receptionist who is a practising Christian?

Will the local Christian school be able to continue to employ a cleaner, gardener or maths teacher who maintains a lifestyle consistent with Christianity?

Questions like this and many more are left unanswered by Victoria’s Equal Opportunity Bill 2010, which only allows religious organisations and schools to employ people that conform with the doctrines, beliefs or principles of the religion when it is an ‘inherent requirement’ of the particular position (except for priests or ministers).

Federal MPs cost Australians $1m each

11/4 The Australian | THE cost of each federal MP has blown out to a $1 million a year string of payments and benefits so complex that even the officials responsible for managing the cash say it is impossible to oversee and control the spending.

The average salary of an MP is $180,000 a year - but the real cost is more than five times that thanks to a string of entitlements totalling $721,000 and a further $164,000 a year just to keep tabs on the cost, The Sunday Telegraph reports.

Entitlements federal politicians receive include airfares, chauffeur-driven vehicles, travel allowances, ministerial salary top-ups, electricity and electorate office rentals. Entitlements have become so complex, 315 bureaucrats now work full time in the Department of Finance to make sure the country's 226 federal MPs are paid and equipped.

Kevin Rudd shuts refugee door

10/4 The Australian | KEVIN Rudd has frozen asylum applications from Afghans and Sri Lankans after receiving advice that people-smugglers were preparing to launch a new wave of vessels for northern Australia.

Sources confirmed yesterday that the decision, announced yesterday, came partly in response to new intelligence that people-smugglers were forming "new ventures" overseas expected to boost the boat traffic.

While the government presented the move as a well-considered response to improving security circumstances in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, the opposition said it was proof the government's previous approach had encouraged people-smugglers.

Rising support to abolish state governments

10/4 The Australian | FOUR in 10 voters favour abolishing state governments, seeing them as the least-effective level of government and increasingly looking to the federal government to fix health and other problems. The findings of a Newspoll survey conducted last month for Griffith University's federalism project and reported exclusively in The Weekend Australian today point to what constitutional lawyer George Williams calls "a crisis of confidence in state governments".

NSW: Builder Reed Group sought ban on school quotes

10/4 The Australian | A CONSTRUCTION giant that won $384 million in contracts under the Rudd government's school building program pleaded with the NSW government to stop schools obtaining independent quotes for their projects. In documents obtained by The Weekend Australian, The Reed Group told the NSW government it had reviewed 25 schools and found the principals of "at least half" had been in contact with local builders to "price their buildings".

In an apparent acknowledgement that its pricing was causing alarm in the community, program manager Max Goldstein requested that the NSW Department of Education order school principals to stop obtaining quotes from other builders. "We suspect that if this continues there will be many disgruntled builders and P&C members whose feelings will. . . filter through to the community - exactly what everyone is trying to avoid," he wrote in an email. "I would request that the (state government) provide specific direction to all school principals involved not to do this

TASMANIA: Governor Peter Underwood returns Tasmanian Labor to power

09/4 The Australian | LABOR has hung on to government in Tasmania after the state's governor dramatically intervened to end a constitutional stand-off, but a furious Liberal leader last night declared it an "illegitimate" administration.

Governor Peter Underwood late yesterday announced he would commission incumbent Labor premier David Bartlett to form a government, in the wake of the March 20 election in which the major parties tied on 10 seats apiece.

While Mr Bartlett had advised Mr Underwood to give Liberal leader Will Hodgman first chance to attempt to form government, the Premier retracted key statements that gave the Governor little choice but to reject that advice.

Taxing Sin

7/4 Andrew Leigh, Online Opinion | In The Australian Legend, Russell Ward wrote “no people on the face of the earth ever absorbed more alcohol per head of population” than Australians in the 1800s. While scholars debate Ward’s precise claim, it is clear that European settlers consumed vast quantities of alcohol. And 80-90 per cent of men smoked.

Substance abuse is inextricably linked to Australian history, where rum and tobacco often took the place of cash. Today, 19 per cent of us are regular smokers, while 13 per cent of us are risky drinkers (defined as more than four drinks a day for men, and more than two drinks a day for women). Compared with other developed countries, we have relatively few smokers, and a slightly above-average level of alcohol consumption.

Can sin taxes make us pure? In the case of cigarettes, you might expect that most buyers would be addicts, and therefore unresponsive to prices. But it turns out that smokers are surprisingly price-sensitive. On average, a 10 per cent price hike cuts cigarette sales by 5 per cent. Although this is offset slightly by an increase in intensity (higher taxes induce smokers to take a few extra puffs out of each cigarette), the health benefits are still substantial. Teens are two to three times as price-responsive as the rest of us.

TASMANIA: Greens leader rebuffed in seeking role in Tasmania's new government

7/04 smh.COM.AU | THE Tasmanian Greens leader, Nick McKim, has tried to deal his party back into talks to form the state's next government before a planned abdication of power today by the Labor Premier, David Bartlett.

Mr McKim revealed he had approached, and been rebuffed by, the office of the Governor, Peter Underwood.

But yesterday he raised pressure on the would-be Liberal premier, Will Hodgman, saying that in the absence of negotiations, the Greens retained the option of supporting Labor on the floor of parliament. Mr Underwood is set to facilitate a transfer of power after the election's 10-10-5 result deadlocked the main parties.

VICTORIA - Religious exceptions restricted!
PLEASE ACT NOW!


The Victorian parliament's Lower House, the Legislative Assembly, has passed the sort of legislation that would be more recognisable under the banner of the KGB than the government of a free and democratic nation like Australia.

This Bill will give a statutory body (the Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission)

1. The power to enter a church or meeting with the sole motive of assessing what is said. 

2. The right to demand that an organisation hand over files and compel the people concerned to attend a hearing at the
Commission, without any complaint being made or any illegal activity being reported, and

3. The power to themselves initiate a complaint of discrimination (removing any illusion that they are the unbiased umpire).

This sort of legislation is NOT something we should tolerate in this country.

Vic EO Bill passes Lower House

Australian Christian Lobby |The Victorian Equal Opportunity Bill 2010 passed through the Lower House of parliament last week. The vote went predictably according to party lines, with the ALP using its strong majority in the house to quash the concerns of the Opposition about the possible ramifications of the proposed law.

ACL issued a media release last Friday calling on Upper House members to reject the bill because it places unnecessary restrictions on the practice of religious freedom when it comes to the employment of staff in faith-based schools and other religious organisations. It requires such groups to justify how, when and why religious adherence and conformity to moral standards is an ‘inherent requirement’ of a particular position.

The release in particular calls upon Greens members to justify their commitment to preventing injustice, by rejecting a bill which gives the Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission draconian powers to launch investigations and interrogate witnesses.

Please click here to read the media release.

Tony Abbott Address to the Leader's Forum – ‘Economic Fundamentals’

This is the first of three substantial speeches setting out the values and approaches that I intend to take should the Coalition form a government after the next election. This first one, rightly, deals with the revenue because government can do very little without paying for it and a political party which can’t be trusted with money is quite toxic in government.

In chapter 10 of The General Theory, JM Keynes wrote:

“If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again … there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is.”

... Australia has come a long way since the 1980s when Lee Kuan Yew described us as the “poor white trash of Asia”. Australia has survived the global financial crisis thanks much more to the reforms of previous governments than to the spending spree of the current one. The Hawke/Keating Governments introduced financial deregulation, tariff reform and the beginnings of privatisation and labour market reform. The Howard Government enshrined the independence of the Reserve Bank, consolidated hard-won budget surpluses, reformed the indirect tax system to cut direct taxes, began welfare reform, concluded the US free trade agreement and deepened privatisation and labour market reform

Of course, by dropping the “no disadvantage” test (before reinstating it as the “fairness” test) and extending unfair dismissal protections to firms with up to 100 staff, the former Government went too far. Still, as Mr Howard declared, tomorrow’s prosperity depends upon today’s reforms. Plainly, Australia’s relative economic strength owes more to the governments which created the surplus than to the one which has frittered it away.

The greatest moral conundrum of our time … until the next one

Peter Costello, SMH.com.au | Last year, we were told, the most important issue for the country - for the planet - was greenhouse gas emissions. This meant the Senate had to pass the government's carbon pollution reduction scheme.

It was so urgent it had to be legislated before the end of the year, and before the summit in Copenhagen.

We were led to believe if the Senate refused to pass the legislation there would be a double dissolution of Parliament. The Liberal leader, Malcolm Turnbull, warned this would lead to a humiliating election defeat for the Coalition. Kevin Rudd declared climate change ''the great moral and economic challenge of our time''.

Now the legislation has become less important than getting 30 per cent of the GST from the states so the government can rearrange financing in the hospital system. Can a momentous moral challenge fizzle out like this? Or are you beginning to suspect all the crisis was politically driven?

... I watched this issue elevated in the lead-up to the 2007 election, when it was used to illustrate how the Howard government was old, tired and out of touch. It was brought to fever pitch late last year to wedge the Coalition.

Without any immediate political target, it lies dormant. But I expect it will be back for the election - probably in an attack on the Coalition's policy on direct abatement measures. Which is why the public is entitled to get a little cynical. You never hear Rudd arguing for an emission trading scheme as if he really believes it is ''the great moral and economic issue challenge of our time''. He raises it, he drops it, it comes and it goes - like all the other issues of the regular media cycle.

Prayer: Protection For Australia

March 2010

At the prayer meeting in Parliament House this week, we were impressed to pray for protection for the nation in several areas. Protection is needed before an attack comes, to thwart any success of the enemy. So pray for a hedge of protection (like in Matthew 21:33; Job 1:10)

 - around the nation and around our Parliaments and governments;
 - around our Christian heritage for future generations to enjoy;
 - around the prosperity the Lord has granted this nation - in particular, in relation to business negotiations being undertaken for our resources;
 - around our cities, towns, gateways and infrastructures
 - around business, family, education, church and social communities
 - around Australia's relationships with other countries

Pray against those who would seek to rob our nation of the Lord's blessing. Pray and confess the Proverbs 21:30 "There is no wisdom or understanding or counsel against the Lord". .