Mission & Justice

11/5/08

Many more underage Australians believe it is acceptable to drink alcohol on a regular basis today than they did 16 years ago, according to a national survey. The Dolly Youth Monitor, which has surveyed thousands of teenagers between the age of 10 to 17 since 1992, found there has been a sharp increase in the numbers that approve of alcohol use. The latest edition of the bi-annual survey found that 80 per cent believed regular drinking was acceptable, while back in 1992 only 64 per cent thought so.

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Editorial; 28/4/08
The announcement by representatives of Papua New Guinea and Australia on the future of the Kokoda Track is already generating disagreement. There was a sense of relief when the environment ministers for PNG and Australia issued a joint declaration about the Kokoda Track, one that ensures the future of both the wartime icon and of the people who live nearby. Reports were carried in The National last week; suffice it to say that it has been agreed that there will be no mining exploration in the Owen Stanley ranges. The issue threatens to become controversial because an Australian mining company, Frontier Resources, has declared that any refusal by PNG to renew the exploration licence would be viewed as “expropriation” by the company. Frontier’s stance on the issue is predictable but deeply unfortunate.

See: http://www.thenational.com.pg/042808/lead_editorial.htm

Exactly where is the Track
Steve Marshall; 28/4/08
This time two years ago I presented a documentary on the Kokoda Track for the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent Program. Given the tracks surge in popularity with Australian tourists, I posed the question as to whether the track was in danger of being loved to death. Back then villagers were gearing up for a new season that would see close to 4000 people pass along the WW2 trail. This year more than 6000 will set out on the week long walk with a staggering 800 timing their pilgrimage with ANZAC day. The increase in traffic is placing the track under incredible pressure and stirs up fears about its long term sustainability. At the time of writing, a Kokoda Track task force is preparing to table a report at the Ministerial Forum that was held in Madang earlier this week.

See: http://www.thenational.com.pg/042808/wkender6.htm

Rachel Browne; 11/5/08

A leading Sydney pub is banning alcopops to curb binge drinking and alcohol-fuelled violence. Manly’s Steyne Hotel is to ban all ready-to-drink beverages over the bar from tomorrow. It will also stop bottle shop sales of alcopops after 8pm. The beverages account for about 10 per cent of the Steyne’s weekly trade but hotel general manager Guy Fraser-Hills said the pub was prepared to lose business to combat anti-social behaviour due to excessive drinking.

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11/5/08

While Burma’s military regime restricted the rush of international aid offered to help hungry and homeless cyclone survivors, the Government was exporting tonnes of rice through its main port. Four of Thilawa port’s five berths were empty yesterday, but a crane was loading large white sacks into the hold of a freighter. The sacks were filled with rice destined for Bangladesh, according to the drivers of at least 10 transport trucks waiting to deliver more rice to the docks. The junta has a monopoly on rice exports and said last week that it planned to meet commitments to sell rice, which has reached record high prices on the world market, even though Burma’s main rice-producing region sustained the worst cyclone damage. The cyclone caused massive destruction in the Irrawaddy River delta, where farmers are now desperate for food.

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Nicolas Rothwell;10/5/08

They Are Meditating: Bark Paintings from the MCA’s Arnott’s Collection; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

In the mid-1960s, Jerome Gould, an American graphic artist with a keen eye and a taste for adventure, took a series of field trips into the remote terrain of Arnhem Land. Gould was a collector; he had a big budget and a strong visual sense: indeed, his innovative design for Michelob beer bottles was all the rage just then. He chartered light aircraft and flew through the north, snapping up early masterpieces of Aboriginal bark painting from missionary settlement craft shops. During those years, in the margins of his journeys, he did contract design work for Arnott’s Biscuits. So, by a strange and convoluted chain of circumstances, was born one of Australia’s greatest and least-known holdings of indigenous art.

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Russell Skelton; 10/508

Broken Hill’s mining boom has no silver lining for the town’s fast growing population of Aboriginal children, many of whom have unacceptable levels of lead in their blood.Recent figures reveal that the number of children with high blood lead levels has increased, but government funding for programs to minimise environmental health risks has been slashed.

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Jamie Walker; 10/5/08

Having  worked on 50 Aboriginal land rights cases, anthropologist Peter Sutton says that time is up for the nation’s troubled indigenous communities. Professor Sutton, picking up on this week’s Mullighan report in South Australia, the latest to uncover rampant child sex crime in an Aboriginal homeland, said governments should withdraw funding rather than perpetuate the cycle of abuse. There was no future in “state-funded ghettos”, he told The Weekend Australian. Asked if they should be closed down, Professor Sutton said: “No, I am talking about withdrawing funds rather than actively closing them. The fact is they are artificial communities. If they were full of white fellas, no one would dream of propping them up just because the people say they want to stay there.

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10/5/08

Seven Red Cross aid workers, including four Australians, have received visas to enter cyclone-hit Burma. Australian Michael Annear, regional disaster response coordinator who has been in Burma since Tuesday, spoke to international media tonight. An estimated 1.5 million people have been left homeless by the deadly cyclone Nargis, which has killed an estimated 66,000 people. Red Cross workers in Burma have had two truckloads of aid supplies arrive, Mr Annear said.

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8/5/08

Iraqis employed at the British embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone claim to have been sexually abused, the Times has reported. The British Foreign Office has received complaints from an Iraqi cleaner and two cooks that a culture of sexual harassment, abuse and bullying exists at the embassy, the report said Thursday. Accusations have been made against British employees of the US service company KBR which was responsible for catering at several embassies in Baghdad.

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Desmond Tutu; 9/5/08

In the present scandal of the attempt to ship tonnes of arms and ammunition to Zimbabwe, it is the Chinese who have spoken the most sense. China’s foreign ministry said the country’s shipment of mortar shells, rockets and bullets was perfectly normal trade. It certainly is. Shipping arms to African governments who could use them to abuse their own people is an abhorrent but almost daily occurrence. And at present there is nothing the international community can do about it because there are no effective global controls on the arms trade. If you want to export weapons to a country that commits gross abuses of human rights, then you can. If you want to sell expensive kit to governments struggling to feed or educate their people, it’s really no problem. You might have to use a few tricks to get around the flimsy patchwork of controls that presently exist but it’s easy and it’s done all the time.

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