Mission & Justice

13/5/08

The US’s first airlift landed in Burma last night after prolonged negotiations with the military junta that has restricted international efforts to help up to two million cyclone survivors at risk of disease and starvation. In what was seen as a huge concession by the junta, the unarmed US military C-130 cargo plane, packed with supplies, flew from the Thai air force base of Utapao into Rangoon. Two more air shipments were scheduled to land today. Relief workers who remain prohibited from entering Burma warned it could take weeks to reach many cyclone victims because of the nation’s decrepit infrastructure. Such a delay will increase the number of people at risk and raise the possibility of unrest, they said.

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Nicolas Rothwell; 13/5/08

Scholar and grandmother, translator and cultural defender, Dr R. Marika, who died, aged 49, over the weekend near her home in northeast Arnhem Land, was one of Australia’s most prominent and admired traditional Aboriginal leaders. Dr Marika’s long list of achievements, appointments and accolades highlighted her brilliance; but they give little clue to the determination, bravery and sweetness of character that made her so loved by her wide circle of friends. Born into the Rirratjingu clan-group of the Yolngu people, the eldest daughter of the land rights campaigner Roy Marika, she devoted her life to education and to the cause of communication between the English-speaking mainstream and her own society.

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Natasha Robinson; 13/5/08

Opal fuel should no longer be advertised as non-sniffable, the Northern Territory Coroner warned yesterday, after finding a boy died after sniffing the supposedly safe petrol at a remote central Australian community. Kenny Burns, 12, suffocated after sniffing Opal fuel for about 10 minutes after a disco at Hermannsburg, Coroner Greg Cavanagh said in his report, delivered yesterday. The boy, a regular petrol sniffer who had been responding well to social workers’ attempts to steer him away from the habit, had been sniffing Opal with his 15-year-old cousin, who watched him fall backwards and begin to suffocate after inhaling the volatile fumes.

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Paul Maley; 13/5/08

A six-month-old baby and a teenage girl were killed during a firefight in Afghanistan between Australian troops and Taliban militants. But a report into the battle, in which Australian soldier Luke Worsley also died, has not recommended the Diggers change their rules of engagement. The Vice Chief of the Defence Force, Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie, yesterday said the baby was in a room from where a man and a woman, armed with AK-47 assault rifles, opened fire on Australian troops on November 23 last year.

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Patricia Karvelas; 14/4/08

All rural and remote Aboriginal children would be entitled to a bed in full-time hostels built by the federal Government beside new schools, under a radical proposal to be put to the 2020 Summit. West Australian Aboriginal activist and chair of the Northern Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance Peter Yu - a participant in the 2020 indigenous panel - said if the Rudd Government was serious about social change, it would invest millions into school-based infrastructure. Mr Yu, who is a previous leader of the Kimberley Land Council and made his name during the native title debates of the 1990s, believes the new hostels should be built in all regional centres and provide full-time mentors to indigenous students

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12/5/08

Betel nut chewing contributes to the degradation of coral reefs, was a message among others that stood out at the launch of the Pacific year of reefs 2008. People who enjoy chewing betel nuts were told to think twice about how much damage their habit has done to the reefs. An observer at the stall display pointed out that in the Maringe District of Isabel Province, people have damaged the coral reefs in order to produce the lime for betel nut chewing.

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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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Aung Hla Tun; 12/5/08

Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta yesterday in search of food, water and medicine as aid workers warned that up to 1.5 million faced death if emergency supplies did not get through soon. Buddhist temples and schools in towns on the outskirts of the storm’s trail of destruction were now makeshift refugee centres for women, children and the elderly as millions of dollars in emergency aid was stalled on airport tarmacs pending permission to enter the country and hundreds of relief specialists were waiting for visas. The reclusive military government is accepting aid from the outside world, including from the UN, but has made clear it will not let in the foreign logistics teams needed to transport the aid into the inundated delta.

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Aung Hla Tun; 12/5/08

Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta yesterday in search of food, water and medicine as aid workers warned that up to 1.5 million faced death if emergency supplies did not get through soon. Buddhist temples and schools in towns on the outskirts of the storm’s trail of destruction were now makeshift refugee centres for women, children and the elderly as millions of dollars in emergency aid was stalled on airport tarmacs pending permission to enter the country and hundreds of relief specialists were waiting for visas. The reclusive military government is accepting aid from the outside world, including from the UN, but has made clear it will not let in the foreign logistics teams needed to transport the aid into the inundated delta.

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Jeremy Roberts & John Wiseman; 12/5/08

Former federal indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough was warned two years ago not to deal with certain prominent Aboriginal figures in South Australia’s remote northwest because they were being investigated for sex crimes, he has revealed. Mr Brough - who lost his federal seat of Longman in Queensland at the last election - said the confidential advice to steer clear of several high profile indigenous people came from South Australia’s Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jay Weatherill. Mr Brough said he was breaking his silence out of frustration at the Rann Government’s failure to move decisively against sexual predators in the state’s northern desert lands, in spite of evidence reaching as far as Mr Weatherill.

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