Mission & Justice

Lindsay Murdoch; 20/10/08

They are children, boys and girls, starting their teens. Some are even younger. They go to sniff petrol at a dark place in the mangrove forest, a short distance from Yirrkala’s school, where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his cabinet met in July, promising action to end Aboriginal disadvantage.In May, teachers were shocked when four students staggered into class, their eyes glazed, out of it, wandering around like zombies, and stinking of petrol. More and more of the children began missing classes. Elders were brought in to speak to students about the evil of petrol sniffing. Frustration grew to alarm because, years ago, when petrol sniffing was a problem in Yirrkala, young lives were lost.

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Frank Brennan; 17/10/08

Last Friday, I visited 22-year-old Australian citizen Scott Rush in the Kerobokan prison on the Indonesian island of Bali where he is on death row for being a hapless drug mule. Scott wrote a letter that day to those attending a dinner organised by his parents in Brisbane for Australians Against Capital Punishment: “I’d like to thank you all for all that you are doing for me and the others here at the Death Tower. To all of you who have come to this function I would like to thank you for your caring and showing solidarity by your presence. There is not much that I can say in my circumstances but I can say this: I’m not a celebrity. I have committed a serious crime but I am reforming myself and want to show you that I am capable of complete reform. Sunday was the sixth anniversary of the Bali bombings which claimed 202 lives, including 88 Australians… Early morning, the Australian Consulate hosted a memorial service for victims’ families… Many wept … The media-amplified pleas of some of them that the bombers be executed, and quickly, were understandable. For me, talk of the death penalty evoked the young, frightened face of Scott Rush, as well as the laughing, haughty faces of Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra. I had been troubled by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s response to the gloating Bali bombers at the end of Ramadan a couple of weeks earlier: ‘The Bali bombers are cowards and murderers pure and simple, and frankly they can make whatever threats they like,’ he said. ‘They deserve the justice that we delivered to them.’ I thought the time had come when our national leaders could espouse that justice excludes the death penalty for anyone, no matter what their offence and no matter what their lack of remorse. After all, just before Christmas, the new Rudd Government had voted at the UN for a motion urging retentionist States to ‘establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty’.

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17/10/08

The number of people seeking help for alcohol-related problems has increased, a new report shows. The Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Services in Australia 2006-07 report, to be released today, showed 42 per cent of people who sought treatment in that period needed help for alcohol abuse.
The report showed the number of people seeking treatment for alcohol as the primary drug of concern increased from 56,076 to 59,480, The Daily Telegraph reports. And the coordinator of the Salvation Army’s drug and alcohol treatment program, Gerard Byrne, said those numbers were likely to have risen since the report was completed.

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Paul Toohey; 17/10/08

Petrol-sniffing is far from dead - it is breaking out across the Top End, possibly as a result of alcohol restrictions introduced under the federal Government’s intervention in Northern Territory communities. The intervention’s business managers - the eyes and ears of the federal Government in the Northern Territory - say petrol-sniffing is occurring in 38 per cent of intervention communities. The business managers revealed in a just-released report that the intervention was facing a dangerous Catch-22 situation: increases in sniffing might be a result of alcohol restrictions arising from the intervention. In northeast Arnhem Land, leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu said the scourge had hit close to home. “Within my family, we are desperately trying to tackle an outbreak of petrol-sniffing at Yirrkala,” he said.

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14/10/08

Vietnam has agreed to grant clemency to two Australians facing execution for drug trafficking. During his meeting with the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, in Canberra yesterday, the Vietnamese Prime Minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, said his country would spare the lives of Jasmine Luong and Tony Manh, who are both from Sydney. “Building upon the excellent friendship between our two countries and on humanitarian grounds, I have been informed that the Vietnamese President has decided to grant clemency to two Vietnamese-Australians charged with drug trafficking,” he said. Luong was arrested at Ho Chi Minh City airport as she tried to board a flight to Australia on February 13 last year. Customs officials said they found heroin in her shoes and luggage. Manh was arrested in March last year with heroin hidden on his body as he was about to board a flight to Sydney.

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Julian Lee; 11/10/08

Anti-alcohol campaigners have branded a new policy banning alcohol manufacturers from advertising near schools as a PR stunt designed more to deflect criticism from the marketing industry rather than an effective way of combating teen drinking. From March billboard and poster companies will be unable to place alcohol ads within 150 metres of any school, guidelines ratified by the poster industry say. The peak body for poster companies, the Outdoor Media Association, cited “public concern” about alcohol advertising and said it was “committed to reducing the risk” of such ads inadvertently targeting people under the legal drinking age.

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Cameron Houston & Jill Stark; 3/10/08

Rounds of drinks, jugs of beer and shots could be banned after 1am as police and Liquor Licensing Victoria trial new measures to fight binge drinking in Melbourne’s nightclubs. The trial will be introduced next week at three late-night venues — Escobar, Ding Dong Lounge and QBH — which will be permitted to serve only one drink at a time to patrons after a designated time. The initiative is aimed at curbing late-night “shouts” and would enable bar staff to monitor individual alcohol consumption more effectively.

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Natasha Robinson & Lauren Wilson; 3/10/08

Desperate for a “real life”, Rosemary Maraltadj was determined to get out of the cycle of violence and drug abuse in her home town, the remote indigenous community of Kalumburu. While still only a teenager, Rosemary had already seen the worst of life. “I wanted to leave because there was nothing there for me to do - only bad things to get into and it wasn’t good for me,” the 18-year-old said yesterday. “Young girls like me are only getting pregnant and living with boys and there’s alcohol and drugs,” she said. “I wanted to get away from there - I wanted a real life.”

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Leigh Dayton; 2/1/08

Smoking is the fast track to severe depression as well as to cancer, heart disease and premature ageing. It is well known that depressed people often “self-medicate” with cigarettes. But Melbourne researchers have discovered hard evidence that smoking can cause depression as well as being a symptom of it, with heavy smokers nearly twice as likely to develop the illness than non-smokers. While their study involved only women, epidemiologist Julie Pasco and her colleagues - all with Melbourne University and Barwon Health - are following up the findings with 1500 Australian men. “There will be hormonal variations but we suspect we’ll get similar worrisome results with men,” Professor Pasco said. According to Professor Pasco, her team’s study of 1043 Australian women - followed for more than a decade - suggests smokers with depression are worsening their illness.

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Tracey Holmes; 30/9/08

Unsporting? Us? Surely not. Well, Google the words “Australian sport” and aggressive, uncompromising, arrogant, hypocrites, bullies, racist, sexist and violent. Watch your computer overheat with the number of articles, blogs, books and videos referring to Australian sport in such negative tones. It’s not good enough… The Good Sports Foundation has collated these facts. More than 30 per cent of 13-to-17-year-olds participate in unsupervised drinking at sports clubs. Half of drinkers at sports clubs consume alcohol at harmful or hazardous levels. A third of club members acknowledge drink driving takes place from their club. More than 43 per cent of our population believes getting drunk is an acceptable part of the Australian way of life.

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