Mission & Justice

10/10/08

The multi-billion kina mining company accused of causing a security scare in Papua New Guinea has denied outright it was doing so. It warned further negative speculation and claims against the Chinese-run mine would jeopardise the operation of the mine and possibly see PNG losing an expected 8 per cent increase in gross domestic product (GDP). The Ramu nickel-cobalt mine, based in Madang Province, yesterday brushed aside claims its expatriate workers, mainly engineers, were entering the country without being checked by customs, immigration and security officials. It also refuted claims the PNG Government had protected its in-coming workers from security checks and described a report published by this newspaper yesterday as untrue.

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9/10/08

Up to 300 Chinese are allegedly entering Papua New Guinea as executives for the Ramu nickel mine every week without being checked by customs, security officers and immigration. These Chinese are coming into the country as engineers and other authoritative positions of this company without security, customs and immigration checks because they have been given special check exemptions by the Government. The fact that these people are travelling in and out of the country without being checked has irked the country’s national security frontliners, the National Intelligence Organisation and the Transnational Crime Unit because they say it sets a bad example for other groups. The Post-Courier is in receipt of protest letters sent by concerned security agency executives to the Labour Department boss David Tibu with copies to the Immigration Office, Foreign Affairs, Chief Secretary’s office and police, basically disputing the Government’s actions to exempt checks on these people coming in from a foreign land to work in PNG.

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7/10/08

A sexual harassment law is being drafted by the Shoura Council and the Ministry of Labor, according to yesterday’s Al-Madinah newspaper. The draft law suggests a SR50,000 fine and a prison sentence of up to three years to people found guilty of sexually harassing women subordinates. The law aims at reducing incidence of harassment in workplaces with women’s sections, such as hospitals and advertising agencies. According to the Al-Madinah report, legal experts have analyzed sexual harassment laws in Europe, the US and in some Muslim countries before preparing the draft. The new law will label sexual harassment a crime against honor that will entail a minimum of one year in prison and a SR20,000 fine.

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4/10/08: http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/theaustralian/ comments/she_has_smashed_the_myths_about_aborigines_and_jobs/

What a wonderful story about Rosemary Maraltadj escaping the remote community of Kalumburu in Western Australia and getting the opportunity for a fulfilling and important job as an aged care trainee in Newcastle, NSW (”At last, Rosemary gets taste of ‘real life“‘, 3/10). She has smashed the myth that Aboriginal people can’t or should not be mobile. The important moral to this story is that her opportunity came courtesy of contact with an outsider—Ruth Donald, a captain in the Army Reserve.
Contact with the outside world is an important pathway to opportunity, which makes me wonder why the federal Government should even consider re-imposing the permit system on Aboriginal townships in the Northern Territory. It shouldn’t be left to chance or the will of particular Aboriginal corporations or powerful men to determine when and how there should be contact between these communities and the rest of Australia. The sooner those closed communities connect with the real world in a more holistic fashion the better.
I hope it works out for Rosemary and all credit to her for having the guts and commitment to have a go. Let’s hope she gets the support she needs as a young woman a long way from home. Given that there are so many people in remote communities without job opportunities and that we have labour shortages in a range of vital industries elsewhere in Australia, let’s hope that a lot more Aboriginal people can aspire to having opportunities similar to Rosemary’s; David Moore; Bridgeman Downs, Qld

2/10/08

Authorities in Singapore have raided the premises of an engineering company following an Al Jazeera report on allegations that migrant workers were being kept there under duress. Singapore’s manpower ministry said it raided the offices of San’s Marine on Friday and have since launched an investigation. Last month Al Jazeera correspondent Tony Birtley visited the company’s warehouses and found about 30 migrant workers being held there in what the workers called “the cage”. Our correspondent was investigating how workers from Bangladesh were being ripped off in highly-organised false job scams, paying exorbitant fees to agents in exchange for broken promises of high paying jobs.

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30/9/08; Editorial

Closing the indigenous gap will benefit wider economy In a nation as wealthy as this, essential human decency dictates that rectifying the Third World conditions in which many indigenous Australians live is our most pressing social priority. Nobody should underestimate the costs, as the Northern Territory intervention process demonstrates. Such investment, however, will not be a one-way street, as Mike Steketee reports today. An Access Economics report, commissioned by Reconciliation Australia, sets out the sizeable benefits that should flow to the wider economy as result of helping Aborigines improve their quality of life.

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Stephen Lunn; 29/9/08

The traditional link between marriage and having children may be beginning to unravel, with far more young women having babies outside marriage than even a decade ago. New research shows that 30per cent of women aged 29-34 now have had a child by age 25, the same as for women aged 34-38. Yet 42 per cent of 34- to 38-year-old women were married at 25, compared with just 29 per cent of 29- to 34-year-olds. Such a marked decline in the young mothers’ marriage rate in just a few years surprised one of Australia’s leading demographers, Peter McDonald, who will present his findings to the conference, A Decade of the Life Course, in Canberra today.

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Kerry-Anne Walsh; 28/9/08

The Federal Opposition’s new immigration spokeswoman has raised strong concerns about the Government’s new seasonal worker program. Sharman Stone, from regional Victoria, where many of the new visa-holders would work, said the program was confusing and lacked detail. Regulations to allow 2500 Pacific Islanders into Australia as guest workers were introduced into Parliament on Tuesday. The workers will be placed on regional farms, which have suffered from such a chronic lack of workers. More than $700 million in fresh produce was left to rot last year. The pilot program, over three years, will be open to seasonal workers from Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Vanuatu.

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25/9/08

As both chairperson of the Indigenous Land Corporation and an indigenous woman, I am disappointed Peter Dowding (”Indigenous Land Corp `just like white owners’ ” 23/9) has made unsubstantiated, untrue and insulting comments about the traditional owners of Waliburru and about the ILC’s activities in the pastoral industry.
The ILC has purchased 221 properties since 1995 totalling more than five million hectares, of which the ILC only leases two as pastoral businesses to provide indigenous training and employment. It also leases another two cattle properties in the Northern Territory under the NT Land Rights Act, one of those being Waliburru Station, the subject of a feature story in The Australian (”Cattlemen muster pride”, 22/9). The ILC does not require any indigenous landholder to lease its land to the ILC before it will provide land management assistance. In fact, in Dowding’s home state of Western Australia, in the past three years the ILC has approved $4 million to 18 pastoral properties for development work and the purchase of livestock. It also approved $2.5 million for the provision of technical expertise and training for 20 properties through joint West Australian Government and ILC programs. All of these properties are indigenous-owned and operated.
In relation to Mount Welcome, contrary to Dowding’s allegations, the ILC has never requested it be leased to the corporation and the ILC has no intention of seeking a lease.
Unlike Dowding, I have visited Waliburru on a number of occasions and have seen the pride and joy in the people who are now operating a successful pastoral operation equal to any in Australia. Let him go to Waliburru and try to tell the traditional owners that they are wrong. A few of the ringers might not too politely tell him to get off his high horse. Shirley McPherson; Chairperson, Indigenous Land Corporation

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Badea Abu Al-Naja; 24/9/08

The soap opera of child exploitation continued unabated in Saudi Arabia without any mercy or passion from the families of these children. These children, who are mostly foreigners, will bring tears to your eyes when you listen to their dramatic stories and the reasons that made them pose as street peddlers. What took place at a market place in Makkah recently was a heartbreaking story of child abuse. A young girl, who was not more than four years of age, was selling chewing gum at the car park of the market. She had two boxes of chewing gum in her hands and a cloth bag on her shoulder to keep her money. She was moving among cars trying to sell her commodity. She was too short to be seen by drivers or passengers and could have easily been run over by a vehicle.

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