Bond, who hit rock bottom in 1992, earns his spot on the 2008 BRW Rich 200 list mainly through interests such as holdings in Madagascar Oil and Lesotho Diamond Corporation.
The former media proprietor last made the list in 1989, after peaking in 1987 at fourth spot with $400 million.
The ABC's flagship radio current affairs programs — often the source of tension and controversy in the Howard years — have won overwhelming endorsement from a landmark report by an external expert.
An audit of AM, PM and The World Today found they were almost 96% accurate.
ABC managing director Mark Scott said the report supported the ABC's goal of continually improving editorial standards. He emphasised the report was not initiated at the behest of Mr Howard's government.
The review, by an expert who reported to the ABC's director of editorial policies, Paul Chadwick, found 95.3% of items sampled from the three programs were either wholly or substantially accurate for plain facts and were 97.3% accurate on the context of the facts.
Denis Muller, an independent media research specialist and a former associate editor of The Age, devised a method to review a sample of 150 current affairs items from last October.
Drawing on 12 experienced journalists whose names were not given in the 48-page report, the audit compared the 150 current affairs items with the originals of documents used for the items. Dr Muller put items in four categories: wholly accurate, substantially accurate, immaterially inaccurate or materially inaccurate.
"There is a very high standard of accuracy in the material broadcast by AM, The World Today and PM," he concluded.
Inaccuracies stemmed less from recklessness or incompetence than from deadline pressure and "the competitiveness that drives journalists to make the most — sometimes too much — out of their material".
In an appendix to the report, the head of the ABC's news division, John Cameron, contested the findings of inaccuracy in some instances, saying the journalists' news-gathering inquiries had found information that clarified or superseded the original documents.
The review comes against a backdrop of 11 years of tension and sometimes open hostility between the ABC and Mr Howard's government.
Former communications minister Richard Alston complained unrelentingly about the Iraq war coverage in 2003 by the morning radio current affairs program AM, exhausting all the ABC's internal complaints mechanisms and, unhappy with the ABC's overall exoneration of the program, appealed to the Australian Broadcasting Authority with only marginal success.
Mr Howard appointed three noted public critics of the ABC to its board, anthropologist Ron Brunton, News Limited columnist Janet Albrechtsen and historian Keith Windschuttle.
After Mr Scott began as managing director in mid-2006, he moved swiftly to lower the temperature of government-ABC relations, making his first major speech at the Sydney Institute, which is headed by long-time critic of the ABC Gerard Henderson, and in late 2006 appointed respected former journalist and lawyer Paul Chadwick as the first director of editorial policies.
Mr Scott said yesterday he was not providing specific briefings to the Rudd Labor Government on the continuing reviews of programs, policies and procedures.
"We are doing this ourselves as part of our self-regulation, and making the results available to all online.
"The ABC holds itself to the highest editorial standards of independence, fairness, accuracy and impartiality under the framework of our editorial policies," he said.
WAYNE SWAN: We certainly do. We not only protect them, we support them. When I talk about low and middle income families, I talk about people across the...
BARRIE CASSIDY: No you don't, you talk about working families.
WAYNE SWAN: I talk about pensioners as well, I talk about singles on low incomes, they're all part of the Australian family, Barrie.
BARRIE CASSIDY: So who's not? Who do you exclude? Who are you not setting out to protect?
WAYNE SWAN: I'm not setting out to exclude anyone. When I'm talking about people on modest incomes, low incomes, modest incomes, I'm talking about all people in the community, but the people out there that are doing it really tough at moment are those people who are trying to raise a few children, I'm not saying someone on a low income or pension income isn't doing it tough, but we do have to make sure that those people that are raising the next generation of young Australians can get by, so that in the future our economy is not only economically healthy, but socially healthy.
In The Age (via the Oz's Cut & Paste) Michelle Grattan explains:If you feel like throwing a heavy object at the TV every time Kevin Rudd intones about working families - because you're not part of one - take heart. Like much else in politics, things are not as they seem. A working family apparently does not actually have to work or, indeed, be a family in the conventional sense.
A talkback caller on Friday got Kevin to explain. The questioner was worried about singles and the elderly, who were apparently not in the favoured working families circle.
Here is the definitive explanation. Excuse the Kevinese. "Well, 'families' we use in just a very broad sense. I mean, if you're a single person who is a pensioner or a self-funded retiree, or someone who is being provided care by a carer, everyone is part of a broader family. So, when we say 'working families', we're not talking about some nuclear family of Mum, Dad and two kids; it's people who are out there in a set of family relationships either under one roof or beyond one roof, who are under financial pressure. And that means our senior Australians as well."
There you have it. "Working families" is a political frame more than an objective reality.
One advantage of talking about working families compared with, say, middle Australia is that it taps into a policy area of Labor's natural advantage ... If that's the political rationale for the endless repetition of working families, the downside is that inevitably some of those who are obviously not families nor working will say, "What about us?" Hence the stretch to put them inside the tent.
As George Orwell said years ago about this kind of language, it aims to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.[W]hen I went through airport security in Minneapolis on Monday, it was an object lesson in something -- a line of a hundred people twisted around in the cattle chute, 16 men and women in the white TSA shirts with the epaulets, an obese young woman shouting at us to take our laptop computers out of our cases in a voice she learned from a prison camp movie; one metal detector in operation, two closed, and the guardian of this narrow gate was a man who carefully read each boarding pass as if proofreading it for misspellings, though it had already been checked by his colleague at the head of the line.
I wanted to tell the shirts not to treat us with such extravagant contempt, but you should be careful about mouthing off to people who have the power to detain you and order a body search.
And also it seemed to me that I was the only one in line who was grinding my teeth. Everyone else was quite chipper, as if they were heading off on the class trip to Excelsior Amusement Park. So if I had spoken up and the shirts had thrown me to the ground and Maced me and stuffed me into a holding cell to await arraignment under the Patriot Act, I doubted that anyone would've come to my defense. They would've figured I must have had a shoe bomb on me or something.
I wish that I could express myself half as well as Mr Keillor.Australian man David Hicks should never have been charged with terror offences, according to Guantanamo Bay's former chief prosecutor.Colonel Moe Davis, who oversaw the prosecution of Hicks, quit the war court last year.He testified overnight that evidence for the war crimes tribunals was obtained through prisoner abuse, and political appointees and higher-ranking officers pushed prosecutors to file charges before trial rules were even written.
Col Davis was giving evidence at a pre-trial hearing for Osama bin Laden's driver, Yemeni prisoner Salim Hamdan, in a courtroom at the remote Guantanamo naval base in Cuba.
Since the US began sending foreign captives to Guantanamo in 2002, only one case has been resolved - that of Hicks. Hicks avoided trial by pleading guilty to providing material support for terrorism and served a nine-month sentence as part of a plea negotiated by a Pentagon appointee without the chief prosecutor's involvement.
Col Davis testified that he "inherited" the Hicks case from a previous prosecutor and would not otherwise have charged him because he wanted to focus on cases serious enough to merit 20 years in prison and the Hicks case did not meet that test. He said a supposedly impartial legal adviser demanded prosecutors pursue cases where the defendant "had blood on his hands" because those would excite the public more than mundane cases against document forgers and al-Qaeda facilitators.
While he was chief prosecutor, Col Davis appeared to be a stickler for the rules. He was a vocal critic of Hicks's defence team and criticised his military lawyer, Major Michael Mori.Col Davis threatened to charge him under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with using contemptuous language towards the president, vice-president, and secretary of defence.Col Davis said Maj Mori was not playing by the rules and criticised his regular trips to Australia. He said he would not tolerate such behaviour from his own prosecutors.
“Certainly, in the US it would not be tolerated having a US marine in uniform actively inserting himself into the political process. It is very disappointing,” he said in May last year. “He doesn't seem to be held to the same standards as his brother officers.”
In an interview with ABC TV's Lateline program in March last year, Col Davis insisted the tribunal process was free from political influence and was evasive on whether abusive interrogation techniques were used on prisoners. In today's testimony, Col Davis said pressure was ramped up after "high-value" prisoners with alleged ties to the September 11 plot were moved to Guantanamo from secret CIA custody shortly before the 2006 US congressional elections and amid US presidential campaigns.
"There was that consistent theme that if we didn't get this thing rolling before the election it was going to implode," he told the court."Once you got the victim families energised and the cases rolling, whoever won the White House would have difficulty stopping the proceeding."
She joined the army after her two brothers were taken prisoner in Singapore. Her training in typing and shorthand, partly in a post-war rehab scheme, left her working again as a domestic servant, but ultimately helped her as an activist.
She wrote a few lines which stand both as accusation for the present mess, and as true words about the way we should see April 25th -
“To our father’s fathers
The pain, the sorrow;
To our children’s children
The glad tomorrow.”
Like Major General Jeffery and Sir Zelman Cowen and Sir Ninian Stephen before him, Ms Bryce has been apolitical, non-controversial and non-interventionist during her time as Queensland Governor. She has been a safe pair of hands, respecting the boundaries of the office. Aside from a well-publicised turnover of personal staff that has not impacted on her public role, her tenure has been smooth, characterised by enthusiasm and hard work in cities and small towns across Queensland.
While there are those eager to see an Australian republic replace the constitutional monarchy, Mr Rudd, wisely, was not being drawn yesterday on whether Ms Bryce would be Australia's last governor-general. The move to a republic is a standing commitment of the Rudd Government and Mr Rudd put the debate back on the public agenda in London. As he said yesterday, however, it is "not a top-order question" in the face of many other priorities. Given her discretion in Queensland about Australia's constitutional future, Ms Bryce would be unlikely to indulge in any such speculation.
The Government House website defines the governor-general's role as being "to encourage, articulate and represent those things that unite Australia as a nation". Ms Bryce is well-qualified to carry it out, and we wish her well.
It is easy for all us couch republicans to wish for the inevitable transition to take place sooner rather than later, but the PM's assessment that it isn't a "top order question" is accurate enough at the moment, and with our political system already being a de facto republican one in so many respects, not to mention the protracted processes necessary to obtain approval for any constitutional change, I'd be surprised if Ms Bryce is our last GG.
Ted Jones, one of two living survivors of the Royal Marines Band of HMS Exeter was honoured at the weekend with a presentation at Glenelg.In 2008, work will begin on the ABC's first purpose-built continuous news centre to provide multiple, simultaneous continuous streams of news, 24 hours a day to every outlet of the ABC - ABC1, ABC2, ABC Online, Australia Network and ABC Radio.
A specialist production team will operate the CNC using new technology to sift and distil the hundreds of hours of news content produced daily by ABC staff around the country and make it available to multiple platforms around the clock.
For our audience it means stories can be published or updated as soon as they are completed, taking full advantage of the ABC news network: more than 1000 journalists working locally, nationally and internationally.
The centre will deliver to existing continuous news platforms, and be viable for potential future ones such as an ABC news channel for digital TV, or internet TV. To do this we have to reorganise the way we work. If Sky News can deliver a 24-hour news service with a fraction of the number of journalists working in ABC newsrooms, then it stands to follow that the ABC is capable of producing a 24/7 news service for our audiences: we just need to work smarter to deliver it.
In contrast to Sky News, a niche service available only in the 25 per cent of homes that can afford pay TV, the ABC provides a universal service to all Australians, rich and poor. The CNC would make ABC news content even more accessible to all Australians, all day on different devices.
We begin with a great advantage: our strength and reputation in news gathering. By adopting a new production model we can harvest more effectively the news and information we are generating.
Digital technology means we can create news content once and use it many times over on a number of different platforms. The CNC will allow us to take stories that appear on news services in Perth, Darwin or Brisbane and make them available for audiences across the country. It means we can put cameras in the AM studio, so these interviews won't just be heard on radio but can be seen on TV or online.
The same principles apply to our creation of 60 new local websites, ABC Local, delivering not just local news, weather and sport but also video and audio, reflecting local events and cul-
ture and opportunities for audiences to contribute.
These will be the dominant information hubs across regional and rural Australia, demonstrating the depth of ABC commitment outside the state and territory capitals.
The ABC has no rival in rural, regional and local news gathering and with fast broadband coming to the bush, the ABC will be the "town square" where events, issues and community information is posted and debated.
The continuous news centre will be built within existing ABC funding, a result of a constant process of review at the ABC to ensure our funding is being used in the most efficient and effective way.
Much of it involves taking the content we already produce and finding new ways to connect with our audiences. If there's a new and better way of working offered by technology, we use it.
That's how we are able to achieve so much within existing means.
I'll look forward to seeing how this unfolds. While much of what Mr Scott says about the ABC's "strength and reputation in news gathering" is true IMO there are significant areas where the network's news dissemination could be improved. For example
On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action, that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.
On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation -- that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Rev. Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain.
Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely -- just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice.
Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country -- a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America, a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Rev. Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems -- two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Rev. Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?
And I confess that if all that I knew of Rev. Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than 20 years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor.
He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine, who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth -- by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, "Dreams From My Father," I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note -- hope! -- I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones.
"Those stories -- of survival, and freedom, and hope -- became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world.
"Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish -- and with which we could start to rebuild."
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety -- the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger.
Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear.
The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Rev. Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.
Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions -- the good and the bad -- of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork.
We can dismiss Rev. Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Rev. Wright made in his offending sermons about America -- to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through -- a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.
And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country.
Is there a politician (or anyone) in Australia who can speak like this?Politics Queensland (old and new) style
From today's Australian :
Former Queensland premier Peter Beattie has performed his most spectacular backflip by accepting a $200,000-a-year job representing the state Government in the US only months after he declared he would not take any government position.
Mr Beattie's successor as Premier, Anna Bligh, announced his appointment yesterday as Queensland's Trade Commissioner to North and South America, starting on June 1 and based in Los Angeles.
At the time of his resignation in September, there were rumours Mr Beattie would be appointed the Queensland government representative in London, but in December he told a Queensland newspaper he had turned down the position.
"I will not be accepting any government positions at a state or federal level. This is to avoid any unfavourable perceptions of deals or otherwise," Mr Beattie reportedly told The Sunday Mail.
Ms Bligh also yesterday announced the appointment of former transport minister Steve Bredhauer - a close personal friend and factional ally - to be Queensland's special representative to China and Vietnam.
As a public servant, Mr Beattie will be part of Trade Queensland, whose recently appointed general manager is Rob Whiddon, who was Mr Beattie's chief of staff for the 11 years he was premier.
Mr Beattie had previously, as part of a complex factional deal, appointed one of his former ministers, Bob Gibbs, to the position he will now hold in Los Angeles.
Andrew Fraser puts the appointment in (a bipartisan) context with some trenchant but fair criticism:One of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's last acts in the dying days of his premiership in 1987 was to appoint Tom McVeigh Queensland's agent-general in London. McVeigh had been one of his strongest supporters in the "Joh for PM" push.
The plum posting followed several other political appointments from the Bjelke-Petersen government, including postings for former Country Party minister Wally Rae, as well as John Andrews, a public servant who did the redistribution that helped keep the National Party in office.
This is the dubious tradition that Anna Bligh has continued after it was resurrected by no less a person than Peter Beattie himself. It is the political insider's "jobs for the boys" (and girls too, now), for which the taxpayer has to pay. Handing out appointments to your political opponents as well as your former colleagues only insults the intelligence of the electorate.
Queensland is alone among the states in maintaining a heavy overseas presence. The Queensland foreign affairs empire is again a throwback to the days of Bjelke-Petersen, who never trusted the Canberra "socialists" to adequately represent Queensland's interests. Hence the appointment of political mates, the sort of cronyism that was supposed to disappear from Queensland when the Nationals lost office in 1989.
.....
For Bligh, the Beattie appointment is an appalling black mark. There's no real reason for a state to have such a heavy overseas presence, and even less of a reason to staff them with former politicians.
As for Beattie, you wonder if he has any spine left after all those backflips. But saying less than three months ago that "I will not be accepting any government positions at a state or federal level" and then signing up for this shows the very elastic nature of the man's ethics. Little wonder that people get disillusioned with politics and, especially, politicians.
Observations are from Kent Town, about 2 km east of the city centre.
| Date | Day | Temps | Rain | Evap | Sun | Max wind gust | 9 am | 3 pm | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Min | Max | Dir | Spd | Time | Temp | RH | Cld | Dir | Spd | MSLP | Temp | RH | Cld | Dir | Spd | MSLP | |||||
| °C | °C | mm | mm | hours | km/h | local | °C | % | 8th | km/h | hPa | °C | % | 8th | km/h | hPa | |||||
| 1 | Sa | 13.5 | 25.7 | 0 | ESE | 46 | 02:12 | 17.2 | 37 | E | 9 | 1022.6 | 24.4 | 25 | SW | 17 | 1020.4 | ||||
| 2 | Su | 13.3 | 31.1 | 0 | 11.4 | NE | 30 | 08:08 | 23.5 | 16 | NE | 15 | 1021.6 | 30.1 | 9 | W | 19 | 1019.9 | |||
| 3 | Mo | 15.6 | 35.4 | 0 | 19.6 | 11.0 | 25.6 | 16 | NNE | 7 | 1020.0 | 34.3 | 6 | W | 19 | 1017.5 | |||||
| 4 | Tu | 23.5 | 35.7 | 11.8 | 10.4 | 27.0 | 16 | WSW | 4 | 1019.4 | 34.5 | 12 | WSW | 13 | 1017.7 | ||||||
| 5 | We | 24.4 | 37.9 | 0 | 10.6 | 11.2 | ESE | 35 | 23:04 | 28.4 | 27 | NNE | 13 | 1021.1 | 37.3 | 9 | WSW | 15 | 1019.3 | ||
| 6 | Th | 19.6 | 38.5 | 0 | 7.2 | 11.2 | SW | 30 | 14:11 | 26.5 | 28 | ENE | 4 | 1022.2 | 38.0 | 8 | WSW | 17 | 1020.6 | ||
| 7 | Fr | 19.9 | 39.0 | 0 | 8.2 | WNW | 24 | 11:52 | 26.5 | 39 | Calm | 1022.3 | 37.3 | 11 | W | 15 | 1020.4 | ||||
| 8 | Sa | 21.1 | 39.8 | 0 | E | 26 | 20:59 | 26.8 | 33 | Calm | 1021.1 | 38.9 | 9 | SW | 20 | 1018.9 | |||||
| 9 | Su | 25.4 | 40.2 | 0 | E | 37 | 00:56 | 31.5 | 15 | NNE | 11 | 1020.9 | 39.5 | 9 | WSW | 19 | 1018.7 | ||||
| 10 | Mo | 22.4 | 40.0 | 0 | 11.4 | WNW | 31 | 13:01 | 28.6 | 26 | NNE | 4 | 1019.8 | 38.0 | 12 | WSW | 19 | 1018.7 | |||
| 11 | Tu | 22.0 | 38.4 | 0 | 34.4 | 11.1 | WSW | 30 | 13:41 | 26.2 | 45 | N | 6 | 1020.6 | 35.9 | 23 | SW | 19 | 1018.1 | ||
| 12 | We | 22.4 | 39.2 | 0 | 7.8 | 9.4 | WSW | 37 | 14:33 | 25.7 | 44 | SSW | 6 | 1018.6 | 38.3 | 13 | WNW | 17 | 1015.9 | ||
| 13 | Th | 25.0 | 39.7 | 0 | 8.0 | 10.8 | NW | 52 | 12:52 | 31.4 | 21 | NNE | 9 | 1014.3 | 38.8 | 9 | NW | 30 | 1011.6 | ||
| 14 | Fr | 30.2 | 38.6 | 0 | 15.8 | WNW | 56 | 12:07 | 31.2 | 15 | N | 20 | 1012.9 | 38.1 | 8 | NW | 30 | 1012.4 | |||
| 15 | Sa | 23.6 | 38.3 | 0 | NW | 31 | 12:51 | 26.1 | 42 | NNE | 4 | 1015.9 | 36.0 | 17 | WNW | 15 | 1014.5 | ||||
| 16 | Su | 22.5 | 39.9 | 0 | 10.9 | WNW | 31 | 11:18 | 28.5 | 34 | NE | 7 | 1015.9 | 39.7 | 11 | WSW | 17 | 1013.9 | |||
| 17 | Mo | 25.9 | 0 | 22.8 | 32.0 | 19 | NE | 9 | 1014.7 | 39.6 | 10 | WNW | 19 | 1011.9 | |||||||
| Statistics for the first 17 days of March 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Mean | 21.8 | 37.3 | 14.6 | 10.9 | 27.2 | 27 | 7 | 1019.1 | 36.4 | 11 | 18 | 1017.1 | |||||||||
| Lowest | 13.3 | 25.7 | 0 | 7.2 | 9.4 | 17.2 | 15 | Calm | 1012.9 | 24.4 | 6 | WSW | 13 | 1011.6 | |||||||
| Highest | 30.2 | 40.2 | 0 | 34.4 | 11.4 | WNW | 56 | 32.0 | 45 | N | 20 | 1022.6 | 39.7 | 25 | NW | 30 | 1020.6 | ||||
| Total | 0.0 | 146.2 | 108.8 | ||||||||||||||||||
The wreckage of HMAS Sydney, sunk off the West Australian coast during World War II, has been found, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced today.
The ship's entire crew of 645 went down with the ship in the Indian Ocean and its location has been a mystery for 66 years.
The wreckage of a German ship - the merchant raider Kormoran - believed to have sunk the Sydney was found at the weekend in waters about 800km north of Perth.
Both sites are likely to be protected as war graves. Mr Rudd said Environment Minister Peter Garrett was in the process of issuing an interim protection declaration in relation to both ships.
"The environment minister will be issuing a full statement a bit later in the day, but I'm advised it provides immediate and early protection of the sites against any unauthorised intrusion," he said.
Mr Rudd said the Sydney was found yesterday, about 22km from the Kormoran.
"I'm advised that the HMAS Sydney was found some 12 nautical miles from the Kormoran, some eight nautical miles from the scene of the principal battle site and at a depth of some 2470 metres," Mr Rudd said.
Hull intact
Mr Rudd said the hull has been found largely intact. But Chairman of the Finding Sydney Foundation, Ted Graham, said there were no plans to raise the ships.
"For a start they're in very deep water, and secondly, from my point of view, and from the foundation's point of view they contain the remains of many people, and our view is firmly that they should be left alone," he said.
Mr Rudd said it was important to understand that the Sydney was the tomb of 645 Australian sailors and air force members.
"The good thing about Australians is we treat our war dead with respect and these war dead will be treated with complete respect.'
Closure
The Prime Minister said the Federal Government hoped the find would bring some closure for the families of the 645 sailors who went down with the ship.
He said the Australian Defence Force would be contacting family members.
"They will be using their own communications systems to make sure that the surviving family members of the crew of HMAS Sydney are informed of this discovery as soon as is practically possible."
Chief of the Royal Australian Navy, Vice Admiral Russ Shalders, said it was a very historic day.
Mystery
"For 66 years, this nation has wondered where the Sydney was and what occurred to her, we've uncovered the first part of that mystery ... the next part of the mystery, of course, is what happened.
"It will take some time to try to ascertain exactly what happened that day over 66 years ago."
Admiral Shalders said there had always been an HMAS Sydney in the Australian navy.
"It's an historic name and we've added to the history of that name over the weekend."
Standby for more information, interpretation and speculation.Mr Rudd says it is a promising outcome which could lead to the discovery of HMAS Sydney.
"Finding the Kormoran is one big step forward," he said.
"Of course that does not mean that the search has yet found the Sydney itself but it does play one significant step closer.
"All of us concerned about this great ship and those of us who are concerned about what happened to the 645 brave souls who went down with her, have all these years been wondering where she lay and what in the end actually happened."
This hyped approach tells people that "a lot of Muslim youth in my electorate that are totally irreligious, or its marginal to their existence and they don't spend a lot of time thinking about the Koran."
Firstly, what problem are you trying to resolve? What are the objectives of the group? Surely starting with the group before stating its objectives is like putting the cart before the horse. I won’t buy the old story of "factors contributing to the radicalisation of young Muslims", this issue has already been the subject of research and literature and has been done to death.
