Racism in Australia

Australia Finance Minister Penny Wong considers racial abuse is not unusual in Australia

2010-10-06T15:21:00.000+08:00

SAY NO TO RACISM

Ms. Penny Wong,
Minister for Finance,
senator.wong@aph.gov.au

Dear Minister,

We refer to the report below for your information.

You are to be congratulated for calling a spade a spade when you said: Racial abuse was not unusual in Australia.

Although the White Australia policy was completely dismantled in theory but in practice, it remains the same and Labor is more racial than the former racist Howard government because it increased the English Test from 4.5 to 5.0 to day.

Racism destroys the quality of life.

Would you like to comment, please?

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
unitypartywa@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
http://twitter.com/unitypartywa (Uploaded)
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/ (Uploaded)
Phone/Fax: 61893681884
Date: 06-Oct-2010.
Environmental friendly-save the trees-use Email
Can you afford to give Bigpond a try?

Wong Defeats Race-Sex Prejudice as Australia Minister Set to Erase Deficit

Australia’s finance minister may need to reprise the toughness she showed in overcoming racial abuse and gaining control of a university political club to succeed in her new role.

Penny Wong is now charged with meeting Australia’s goal of becoming the first major developed nation to return its government budget to surplus. At stake: sustaining investor confidence in a country that avoided a recession during the global crisis and now seeks to end its deficits by fiscal 2013. Wong’s main mission is holding the line on cabinet colleagues’ budget requests to maintain a 2 percent cap on spending growth.

“She will have no problems saying no” to funding requests, said George Karzis, whom Wong ousted in 1989 as head of the Labor Club at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, and now works at law firm Norman Waterhouse in Adelaide. He said the two had embarked on a “campaign of enthusiastic recruitment” of new members to help gain control of the club, with Wong emerging the victor.

Australia’s economic growth, accompanied by the lowest debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratio among advanced economies, has helped make its dollar the second-best performing major currency this year, climbing about 8 percent against its U.S. counterpart.

The economy, which is now in its 20th year of expansion, surged 1.2 percent last quarter, the fastest pace since 2007 as growth spread from the mining industry to households.

Smaller Deficit

Wong started her job last month with one advantage: The deficit has so far turned out to be smaller than the government had anticipated. The shortfall was A$54.8 billion ($53.2 billion) in the fiscal year that ended June 30, compared with a forecast in May this year of A$57.1 billion.

“The key is to ensure we get the budget back into surplus and ensure the strict spending rules,” Wong, 41, said in a telephone interview on Sept. 28. “We have to deliver fiscal consolidation and that will require enormous discipline.”

Wong was born in Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysia, to a Cantonese father and an Australian mother. Her parents met at the University of Adelaide when her father traveled to South Australia on a scholarship in the 1960s and returned to Malaysia together. When they separated, Wong moved to Australia at age eight with her mother and brother.

Wong’s brother died 10 days after her election to parliament in 2001. In her maiden speech the following year, she made reference to his passing, saying, “Your life and death ensure that I shall never forget what it is like for those who are truly marginalized.”

Migrant Difficulties

Wong alluded in her speech to the difficulties migrants faced when she arrived 25 years earlier.

“It was a hard time to leave a familiar place and come to somewhere where you and your family were seen as so different,” she told lawmakers. “Racial abuse was not unusual. It used to lead me to wonder, ‘How long do you have to be here and how much do you have to love this country before you are accepted?’”

Australia’s discriminatory immigration program, known as the White Australia policy, was completely dismantled in 1973. As late as 1988, John Howard, who went on to become Australia’s second-longest serving prime minister, called for reduced Asian immigration for the sake of “social cohesion.”

Wong wasn’t deterred. She won a scholarship to Scotch College in Adelaide, where Prime Minister Julia Gillard also hails from, and later became a captain of the school, the most prestigious position for a student. Di Hill, deputy principal at the time, recalls that some other students viewed the young Wong as “different” and she got “some teasing” as a result.

‘Intellectually Smart’

“Penny always said what she thought, in a way she probably wouldn’t now as a politician,” said Hill, whose husband, Robert, was a cabinet minister under Howard and who says she encouraged Wong to enter school politics, a process that ended with her being elected president of the student representative council by a record majority. “Sometimes that could aggravate people. She’s incredibly clever. Intellectually smart.”

Wong planned to become a doctor after graduation, winning a spot in medical school before deferring to go overseas. She returned to the University of Adelaide a year later and studied arts and law.

“I did a gap year and did some work in hospitals in Brazil and decided medicine wasn’t for me,” she said in the interview. “Not liking the sight of blood was one of many reasons.”

Wong worked part-time as an organizer for the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union through the concluding stages of her law degree, while still managing to graduate with honors.

Legal Officer

She was a barrister and solicitor at an Adelaide firm for three years and then spent three years as a legal officer at the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union in South Australia before being selected as a Labor candidate for the Senate.

Wong served as the party’s spokeswoman during Labor’s 2007 election campaign and became Australia’s first ethnic Asian cabinet minister when then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd appointed her to the climate-change portfolio after he led the party into government.

As climate-change minister, she drafted legislation proposing that Australia, the world’s biggest coal exporter and driest inhabited continent, reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in the next decade by between 5 percent and 15 percent from 2000 levels. The Senate defeated the bill in December after a revolt in the opposition Liberal party led to a leadership change, and it turned against the plan.

Shrug Off Failure

While the defeat helped to bring down Rudd, Wong was able to shrug off the failure and continue her political ascent, partly because of the perception that Rudd’s poor judgment contributed to the bill’s collapse, said Haydon Manning, an associate professor in the Department of Politics and Public Policy at Flinders University in Adelaide.

“I’ve always thought she’s been harshly judged, given it was a very complex piece of legislation,” Manning said in an interview. “Rudd should have helped her sell it; instead, he left her to face the pressure.”

Wong’s promotion to finance minister in Gillard’s government now places her among the country’s top officials. The post is akin to the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget in the U.S., with Treasurer Wayne Swan occupying the equivalent of Treasury secretary.

Her ascendance is a rarity: Australia has a dearth of Asian-born representatives, even as the group’s share of the population climbed to 8.5 percent of country’s 22 million people in 2009 from 5.3 percent in 1999, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data.

Public Servant

A member of the Uniting Church, Wong is also Australia’s first openly lesbian Cabinet member. She lives in Adelaide with her partner of three years, Sophie Allouache, a public servant who, like Wong, went to Scotch College. Allouache attended both of Wong’s swearing-in ceremonies.

Wong will have to display “a reckless degree of toughness” in her new role, Nick Minchin, finance minister from 2001 to 2007 in Howard’s government, said in a Sept. 29 interview.

As finance minister, “you have to be able to stand up to your colleagues and say no and be able to make the case,” said Minchin, who oversaw the sale of the final 35 percent stake in Melbourne-based Telstra Corp., Australia’s largest telephone company and is also from South Australia. “In a minority government like this, there are going to be enormous demands for what can only be described as pork barreling: inappropriate and irresponsible spending.”

‘Real Risks’

There are “real risks and she has a tough job ahead of her,” he added.

Wong replaced former Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, who quit politics to work at Lazard Ltd., an investment bank. Tanner was credited with helping lead Australia’s response to the credit crisis, pressing to get stimulus into the economy quickly.

“Tanner was very well respected in the market,” said Stephen Halmarick, who helps manage about $135 billion as head of investment markets research at Colonial First State Global Asset Management in Sydney. While Wong’s appointment came as a surprise to some investors, “she is obviously someone who is very smart and can master her brief and will bring a new dimension to the role.”

A smiling PM leads Labor government in name only

2010-09-09T17:39:00.000+08:00

Ms Julia Gillard,
Prime Minister of Australia
info@pm.gov.au

Dear Prime Minister,

We refer to the reports below for your information.

Would you like to comment, please?

We look forward to hearing from you shortly,

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
unitypartywa@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
http://twitter.com/unitypartywa (Uploaded)
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/
Phone/Fax: 61893681884
Date: 09-Sept-2010.
Environmental friendly-save the trees-use Email
Can you afford to give Bigpond a try?
A smiling PM leads Labor government in name only
September 8, 2010 - The Age
THE uncomfortable irony surely has not been lost on the Gillard government: the Labor Party, which is so weakened that large segments of its own electoral base are simply marching away, holds on to office only because four men who have never been part of the ALP have decided to give it a bare parliamentary majority.

Labor's own supporters across Australia couldn't do it. Not even the hundreds of thousands of disaffected Labor people who now back the Greens could help the ALP over the line through their preferences. In the end, two ex-Nationals in Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, the ex-Liberal and ex-Green Andrew Wilkie, and the Marxist-turned-Green Adam Bandt have allowed the Gillard government to live again.

This is the foundation on which Australia's new national government is built. As Oakeshott said yesterday afternoon, the concept of a mandate is not operational in this parliamentary term. The voters made the judgment on August 21; the ongoing vote count between Labor and the Coalition is as close to 50-50 as you can get. Neither of the major parties could attract an endorsement from a majority of voters.

So the political system must now, in many important respects, rebuild itself. It will not be a wholesale rebirth. The viciousness, the personal attacks, the cheap shots, the hyperbole, the resentments, the glossing over of mistakes and uncomfortable facts - none of this will vanish. It will remain. Indeed, it's likely that the intensity of the 17 days between election day and yesterday's declaration of a result in Labor's favour will bring about even more heat in the contest between Labor and the Coalition.........

First cracks appear
Tom Arup, Katharine Murphy and Michelle Grattan
With NICK O'MALLEY - September 9, 2010 - Age

THE first cracks have appeared in the Gillard government's alliance with the crossbench MPs, with the Greens signalling they may side with the Coalition on some issues, and a country independent clashing with Treasurer Wayne Swan over the mining tax.
Less than 24 hours after Julia Gillard secured the last pledges of support needed to form government, Bob Brown raised the potentially destabilising prospect of the Greens working with the Coalition on legislation to boost mental health spending and to alter Labor's paid parental leave plan.

Senator Brown, whose party will have the balance of power in the Senate from July, also put the politically emotive issue of death duties on the agenda, suggesting next year's tax summit should consider the issue.

The spectre of a more assertive and powerful Greens came as the Prime Minister waited on Rob Oakeshott, one of two country independents propping up her government, to decide whether he will join her cabinet as a minister for regional Australia. He is seeking advice on whether the convention of cabinet solidarity can be changed so he could vote against a government bill outside his area.

As the difficulties became apparent, the opposition went on the attack. Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey said: ''If a newly married couple are arguing on day one, it doesn't augur too well for the rest of the marriage.''

Shadow attorney-general George Brandis said the government ''has as much legitimacy as the Pakistani cricket team''.

Amid the drama, Ms Gillard was preparing to reshape her ministry, which is now likely to include Kevin Rudd - whom she deposed earlier this year - as foreign minister. Mr Rudd's return to cabinet, which Ms Gillard has consistently promised, will further complicate her management challenge.

Senator Brown said the reality of the hung parliament was that the opposition could propose and pass legislation with the support of the Greens and independents, even if the government objected. ''This is part of the new paradigm,'' he said.

He nominated mental health and biosecurity as areas where the opposition and Greens shared similar policies.

Asked whether the Coalition and Greens could also combine to extend Labor's paid parental leave program, Senator Brown said the issue could be discussed with the government and opposition. ''There's good potential there for bipartite agreement for improving that legislation.''

Constitutional experts told The Age it was legally possible for the opposition to drive a legislative agenda, including bills that would require budget spending.

George Williams, of the University of New South Wales, said Tony Abbott's private member's bill to strike out Queensland's wild rivers laws was an example of legislation that, if passed, could be implemented without the support of the government.

The ability of the opposition to legislate will be enhanced by proposed rules allowing more private member's bills to be debated and voted on in the House of Representatives.

The opposition would need the support of WA National Tony Crook plus three independent or Greens MPs to pass legislation in the lower house.

Until July 1 next year the Coalition will only need the support of independent Nick Xenophon and Family First's Steve Fielding to pass bills in the Senate. After that it would need the support of the Greens.

Senator Xenophon said he was open to legislation from all sources, saying it should be judged on the quality of the idea, not its political shade.

The tax summit, part of the deal between Labor and two of the country independents, has given renewed impetus to criticism of the mining tax.

Yesterday morning Mr Swan signalled the mining tax would not be discussed at the summit, but later he said it might be. He said he was ''relaxed'' about this.

The switch came after Mr Oakeshott insisted the tax would be on the summit agenda, and Mr Windsor expressed surprise that Mr Swan thought otherwise.

After speaking with Mr Swan, Mr Windsor said the misunderstanding had been cleared up.

Opponents of the mining tax want to use the summit as a platform to reopen the debate.

Meanwhile, Heather Ridout of the Australian Industry Group said the business community did not want a hung parliament. ''We have a group of interests here that aren't necessarily always headed in the same direction,'' she said. But she said a more difficult reform process might actually improve any changes made.

She hoped the country independents would be a counterweight to the ''ambitious'' and less business-friendly ideas of the Greens.

Australia better be ready

2010-09-08T18:20:00.002+08:00

Manager,

Perth Channel 9

ninenews@perthtv9.net.au

Dear Sir/Madam,

Re: Australia better be ready.

"I've just seen the 60 min. program last Sunday night (5, Sept. 2010 at 7.30p.m. on your station and the way it was presented is definitely quite provocative, especially for all those westerners who do not understand the derivatives of China's history and culture. The title itself is very provocative and this should be pointed out to the media - this reflects some negative view about China. Most of the Australian media had been irresponsible and very unethical in their reports on China in the past and even so today. What has China done to Australia or the world for that matter except helping it's economic?

The so-called exercise as reported claimed to be a joint one with participations from most of the Eastern countries, but no mention about which are these countries. I do not believe that Taiwan, Indonesia, S-E countries like Thailand, Malaysia and even Japan and Singapore are the participating countries.

If it is just a naval exercise, why broadcast it as a "Australia better be ready"? This is very unethical and irresponsible of Channel 9. Knowing more about the derivatives of China's history and culture (me being part of that and also a by-product of Western derivatives) where China has never been in its history initiated any proactive aggression against any country in the world, then why accuse it of being a potential 'threat' to Australia and the world?

The fact that China has increased its military strength is more believable to be based upon "defence" rather than 'offence' because of its history of having been a victim of some of the worse onslaught of aggressions from the West - eight Power Allied Forces on September 7, 1901. The 8 countries were Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Austria and Italy, and Japan again in the immediate past (the Rape of Nanking as examples).

The Rape of Nanking - Japanese Holocaust

Another vital point to look at is - what if China were to conduct such a similar exercise in the Pacific ocean, how would Australia and the US governments react to that? Understanding the derivatives of the Western culture, I am 100% sure that the US and Australia will put up a very strong protest and may even threaten reprisal actions against China.

We must stand up for any potential act of provocation of aggression of any country if we were to 'fight' for Peace in the World. If China were to conduct such an exercise and broadcast it as 'Preparing War against US or Australia or the World' I will definitely be the first to protest!

This is to adopt a universal and holistic position."

We look forward to hearing from you shortly.

Yours truly,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
unitypartywa@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
http://twitter.com/unitypartywa
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/
Phone/Fax: 61893681884
Date: 07-Sept-2010.
Environmental friendly-save the trees-use Email
Can you afford to give Bigpond a try?

Troops withdrawal from Iraq

2010-09-03T11:05:00.002+08:00

Dear President Obama,

You are to be congratulated for bringing those 100,000 US troops home where they belong. Former President Bush should not invade a sovereign country - with the hope of getting more oil for America and he failed badly.

As the Commander-in-Chief, we do not believe that you will make the same mistake.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie
----- Original Message -----
From: Barack Obama
To: Eddie Hwang
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2010 10:34 AM
Subject: Iraq

Dear Eddie --

Tonight marks the end of the American combat mission in Iraq.

As a candidate for this office, I pledged to end this war responsibly. And, as President, that is what I am doing.

Since I became Commander-in-Chief, we've brought home nearly 100,000 U.S. troops. We've closed or turned over to Iraq hundreds of our bases.

As Operation Iraqi Freedom ends, our commitment to a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq continues. Under Operation New Dawn, a transitional force of U.S. troops will remain to advise and assist Iraqi forces, protect our civilians on the ground, and pursue targeted counterterrorism efforts.

By the end of next year, consistent with our agreement with the Iraqi government, these men and women, too, will come home.

Ending this war is not only in Iraq's interest -- it is in our own. Our nation has paid a huge price to put Iraq's future in the hands of its people. We have sent our men and women in uniform to make enormous sacrifices. We have spent vast resources abroad in the face of several years of recession at home.

We have met our responsibility through the courage and resolve of our women and men in uniform.

In seven years, they confronted a mission as challenging and as complex as any our military has ever been asked to face.

Nearly 1.5 million Americans put their lives on the line. Many returned for multiple tours of duty, far from their loved ones who bore a heroic burden of their own. And most painfully, more than 4,400 Americans have given their lives, fighting for people they never knew, for values that have defined our people for more than two centuries.

What their country asked of them was not small. And what they sacrificed was not easy.

For that, each and every American owes them our heartfelt thanks.

Our promise to them -- to each woman or man who has donned our colors -- is that our country will serve them as faithfully as they have served us. We have already made the largest increase in funding for veterans in decades. So long as I am President, I will do whatever it takes to fulfill that sacred trust.

Tonight, we mark a milestone in our nation's history. Even at a time of great uncertainty for so many Americans, this day and our brave troops remind us that our future is in our own hands and that our best days lie ahead.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

Hung parliament let the people decide

2010-08-28T14:39:00.000+08:00

Mr. Stephen Gageler,
Australia - Solicitor General
stephen.gageler@ag.gov.au

Dear Mr. Gageler,

We refer to the reports below for your information.

Would you like to comment, please?

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours truly,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
unitypartywa@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
http://twitter.com/unitypartywa (Uploaded)
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/ (Uploaded)
Phone/Fax: 61893681884
Date: 28-Aug-2010.
Environmental friendly-save the trees-use Email
Can you afford to give Bigpond a try?
Governor-General Quentin Bryce should resign now
Peter Faris - The Australian - August 27, 2010 12:00AM

THE federal election has produced a hung parliament where any government will be in a minority.
This has produced the possibility that the Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, may have to exercise her constitutional powers.

In my view, she gives the appearance of being biased in favour of Labor.

This issue of bias cannot be resolved and consequently she must resign now.

An independent administrator would then be appointed by arrangement between Julia Gillard (as leader of the caretaker government) and Tony Abbott (as Leader of the Opposition). At that point we would then have the independent umpire that the nation is entitled to.

A failure by Bryce to completely remove herself will make her personal position an issue in the resolution of which party is to govern. The issues are difficult enough without adding that.

The law in relation to bias is well settled. In Webb and Hay (1994), Justice Deane said in the High Court: “The area covered by the doctrine of disqualification by reason of the appearance of bias encompasses at least four distinct, though sometimes overlapping, main categories of case.

“The first is disqualification by interest, that is to say, cases where some direct or indirect interest in the proceedings, whether pecuniary or otherwise, gives rise to a reasonable apprehension of prejudice, partiality or prejudgment.

“The second is disqualification by conduct, including published statements.

“The third category is disqualification by association. It will often overlap the first and consist of cases where the apprehension of prejudgment or other bias results from some direct or indirect relationship, experience or contact with a person or persons interested in, or otherwise involved in, the proceedings.

“The fourth is disqualification by extraneous information. It will commonly overlap the third.”

Deane added, in a footnote, as an example of disqualification by association, “a case where a dependent spouse or child has a direct pecuniary interest in the proceedings”.

The following facts seem to be beyond argument.

A Labor member of federal parliament, William Richard “Bill” Shorten, is married to the daughter of Bryce. Shorten is Parliamentary Secretary for Disability and Children's Services in the Gillard caretaker government.

On November 29, 2007, immediately after that year's election, Shorten was appointed to that parliamentary post. On September 5, 2008, Bryce was sworn in as Governor-General. Shorten married her daughter, Chloe Bryce, on November 14, 2009. Their child, Clementine, was born about December 23, 2009.

The following allegations have been made.

First, that Shorten was one of the faceless men behind the sacking of Kevin Rudd in favour of Gillard.

Second, that Shorten is favourite to topple Gillard and to become prime minister in her place.

A combination of these facts and allegations show that it is of the utmost personal importance to Shorten that Labor retain power as a result of this election.

Similarly, if Bryce is to play a role in the decision making process, then it is critical to Shorten (and no doubt his wife Chloe) that Bryce either decides in favour of Labor or makes the decision that suits Labor best (for example, a new election, if that is what they want).

It is impossible to predict what will occur in the final resolution of the election issues. It is entirely possible that Gillard will advise Bryce to make a particular decision tomorrow.

Alternatively, Australia could limp along for several months with an unstable minority government until Bryce is called upon to make a decision.

Let me make two things clear.

First, I cannot predict if there will be a decision by the Governor-General on some issue. But the present circumstances of a hung parliament make it highly likely.

Second, and most important, I cannot prove that Bryce is biased in favour of Labor because of her close family connections. I do not say that she is.

But what I do say, and I say very strongly, is that there is a perception of bias.

Bryce is subject to the doctrine of disqualification by reason of the appearance of bias. Her daughter's husband has an enormous interest in the outcome of the election: a favourable decision by Bryce may enable Shorten to become prime minister.

Surely his wife and her daughter, Chloe, shares that interest.

Bryce must resign now to avoid her personal issue precipitating a constitutional crisis similar to 1975. Bryce is fatally compromised: regardless of whatever decision she makes, half the country will be dissatisfied. Any decision she makes in favour of Labor, however correct or innocent that decision may be, will leave half the citizens of Australia believing that she made the decision for personal and family reasons. That is perceived bias.

Bryce must stand down now - she cannot wait for the crisis to envelop her and us.

None of this is very surprising. The duty of Governor-General to be an impartial adjudicator in electoral crises is the most important part of the job.

When she accepted the position, on September 5, 2008, it is difficult to know if she knew Shorten was having an affair with her daughter but given that the marriage occurred 14 months later, it is probable that she did.

In any event, with an upcoming election in 2010, her position as Governor-General, when her son-in-law was a leading Labor politician and powerbroker, was always going to be precarious.

If there had been a convincing outright result to the election, these issues may not have arisen.

Australia is entitled to a Governor-General who is independent and above politics. We are also entitled to a Governor-General who does not have the appearance of bias.

It is the constitutional duty of Bryce to remove herself immediately. Otherwise there will be a real constitutional crisis.

Peter Faris QC is a Melbourne barrister.

Solution to political crisis is simple: let the people decide
Tony Koch - The Australian - August 25, 2010 12:00AM
THE advice from one of the country's most respected legal practitioners to the Governor-General is simple: "Let the people decide."

In settling the current political crisis, Quentin Bryce could use elements of the controversial precedent set by then governor-general John Kerr in 1975 when he sacked the Whitlam government, Bill Pincus QC, a former president of the Australian Law Council, suggested yesterday.

The important element that would bring about stable government is that another election should be called soon, Mr Pincus said.

"Sir John Kerr, who sacked the federal Labor government in 1975, was much criticised by the Labor side which had appointed him.

"Whether he did it as cleverly as he might have done is arguable, but he achieved the result that the government, which could not guarantee supply because of Senate obstruction, ceased.

"He installed Malcolm Fraser as prime minister and instructed him that an election had to be held as soon as possible, and so the people of Australia settled the issue.
"A situation with some similarities arose in Queensland in 1987, when the governor and former chief justice Sir Walter Campbell put an end to the political career of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen -- who incidentally had appointed him to the vice-regal position.

"Does anybody really believe that both Sir John Kerr and Sir Walter Campbell would not have had a lot of sleepless nights over those decisions?

"But they did their duty as they saw fit, and the political impasse was addressed."

Mr Pincus, a retired Federal Court judge who also served for nine years on Queensland's Court of Appeal, said it was nonsense to suggest Dr Bryce could not make necessary decisions because of a possible conflict of interest brought about through her daughter being married to Labor frontbencher Bill Shorten.

He said Ms Bryce had "a discretion unfettered by any law" to act to solve any impasse she saw inhibiting stable government.

"In doing what has to be done, the Governor-General will get little guidance from the law," Mr Pincus stated. "The problems are typically practical ones, involving common sense and fairness rather than legal rules . . . A defect of our Constitution, some think, is that it leaves the governor-general role undefined in most respects but gives the office-holder sweeping powers."

Mr Pincus said that in deciding who should govern, the Governor-General was not obliged to take notice of promises made by the independents .

"A government which is dependent on the whims of a few no doubt well-meaning independent MPs would be a very weak one," he said.

Hunt parliament - let the people decide

2010-08-28T10:29:00.002+08:00

We need to stand up for multiculturalism

2010-08-20T11:05:00.000+08:00

SAY NO TO RACISM

Mr. Pino Migliorino,
FECCA - Chairman
admin@fecca.org.au

Dear Mr. Migliorino,

You are to be congratulated for standing up for multiculturalism and it is so sad that both political parties have been using "anti-multiculturalism" to win votes!

How low can they go in Australia?!!

The media is not doing much better during this campaign.

Yours sincerely,
Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
unitypartywa@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
http://twitter.com/unitypartywa (Uploaded)
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/ (Uploaded)
Phone/Fax: 61893681884
Date: 20-Aug-2010.
Environmental friendly-save the trees-use Email
Can you afford to give Bigpond a try?

We need to stand up for multiculturalism
August 20, 2010 - 6:54AM
The portrayal in this election of diversity as a villain that threatens the comfortable lives of Australians urgently needs some political will to defend multiculturalism.
This campaign has been hijacked by appeals to the odd marginal vote and pits vulnerable groups against each other, a remnant of the old habits of colonisation.

When the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia consulted its membership to gauge reactions to these elections, many bemoaned the "divide and conquer" principle of the rhetoric.

Politicians have appealed to the lowest common denominator of fear among migrants by portraying new arrivals as people who stay in hotels, are provided housing, jump metaphorical queues and take away the jobs of the other vulnerable migrant communities.

Australia's last multicultural policy expired in 2006. The Rudd government appointed the Australian Multicultural Advisory Council to advise the government on multicultural issues with a view to fostering better social cohesion. The council produced The People of Australia report in April, but since then there has been mostly silence about its recommendations from all sides.

In this campaign, migrants have been approached to affirm the anti-diversity stands of political parties. In some sort of diabolical logic, this seems to legitimise xenophobia. One quote from a migrant Ola Abdelmaguid in the council's People of Australia says it all: ". . . the media makes a lot of myths. They often select the most extreme person. And people believe what they hear and see."

Multiculturalism is a global phenomenon, perhaps this is why it is not popular in the current election debates, which have been focused (in the words of the Nobel prize winning Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore) within the "narrow, domestic walls" of Australian politics.

If anyone bothers to go to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, which is where one should logically go for information about such matters, it will clarify some of the numbers being bandied about regarding population.

The fact of the matter is that two-thirds of our migration intake in recent years are temporary migrants including students and highly skilled 457 workers. The latter form part of the global labour market and are influenced by factors beyond Australia's control. This information is available to the public. So how come we persist in holding 4000 odd vulnerable people fleeing life threatening situations responsible for the future of Australia's living standards, resources, infrastructure and border security? What is the real intention of this unrealistic premise?

Australian policy has been in retreat from multiculturalism for some time now. The divide and conquer strategy of the elections might deliver a short term win for politicians but in the long term it turns communities against each other and will undo any good that governments have tried to do in building social cohesion. The challenge for Australia is to learn from some of our Asian neighbours and conceptualise population and diversity as assets rather than as threats.

For some time we modelled multiculturalism to the world, we need to find the confidence to do this again.

Pino Migliorino is chairman of the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia.

A 3rd World War looming?

2010-08-02T09:30:00.000+08:00

Mr. Ban Ki-moon
UN Secretary General,
BanKimoon@un.org

Dear Secretary General,

We refer to the reports below for your information.

We urge the United Nation to investigate whether the US in conducting "military exercise" in the Far East is instigating "instability and unnecessary provocation" of no International benefits to all Man kind.
A 3rd world war must be prevented at all costs!

We look forward to hearing from you in due course.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
unitypartywa@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
http://twitter.com/unitypartywa (Updated)
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/ (Updated)
Phone/Fax: 61893681884
Date: 02-Aug-2010.
Environmental friendly-save the trees-use Email
Can you afford to give Bigpond a try?
Mr. Barack Obama,
President of America
info@barackobama.com
Dear President Obama,

Remembered you asked us for support before your election and we have supported you because we did not like former George Bush's warmongering activities.

One does not have to be a brain surgeon to see through America's pathetic excuse to conduct military exercises in the Yellow Sea. The Americans used
the Gulf of Tonkin incidence as an excuse to get involved in the Vietnam War. Looks like history is repeating itself and the Americans still have not learn those lessons from the Korean War, Vietnam War, Iraq invasion and the invasion of Afghanistan. America is no better than Iraq under Saddam Hussein who invaded Kuwait some years ago.

It is so obvious to the whole world that the sinking of the Cheonam is a fabrication of South Korea and the US to implicate North Korea (see first video clip). The planned military exercise is none other than an exercise to intimidate North Korea and to send a provocative message to China. Why is the US sending over whelming military forces to exercise at the Yellow Sea which is an area close to the Chinese territory? Would America accept a similar situation if the Chinese and Russian navies conduct military exercises in the Gulf of Mexico or off the coast of California or Florida?

Mr President, your country is in a economic crisis. Do you think it would be better off concentrating your energies getting your country out of the economic doldrums and leave China alone as this country has been a role model to many peaceful nations in forging world peace and harmony? It seems that nearly every American president that comes into office has to be involved in a war or wars of some sort in order to prove to be macho and in control. This strange American psyche is a blot to your nation and as such, America has lost the respect of people in many countries.

As a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the world looks upon you as a leader in forging peace. We hope that you will go for total disarmament of nuclear weapons including those nations that are nuclear armed at present. If America and any other country have nuclear weapons, they have no right to prevent other nations from acquiring nuclear weapons as well. What is good for the goose is also good for the gander.

You are to be congratulated for getting the Senate to pass the Wall Street Reform Bill and no doubt you will sign it at your earliest opportunity.

Eddie Hwang
27-Jul-2010.

Gillard's smartest move: becoming another Hanson

2010-07-21T08:35:00.000+08:00

Gillard's smartest move: becoming another Hanson

John Pasquarelli - The Australian - July 20, 2010 12:00AM HOW many more solutions will there be as Liberal and Labor stand toe to toe over the constant stream of boats illegally entering our waters?

Long ago, we should have seriously reviewed our membership of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, as changing times have swept the original motives for its creation aside.

Australia benefitted hugely from the many post WWII migrants and refugees who came here, rapidly assimilated and locked arms with the rest of us.

Before he was garrotted by Labor thuggees, Kevin Rudd came out in favour of a "Big Australia", but that set the alarm bells clanging with mainstream Australia, as it coincided with his disastrous policy on people smuggling that resulted in boats arriving almost every day, as well as a continuous stream of media reports detailing the ethnicity of criminal offenders despite the PC brigade, including some senior police, trying to censor such material.............
In 1996 when Pauline Hanson called for "all Australians to be treated equally" and for ATSIC to be abolished, most politicians and the media vilified her in the most venomous way for her attack on the Aboriginal industry, but when Noel Pearson made similar comments 10 years later, he was warmly embraced.

Remember Hanson on how she had the right to invite who she wanted into her home and the famous "we are in danger of being swamped by Asians" statement?

Labor's polling has obviously shown that ordinary Australians are mightily concerned about these issues more than ever and in a breathtaking act of gross hypocrisy, Julia Gillard has dumped Rudd's Big Australia, as well as veering away from his asylum-seeker policy.

So much for Rudd saying that he would never move to the right on such matters and expecting Gillard to heel to his command.

Gillard's brazen echoing of Hanson has her encouraging mainstream Australia by exhorting it to debate issues such as border security and the boatpeople without fear of being labelled racist and intimidated by the agents of political correctness.

Calling for openness in public debate to be a mark of her prime ministership as long as people spoke with goodwill and were not critical of other's race or culture tells me that after all her clever and too-smart plagiarism of Hanson, Gillard fails to understand that it is cultural incompatibility that is the root of all the problems connected with refugees and migrants, the element that hinders us bringing in, in her words, "the right type of migrant".

It was suggested to Tony Abbott months ago that he should embrace the mainstream by encouraging people to debate all those issues connected to multiculturalism and immigration via dedicated postal and email addresses, but nothing happened and now Gillard has gazumped him.

Neither Gillard nor Abbott have an effective solution to the people smugglers as the successful way would be far too hard for most politicians to handle.

Our laws must change and people smugglers and their clients would be warned that they face arrest on criminal charges and serious time in prison: no visas, no "Hotel Australia". All boats would be destroyed and big bounties for bringing people smugglers into Australian jurisdiction would be advertised.........

She is now standing in front of the cameras like an automaton delivering her spin words "sustainable" and "moving forward" but her cynical intent to morph into Hanson may prove to be one of her best moves.

John Pasquarelli is a former adviser to Pauline Hanson.

Unmarried Gillard wedded to a nation that upholds injustice

2010-07-20T09:20:00.000+08:00

Unmarried Gillard wedded to a notion that upholds injustice

SAMANTHA STEVENSON - July 17, 2010

When Julia Gillard became Prime Minister, many of us were triumphant at this ultimate smashing of the glass ceiling in Australian politics. Some chose to see it as a progressive step forward for those of the marginalised red-haired population, who now had an Australian celebrity to celebrate with more serious credentials than Nicole Kidman or Cameron Ling from the Geelong Cats.

One person declared ''Gillard is doing it for all the unmarried, barren atheists'', and that she clearly understood ''the church and the state should butt out of people's private relationships''.

Amid this optimism that Gillard's difference to her prime ministerial predecessors apparently represented, Australian gays dared to hope the refreshing lack of religious affinity at the highest level would mark a new approach to gay marriage rights that differed to the social conservatism of the Howard and Rudd years. It was wrong.

Gillard took time out from her mining tax deal-brokering to declare it was still the government's view, as well as her personal one, that gay marriage should not be legalised in Australia. She told Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O on morning radio that: ''We believe the Marriage Act is appropriate in its current form, that is, recognising that marriage is between a man and a woman.''

Yet treating marriage as some grand prize of heterosexuality reinforces the ultimate dichotomy between a man and a woman. While extending the right to marry to gay couples would be a progressive step forward for the homosexual community, it would also smash another cultural norm - the gender inequality of marriage. Even in today's most liberated households, women predominantly take on the bulk of domestic and child-rearing duties, even if they work in some capacity outside the home.

Some may choose to do so. But while fighting over whose turn it is to clean the toilet after mutually busy days at the office may seem mundane compared to fighting (as our mothers did) for the right to work outside the home in the first place, for many married women choices remain dangerously limited.

Bettina Arndt recently chose to deride Gillard's de facto status, claiming as Australia's most significant female role model, Gillard was doing it all wrong. Apparently the idea of Julia and Tim ''playing house'' in The Lodge without a marriage certificate set a bad example for us women, as de facto relationships limit our choices whereas marriage strengthened them.

Yet under Gillard, same-sex relationships will remain de facto by default, and they, obviously, cannot be characterised by a lack of choice for one partner based on gender difference. There is more at play than the absence of wedding rings...........

"Yellow peril" racism rear its ugly head

2010-04-04T08:14:00.000+08:00

Professor David Day,
Vice Chancellor - La Trobe University,
david.day@latrobe.edu.au

Dear Professor Day,

We refer to the report by Professor Marilyn Lake for your information.

We wish to congratulate Professor Lake for her historian’s balanced and responsible report as she is acknowledging the fact that as Australians, we must continue to practice gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity as our exclusive possessions of no one race or religion but as belonging to all.

However, as a historian, she forgot to be objective enough to point out that due to various unions pressures, Labor is already seen to be reverting to its former White Australia Policy by raising the English Dictation Test score from 4.5 to 5 last year. As a result of this discriminatory policy, no 457 Visa workers from China can now land on our shore.

This reminds us that racist Arthur Caldwell’s statement seems to us to be still well and alive: "Two Wongs don't make a White" and we would add that “two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Yours sincerely,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
unitypartywa@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
http://twitter.com/unitywa (Uploaded)
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/
Date: 04-Apr-2010.
Environmental friendly-Save the trees-Use Email
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?

MARILYN LAKE - April 3, 2010 - Age
Chinese were once vilified in Australia, a travesty we'd do well not to repeat.
THE harsh sentence handed down to Stern Hu this week and radio talkback on Chinese investment in Melbourne real estate have converged in focusing attention in Australia on the consequences of the rise of Chinese power in the contemporary world.
Business leaders join would-be home owners in waxing indignant at the new turn of events. Australians are complaining about being sidelined. Suddenly it seems that Charles Pearson's remarkable prophecy of almost 120 years ago has come to pass.
In 1893, Pearson, a leading Victorian Liberal politician and journalist, predicted in what would become probably the most influential book ever written by an Australian - National Life and Character: A Forecast - that the day would surely come when the Chinese, victims of colonial persecution, would become a great power in the world. White men would be humiliated, ''elbowed and hustled, and perhaps even thrust aside by peoples whom we looked down upon as servile''.
Across the world, startled readers took notice. Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Pearson from Washington praising his book, but asserting that the timid colonial was surely mistaken. In any contest between East and West, according to the future American president, white men, soon to embark on new imperial conquests, would certainly prevail.
The Athenaeum magazine in London, on the other hand, urged its readers to heed the new insight deriving from Pearson's different perspective: ''He regards the march of affairs from the Australian point of view, and next to Australia what he seems to see most clearly is the growth of Chinese power.''
But Pearson's forecast was not as original as it seemed. In fact, he borrowed the idea and, in some cases, the exact words from the Chinese colonists among whom he lived in Melbourne.
Subject to relentless discrimination and humiliation at the hands of Victorians accusing them of alien customs and cheap labour, Chinese community leaders such as Lowe Kong Meng and Cheok Hong Cheong were moved to write numerous letters, booklets and petitions demanding fair treatment and recognition of their common human rights. They pointed out that Chinese worked just as hard and enjoyed material comforts just as much as other Australians.
They were often well educated, literate and usually law-abiding, and they objected strongly to the insults heaped upon the Chinaman solely because of the ''colour of his skin''. But perhaps the time for forbearance was past. Evil treatment, they said, would bear bitter fruit and wounds would fester.
''A time may come … probably will come sooner than is supposed, when the presence and power of China as a great nation will be felt in these seas.'' Pearson made the warning his own.
Australia's response to the prospect of Chinese power was the White Australia Policy. The passage of the Immigration Restriction Act and the ruse of a dictation test were aimed at barring all Asiatics from migrating to the new Commonwealth of Australia. A raft of state and federal legislation further discriminated in employment and welfare policy against those already in the country.
The number of Chinese-born Australians rapidly shrank to just a few thousand. With the end of racial discrimination in immigration, the numbers of Chinese migrating to Australia and arriving as visitors has risen again.
No longer accused of augmenting the ranks of cheap labour, they are now attacked for their apparent wealth and blamed for the difficulties experienced by young white Australians in buying their own homes, in realising the Australian dream.
The offence of the Chinese, it seems, is that they now have too much money. Increasingly, callers to talkback radio blame not just negatively geared investors exploiting Australian tax law, but Chinese buyers who speak Mandarin.
The visibility of Chinese buyers at auctions makes for good stories on the evening news - other foreign investors are not so easily identified.
A hundred years ago, warnings about the rise of China as a world power and the migration of thousands of Chinese people to southern Africa, Australasia and North America led to the adoption of racist policies of exclusion and discrimination, whose legacies continue to haunt us, as, for example, in Indian reaction to incidents of racial violence in Melbourne.
In responding to the housing crisis, let us be wary of reverting to type. Recent calls for tighter regulation of foreign investment in Australia, along with demands for cuts in the migration intake, deserve wide and open discussion, but we should not repeat the mistakes of the past by making race or nationality or colour the basis of our grievances and the ground on which we shape our policy.
Marilyn Lake is professor of history at La Trobe University.

Ombudsmman's Duty to investigate Maladministration

2010-03-31T07:53:00.002+08:00

----- Original Message -----

From: Unity Party WA

To: Commissioner -WA Police ; general@lpbwa.com ; Chair - legal pcc wa ; piccc@piccc.wa.gov.au ; Minister.Porter@dpc.wa.gov.au ; Ombudsman - WA

Cc: Premier - WA ; President - High Court

Sent: Monday, February 08, 2010 9:32 AM

Subject: Re: OMBUDSMAN’S DUTY TO INVESTIGATE MALADMINISTRATION

The Ombudsman of Western Australia
mail@ombudsman.wa.gov.au
The Attorney General of Western Australia
Minister.Porter@dpc.wa.gov.au
The Legal Practice Board of Western Australia
general@lpbwa.com
The Legal Profession Complaints Committee of Western Australia
lpcc@lpbwa.com
The Parliamentary Inspector of Western Australia
piccc@piccc.wa.gov.au
WA Commissioner for Police
commissioner@police.wa.gov.au
Dear Sirs

OMBUDSMAN’S DUTY TO INVESTIGATE MALADMINISTRATION

OF GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS - HOODWINKING THE PUBLIC?

I refer to the case of our Member Mr. Nicholas N Chin, Barrister & Solicitor. He alleges that he is a subject of malicious persecution caused by the maladministration of the Legal Practice Board of the Department of the Attorney General. He also suffers the detriment caused to him by Registrar Powell’s maladministration of court records of the Supreme Court. Both of them made wrongful administrative decisions thereby helping erring lawyers to achieve private and personal advantages and at the same time thus enabling them to commit crimes and cause public detriment with impunity. Both of them are not involved in making judicial decisions, the merits of which could not be questioned by the Ombudsman. They are involved in maladministration of the government departments for which the Ombudsman has the statutory right to interfere so as to promote better governance of Western Australia. The facts of the case are available at the blogspot of Mr. Chin, which you may access by Googling “nicholasnchin”.

In accordance with s.14 of the Parliamentary Commisioner Act, 1971 (WA), the Honourable Ombudman should therefore exercise his public statutory duty to investigate the following government Departments for maladministration, failing which, the public would have no choice but to compel him to perform his public obligations and duties:

a) The Department of the Attorney General, particularly the Attorney General himself is to be held responsible for his administrative decision in allowing a pseudo Full Board of the Legal Practice Board to fester and to usurp the statutory functions of that regulator of the Legal Profession of WA. The pseudo Full Board was able to influence the independence, integrity and impartiality of the lawyer’s watchdog body, the Legal Profession Complaints Committee. The pseudo Full Board’s unsavoury influence enabled that watchdog body to achieve a clandestine purpose which is against the public interests. This wrongful administration of that Department is thus causing a public detriment as members of the public are constantly being robbed, plundered and fleeced by erring lawyers with impunity. Many cited examples of these makes it abundantly clear that the Ombudsman should act and act quickly in order to stem the tide of a rapidly deterioration of what used to be an efficient government of Western Australia.

b) The Police Department of Western Australia should be taken to tasks for neglecting to make the administrative decision to investigate the criminal conduct of lawyers who infiltrate the Pseduo Full Board, the watchdog body of lawyers in WA and the corrupt judicial officers who manipulate court records for the personal advantage of erring lawyers. We acknowledge that it is not allowed to investigate lawyers and judicial officers if they are doing justice for the common people. But the situation would be different, if they are found to be manipulating the administrative affairs of the courts and the government departments to achieve the clandestine purpose of perverting the course of justice and to achieve a private advantage as opposed to the achievement of a public advantage in the public interests.

c) The Case Management Registrar D Powell of the Supreme Court of Western Australia had participated in a purposive wrongful administrative decision to cover up erring lawyer David Taylor. This had enabled the learned David Taylor to commit the crimes of perjury contrary to s.124 and the falsification of court records contrary to s.85 of the Criminal Code Act, 1913. The cover-up of these crimes in contained in his letter dated 11.6.2009 that has the effect of misleading the Court of Appeal in the case of Chin v Hall [2009] WASCA 216 to make a mistake in its reasoning at paragraphs 54 and 55 of that judgment. But for this error, the public detriment would not have been caused. This conduct of a judicial officer is contrary to the meaning of being corrupt as defined by Jean-Franois Revel (ENCOUNTER March, 1987) in the following words: “It means misapplying political or administrative power, whether directly or indirectly outside its proper spheres, for one’s own financial or material advantage, or in order to distribute the gains among one’s friends, colleagues, relations or supporters.”

We would appreciate your comment and action as our members therefore demand that we receive a reply to this letter within 14 days or we will have no choice but to upload this letter onto our website for public information.

Yours faithfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
http://twitter.com/unitywa
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 08-Feb-2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?

China reports on US human rights record

2010-03-27T15:57:00.000+08:00

Mr. Barrack Obama
President of the United States,
president@whitehouse.gov

Dear President,

We refer to the report below for your information.

Would you like to comment, please?

We wait for your reply in due course.

Yours respectfully,
Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
http://twitter.com/unitywa (Uploaded)
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 27-Mar--2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?

China reports on US human rights record
2010-03-12 16:50:03
BEIJING - China Friday retorted US criticism by publishing its own report on the US human rights record.

"As in previous years, the reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory," said the Information Office of the State Council in its report on the US human rights record.

The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009 was in retaliation to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009 issued by the US Department of State on March 11.

The report is "prepared to help people around the world understand the real situation of human rights in the United States," said the report.

The report reviewed the human rights record of the United States in 2009 from six perspectives: life, property and personal security; civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; racial discrimination; rights of women and children; and the US' violation of human rights against other countries.

It criticized the United States for taking human rights as "a political instrument to interfere in other countries' internal affairs, defame other nations' image and seek its own strategic interests."

China advised the US government to draw lessons from the history, put itself in a correct position, strive to improve its own human rights conditions and rectify its acts in the human rights field.

This is the 11th consecutive year that the Information Office of China's State Council has issued a human rights record of the United States to answer the US State Department's annual report.

"At a time when the world is suffering a serious human rights disaster caused by the US subprime crisis-induced global financial crisis, the US government still ignores its own serious human rights problems but revels in accusing other countries. It is really a pity," the report said.

Gallop blasts Racism in Australia

2010-03-20T07:30:00.000+08:00

The Editor,
The West Australian
westinfo@wanews.com.au

Dear Editor,

We refer to the report below and wish to congratulate the former WA Premier Dr. Geoff Gallop for telling the truth about Racism in Australia.

It is a strange, enigmatic and tragic problem happening in our society which does not seem to want to go away. None of us would like to see himself or herself as a racist, yet this strange enigmatic force is very real, and it persists in its tenacious ways with its tentacle-like structures that permeate even our justice system let alone the school systems and the government departments.

Just look at the treatment of our Members Ms Lili Kang and Mr. Nicholas Chin. Their stories contain rich and meaningful lessons for us. Theirs are on our website: www.unitywa.org and http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/ and the blogspot of Mr. Chin which you can access it by typing “nicholasnchin” on Google.

We are criticizing about Malaysia and its opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim being deprived of his rights in a country without true democracy but this very situation is happening in our own back yard. How can we be so hypercritical?

Yours sincerely,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
http://twitter.com/unitywa (uploaded)
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 20-Mar-2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?

Gallop blasts racism

PHILIPPA PERRY, The West Australian March 18, 2010, 5:02 am

Australia has significant pockets of racism and has seen a re- emergence of nationalism, according to former WA premier Geoff Gallop.

In a speech to be delivered to a Human Rights Arts and Film Festival breakfast this morning, Dr Gallop says Australia should have a charter of rights to benefit ordinary people as well as the marginalised and vulnerable in society.

"There are a lot of good things about Australia but one of them isn't the re-emergence of a form of political and cultural nationalism backed up at times by a particularly crude and nasty form of populism," he says.

"We describe ourselves as an egalitarian and tolerant nation but significant and unjustified inequalities remain as do not- insignificant pockets of racism."

Dr Gallop says Australia is the only democratic nation without a national bill or charter of rights and that while our rights receive some recognition nationally, it is very limited.

He says a charter of rights could be given a role in the legislative process, the administration of policy and the interpretation of the law.

Dr Gallop says there is a deep suspicion among elements of the political elite that a Human Rights Act will make it too hard for them to govern when faced with challenges such as terrorism and crime generally. "Not having a charter of rights legitimised by the Parliament sends a message to the community that the government itself is fearful of subjecting itself to serious human rights scrutiny," he said.

Follow thewest.com.au on Twitter

***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

The Ombudsman of Western Australia

mail@ombudsman.wa.gov.au

The Attorney General of Western Australia

Minister.Porter@dpc.wa.gov.au

The Legal Practice Board of Western Australia

general@lpbwa.com

The Legal Profession Complaints Committee of Western Australia

lpcc@lpbwa.com

The Parliamentary Inspector of Western Australia

piccc@piccc.wa.gov.au

WA Commissioner for Police

commissioner@police.wa.gov.au

Dear Sirs,

OMBUDSMAN’S DUTY TO INVESTIGATE MALADMINISTRATION

OF GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS - HOODWINKING THE PUBLIC?

I refer to the case of our Member Mr. Nicholas N Chin, Barrister & Solicitor. He alleges that he is a subject of malicious persecution caused by the maladministration of the Legal Practice Board of the Department of the Attorney General. He also suffers the detriment caused to him by Registrar Powell’s maladministration of court records of the Supreme Court. Both of them made wrongful administrative decisions thereby helping erring lawyers to achieve private and personal advantages and at the same time thus enabling them to commit crimes and cause public detriment with impunity. Both of them are not involved in making judicial decisions, the merits of which could not be questioned by the Ombudsman. They are involved in maladministration of the government departments for which the Ombudsman has the statutory right to interfere so as to promote better governance of Western Australia. The facts of the case are available at the blogspot of Mr. Chin, which you may access by Googling “nicholasnchin”.

In accordance with s.14 of the Parliamentary Commisioner Act, 1971 (WA), the Honourable Ombudman should therefore exercise his public statutory duty to investigate the following government Departments for maladministration, failing which, the public would have no choice but to compel him to perform his public obligations and duties:

a) The Department of the Attorney General, particularly the Attorney General himself is to be held responsible for his administrative decision in allowing a pseudo Full Board of the Legal Practice Board to fester and to usurp the statutory functions of that regulator of the Legal Profession of WA. The pseudo Full Board was able to influence the independence, integrity and impartiality of the lawyer’s watchdog body, the Legal Profession Complaints Committee. The pseudo Full Board’s unsavoury influence enabled that watchdog body to achieve a clandestine purpose which is against the public interests. This wrongful administration of that Department is thus causing a public detriment as members of the public are constantly being robbed, plundered and fleeced by erring lawyers with impunity. Many cited examples of these makes it abundantly clear that the Ombudsman should act and act quickly in order to stem the tide of a rapidly deterioration of what used to be an efficient government of Western Australia.

b) The Police Department of Western Australia should be taken to tasks for neglecting to make the administrative decision to investigate the criminal conduct of lawyers who infiltrate the Pseduo Full Board, the watchdog body of lawyers in WA and the corrupt judicial officers who manipulate court records for the personal advantage of erring lawyers. We acknowledge that it is not allowed to investigate lawyers and judicial officers if they are doing justice for the common people. But the situation would be different, if they are found to be manipulating the administrative affairs of the courts and the government departments to achieve the clandestine purpose of perverting the course of justice and to achieve a private advantage as opposed to the achievement of a public advantage in the public interests.

c) The Case Management Registrar D Powell of the Supreme Court of Western Australia had participated in a purposive wrongful administrative decision to cover up erring lawyer David Taylor. This had enabled the learned David Taylor to commit the crimes of perjury contrary to s.124 and the falsification of court records contrary to s.85 of the Criminal Code Act, 1913. The cover-up of these crimes in contained in his letter dated 11.6.2009 that has the effect of misleading the Court of Appeal in the case of Chin v Hall [2009] WASCA 216 to make a mistake in its reasoning at paragraphs 54 and 55 of that judgment. But for this error, the public detriment would not have been caused. This conduct of a judicial officer is contrary to the meaning of being corrupt as defined by Jean-Franois Revel (ENCOUNTER March, 1987) in the following words: “It means misapplying political or administrative power, whether directly or indirectly outside its proper spheres, for one’s own financial or material advantage, or in order to distribute the gains among one’s friends, colleagues, relations or supporters.”

We would appreciate your comment and action as our members therefore demand that we receive a reply to this letter within 14 days or we will have no choice but to upload this letter onto our website for public information.

Yours faithfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
http://twitter.com/unitywa
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 08-Feb -2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?

RESULTS OF APPLICATIONS FOR SPECIAL LEAVE TO APPEAL LISTED FOR THE PUBLICATION OF REASONS AND PRONOUNCEMENT OF ORDERS CANBERRA WEDNESDAY, 10 MARCH 2010 No. Applicant Respondent Court appealed from Result

4.
Chin
Legal Practice Board of Western Australia (P36/2009)
Supreme Court of Western Australia (Court of Appeal) [2009] WASCA 117
Application Dismissed [2010] HCASL 4

Dalai Lama CIA Monk exposed

2010-03-19T14:04:00.002+08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmw5FIjDDBY&feature=player_embedded

Japanese surrender

2010-03-16T08:59:00.000+08:00

http://enka2.netorage.com:9711/harddisk/user/lyk36/mumess/376-macarthurjap.htm

Japanese surrender

2010-03-10T07:48:00.000+08:00

http://enka2.netorage.com:9711/harddisk/user/lyk36/mumess/376-macarthurjap.htm

No reform for political funding

2010-03-01T09:52:00.000+08:00

Mr. Kevin Rudd,
Prime Minister of Australia
postmaster@pmc.gov.au

Dear Prime Minister,

We refer to the reports below for your information.

Would you like to comment, please?

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
http://twitter.com/unitywa (Uploaded)
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 01-Mar-2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?
Corruption-buster slams the politics of deception
Tony Koch - The Australian - February 25, 2010 12:00AM
FORMER anti-corruption commissioner Tony Fitzgerald has hit out at what he sees in Australia as an amoral political culture run by a governing class preoccupied with amassing power for itself.

The man credited with cleaning up public life in Queensland through the corruption inquiry he headed in the late 1980s told The Australian yesterday that young people felt "totally excluded" from decision-making.

Mr Fitzgerald will return to the public stage in Queensland next Tuesday when he launches a biography by this journalist on former Queensland Liberal leader and businessman Terry White, and later that day launches another book of essays that analyses the legacy of his landmark inquiry.

In that publication, The Fitzgerald Legacy, he writes in the foreword that small groups control the Labor and Liberal parties "and indirectly the national destiny".

"Dynasties are emerging as politics become, for some, the family business," he writes.

"Misleading or deceptive conduct is barred in commerce, but secrecy and misinformation (euphemistically called spin) are routinely employed by politicians.
"Political debate is often marked by spiteful, juvenile point-scoring and attempts to discredit each other, inevitably discrediting all participants.

"Media management insults and confuses the electorate, which is denied the comprehensive, accurate information which is essential to the proper functioning of democracy."

Most pointedly, Mr Fitzgerald writes that (political) access and influence can be purchased and patronage is dispensed to supporters and used to silence potential critics.

That is a repeat of a warning Mr Fitzgerald issued last July when he addressed a Brisbane function marking the 20th anniversary of the delivery of his report.

He then criticised the plethora of "consultants" who fed off government -- most of them former MPs or party hacks.

Mr Fitzgerald said yesterday that "the political class" was interested in the acquisition and exercise of power, not democratic theory.

"Mature democracies restrain self-serving activities by dividing power and imposing effective constraints. Under our weaker system, whichever party is in government, with effective parliamentary control, can and routinely does indulge its adherents, supporters and ideology," he said.

"Well-connected individuals and small, usually wealthy, groups are provided with access to and influence on the political process. Decisions favouring special interests are common.

"Because all parties grasp opportunities when in power, opposition criticism is muted and the risk of an electoral backlash is low.

"Instead, the general public is becoming increasingly cynical, apathetic and disengaged."

Gifts lavished on senior WA public servants
Joe Spagnolo, political reporter - October 02, 2009 06:40pm

ALMOST 100 senior WA public servants and ministerial officers have been lavished with thousands of dollars in freebies from some of the State's biggest companies and organizations, it has been revealed.

The public servants - working in government agencies such as Treasury, Planning and the Department of Premier and Cabinet - received more than $30,000 in gifts and free travel from September last year until the end of July this year.

New figures show the fat cats were treated to cricket, football, rugby matches and golf days as well as ballet, circus and Leeuwin concert tickets.

They also received bottles of scotch and wine, chocolates and clothing.

Ministerial staff within the Office of the Premier helped themselves to chopsticks, scented candles and an ornamental fan courtesy of Japanese businesses, while others received stamp collections, silk scarfs and carvings from the Japanese.

Amongst those offering the freebies were banking institutions, real-estate groups and mining companies.

In one case, a Department of Treasury and Finance officer spent two nights at the Caves Hotel in Yallingup, valued at $500, as a guest of the Commonwealth Bank, which provides banking services to government agencies.

Details of the perks were released by the government following a series of questions by Labor MP Mark McGowan.

Premier Colin Barnett has refused to answer a series of questions put to him by PerthNow about the perks, issuing this statement through his media adviser: ``The receipt and giving of gifts throughout government and opposition is done in accordance with the Ministerial Code of Conduct.’’

The Premier’s adviser and the Office of the Public Sector Commission said this week that each individual government agency had its own code of conduct which dealt with freebies and that heads of agencies decided whether it was appropriate for gifts and travel should be accepted.

``In the case of the Department of Premier and Cabinet it conducted ethical and accountable decision making training for all departmental officers which included specific case studies on accepting gifts,'' a spokeswoman for the Premier said.

Mr McGowan this week raised concerns about freebies for public servants and other government officers.

``I don’t think there is a problem going to the footy but there is a serious issue when there is a business relationship between the provider and the receiver – such as the CBA providing free accommodation to an officer from Treasury,’’ he said.
Political bigwigs dined out in the lap of luxury
Patrick Lion - From: The Courier-Mail - January 27, 2010 4:00AM
MINISTERS and advisers were wined and dined by Australia's richest woman onboard one of the world's most exclusive cruise liners.

The incident took place while her project was under State Government review, the Courier-Mail reports.

Deputy Premier Paul Lucas, Mines Minister Stephen Robertson and Speaker John Mickel last month enjoyed hospitality aboard The World, a $350 million floating resort on which billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart owns a plush residence.

The office of Premier Anna Bligh yesterday backflipped on an earlier commitment and refused to release the full list of invitees for the dinner party but Transport Minister Rachel Nolan's chief-of-staff and Mr Robertson's policy adviser also attended.

Senior government sources said the Premier, Infrastructure Minister Stirling Hinchliffe and Ms Nolan had to reject their invites to the dinner last month while The World docked in Brisbane.
Details have emerged amid an integrity debate over links between business and State Government decision-makers.

The intimate event was held shortly after the Premier met Ms Rinehart in her Executive Building office on December 17 to discuss and accept her application for the Government to declare an "infrastructure facility of significance" on a planned train line from her two proposed central-west Queensland mines.

It allowed Ms Rinehart's firm, Hancock Prospecting, to start a feasibility study into the projects this year.

A green light for the application would mean the Government would recognise the 500km rail corridor, between the company's Alpha and Kevin's Corner mines in the Galilee Basin to the coast at Abbot Point, as economically and socially important for the state.

Government co-ordinator-general Colin Jensen is also still conducting overall environmental assessments into the two projects, which are valued at $16.5 billion, as well as a nearby $7.5 billion proposal by Liberal Nationals' billionaire backer Clive Palmer.

Department sources said dinner guests had to provide passports when boarding the highly exclusive international vessel, which is home to millionaires and billionaires who each have spent up to $22 million on residences

To preserve democracy, political donations must be limited
December 20, 2009 - age
WHAT price democracy in Australia? As far as the broad mass of taxpayers are concerned, not that much, it seems. For the 2007 federal election, taxpayers chipped in about $49 million to help political parties run their campaigns, up from $10.3 million in 1987.

That might sound like a lot, but compared to public funding for elections in other countries, it's relatively small beer.

This is not to say Australian elections are cheap. In fact, the cost of funding them has been rocketing. Labor's spending rose by 116 per cent in real terms over the 20 years to 2004. Liberal spending surged 136 per cent.

Public funding makes up just 20 per cent of election spending in Australia. The rest comes from a morass of donations, membership and affiliation fees, investments and fund-raising.

Ask Premier John Brumby and he might say that this is all part of the democratic process. Is it not a basic freedom for individuals and companies to contribute to a political party if they wish?

But perhaps a more pertinent question is whether that ''basic freedom'' carries with it an even bigger cost: the erosion of the democratic process itself.

John Faulkner, previously special minister of state and now defence minister, warned in a green paper on electoral reform that ''spiralling costs'' of electioneering had created a campaigning ''arms race''.

This has heightened the danger that fund-raising pressures would open the door to donations that might attempt to buy access and influence.

Consider a recent report in The Age that coal company Exergen paid Victorian Labor for a private briefing with Brumby, before its $1.5 billion scheme to export 12 million tonnes of brown coal to India was examined by a state cabinet committee. Then there was Latrobe Fertilisers chairman and ALP donor Allan Blood, who reportedly paid $10,000 to sit next to Brumby at a fund-raising dinner. The company has proposed a $2 billion scheme to turn brown coal into fertiliser.

As Faulkner points out, there is a danger that ''third party'' participants could influence the electoral process without being subject to the same regulations that apply to political parties.

''Perceptions of the potentially distorting nature of large donations - either cash or resources - to political parties will degrade the public's trust in the integrity of the political process.'' The solution? Ban or severely limit political donations and increase the public funding of election campaigns to compensate for the lost revenue. And while we're at it, ban third-party advertising during campaigns.

This is what both major parties say they want to do. The Sunday Age reported last week that Labor had already drafted legislation to introduce reforms based on changes introduced in Canada and New Zealand.

The plan, which has become bogged down, would include limiting donations from individuals and organisations to about $1500. To make up for the loss, the taxpayer-funded contribution would be almost doubled from about $2.20 for each first preference vote to about $4.25.

All this sounds noble, but there are practical reasons too for the changes. In an age of growing cynicism, political parties are finding it increasingly difficult to raise the cash needed to fund election campaigns that include television and radio advertising, sophisticated use of electronic media and a blizzard of direct mail.

The NSW branch of the Labor Party is in a particularly parlous state because years of unrest and scandal in the State Government has cruelled their ability to raise corporate funds.

One Labor source said: ''It's being put in high-minded terms, but Labor federally is $8 million in debt, and Rudd point blank refuses to fund-raise. State branches are also in a parlous state.''

So what's the hold-up? The major sticking point is that the Federal Opposition wants union affiliation fees included in the definition of ''donation''.

But unions fear that if they lose the ability to pay Labor such fees - which are said to account for up to 70 per cent of the cost of running some state branches - they will be disenfranchised and eventually lose political influence within the party.

Despite Kevin Rudd's anti-union tough talk, Labor seems unwilling or unable to completely sever the umbilical cord financially linking it to the union movement and is continuing to insist that affiliation fees should not be included in the definition of ''donation''.

As long as this is the case, Faulkner's high-minded reformist agenda will not see the light of day and Australia's political parties will remain increasingly reliant on big business and the union movement to pay for their big-spending campaigns.

Josh Gordon is national political reporter for The Sunday Age

Lobbying & Political donations

6-February 2010 - smh

.........Brad Pedersen is a former councillor and founder of Democracy Watch, a coalition of senior academics and prominent judicial and political identities from across the political spectrum, focused on ''cleaning-up'' the political donations systems. ''Financial donations to political parties and candidates is the most corrupting force in our political system,'' Pedersen says.

''This is the dark underbelly of our political system. These donations are a serious threat to our democracy. The policy outcomes of all our governments risk being improperly influenced by huge corporations, powerful trade unions and wealthy individuals. Some donors even secure their influence by making equally enormous donations to both parties."

$5000 access to Labor ministers
ANDREW CLENNELL STATE POLITICAL EDITOR - October 29, 2009 - smh
FOR $5000 a head, business people and lobbyists can get the opportunity to hobnob with federal and state ministers at Labor's state conference in a fortnight.
A pamphlet being distributed by Labor officials advertises membership of the Business Observers Centre at the conference as $5000 a head or $2000 to $4000 a head for members of the Party's Business Dialogue group.

Membership of the business observers centre gives you the right to ''pre luncheon drinks'' with federal and state ministers and the ability to attend a breakfast meeting with the general secretary of NSW Labor, Matt Thistlethwaite.

It also entitles developers, hotel owners and others who pay the fee to attend business forums with state ministers Kristina Keneally, Eric Roozendaal, Joe Tripodi, Carmel Tebbutt and John Robertson. Forums will also be held with the federal ministers Julia Gillard, Anthony Albanese, Lindsay Tanner, Martin Ferguson, Tanya Plibersek, Craig Emerson and Mark Arbib.

Places are restricted to 80 takers, so the Labor Party hopes to raise $400,000.

The Greens MP Lee Rhiannon said yesterday: ''Yet again Labor is offering big business the opportunity to buy access that is not available to ordinary people. The Government appears to have learnt nothing from the string of political donation scandals …''

''The least the Labor Party organisers could do is to disclose who buys a $5000 pack to provide some transparency.''

The Labor Government is also under fire for hiring a director and shareholder in a major lobbying firm to become the chief of staff to the Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt.

Scott Gartrell, a cousin of the former Labor federal secretary Tim Gartrell, is a lobbyist who has resigned as a director of Government Relations Australia since his appointment, but still holds shares in the company. A spokeswoman for Ms Tebbutt said Mr Gartrell was ''in the process of disposing his shares … ''.

No reform for political funding
ROYCE MILLAR - January 13, 2010
THE Rudd Government has abandoned its promise of a new, cleaner system of political funding before the next election, prompting Opposition claims it has caved in to union pressure.

More than a year after the Government promised tougher controls on donations and expenditure in time for the next federal poll, Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig is refusing to back the promise.

Senator Ludwig would only say that the Government was still determined to achieve reform and was ''working with all parties'' to do so. He would not be drawn on the timing or likely detail of such legislation.

This marks a significant retreat on the pledge of his predecessor as special minister of state, John Faulkner, a champion of electoral reform who in September 2008 promised an end to the campaign finance ''arms race''.

At the time, Senator Faulkner told The Age: ''The electoral reforms will definitely be in place before the next election.''

Michael Ronaldson, the Coalition spokesman on electoral issues, accused the Government of crumbling under union pressure, saying ''momentum'' in negotiations stopped when unions started lobbying to shore up their ties with, and influence on, Labor.

Senator Ronaldson described Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's handling of the proposed changes as a disgrace. ''It is becoming clearer by the day that Kevin Rudd owes the unions and that they own him.

''It is increasingly clear that the level of union influence means that the reforms are all but dead in the water. And this is a great tragedy for this country.''

Senator Ludwig this week diverted attention to other parties involved in negotiations around the proposed Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill. ''In order for legislation to pass the Senate, we need agreement between Labor and the Liberals, Greens, Nationals and Independents,'' he said.

''Constructive talks with each party are continuing in order to build further support for the Government's campaign financing reform," he said.

The Age understands that broad agreement had been reached between the major and minor parties, including the Greens, about the need for key reforms, including controls on donations to political parties and campaign expenditure, regulation of third parties such as lobby groups and unions, and increased public funding for elections.

However the talks appear to have been derailed after lobbying by unions and party machines, in particular Victorian Labor. Unions are upset that one proposal on the bargaining table was a ban on union affiliation fees to the Labor Party, a major source of income for Labor which also gives unions a key role in party decision-making.

Victorian Labor wants to protect its income from both unions and corporations and is keen to ensure revenue continues to flow from controversial but successful fund-raising arm, Progressive Business, particularly as it faces both state and federal elections this year.

Labor MPs are also believed to have pressed the point that the proposed reforms had the potential to hurt Labor more than other parties.

It is unclear how Tony Abbott's ascension to the Liberal leadership has affected the party's approach.In a written statement to The Age this week, he said: ''The Liberal Party is open to discussions with the Government on this issue if they are genuinely seeking our views. Any new arrangement has got to be fair, it can't favour one side or another.''

Such sentiment is at odds with a speech he made earlier this week, in which he said he would oppose all Labor initiatives unless convinced ''beyond reasonable doubt'' the Government was right.

Ken Coghill, an associate professor at Monash University, argues that the activity of lobbying, rather than individual lobbyists, should be registered. ''The very important thing is to have a very complete and comprehensive list of lobbying activity. So if a CEO of a large mining company … or a CEO of a building developer meet a minister, it should be on the public record.''

There is ''no question'' business can influence government through lobbying, he says.

''Sometimes it can be a very fine line of what is a problem and what is not.''

One former senator who was on the standing committee for the lobbying code of conduct, and who has made submissions in response to the Federal Government's electoral reform green paper of last September, believes the system needs to be overhauled.

"The practice of companies making political donations without shareholder approval and … unions making political donations without member approval must end. The practice of some companies and unions affiliating to or becoming members of political parties without shareholder or member approval must end. The UK has attended to both corporations and unions along these lines."

Racism against Aborigines in Australia

2010-02-10T08:41:00.000+08:00

Mr. Kevin Rudd
Prime Minister of Australia
postmaster@pmc.gov.au

Dear Prime Minister,

We refer to the reports below for your information and action.

Former chief justice of the Family Court of Australia Alastair Nicholson is to be congratulated for raising his concern that you have broken your promise in restoring the Racial Discrimination Act and the miss-treatment of the original owners of this land.

We have also written to you on a number of occasions with regard to this immoral racial discrimination against indigenous Australians but you preferred to ignore our warnings.

Would you like to comment about professor Nicholson's report, please?

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
http://twitter.com/unitywa (Uploaded)
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 10-Feb-2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?
Income program a cloak for racism: professor
ADELE HORIN - February 10, 2010
THE federal government's plan to extend income management of welfare payments beyond the Northern Territory is a ''clumsily disguised and cynical attempt'' to perpetuate racial discrimination against indigenous Australians, a former chief justice of the Family Court of Australia said yesterday.

Alastair Nicholson, now an honorary professorial fellow in law at the University of Melbourne, said he considered it ''highly unlikely'' the proposed powers would ever be used against welfare recipients generally.

''The real targets of the income management scheme are likely to be Aboriginal people, including Aboriginal people living beyond the Northern Territory.''

Professor Nicholson was speaking at the launch in Melbourne of the book This Is What We Said, which contains accounts from Aborigines affected by the Northern Territory emergency intervention. The measures were introduced by the Howard government in 2007 and nullified the Racial Discrimination Act in the affected communities.

In strong criticism of the Rudd government, which had promised to restore the Racial Discrimination Act, Professor Nicholson said its proposed legislation perpetuated the discrimination.

He said an analysis showed Aboriginal people already subject to income management would continue to be so for a further 12 months after the proposed law came into effect.

''For these people, who include most of the Aboriginal population of the Northern Territory, it is as if the repeal of the RDA … never happened.''

As well, the ''purported'' extension of income management beyond the Northern Territory and to other groups was ''little more than a ruse to overcome the provisions of the RDA''.

The Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, said: ''Income management is delivering benefits across the country for indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, including increased school attendance in some Cape York communities, people spending more on food, including fresh fruit and vegetables, in the Northern Territory, and an increase in the number of families being referred for income management by child protection authorities in metropolitan Perth.''

She said that as part of the government's welfare changes, non-discriminatory income management would be be introduced first in the Northern Territory, and after evaluation, to vulnerable communities across Australia.

Under the plan long-term welfare recipients, including sole parents and young people who live in areas designated as ''disadvantaged'', will have 50-70 per cent of their allowance quarantined to be spent on designated items in specified shops.

Professor Nicholson said the measure would punish welfare recipients as a class, and was a ''sloppy, cheap and unfair solution'' that reflected lazy politics. It showed how far the government was prepared to go to maintain its income management regime.

However, though income management would be applicable throughout Australia, it was clear the criteria in the bill were designed in such a way as ''to target Aboriginal people without expressly saying so'' and might now encompass others as well.

Aboriginal health 'world's worst'

April 02, 2007 07:08am - Perthnow

AUSTRALIA has been ranked at the bottom of a league table of wealthy nations working to improve the health of its indigenous people.
The report, report to be published today by the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) and Oxfam Australia, found New Zealand, Canada and the US had narrowed the life expectancy gap between non-indigenous and indigenous people to approximately seven years.

But in Australia, Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders are still dying nearly 20-years younger than non-Aboriginal Australians.

Oxfam said Australia lagged behind other wealthy nations in redressing the imbalance in indigenous health on a range of fronts.

The aid agency said Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander infant mortality rates were more than 50 per cent higher than for indigenous children in the USA and New Zealand.

Low birth weights were also more than double the incidence of those of indigenous populations in Canada and the US, as well as 60 per cent higher than in New Zealand's indigenous population.

Executive Director of Oxfam Australia, Andrew Hewett, said the health indicators were a national scandal.

"At what point do we stand up and start shouting?" he said.

"It's scandalous that in a country as wealthy as Australia we cannot solve a health crisis affecting less than three-per cent of the population."

Oxfam said federal and state governments needed to invest an extra $350 million to $500 million each year into primary health care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to correct the slide.

White man's rule, black man's injustice

April 6, 2007 - smh
A death in a remote town in the Northern Territory has exposed faultlines in the justice system, writes Lindsay Murdoch.

White man's justice meant nothing in Wadeye as fists, rocks, sticks and hammers flew, spilling blood into the outback's red dust on a scorching hot afternoon. It was payback time. By mid-afternoon almost 300 people had gathered at a football oval in one of Australia's most isolated communities, for a fight between two clan-based gangs.

Detective Senior Constable Carmen Butcher knew she would not be able to stop the brutality when she and two other officers went to the oval, because for centuries this was the way Aboriginal people had settled their disputes here, 350 kilometres south-west of Darwin.

"Generally when something happens in the community they tend to try and sort it out themselves by fighting, and usually if they have a large fight there's nothing we can do about it," Butcher said later.

But nobody counted on the actions of the former Pauline Hanson supporter Robert Whittington, a newcomer to Wadeye, who also went to the oval that October day in 2002. The acting sergeant-in-charge of Wadeye's police station raised his pistol and fired at least four shots in quick succession, killing 18-year-old Robert Jongmin and wounding another youth, witnesses said.

Moments later, Butcher confronted Jongmin's father, Ambrose, who was armed with a wheel brace and hammer. "I stopped him and spoke to him and just said to him that it's not the way … get rid of the weapons and let the police deal with it," Butcher told him.

Jongmin, 54, listened. But the respected clan leader now says his decision to turn his back on his people's traditional payback, which includes spearings, and allow white man's law to deliver justice for his son's killing was a mistake that ruined his life. Jongmin says his son had never been in trouble with police, unlike many local youths, and that he was a hero because he ran onto the oval to wrestle a shotgun from a youth who was threatening to shoot people. Whittington opened fire after the shotgun discharged into the ground, witnesses said. "Look at what happened … my son [did that] and was shot in the back by a policeman," Jongmin says.

Jongmin wants the Northern Territory Government to set up an independent inquiry into the way police and lawyers handled the shooting after Whittington walked free, even though a magistrate had found a prima face case for murder after hearing weeks of evidence. He also wants the Northern Territory Government to pass retrospective legislation so that Whittington can face new charges.

Whittington was supposed to stand trial last year after the Director of Public Prosecutions' office reduced the murder charge to committing a dangerous act causing death. But just as a jury was about to start hearing evidence, the trial judge, Dean Mildren, noticed what the bevy of case lawyers had not. Whittington had not been charged with an offence within two months of the shooting. He dismissed the charge.

Lawyers say the territory's justice system failed the Jongmin family and Wadeye, a long-troubled community struggling to end the gang violence that last year turned its streets into a war zone. Other serious criminal charges hung over Whittington, who was suspended on full pay, for 4½ years although he could have been dismissed for breaching the Police Administration Act in 2002.

Jongmin can't look at photographs of Robert, his youngest son. He can't speak his name. "My life was ruined. I am slowly trying to pick myself up," he says.

Jongmin says the police should have kept away from payback business "like they had done over all the years". "A policeman is here for five minutes - bang, bang, bang."

Jongmin says he has not received an apology for the death of his son. "How can they do that with what he [Whittington] done … face to face with me. I don't think so," he says. "What's the use of an apology from a white man? My son is gone. He should be here with us now."

Since the shooting, the police have ordered residents not to use traditional payback violence to settle disputes and have adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards inter-clan violence. But the dismissal of charges against Whittington has undermined these efforts. At least one clan leader offered to be speared to settle lingering problems between the two gangs over Robert Jongmin's death.

Sean Bowden, a Darwin lawyer representing Jongmin, says there are aspects of the case the family wants independently investigated. "The family is seeking justice and to obtain justice the family feels that Mr Whittington should face a jury on the charges that were brought against him," Bowden says.

In a letter to Jongmin last month, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Richard Coates, said there was evidence Whittington "should not have fired his pistol when he did". Coates said Whittington had said in an unreleased statement he thought when he fired the pistol the wounded youth, Tobias Worumbu, had shot Robert Jongmin "and that was why he fired his pistol at Mr Worumbu".

The Jongmin family last month asked Coates to appeal the dismissal of the charge against Whittington to the High Court. Coates did not reply to the request before the time limit for the appeal to be lodged had expired.

Whittington, whose legal costs have been paid by the NT Government, is back on duty in Darwin. An inquest into Robert Jongmin's death has been set for August 7, and the Jongmin family will co-operate.

Thank you for your email, Mr. Hwang

2010-02-01T08:44:00.000+08:00

----- Original Message -----
From: Rudd, Kevin (MP)
To: Unity Party WA
Sent: 16 March, 2007 1:17 PM
Subject: RE: Disgraceful security pact
Dear Mr Hwang
Thank you for your email of support and for sending me the report. This year will bring many
challenges and I look forward very much to your continued support as we work towards the election
of a Federal Labor Government.
Thank you once again for taking the time to drop me a line.
Kind regards,
Kevin Rudd
Federal Labor Leader
Member for Griffith

Obama to control greedy banks

2010-01-31T16:34:00.000+08:00

Mr. Barack Obama,
President of the US,
president@whitehouse.gov

Dear President,

We refer to the report below for your information and wish to congratulate you for taken this drastic action which is long overdue.

The global greedy banking cartel and other financial institutions are there to serve their own interests and must be controlled as to avoid another Great Depression!!

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 23-Jan-2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Bigpond a try?
Obama plan to limit the size of banks - report
From: AFP - January 21, 2010 4:24PM
US President Barack Obama will tonight propose new limits on the size of US banks after spending billions of tax-payer dollars to bail out "too-big-to-fail'' firms, a senior official says.

The measures would place sweeping new restrictions on a sector seen as responsible for sparking the largest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"A couple of months ago the President began discussing with his economic team the need to include in financial reform more specific and stronger provisions to limit the size and scope of financial institutions'' the official said.

The proposals aim "to cut down on excessive risk taking'' among the largest banks, after crises at a handful of the largest firms threatened to choke the flow of cash to the US economy.

''The President will announce a series of measures that address size and scope'' of the institutions the official said.

by efforts to rescue banks that were exposed to massive loses on the sub-prime mortgage market.

The official, who asked not to be named, said the new measures would limit banks' ability to use their own cash to buy such financial instruments, so-called proprietary trading.

"The proposal will include size and complexity limits specifically on proprietary trading,'' the source said.

Facing widespread voter anger over state take-overs of the troubled firms, Mr Obama earlier this month proposed a tax on big banks and warned the banking industry not to block or water down his planned regulatory reforms.

"It is both in the country's interests and ultimately in the financial industry's interest to have updated rules of the road to prevent abuse and excess.''

The new measures will have to be approved by Congress before becoming law.

Obama to control greedy banks

2010-01-31T16:32:00.000+08:00

Yes, Mr. Gore, we will help to spread your call

2010-01-31T08:16:00.000+08:00

Yes Mr. Gore, we will help to spread your call.

Eddie Hwang
----- Original Message -----
From: Al Gore, The We Campaign
To: Unity Party WA
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 3:35 AM
Subject: We have a choice

Call your members of Congress NOW to demand new, clean energy.

Take Action.

Dear eddie,

I need your help. Will you make a call?

Congress will consider energy legislation this week. Of course, the oil industry is pushing its "drill, drill" slogan with all its might -- and some are hoping to use this for political advantage.

Meanwhile, tax credits for investments in solar and wind power have not been extended, and the growing renewables business that just made America the largest producer of wind power in the world, is on the verge of shutting down huge planned projects all over the country.

Billions in private investment, thousands of megawatts of new, clean energy, and more than 100,000 new jobs expected for 2009 will be lost.

We face a stark choice: subsidize old, dirty energy or invest in new, clean energy. This should be easy, but the influence of the oil lobby is deep -- they've already spent more than $100 million in lobbying and advertising this year. Please call your members of Congress now and tell them to pass legislation that will Repower America.

Click here to find out how to call.

Washington is being diverted by all the political noise around "drill, drill" away from what really will make a difference -- building a new, clean energy future. Projects in the pipeline that will power millions of homes will be canceled, setting us back for years, if Congress doesn't do the right thing now. Congress needs to hear from all of us.

Click here to make a quick call today.

Thank you so much,

Al Gore

www.wecansolveit.org

EU steel makers oppose BHP-Rio iron ore deal

2010-01-31T07:28:00.000+08:00

Mr. Kevin Rudd,
Prime Minister of Australia
postmaster@pmc.gov.au
Dear Mr. Rudd,
We refer to the reports below for your information.
Since you ignored our email below, we will upload the various reports onto our website for our global readers
to judge whether our concern that important raw materials like iron ores should never be
monopolised by countries like Australia and Brazil who are well end owed with them, to the
detriment of the world economy as a whole.
We strongly believe that a sharing of these natural resources world-wide in accordance with time-tested economic principles
aimed at maximising production and the better utilization of the world's natural resources would bring about greater justice
to humankind.
Fair and equitable distribution of natural resources to nations which are not well-endowed with them would bring about a
world that is a better place to live in for all.
Australia - the lucky country needs to act responsibly.
Yours respectfully,
Eddie Hwang
www.unitywa.org
10-Nov-2009.
EU steel makers oppose BHP-Rio iron ore deal
EUROPEAN steel makers have called on European Union antitrust regulators to probe BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto's iron
ore jont venture in WA.
The European steel industry federation Eurofer - whose members include the world's biggest steel makers ArcelorMittal SA,
ThyssenKrupp AG and Corus Group - said the joint venture isn't "much different from the effects which would have
resulted" from BHP's takeover bid for Rio last year.
"The European steel industry continues to believe that a merger of iron ore assets of this type in a world market already
dominated by just three suppliers would not be in the interests of the steel industry, European consumers or the European
economy," it said.
EU opposition to BHP's hostile $US68 billion ($A86.04 billion) bid for rival Rio forced it to abandon the takeover attempt
last year.
The European Commission saw competition problems with the deal that they said could hike prices and reduce choice for
European mineral and metals customers.
Rio also complained that the bid undervalued it.
The two miners are now planning a joint production project to pool all their iron ore assets in Western Australia, a move
that could save them billions as iron ore prices slide.
Australia's BHP will also pay Rio $US5.8 billion ($A7.34 billion) to equalise its contribution to the joint venture.
The deal rescues Rio after it scrapped a $US19.5 billion ($A24.67 billion) deal with China's Chinalco over Australian fears
that the deal would give a foreign company a strategic stake in one of the country's biggest industries.
Rio's balance sheet is weighed down by $US38.7 billion ($A48.97 billion) in debt.
Combining BHP and Rio would allow them to

Staring down the dragon

2010-01-31T07:19:00.001+08:00

Mr. Don Argus,
Chairman - BHP
businessconduct@bhpbilliton.com

Dear Mr. Argus,

We refer to the report below for your information.

Would you like to comment, please?

We look forward to hearing from you in due course.

Yours sincerely,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
http://twitter.com/unitywa
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 30-Jan-2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?
Staring down the dragon: BHP's battles in China
January 30, 2010 - smh
BHP has stood up to China like no other corporation, but the world's biggest miner is playing a dangerous game, John Garnaut reports from Shanghai.

When BHP Billiton's chief executive, Marius Kloppers, flew to China last week, he was expected to reach out and try to placate officials who are overseeing iron ore negotiations and administering the country's new anti-monopoly laws.

Commentators expected he would see Shang Ming, the director-general of China's Anti-Monopoly Bureau at the Ministry of Commerce, who has spent much of the past eight months working out whether he can and will upset BHP's iron ore joint venture plans with Rio Tinto.

''Everyone knows that the Chinese Government, including the Ministry of Commerce, are extremely unhappy about the proposed joint venture,'' says Allan Fels, the former Australian competition boss, who has advised Shang on administering his new anti-monopoly powers. ''And the Chinese law appears to have full extra-territorial force, which seemingly fully covers the transaction.''

Some thought Kloppers might also try to see Li Yizhong, the former oil company chief who now runs a ''super ministry'' of industry and information technology. The ministry is overseeing this year's price negotiations and is drawing up new measures to track and potentially control iron ore imports, at a time when BHP is leading the charge to tear the old benchmark pricing system down.

''The international iron ore market is monopolised by the three leading miners,'' said a spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and

Information Technology on Thursday. ''We hope that they will bear in mind the long-term interests of the industry and friendly long-term co-operation with China. We're expecting a fair price.''

But Kloppers didn't see Shang Ming, Li Yizhong or, it seems, any other senior Government official. He didn't make it to Beijing, where the company no longer has an office.

Instead, sources say, Kloppers mostly let his key customers come to him at BHP's Shanghai headquarters, which is reeling from the exodus of three of the company's most experienced and respected executives.

The China branch's president, Clinton Dines, left the company in June, after two decades. Frank Xu, who close observers say ''owned'' government relations for the company, left in July. And now Robin Bordie, the company's key China economist, has told the company she's walking out as well.

BHP is well aware that it is one of the few companies in the world with the power to set terms with China. ''If you're going to play in this game, then you have got to play with the big boys, and they know that,'' the chairman, Don Argus, told reporters in October, brushing off problems that might arise if the joint venture with Rio Tinto caused hostility in China.

BHP's clear and uncompromising China strategy has plenty of admirers. But those same people warn that success depends entirely on execution. ''It's not against the rules to start a war when dealing with China,'' says the long-time China head of another major resources company (which does not sell Australian iron ore). ''But you cannot back down, and you absolutely cannot lose.''

Jim McGregor, the former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, warned in Time magazine last week that China is becoming an increasingly unpredictable and hostile environment for foreign companies. He says it makes sense for some companies to draw a strategic line in the sand, provided they are well prepared and know that what goes around may come around.

In the past two years Chinese companies and officials have demonstrated that gaining better terms on the iron ore trade is a national priority. They have thrown their weight around, but have so far had mixed success.

Chinalco rudely interrupted BHP's original takeover bid for Rio Tinto, which was later aborted. China's top intelligence agency tapped the phone and email traffic of Rio Tinto, then detained Stern Hu and three other members of Rio's sales team, initially treating the case as a threat to China's national security.

The China Iron and Steel Association and some government officials managed to temporarily block spot market shipments from both companies. Chinese steel mills walked away from contracts without apology when prices plunged during the financial crisis.

But, so far, the laws of supply and demand have proved too much for even the champions of ''China Inc'' to overcome.

China's iron ore imports rose an astonishing 42 per cent last year, to 630 million tonnes, while the rest of the world collapsed. It accounted for as much as 70 per cent of global seaborne trade.

Australian miners secured the lion's share of those extra shipments. Australia's global iron ore exports rose 17 per cent to 383 million tonnes, even as they fell to other major destination. Exports to China rose by 46 per cent, to 282 million tonnes - nearly three-quarters of Australia's total.

It seems both BHP and Rio Tinto can virtually do what they like for as long as China desperately needs their ore. It may be a different story when the market turns. Chinese companies with Government support are bringing forward that turning point by madly planting start-up mines around the world.

''It's pretty obvious that BHP have decided that playing hard ball with China is OK," says Arthur Kroeber, the principal at Beijing consultancy Dragonomics.

''The structure of the market here clearly favours them, because ore producers are highly consolidated and the domestic consumer base is highly fragmented, with no reasonable prospect of being tightly controlled. In that sense, it is a strategy that makes sense.''

However, he says the strategy makes sense now but might not look so good from the moment when the supply curve catches up with demand.

''Business and politics in China are even more closely intertwined here than in most other markets,'' he says.

''If you go out of your way to play very aggressively when conditions favour you, there is a likelihood that there will be reprisals of one kind or another when conditions go the other way.''

BHP headquarters is confident that the work of reading, engaging and anticipating China has not missed a beat.

''Our China office is as important to us today as it always was, given the significance of the China market,'' says a BHP spokeswoman, Samantha Evans.

But it will not be easy to make up for the loss of Clinton Dines, Frank Xu and Robin Bordie, and the closure of BHP Billiton's office in Beijing.

In two years BHP's China staff has been cut from about 100 to 70, including the dismantling of both its China exploration and Beijing Olympics sponsorship teams. Rio Tinto, in contrast, maintains about 130 staff in Beijing and Shanghai.

''BHP has now got no machinery at all for engaging with the Chinese Government, at a time when Australian corporate and political relations with China have never been shakier,'' says one source who has worked with BHP.

''Frank 'owned' all of the relationships with the Chinese government and media. Clinton was pretty well-known and liked by domestic and foreign media, and Robin was part of that cabinet.''

All three employees declined to talk about the reasons for their departure.

Dines, who has taken up consultancies and board directorships, hinted at differences with head office in a joint opinion article published this month in the Herald.

''One area where the big suppliers have some work to do is developing - or repairing - stable, long-term relationships," he wrote, together with an iron ore consultant, Philip Kirchlechner. ''It seems that many senior managers in the industry do not understand what a relationship is, in the East-Asian, Confucian context.''

Bordie, according to BHP's website, had brought the company ''invaluable ability to analyse the complex situation and rapid changes in China - our single-country market''. Her analysis of China's economic recovery last year is thought to have been more optimistic and therefore more right than public comments given throughout the year by Kloppers and Argus. She is joining the Noble commodities group in Hong Kong.

Xu has left BHP for the Barclays investment bank, in part because his family could not easily make the transition to Shanghai.

But maintaining his unrivalled relationships throughout the Chinese resources industry and bureaucracy was always going to be more difficult from Shanghai.

''If you call up someone like Xiong Bilin [in charge of industry and consolidation at the National Development and Reform Commission] he'll say, 'OK, I'm free, let's have dinner tonight,' " says a government relations veteran. ''You simply can't arrange things far enough in advance to get through the traffic and catch a plane from Shanghai.''

Rio Tinto's travails in China are well known and it has the bigger hole to clamber out of.

But Rio is now sharing the bad press with BHP. Reports of BHP lobbying against ''China Inc'' in Canberra have been embellished in the Chinese media, producing front-page headlines like ''BAD BOY BHP''.

This week that story mutated and again sprang back to life.

BHP's government and community relationships may not be what they were two years ago, but its commercial operations remain strong. Its steady march towards clear corporate strategic goals stands in contrast to Rio Tinto's three-year vacillations.

Rio Tinto's China operations are going through a rebuilding phase. The company's chief iron ore salesman, Stern Hu, is in jail, along with three members of Hu's sales team, while Hu's former right-hand man has retreated to the company's Singapore sales platform. Rio's China president, Tony Loo, has quit the company and headed for Las Vegas, and is yet to be replaced.

BHP's production report last week shows it continues to ruthlessly and persistently execute its five-year-long strategy to dismantle the benchmark contract pricing system. The existing system penalises Australia compared with other benchmark suppliers who carry higher freight costs, such as Brazil, and also privileges Indian and domestic Chinese suppliers, who get much higher prices on China's spot market.

In the second half of last year, BHP sold 46 per cent of shipments on ''short-term referencing pricing'', with the remainder sold on annual contract prices. The statement implies that a large majority of shipments to China were made at quarterly negotiated prices, index-based pricing or the spot market.

The significance of this lies well beyond the tens of millions of dollars BHP implicitly earned from its shipments last year that its competitors did not.

It appears to mean that by the end of March, a large number of BHP's customers will have accepted that they have rescinded on their long-term contracts - perhaps in exchange for BHP forgiving contractual non-performance during the financial crisis. At the same time, local analysts say, the company has been rapidly gaining new customers on non-benchmark terms.

BHP has gone halfway towards smashing the benchmark pricing system in its most important market, while its competitors have not. At the same time, some observers suggest BHP has quietly taken the lead on negotiating with Baosteel and the China Iron and Steel Association on this year's prices for remaining Chinese benchmark contracts.

Clearly, BHP's smart and well-regarded iron ore sales chief, Ben Williams, has been on top of his marketing job.

Williams, who has spent 20 years of the past 30 in China and speaks the local language fluently, has been elevated to China president. He has back-up from Lu Jianzhong, a sharp and affable technology and uranium expert who was formerly a diplomat at the United Nations. Lu has taken control of Chinese media relations.

But they have a power of work ahead.

Whatever the market mood - and in recent weeks it has sagged - China's efforts to get a better deal in iron ore are not about to stop.

''Iron ore is a core national interest for China,'' a senior official says.

Nobody knows how the next round of iron ore wars will be played out. Shang Ming at the Ministry of Commerce might rule that the BHP-Rio joint venture is anti-competitive. But it's not obvious that he has legal sanctions in his armoury that would hurt the miners more than Chinese mills.

''Because BHP Billiton has almost no assets in China and there appears to be very little grip that the Chinese Government can have on this offshore transaction,'' says Fels, the former chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

In June, shortly after announcing the Rio Tinto joint venture, Kloppers dismissed the risk of Chinese or Japanese regulators intervening with the deal.

He said his company was ''just largely a seller of product into those markets, so we don't have any local businesses in China or Japan that would be affected by this''.

An adviser attached to China's Ministry of Commerce immediately begged to differ.

''According to China's anti-trust law, we can veto such a merger agreement if the concentration of overseas business operators will affect domestic market competition,'' said Ma Yu, a director of the Foreign Investment Department at the ministry's Academy of International Trade and Economic Co-operation. ''If the joint venture is set up regardless of China's opposition, the Government can also resort to trade sanctions against the two entities on future business transactions with China.''

Business and government veterans of the Australia-China relationship and iron ore trade are impressed at the strategic vision of Kloppers and his chairman, Don Argus. But they worry that the pair have underestimated China before and may be doing so again.

Premier talks tough over ore royalties

2010-01-31T07:11:00.001+08:00

Mr.Colin Barnett,
Premier of Western Australia,
Premier.Barnett@dpc.wa.gov.au

Dear Premier,

We refer to the reports below for your information.

We wish to congratulate you that the minerals belonged to the States and WA would never give up its sovereign ownership of natural resources.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 11- Nov - 2009.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?
Premier talks tough over ore royalties
ROBERT TAYLOR and PETER KERR, The West Australian November 11, 2009, 2:25 am
Colin Barnett claims to hold the whip hand in royalty negotiations with mining giants BHP-Billiton and Rio Tinto over the proposal to merge their WA iron ore assets.

Ahead of last night's scheduled meeting with BHP boss Marius Kloppers and Rio's Tom Albanese, Mr Barnett said yesterday the deal required State Parliament's approval.

The Government wants BHP and Rio to pay the same full royalty new producers such as Fortescue Metals pay for iron ore.

The mining giants negotiated concessional rates in original State agreements when the industry was being established in the Pilbara but a merger requires a new State agreement.

"I'll be detailing what the State's expectations will be if they proceed (and) the State's expectation will be that they pay the price for iron ore," Mr Barnett said.

"We're 50 years on, they're not investing in towns today. That was appropriate in the 1960s and 70s when the mines were being developed."

The Government has written $540 million into the State Budget over the next four years in anticipation of a new royalties deal.

Mr Barnett also wants the companies to give smaller producers access to their rail lines and has not ruled out pushing for a windfall stamp duty on the merger despite the probability it would require special retrospective legislation.

Also, Mr Barnett again warned that WA would "never give an inch" on its mining taxation powers after reports suggested the Commonwealth was keen to pursue a proposal to share mining royalties through a rent resources tax.

Mr Barnett said the plan was "foolhardy" and would mean companies paying higher taxes with a devastating impact on WA's mining industry.

He said constitutionally the minerals belonged to the States and WA would never give up its sovereign ownership of natural resources.

Mr Barnett ruled out ceding some royalties to Canberra in return for a share of other revenue streams such as income tax.

Japanese giant warns Rio merger could affect trade
NIPPON Steel chairman Akio Mimura is pressuring West Australian Premier Colin Barnett to block the BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto Pilbara iron ore merger, labelling mining oligopolies uncompetitive and a form of resource imperialism.

He cautioned that companies and governments should exercise discipline and uphold the principles of free and fair trade to prevent the strong Japanese-Australian trade relationship from deteriorating.

His comments came as Mr Barnett met with BHP's chief executive, Marius Kloppers, and Rio Tinto CEO Tom Albanese in Perth last night to discuss the government's demands for a higher rate of royalties as part of any joint production plan.........

And in a thinly veiled threat to BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, Akio Mimura said countries must be wary of letting major resources companies grow to a size where they could abuse their market power.

Hu may have roken our laws - academic

2010-01-31T07:02:00.000+08:00

Mr. Kevin Rudd,
Prime Minister of Australia
postmaster@pmc.gov.au

Dear Prime Minister,

We refer to the reports below for your information.

Would you like to comment, please?

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 29-Dec-2009.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?
More Aussies breaking law abroad
Emma Chalmers - The Courier-Mail - December 29, 2009 12:25AM

More than 1,000 Australians arrested overseas
295 convicted, sentenced and imprisoned
334 travellers get emergency Govt loans
MORE Australians are playing up abroad, with a record number arrested overseas during the past year.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade helped more than 27,800 Australians in difficulty during 2008-09.

More than 1000 Australians were arrested and 295 were convicted, sentenced and imprisoned.

Melbourne woman Annice Smoel, 36, was one of the year's highest-profile cases, making international headlines and risking five years' jail for allegedly stealing a bar mat from a pub on the Thai resort island of Phuket. She was fined $30 and allowed home after pleading guilty.

In its annual report, DFAT said its consular case load increased as the number of Australians who travelled overseas exceeded six million for the first time.

"Managing increasing expectations of the level of consular assistance, especially in cases involving Australians detained or imprisoned under foreign laws, remained a significant challenge," DFAT said.

The consular emergency centre received more than 37,000 calls in 2008-09, and almost 18,000 people contacted DFAT worried about relatives they could not contact overseas - an increase of 4000.
"Our consular case load was complex and diverse, often directed to Australians requiring assistance in remote and politically unstable locations," DFAT's annual report said.

DFAT responded to several kidnappings during the year, including the case of 37-year-old Bundaberg photojournalist Nigel Brennan, who was released from captivity in Somalia just weeks ago after a private negotiator paid a ransom.

The department also helped Yandina man Hayden Adcock, who spent 11 days lost in the Laotian jungle. It also weathered a storm of publicity over the murder of backpacker Britt Lapthorne in Croatia. DFAT said it also helped an Australian family to leave Kabul in Afghanistan "following a dispute that led to threats to the welfare of several children and their mother".

Among more than 60 international crises the department responded to were the Bangkok bomb attack, a tourist bus crash in Israel, Fiji floods and the Mumbai terror attacks.

The Federal Government provided more than $415,000 in emergency loans to 334 travellers overseas, including to some prisoners to ensure they received proper food and care.

Hu may have broken our laws: academic

Brendan Nicholson Foreign Affairs Correspondent - August 4, 2009 - The Australian

STERN HU, the Rio Tinto executive detained in China, could be investigated by the Australian Federal Police and charged under Australian law with bribery of foreign officials, says a top international law expert.

Don Rothwell, from the Australian National University College of Law, suggested yesterday the Australian Federal Police should carry out an investigation into Mr Hu’s activities.

A spokeswoman for the Minister for Home Affairs, Brendan O’Connor, was checking last night whether any such investigation was under way.

Professor Rothwell said that while the Chinese Government had released limited information about the case, it could be asserted under Australian law that Mr Hu’s dealings with some officials in the Chinese steel industry amounted to bribery.

It is not a defence under Australian law that bribing officials in another country might be considered customary, necessary, or required, he said.

Professor Rothwell was responding to comments by the Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister, Liu Jieyu, that Mr Hu’s alleged crimes would have broken Australian law had they taken place in Australia. Mr Liu said the Chinese Government believed

the case against Mr Hu was strong and he added that the facts ‘‘would constitute a violation of Australian laws’’.

Mr Hu and three Chinese nationals have been held without charge for a month on suspicion of stealing state secrets while negotiating iron ore deals.

Professor Rothwell said Australia had campaigned hard against the bribery of officials around the world and if Mr Hu had that he would have broken Australian law.

‘‘Stern Hu could be charged with bribery under Australian law,’’ Professor Rothwell said.

‘‘This raises issues as to whether the Australian Federal Police, in light of the revelations in this case, are conducting their own inquiries into the conduct of Stern Hu in China with a view to possible criminal proceedings under Australian law.’’

In 1999 Australia committed itself to combating bribery of officials by signing an OECD convention on combating bribery of foreign public officials in international transactions.

‘‘This convention is designed to … combat a culture of graft, corruption and bribery … ,’’ Professor Rothwell said

UK wants Australia, former colony to keep its criminals

2010-01-31T06:59:00.000+08:00

Mr. Chris Evans,
Minister for Immigration,
minister@immi.gov.au

Dear Minister,

We refer to the report below for your information.

You are to be congratulated for taking the appropriate action in dealing with criminals as we are an independent nation, rather than a "colony".

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 03-Jan-2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?
UK wants Australia, former colony, to keep its criminals
By Charles Miranda - PerthNow - January 02, 2010 11:47PM
TWO hundred years ago its worst citizens were transported to the other side of the world, creating Australia in the process.

Now cash-strapped Britain wants its former colony to keep its criminals again.

In the past 12 months, dozens of British-born paedophiles, rapists and career criminals, many in their late 50s and 60s, were deported to the UK after finishing their sentences in Australian jails, despite having lived most of their lives Down Under.

Among them was notorious paedophile Raymond Horne, who was given a police escort through Heathrow Airport amid British outrage over his forced return from Queensland.

UK campaigners fear that a lack of connection to their former homeland, including no support base of family and friends, makes serial offenders more likely to reoffend.

Australia last year jettisoned more than 60 criminals to their countries of origin, mostly the UK and New Zealand.

UK child welfare campaigner Shy Keenan said while offenders had court-backed restrictions in Australia that would have them back behind bars if breached, once they were deported to the UK the ability to restrict their actions was limited.
She called on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to raise the issue with his Australian counterpart Kevin Rudd.

"It's just not fair," she said.

"In law they do belong here, in essence they are British citizens, but whether they are morally or ethically British is another argument.

"They will be assessed when they come here to Britain and made to sign the sex offenders' register but beyond that there is very little they can do. The slate is effectively wiped clean."

Read more: http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/outraged-brits-say-keep-ex-criminals/story-e6frg12c-1225815434878

Ombudsman to go ahead despite law societies' protest

2010-01-31T06:54:00.000+08:00

Mr. Robert McClelland
Federal Attorney-General
r.mcclelland.mp@aph.gov.au

Dear Attorney General,

We refer to the reports below for your information.

We fully support the Council of Australian Governments for the setting up of a national ombudsman to regulate the profession.

The case of ''Caesar judging Caesar'' or "police investigate police" should not be tolerated in the 21st century.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 21-Jan-2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?
Ombudsman to go ahead despite law societies' protest
JOEL GIBSON - January 21, 2010
Only lawyers have the expertise to investigate other lawyers for alleged misconduct, their professional associations say, and they have asked the Federal Government to reconsider its plan for a national ombudsman to regulate the profession.

A Fed. Attorney General would be expensive and slow, they argue, and would not be an ombudsman in the true sense of the word.

But the state and federal governments are standing firm, saying confidence in the profession will only improve when lawyers stop investigating their own.

As national regulations are being drafted this month, the chiefs of all state and territory law societies have argued in a submission to a Federal Government taskforce that consumers will lose out if lawyers are stripped of self-regulation.

In NSW misconduct complaints are investigated by the Law Society with the oversight of the Legal Services Commissioner.

Last year one in nine solicitors was the subject of a complaint but 83 per cent of conduct complaints were dismissed, which the law societies say is evidence that ''despite claims to the contrary, there are very few complaints of substance about members of the legal profession''.

Of the complaints investigated by the NSW Law Society in the past five years, 250 have been referred to the Legal Services Commissioner for review, which the law societies argue is evidence of satisfaction at their handling of investigations.

''As far as any of us is aware, and combined our experience of the complaint processes across Australia is very substantial, there is no systemic failure with the current … processes. Claims to the contrary are unjustified,'' the law society chiefs say.

They have also denied any need for increased protections against lawyers who overcharge.

The negotiations over new national rules for lawyers are heating up in the lead-up to a May deadline set by the Council of Australian Governments.

Consumer advocates say lawyers are protecting their own turf and are decades behind other industries and professions in accepting independent oversight.

The federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, has described the self-regulation of lawyers as ''Caesar judging Caesar''.

High Court judge criticises courts 'nightmare'
Article from: - SEAN FEWSTER - July 30, 2009 12:01am
JUSTICE is beyond the reach of ordinary Australians because they cannot afford the "nightmare" of going to court, a former High Court judge says.

Michael Kirby – who retired from the bench in February – says more cases should be resolved out of court so clients can speak for themselves, instead of having lawyers "fight it out".

He said mediation before trials would help ensure "normal citizens" had their cases dealt with quickly and inexpensively, sparing them "tremendous pressure, strain and emotional anxiety".

Mr Kirby yesterday told an arbitration conference in Adelaide that Australia's legal system was proud, uncorrupted and functioned "like a Rolls-Royce".

Can we afford to vote Labor or Liberal?

2010-01-25T07:50:00.001+08:00

Mr. Kevin Rudd,
Prime Minister of Australia
postmaster@pmc.gov.au
Mr. Tony Abbott, Leader of the Opposition
tony.abbott.mp@aph.gov.au

Dear Sirs,

We refer to the reports below for your information.

Can we afford to vote Labor who has gone back to racist Arthur Calwell's days when "2 Wong don't make a White" - by increasing the English Test from (4.5) to (5)?

Can we afford to vote Liberal who says that migrants weaken values - what values?

What can the minor parties/Independent do for us?

We wait for your reply soon.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/ (Uploaded)
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 25-Jan-2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?
Migrants weaken values, Abbott says
ANDREW TILLETT MELBOURNE, The West Australian January 23, 2010, 2:35 am

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says the influx of boat people, ethnic crime and migrants' lack of respect for Australian values is undermining Australia's willingness to welcome foreigners.

In a provocative speech to the Australia Day Council in Melbourne last night, Mr Abbott suggested the "great prize" of Australian citizenship was not appreciated fully and was given away too lightly.

But far from wanting to shut the door to migrants, Mr Abbott declared there was no limit to Australia's population if immigration was managed properly, echoing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's recent call for a "big Australia" of 35 million people by mid-century.

Mr Abbott said Australian immigration had been a "success almost unparalleled in history" but the public felt anxious about it because the surge of boat people renewed fears borders were uncontrolled, some immigrants seemed resistant to notions of equality and there were doubts whether the environment and infrastructure could handle more people.

Despite this, he insisted Australians accepted other races. "For all the misguided and sometimes cruel treatment of Aborigines, the ethnic typecasting and occasional snobbery which still exists, Australia has rarely seen domestic discrimination based on race or culture," he said.

In a swipe at the Government, Mr Abbott said soft border protection encouraged people to risk their lives.

While the main villains were people smugglers, a government that let desperate people think getting on a boat might be a shortcut to permanent residency would hardly be blameless. "A strong border protection policy is perfectly consistent with a large and inclusive immigration policy," he said.

A Nation's line in the sand
RICK FENELEY - January 23, 2010

Side by side ... Mecca Laalaa and Kim Short walk along Cronulla beach. They became friends while walking the Kokoda Track last year, an initiative organised in the wake of the Cronulla riots. Photo: Kate Geraghty

Race relations are again under scrutiny, and the question remains: what must be done to heal the wounds left by so many ugly acts. Rick Feneley reports.

You can't see the bridge from Bankstown to Cronulla, but it's there. The community bridge builders got to work soon after the Cronulla riots of December 2005, when Australians were sickened and shamed by a two-day orgy of violence that erupted from a cocktail of booze, testosterone and pent-up racial tension.
In direct response, women from Cronulla and the surrounding Sutherland Shire volunteered to teach Arabic women to speak English. Young Muslims like Mecca Laalaa and Suheil Damouny travelled to the beachside suburb to become surf lifesavers, part of the federally funded On The Same Wave project.

And last year, Laalaa and other young Muslims made lifelong friends with lifesavers from the Cronulla clubs when they walked the Kokoda Track together. They were led on this trek by some of the bridge builders to emerge from the dust of the riots: Jamal Rifi, a family doctor from Belmore; Scott Morrison, the Liberal MP for Cook, covering Cronulla; and Jason Clare, Labor member for Blaxland, covering Bankstown. Morrison and Clare have become mates, one of the many enduring friendships to result from those two days that rocked Australia.

As Damouny says: ''We were the guinea pigs.''

If it can be regarded as an experiment, it has worked in many ways. Last June, Damouny's father, Hythem, followed his lead to Cronulla. He and his business partner, Anan Qasam - two Palestinians via Lebanon and Jordan, then Yagoona - bought the convenience store on the Cronulla beachfront. Despite some lingering concerns about the horrifying scenes of 2005, Qasam says he was confident. ''I thought, that was not the Australia I knew.''

What, then, is the Australia we know?

In his address this week for Australia Day, General Peter Cosgrove, the former Defence Force chief, identified the Cronulla riots as a low point in the nation's history. ''Because it was so unusual and unexpected, it reverberated around the world. It was unexpected because Australia's reputation was that of an egalitarian and multi-ethnic society; tolerant, cheerful and relaxed.''

Now the world is watching once again. Not Cronulla, but Australia.

This week India's Government declared that if violent attacks on its citizens continued in Australia, it would officially warn them not to travel here to study. India was relieved to at last receive acknowledgment from Cosgrove and Victoria's police chief, Simon Overland, that some of the attacks have been racially motivated.

A $15 billion education industry is directly threatened, but much more is at stake. The ugly actions of a few Australians, yet again, have tarnished our reputation internationally. And as we prepare to celebrate Australia Day we are forced to ask ourselves: do these rogues manifest a racist Australian underbelly? If so, what can we do about it? And if not, how do we convince the world?

When the Herald went to Cronulla last Australia Day, it was not hard to find a young, flag-tattooed Anglo-Australian willing to proffer a racist rant against ''the Lebs''. Disinhibited by alcohol, one young woman suggested a repeat of the riots would be a good idea. ''Bring it on,'' she said. A young Lebanese-Australian, when asked how comfortable he felt amid such sentiments, preferred to echo the bravado of his blond-haired mates. ''I bash for Australia,'' he said.

It was the drink talking. There was no repeat of the violence of December 11, 2005, when mobs set upon helpless beach visitors of Middle Eastern appearance, or of December 12, when car loads of revenge attackers descended on beachside suburbs.

Amanda Wise is a doctor of sociology and senior research fellow at Macquarie University's Centre for Research on Social Inclusion. She grew up in the Shire and was a teenager there in the early 1980s. ''I can't remember seeing a flag anywhere,'' she recalls.

After the riots, Wise conducted research in the area, including focus group studies of Cronulla locals for the Immigration Department. While she was heartened by the bridge-building work and some messages of tolerance, she also encountered persisting ignorance, fear and outright anti-Muslim racism. ''And there was cynicism, particularly among the men, about turning young Muslims into lifesavers - about what it could hope to achieve.''

Wise fears that the ingredients for the 2005 riots remain. The causes, she stresses, were complex. She addresses them in her contribution to Lines in the Sand: The Cronulla Riots, multiculturalism and national belonging, a collection of essays released last month.

Wise says it was a confluence of events: years of unchecked antisocial behaviour by some Middle Eastern teenagers and young men visiting the beach; a build-up of resentment against the ''Lebs'' and their boisterous beach soccer matches; an assault on two local lifesavers; the stirring of local anger by radio ''shock jocks''; an undercurrent of Islamaphobia, particularly since the September 11 terrorist strikes; a period of anxiety, reactionary nationalism and misplaced flag-waving under the Howard government; and the critical ingredient in the cocktail - alcohol. Lots of it.

Wise worries that while temperatures have cooled, authorities must be vigilant. A stream of government ''interest and money'' that flowed into bridge-building in the first two years, she says, has all but stopped.

Only one of the pioneer Arabic lifesavers remains at the surf clubs. Like other young people, they have moved on to university and careers. But there is no new wave, yet, to replace them.

''It needs constant promotion,'' says Laalaa, 23. She regards her two seasons with the surf clubs as ''one of the greatest experiences of my life''. But there were challenges. Laalaa had pioneered the ''burquini'' - a costume to preserve her modesty. And for this she endured the occasional racist outburst; not from fellow lifesavers but beachgoers affronted by her alien appearance. ''They attacked my clothing, my beliefs. They questioned my ability to save anybody. Some thought I couldn't speak English.''

Laalaa was born in Australia. She graduated in health science and is a health promotions officer at Liverpool Hospital. She still goes to the beach often, and she has no regrets. But she says: ''It does bring you down to some extent. It's important to surround yourself with positive people.''

These include 22-year-old Kim Short, a Cronulla local and lifesaver whom Laalaa met on the Kokoda Track. Until then, Short had known no Muslims. ''It opened our eyes,'' she says. When life was reduced to this challenge, this arduous but common goal, Short says, ''We realised we had all these similarities.''

Wise, in her research, considers the cultural differences. Playing soccer on the beach, for instance, is common in other parts of the world but it became a point of antagonism here.

''Absolutely,'' says Rifi, who has driven much of the bridge-building work through his leadership at the Lakemba Sports Club. Since 2005, he says, Arabic teenagers and young men have become much more sensitive about the rights of others on the beaches. ''And they are making friends. You can see them high-fiving the locals.''

And regardless of the numbers of Arabic lifesavers today, Rifi says the legacy is clear: ''The surf clubs are not the exclusive domain of the blond-haired and blue-eyed.''

Rifi's fellow Kokoda trekker, the Liberal MP and Opposition immigration spokesman Morrison, says: ''Friendship is universal. When people finally get to know one another, all the other stuff falls away.''

Wise agrees. Women volunteers from the Shire who taught Muslims English, through a Smith Family program, had found it a ''life-changing'' education for themselves. And in her focus groups, locals who had expressed hostile views about Muslims tempered their remarks, merely after exposure to more reasoned views.

Morrison, quite frankly, gets annoyed that the Shire is singled out for supposed racism. He says the area has one of the highest rates of volunteerism in Australia. And he stresses that many of the troublemakers in 2005 came from outside the Shire, which he believes is no more likely to produce an outbreak of racial violence today than any other Australian community.

Morrison says he and his ''good friend'' Clare, the Blaxland MP, worry that the riots are constantly regurgitated, and that this only serves the tiny minority of extremists, from the Shire and Bankstown, who ''thrive on conflict''. He insists the decent views of the vast majority have prevailed. ''It was a black day, but we have moved on … I've got to tell you, one of the things that grates us both a bit is there seems to be such a focus on where we started rather than where we are now.''

So where are we now?

The editor of Lines in the Sand is Greg Noble, associate professor with the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney. ''It could happen again,'' he says, ''but is much less likely to, in my opinion.''

Noble says it is ''important to stress the fact that Cronulla is one of the 'whitest' areas of Sydney. The riots occurred there, and not in the most diverse areas, because it is a bastion of monoculturalism which feels itself under threat. So yes, those ingredients remain, although the social context is different and less conducive to violent displays of nationalism that aim at excluding differences. We no longer have, for example, a federal government which has validated the airing of racialised criticisms, and we no longer have a state government which has emphasised a law-and-order stance …

''I think quite a few Australians were shocked by the events, even if they may have agreed with some opinions expressed, and so there is a degree of public awareness which is more cautious about fervent nationalism and its combination with racism.''

At the Cronulla convenience store, the new proprietors have encountered only one racist, a drunk. Qasam recalls: ''He said, 'Is this Cronulla or Lakemba?''' Other customers told off the drunk.

Qasam and his partner, Damouny, have faith in the better nature of most Australians. They are not seeking out the racists in their midst. If they were, however, they might not have to look too hard. As the Herald photographed them on the beach this week, a middle-aged, mild-mannered local approached and asked what we were doing. When told, he volunteered the following: ''I've lived here all my life, and the riots were the best thing that ever happened to Cronulla. The police had stuck their heads in the sand for too long. The ethnic kids were coming down here and making trouble. The Christian Lebanese were OK but the Muslim Lebanese, they'd kick sand in people's faces, harass the girls. No one would do anything because they were scared of being called racist.''

Coles, meanwhile, is defending T-shirts it is selling for Australia Day. ''Aussie born and bred,'' they scream. They are meant to be ''fun and light-hearted''. Some will miss the joke.

Court rules Alan Jones 'racially vilified' Muslim youths

From: AAP - December 22, 2009 9:46PM

BROADCASTER Alan Jones and 2GB radio have been ordered to pay $10,000 in damages after a court ruled he vilified Lebanese Muslims.

Upholding a complaint of "`racial vilification'' against Jones and 2GB, the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal today said a number of Jones' comments were neither reasonable nor made in good faith.

The tribunal had heard that, presenting his regular talk-back slot over the course of a number of days in April 2005, Mr Jones said Lebanese youths hated Australia and raped, pillaged and plundered the country, undermining its culture.

Jones also identified "car hoons'' as Lebanese youths and said they disrespected the police. He also expressed the view Australia was not a multi-racial but a mono-cultural society and this monoculture was now under threat from "enemies within''.

The tribunal's ruling said: ''...Jones' comments about `Lebanese males in their vast numbers' hating Australia and raping, pillaging, and plundering the country, about `a national security' crisis and about the undermining of Australian culture by `vermin' were reckless hyperbole calculated to agitate and excite his audience ...''

The tribunal also ruled Jones interpreted a speech made by Lebanese-Australian cleric Sheik Faiz Mohammed in Bankstown as an excuse for sexual assaults by Muslim men on non-Muslim women.Sydney-based Lebanese-born Muslim figure Keysar Trad, complained to the tribunal.

He was later invited onto Jones' program for an exchange during which the presenter accused Mr Trad, as a Muslim leader, of doing nothing to stop car hoons or speeches such as the one said to have been made by Sheik Faiz Mohammed.

The tribunal awarded the damages and ordered the presenter make a public apology, although its exact nature was not determined.

"We find that the complaint of racial vilification as against both respondents are substantiated,'' the

ruling said.

Obama to control greedy banks

2010-01-23T09:29:00.000+08:00

Help for Haiti

2010-01-15T19:23:00.000+08:00

Dear President Obama,

Yes, we will do our best to spread your message globally with the hope that those who can afford to donate will open the pockets without hesitation.

You are to be congratulated for the generous donation of US$100 millions to help the Haitians.

Yours respectfully,
.
Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
http://unitypartywa.blogspot.com/
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 15-Jan-2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?

----- Original Message -----
From: President Barack Obama
To: Eddie Hwang - unitypartywa@westnet.com.au
Sent: Friday, January 15, 2010 7:00 AM
Subject: Help for Haiti

Eddie --

On Tuesday, a catastrophic earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The full extent of the damage is still being assessed, but the death toll -- already in the thousands -- is climbing fast.

This is the worst earthquake to hit the area in more than 200 years. Entire communities have been ripped apart and as many as 3 million people have been directly affected, including tens of thousands of American citizens who are in Haiti.

Our neighbors in Haiti are racing to confront the enormous devastation -- and this community can help.

Click here for more information about essential relief efforts and ways you can help today.

Footage is pouring in of homes collapsing, Haitians carrying injured family members, and hospitals being overrun in what was already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

I have directed my administration to respond with a swift, coordinated, and aggressive effort to save lives. Personnel from the United States and our partners in the international community are on the ground in damaged areas right now, working side by side with the Haitian people. They're providing much-needed food, water, and sanitation supplies, saving lives and helping local communities start to rebuild.

Despite the fact that we are experiencing tough times here at home, I encourage those who can to reach out and help. It's in times like these that we must show the kind of compassion and humanity that has defined the best of our national character for generations.

Click here to find out what you can do:

http://my.democrats.org/Haiti

As this story continues to unfold, I hope you will continue to keep the people of Haiti in your thoughts and prayers, as well as the many Haitian-Americans who have done so much to enrich our country and who are worried about friends and loved ones in this time of need.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org.
This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Democratic National Committee, 430 S. Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC 20003

Contributions or gifts to the Democratic National Committee are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.

Click here to unsubscribe from this mailing list.

President Obama and PM Rudd

2010-01-14T12:44:00.001+08:00

----- Original Message ----- From: Barack Obama
To: Unity Party WA - Eddie Hwang Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2008 12:50 PM
Subject: Tomorrow
Eddie --
We're just one day away from change. Election Day is tomorrow -- Tuesday, November 4th.
We've asked you to do a lot over the course of this campaign.
Right now, I'm asking you to do one last thing -- vote tomorrow, and make sure everyone you know votes, too.
Watch a short video about how far we've come, and how close we are. Then find or confirm your polling location and make sure your friends and family do the same:

When this campaign began, we weren't given much of a chance by the pollsters or the pundits.
But tomorrow, we can make history.
We've made it this far because supporters like you never stopped believing in your power to bring about real change.
Take the final step now.
Watch the video, find your polling location, and get everyone you know involved on Election Day:
http://my.barackobama.com/nov4
With your vote, and the votes of your friends, family, and neighbors, we won't just win this election -- together, we will change this country and change the world.
Thank you,

Barack

----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Friday, July 17, 2009 11:18 AM
Dear Mr. Hwang,
Thank you for your message. On behalf of President Obama, we appreciate hearing from you. The President has promised the most transparent administration in history, and we're committed to listening to and responding to you.

In order to better handle the millions of electronic messages we're receiving and respond more quickly, we've implemented a new contact form on our website:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Please note that this web form has replaced comments@whitehouse.gov. That email address is no longer monitored, so we encourage you to resubmit your message through the link above. Thank you
Sincerely,
The Presidential Correspondence Team

----- Original Message -----
From: Rudd, Kevin (MP)
To: Unity Party WA
Sent: 16 March, 2007 1:17 PM
Subject: RE: Disgraceful security pact
Dear Mr Hwang
Thank you for your email of support and for sending me the report. This year will bring many challenges and I look forward very much to your continued support as we work towards the election of a Federal Labor Government.
Thank you once again for taking the time to drop me a line.
Kind regards,
Kevin Rudd Federal Labor Leader
Member for Griffith

Justice in Queensland?

2010-01-14T12:39:00.001+08:00

Ms. Anna Bligh,
Premier of Queensland
ThePremier@premiers.qld.gov.au

Dear Premier,

We refer to the reports below for your information.

Why Aborigines are so discriminated in Queensland?

We wait for your reply soon.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 21-Nov-200.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond try?

Police case on death in custody rejected
Michael McKenna - The Australian - November 21, 2009 12:00AM
QUEENSLAND'S anti-corruption watchdog said yesterday it had rejected a two-year police probe into the mishandling of the investigation of the 2004 death in custody of Palm Island man Mulrunji Doomadgee.

Releasing a report into policing in Queensland's indigenous communities, Crime and Misconduct Commission chairman Robert Needham said his investigators were forced to go back to "ground zero" in the case, after last year receiving a 266-page police report into the tainted investigation.

Mr Needham, who is stepping down from the CMC next month, said he hoped the long-overdue report might be released in the first quarter of next year, although it might still be delayed.

Earlier this week, The Australian revealed the CMC would accuse police of "protecting their own" in the case and recommend disciplinary action against officers involved in the investigation

The report was ordered in 2006 after Deputy State Coroner Christine Clements slammed the death-in-custody investigation as lacking "transparency, objectivity and independence".

Police Ethical Standards Command was asked for a report into the initial investigation, to be reviewed by the CMC.
Mr Needham said yesterday the report was "not going to be complimentary" of police, but he could not yet detail his findings.

"In effect, what we have done is we have gone back to ground zero and gone right to the primary documents, right to every interview that has ever been had with all the relevant officers, to the evidence of the coronial inquiry and gone back to every single thing in great detail," he said.

Mr Needham also took some blame, saying the report should have been out earlier this year.

Mr Needham made the comments as the coronial inquest into Doomadgee's death was yesterday reopened at a directions hearing in Townsville.

The report was ordered in 2006 after Deputy State Coroner Christine Clements slammed the death-in-custody investigation as lacking "transparency, objectivity and independence".
Police Ethical Standards Command was asked for a report into the initial investigation, to be reviewed by the CMC.

Mr Needham said yesterday the report was "not going to be complimentary" of police, but he could not yet detail his findings.

"In effect, what we have done is we have gone back to ground zero and gone right to the primary documents, right to every interview that has ever been had with all the relevant officers, to the evidence of the coronial inquiry and gone back to every single thing in great detail," he said.

Mr Needham also took some blame, saying the report should have been out earlier this year.

Mr Needham made the comments as the coronial inquest into Doomadgee's death was yesterday reopened at a directions hearing in Townsville.

Mr MacSporran should reconsider.

Michael McKenna - The Australian - November 20, 2009 12:00AM
THE Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission report into the police mishandling of the investigation of the 2004 death in custody of Palm Island man Mulrunji Doomadgee may not be finalised for another six months.

As family and friends gathered yesterday on Palm Island, off Townsville, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of Doomadgee's watchhouse death, concerns were raised about the decision of Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Commissioner Alan MacSporran to represent Queensland police at today's reopening of the coronial inquest into the case.

Mr MacSporran, who is charged with overseeing complaints about the CMC -- and who has access to all of its files -- will appear for the Queensland Police Service at the inquest's directions hearing in Townsville.

The lawyer for the Doomadgee family, Andrew Boe, said given the history of the death-in-custody investigation -- condemned in 2006 by Deputy Coroner Christine Clements -- Mr MacSporran should reconsider.

"It is clear that the police interests will continue to pursue their own agenda, whilst all that the family seek is what they have sought for the last five years: transparency, integrity and accountability; and some finality," Mr Boe said.
"I would have thought that to avoid any perceptions of impropriety, he should reconsider taking sides on the field in this inquest after sitting in the umpire's chair generally on matters involving the CMC and police service to date.

"If what he seeks is an involvement in the issues on Palm Island, he might fearlessly discharge his statutory obligations instead."

The Queensland Police Service said it was a matter for Mr MacSporran, who did not return calls yesterday from The Australian. On Wednesday, he denied any conflict of interest, saying: "I have not been asked to investigate any matters in respect of this issue, so I have no conflict."

A CMC spokeswoman said last night the report into the police death-in-custody investigation would be handed to police for comment next month and it may take months to be finalised.

Asked if the report could be made public early next year, the CMC spokeswoman said it was not possible to speculate that it would be finalised by then.

"It usually takes six weeks to respond, but we also have to make allowances for Christmas and New Year, as well as further challenges and legal issues," she said.

The CMC report is expected to recommend disciplinary action against senior officers, who investigated the death in custody, and slam the subsequent police review as an example of police "protecting their own".

The long-overdue report was ordered in 2006 after Ms Clements, in her coronial findings, castigated the police death-in-custody investigation as lacking "transparency, objectivity and independence".

Doomadgee was arrested on Palm Island on November 19, 2004, for disorderly conduct. He had sworn at a police liaison officer in a back street.

Less than an hour later, he was dead in a cell.

An autopsy revealed Doomadgee had four broken ribs and his liver had been cleaved in two. He had bled to death. Doctors said in evidence it would have been "most painful".

A week later, Palm Islanders were told his death had been caused by an accident when he and arresting officer Sergeant Chris Hurley scuffled and fell on the police station floor.

Five years on, Doomadgee death investigators facing discipline
Michael McKenna and Tony Koch - The Australian - November 19, 2009 12:00AM
SENIOR officers who investigated the 2004 death in custody of Palm Island man Mulrunji Doomadgee are expected to face disciplinary action following a damning Crime and Misconduct Commission report that accuses Queensland police of "protecting their own".

On the fifth anniversary of Doomadgee's watchhouse death, which sparked riots in the Aboriginal community off Townsville, the yet-to-be finalised CMC report has condemned police handling of the initial investigation and rejected the findings of an internal police review into their handling of the case.

The long-overdue report was ordered in 2006 after Deputy State Coroner Christine Clements slammed the death-in-custody investigation as lacking "transparency, objectivity and independence".

Police handed a 266-page report to the CMC last year recommending only "managerial guidance" of the four police investigators - two of whom were friends of Palm Island senior sergeant Chris Hurley, who was charged and acquitted in 2007 of Doomadgee's manslaughter.

In an explosive revelation, Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Commissioner Alan MacSporran confirmed yesterday he had accepted a brief to represent the Queensland Police Service at the second coronial inquest into Doomadgee's death, to be held in February.
Mr MacSporran will appear for the QPS at tomorrow's inquest directions hearings in Townsville.

Neither he nor the parliamentary crime and misconduct committee have initiated any action in response to the repeated public complaints about delays in investigating Doomadgee's death.

Mr MacSporran yesterday denied any conflict of interest in representing the QPS. "I have not been asked to investigate any matters in respect of this issue, so I have no conflict," he said.

Indigenous leaders and lawyers have accused the CMC and police of double standards over the five-year wait, with rioters jailed within months of the violence, and officers who stared down the mob given bravery awards last year.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service chief executive Shane Duffy said Queensland's indigenous community had waited too long for the investigation to be finalised. "Why the delay if there is nothing to hide and nothing to fear?" Mr Duffy asked.

During the first inquest, Ms Clements was told the Townsville Regional Crime Co-ordinator Warren Webber had appointed two of Sergeant Hurley's friends - Palm Island detective Darren Robinson and Townsville-based detective Raymond Kitching - to investigate Doomadgee's death.

The detectives were picked up at the Palm Island airport by Sergeant Hurley, and then shared a meal and beers with the officer at his home on the night of Doomadgee's death, on November 19.

The inquest was told that the officers had failed to secure the scene where the injury that claimed Doomadgee's life occurred, and that the officers were involved in off-the-record discussions with Sergeant Hurley during their six-day investigation.

Another internal investigation into the case - specifically dealing with the $102,955 ex-gratia payment Sergeant Hurley received for property lost in the riots that followed Doomadgee's death, and an insurance claim he lodged for property valued at a third of that amount - is ongoing.

Silence and delay over cell death shame far north
Two- speed justice exists in Queensland
COMMENT: Tony Koch - The Australian - November 19, 2009 12:00AM
ANYONE who doubts that two- speed justice exists in Queensland need only consider the much delayed Crime and Misconduct Commission investigation into the death in custody of Palm Island man Mulrunji Doomadgee.

On October 30, 2006, former Beattie government minister Merri Rose met her former press secretary in the Brisbane City mall and asked him to deliver a threat to premier Peter Beattie that certain allegedly embarrassing information would be made public if she was not given a plum job.

The message was relayed, the Crime and Misconduct Commission chairman, Bob Needham, was informed the same day and an investigation began. On November 9, 2006, Rose was charged with extortion -- to which she pleaded guilty and was jailed.

So it took the CMC -- the state's anti-corruption watchdog organisation -- 10 days to receive the complaint, complete the investigation and lay charges.

Compare that response with the case of Doomadgee, who was arrested on Palm Island on November 19, 2004, for disorderly conduct. He had sworn at a police liaison officer in a back street. Less than an hour later, he was dead in a cell, having sustained horrific injuries including four broken ribs and with his liver cleaved in two.

The appallingly inadequate investigation by police into the death in custody spoke volumes about the Queensland Police Service's lack of professionalism. It was so demonstrably woeful that the CMC undertook an inquiry into the investigation. But five years have elapsed since the death of the Aboriginal man and that inquiry has not been finalised.

The revelation that the parliamentary officer with the statutory responsibility to oversee CMC investigations and refer any official complaints he receives to that committee is to leave his position and act for the Queensland Police Service at the second inquest into Mulrunji's death is another incredible event in this sad saga.

Alan MacSporran SC yesterday said he had not received any formal complaint about the time taken for the CMC investigation so had not seen any need to take any action.

They are weasel words as there has been trenchant criticism in all media, but particularly The Australian, for more than two years about the delays.

The failure to gain closure on Doomadgee's death is attributable to the complete absence of political leadership -- particularly that of former police minister (and former Aboriginal affairs minister) Judy Spence, who had ministerial responsibility for most of the period since the death.

She applauded the quick justice meted out to the Palm Islanders who rioted a week after Doomadgee's death and burned police buildings. But she went missing when it came to standing up for Aboriginal people when it was clear to all that police had acted inappropriately time and again.

The long-awaited CMC investigation has open to it only two possible findings with regard to the police investigation into the violent death in custody of Doomadgee.

They are that the police were involved in a shameless cover-up, or that these senior officers were grossly inefficient.

Your call, Mr Needham.

Palm Island death in custody case to be re-examined
Joel Gibson Indigenous Affairs Reporter - June 17, 2009
AS ONE high-profile inquest into an Aboriginal death in custody finished, another began and a third was reopened yesterday, prompting fears of a trend.

Queensland's Court of Appeal ordered a new coroner be appointed to re-examine the death of Mulrunji Doomadgee in the Palm Island watchhouse in 2004, raising the prospect that a previous finding implicating a senior police officer could be overturned.

Doomadgee's death led to rioting on Palm Island when an autopsy showed he had suffered four broken ribs and a ruptured liver after being arrested for public nuisance.

The deputy state coroner Christine Clements found Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley responsible in 2006, but he was acquitted of manslaughter and assault in the criminal trial that followed and has since fought to have the coronial finding overturned.

He had a win late last year when the District Court ordered the inquest reopened.

Doomadgee's family and the Palm Island Aboriginal Council then went to the Court of Appeal, which found yesterday that even though the District Court ruling was flawed, the inquest should still be reopened.

The Doomadgee family's lawyer, Andrew Boe, welcomed the outcome, saying they were hopeful a transparent and precise examination of the evidence would settle the matter.

But Sam Watson, an Aboriginal activist, told the ABC the family would now have to endure the entire process again because police were "trying to rewrite history".

Meanwhile, an inquest began in Katherine into the apparent suicide of an Arnhem Land man, 22, whose death was blamed on the Northern Territory intervention.

The man escaped police custody and was found dead with a gun last August after being arrested for consorting with his 15-year-old girlfriend.

Glen Dooley, the principal legal officer of the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, said at the time that the intervention had criminalised consensual relationships.

"Cases are now seen as being the same as those involving pedophiles and sexual predators," he said.

However, the Northern Territory Coroner, Greg Cavanagh, said yesterday that the inquest would not become a de facto royal commission into the success of the intervention.

The inquest continues as indigenous communities digest the recommendations of a West Australian coroner last week that criminal charges be considered over the death of a man named Ward, a Warburton elder who died of heat exhaustion in the back of a prison van.

Professor Larissa Behrendt, from the University of Technology, Sydney, said the geographical spread of the inquests offered little reassurance that criminal justice systems had improved around Australia.

"We still see deaths in custody now that were similar to cases that were investigated by the royal commission," she said.

The 1989 royal commission on Aboriginal deaths in custody found that the high number of indigenous deaths occurred because "too many Aboriginal people are in custody too often".

Latest figures suggest indigenous people are now 13 times more likely to be in custody than non-indigenous people

Swiss bank declaration

2010-01-14T12:37:00.001+08:00

Mr. Pascal Couchepin,
President of Switzerland,
information@pd.admin.ch

Dear President Couchepin,

We refer to the report below for your information.

Would you like to comment, please?

We look forward to hearing from you in due course.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 29-Nov-2009.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?

----- Original Message -----
From: Ch
To: Eddie Hwang - UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2009 9:38 AM
Subject: Swiss bank declaration

The banking laws in Switzerland encourage black money to flow to their banks. This makes them an accomplice to a crime as no one can trace any stolen money. The Swiss have been doing that for years and highlighting this disdainful act of banking has produce results.

One wonders how much money has flown into the Swiss Treasury when no one claims from a dormant account.
Indian money stashed in the Swiss Bank has become a focal point of debate, especially after the Leader of Opposition and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate L K Advani raised the issue on Sunday. If elected, the BJP has vowed to bring the black money back home. Though the Congress dismissed the idea, the Swiss bank issue is slowly becoming a hot election issue.

It is no secret that black money has been flowing out of the country into Swiss banks and other tax havens worldwide for years now. While there is no official estimate to quote yet, LK Advani, the prime ministerial candidate of BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, recently said it might be in the range of Rs 25,000 crore to Rs 75,000 crore. R Vaidyanathan, professor of finance at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and a regular columnist for DNA, feels the real figure is many times that number.

At around $1.4 trillion (over Rs 70 lakh crore), it is way over India’s gross domestic product of Rs 43 lakh crore for 2007-08, Vaidyanathan, who was on Tuesday named the head of a taskforce by Advani for preparing a strategic document to get back the national wealth, told DNA. Excerpts:

Which are the various tax havens where the ill-gotten wealth of Indian businessmen and politicians is stored?
There are presumably more than 70 tax havens in the world. Indian wealth could be more in Switzerland and various British/ US islands.

How much Indian money do you think would be locked away in Swiss banks? What is the basis for the estimate you make?
I make this estimate on the basis of a report titled “Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2002–2006, Global Financial Integrity,” written by Dev Kar and Devon-Cartwright Smith. It was a project sponsored by the Ford Foundation and the final report was released sometime back in December 2008.

Financial flows in the context of this report include proceeds from both illicit activities such as corruption (bribery and embezzlement of national wealth), criminal activity, and the proceeds of licit business that become illicit when transported across borders in contravention of applicable laws and regulatory frameworks (most commonly in order to evade payment of taxes).

In 2006, the most recent year of the Global Financial Integrity (GFI) study, developing countries lost an estimated $858.6 billion to $1.06 trillion in illicit financial outflows. Even at the lower end of the range of estimates, the volume of illicit financial flows coming out of developing countries increased at a compound rate of 18.2% over the five-year period analysed for the study.

How much of this was siphoned out of India?

On an average, for the five-year period of this study, Asia accounts for approximately 50% of overall illicit financial flows from all developing countries. This report shows that the average amount moved from India annually during 2002-06 is $27.3 billion. This means, during the five-year period, the amount taken away is $27.3 billion x 5 = $136.5 billion.

It is not that all these amounts went to Swiss banks; it has gone to different tax and secret shelters. The share of Swiss banks in this dirty money is a third of the global aggregate; some $45 billion out of the 136.5 billion stashed away from India would have been hoarded in these years in Swiss banks. This appears in page 30 of the report mentioned above.

The important point is that this is only for five years. More amounts were stashed away during the Nehruvian socialist regime. So the loot for 55 years would be several times the amount. In fact, in those days, the Indian rupee commanded a better value per US dollar, so fewer rupees could get a dollar. Hence the estimation that Indian money stashed away may be of the order of $1.4 trillion.

How did the money get out?

There are several methods/ reasons — under-invoicing/ over-invoicing of exports and imports and getting the balance stored abroad; kickbacks from major defence/ civilian contracts; in the olden days, smuggling of gold and illegal money; transactions done abroad and not reported here; hawala funds; funds earned by artists/ entertainment industry/ sports people and stashed away abroad, etc. When you want to indulge in adharma, hundred ways are open.

Do you feel international terrorist organisations use the tax-haven route to send across money to finance their nefarious activities?
Even our national security advisor, M K Narayanan, has spoken about it in Berlin.

You recently wrote, “Under pressure from federal authorities, Swiss bank UBS is closing the hidden offshore accounts of its well-heeled American clients, potentially allowing their secrets to spill into the open.”

Do you feel the government of India should also demand all the Indian black money in Swiss banks back?
Of course, India should and must act. We are not a banana republic.

How can the government go about doing this?
By putting it on the global agenda. Put it in G20. Put it in IMF. Put it in Egmont Group. Also take a lead among all developing countries. Support US/ German/ French efforts.

Do you feel Swiss authorities and other tax havens will cooperate with us on this issue if we take the initiative?
It is not our pressure but that of the US, which will make them cooperate. When a family is in deep financial crisis, it tries to look at the small amount saved under the sugar jar by grandma. In the same way, developed economies are desperate for every dollar.

Even if we do not act due to their efforts, the list of crooks may be out. Then, we will be in a dangerous social situation since the who’s who of India will be there. Instead, we should get the list and get the funds and decide on the steps to sterilise it and the punishment to be given out, etc. Otherwise the world will laugh at us. We will be worse than a Nigeria (Sani Abacha) or Phillipines (Markose).

Do you feel the government will do this, given that a lot of the black money belongs to politicians?
Public pressure will make them do it. Plus, the evolving global situation against tax havens also might act in our favour. The money belongs to the poor farmers and unorganised workers.

Do you see businessmen applying pressure on the government to thwart any attempt to get back this money?
The world situation is such that Indian businessmen will want to bring it back now, given the attractive returns in India. The entire proprietary notes route to invest in the stock market was conceived for that.

You wrote in one of your columns that the German foreign intelligence agency BND got the names of 1,400 clients of the Liechtenstein-based LTG Bank who were suspected tax evaders. Of the 1,400, only 600 were supposed to be Germans. Do you think the rest would include Indians? Has the Indian government approached the German government for the list?

Indian names will be there. Our tax evaders and crooks are like Maha Vishnu, present in all continents and all tax havens, in the sea, on the earth, in the air. But our government has been lukewarm in its response to this issue. It should have immediately dispatched senior officials and the finance minister to get the names.

2010-01-14T12:33:00.001+08:00

SAY NO TO RACISM

Mr. Jason Kenney,
Minister for Immigration

Canada.
pm@pm.gc.ca

Dear Minister,

We refer to the report below for your information.

Would you like to comment, please?

We look forward to hearing from you in due course.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 23-Dec-2009.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?

Asian community unites over attacks on anglers
The trial garnered a huge amount of attention from Asians
Peter Edwards Staff Reporter - Published On Mon Dec 28 2009
It was dark on the pier at Mossington Park in Georgina Township when the drunken strangers approached.

Ruohang Liu and his friend Charles Hogan thought the men were joking when they demanded to see their fishing licences.

"He said that he's Canadian and he's doing his Canadian duty and wanted to see my fishing licence," says Liu, 24, now a senior analyst for a GTA investment firm.

Seconds later, before they had a chance to show the strangers their fishing permits, the two longtime friends were pushed into the water.

For Liu, who cannot swim, being shoved into the dark waters of Lake Simcoe shortly after 2 a.m. on Sept. 16, 2007, was a terrifying experience.

But the night would get far worse.

Moments after he was pulled from the lake by his friends, Liu's friend Shayne Berwick, 26, lay near death in a coma with brain damage after the Honda Civic Liu had been driving away from Mossington Park hit a tree while being pursued by locals in pickup trucks.

Trevor Middleton, 23, of Sutton, was convicted Dec. 15 in a Newmarket court of four counts of aggravated assault and two counts of criminal negligence causing bodily harm.

Middleton had been charged with trying to run Liu's Honda off the road, not for the dunking of Liu and Hogan.

The incident on the Mossington Park Bridge is an extreme example of attacks and harassment that have been inflicted scores of times in the past few years on Asian fishermen in the Greater Toronto Area. It has become so common that the attacks have nicknames by some Georgina Township locals: "nip-tipping" and "nipper-tipping."

What's unique about the attack on Liu and Hogan – apart from the near-fatal and crippling injury to Berwick – is the huge attention it has garnered from Asian community leaders, activists and media members.

"It's totally a turning point," Susan Eng, vice-president, advocacy for the Canadian Association of Retired Persons and former chair of the Toronto Police Services Board. "Even the existence of this trial is a major step forward."

For many of Asian background in the GTA, the night is a reminder of generations of similar abuse.

"It has been going on for some time," Eng says. "It's not like it's a recent phenomenon ... Our parents just said that was the price that you had to pay."

At key points during Middleton's trial, there were nine Asian journalists and a few more community activists attending.

Eng says many Asian fishermen drive to Lake Simcoe at night because they have day jobs. They're often professional community members, who are used to being treated with respect, not derision. The consequences of being shoved into the water, even if there aren't serious physical injuries, can't be minimized, she says.

"Being pushed in the water and being soaking wet and having to tell your kids why your cellphone doesn't work any more is a huge humiliation," Eng says. "It's something that reverberates for generations."

The community has been able to focus on the fishermen attacks because it now has well-informed Chinese language media, activists and lawyers, who developed some cohesion through the battle for Chinese head tax redress, Eng says.

That fight brought an apology in 2006 from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and financial redress for the punitive head tax imposed on Chinese-Canadian immigrants between 1885 and 1923.

"For those of us early Canadians born in the community who watched our parents be treated with barely disguised hostility ... this is not a shock so much as it is a bad nightmare that has just come to life," Eng says of the attacks on fishermen.

Increased community reporting has led to investigations on some 30 attacks on Asian fishermen and harassment of fishermen throughout the province between late 2007 and January 2009, when a fisherman was confronted during an ice-fishing tournament.

Court heard some of the men at the Mossington Park pier drank more than two dozen bottles of beer before Liu and Hogan were attacked. Eng says the argument that locals are environmentalists protecting their fish from poaching and overfishing is laughable.

For his part, Middleton said two witnesses from his group who thought they saw him push someone into the water that night must have been lying or mistaken. He swore he was up by his mother's pickup truck, searching for a lost cellphone charger, when the attacks took place.

Middleton said he hadn't even heard the term "nip-tipping" until it was in the mainstream media two years ago.

Recreational fisherman Bradley Lee was one of the Asian community activists who attended Middleton's trial on a daily basis. Lee, a fourth-generation Canadian, said it has stung to hear Asian Canadians routinely treated by locals as outsiders who don't respect fishing regulations.

In an interview, York Regional Police Chief Armand La Barge said: "The Asian fishermen/women were being unfairly characterized by some of the local residents as not being licenced, littering, exceeding their limit or catching certain fish out of season."

La Barge says his force takes hate crimes extremely seriously, and notes it has set up a hotline for Asian fishermen wishing to report incidents, staffed by officers who can speak Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean and Vietnamese.

La Barge said his force has also used undercover male and female Asian officers to fish alongside others in Lake Simcoe in the late evening and early morning hours, to aid victims and arrest attackers.

Eng says it's a victory that the early morning attack made it to trial, so that it could be dealt with in the light of day. "In the light of day, it looks pretty awful," Eng says.

Racism in private high scchools in Australia

2010-01-14T12:31:00.000+08:00

Mr. John Brumby
Premier of Victoria,
premier@dpc.vic.gov.au

Dear Premier,

We refer to the reports below for your information.

We are shocked to read that racial discrimination is wide spread in the State of Victoria in the 21st century and that your Minister for Education and other Ministers are hiding behind the bureaucratic wall and bury their heads in the sand.

Would you like to comment, please?

We wait for your early reply.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 4-Jan-2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?
Race hate scandal rocks some of nation's most elite schools
By James Campbell and Eliza Sum - Sunday Herald Sun - January 03, 2010 7:24AM

MORE than a dozen elite schools are embroiled in a race hate scandal as many of their students join a Facebook group calling for immigrants to get out of Australia.
The group's page, which features a picture of the Australian flag with the words "F--- off we're full" written across it, tells non-English speakers "if you wanna speak your crappy language, go back to were (sic) you came from".

The Facebook group is called "Mate speak english, you're in australia now" and has more than 5000 members from across the nation. It is growing by more than 300 people a day.

Anti-racism groups and school principals yesterday condemned the site, started as a prank, and called for Facebook to delete it.

Its provocative and poorly spelled page features racist rants against Muslims, non-English speakers and migrants.

The group includes students from Scotch College, Melbourne Grammar, Geelong Grammar, Trinity Grammar, Lauriston, Mentone Grammar, Ivanhoe Grammar, Camberwell Grammar, and Haileybury as well as a number of Victorian government schools.

A 16-year-old Berwick Secondary College student told the Sunday Herald Sun the group had been founded by his friends a few months ago as a joke after hearing other languages spoken on trains.
He said they made him an administrator, but he now bitterly regretted his involvement with the group.

"I've got friends from all different cultures," he said.

"People started posting racist stuff. When I caught on, that's when I exited."

The youth said he had contacted Facebook three times asking for the page to be deleted.

"Because there are no administrators left, only Facebook can delete it," he said.

Dr Chris Hayes, Principal of Xavier College, said anyone who had joined the group had broken the school's rules.

"The school abhors this sort of behaviour because it goes against everything the school stands for," he said.

Principal Ross Bevege of Berwick Secondary College said the site was disgusting and offensive and that he had contacted a student's parents about his involvement.

Foreign Students feel unsafe in Australia

2010-01-14T12:28:00.001+08:00

Mr. Kevin Rudd
Prime Minister of Australia
postmaster@pmc.gov.au

Dear Prime Minister,

We refer to the reports below for your information.

Would you like to comment, please?

We wait for your early reply.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 10-Jan-2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?
Smiling faces mask an unease about growing ethnic diversity
January 9, 2010
The year 12 school photo surprises many who stop to look at it closely: more than 80 per cent of the students grinning into the camera are Asian-Australians. Most were born here of parents who came from China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, India and the Philippines. In the small world of the selective high school, the face of multicultural Australia is unmistakable.

Take a walk through the city at lunchtime. You don't have to know that 35 per cent of Sydney's population was born overseas. The ethnic diversity is overwhelming. Move west or south-west into the suburbs and the colour, smells and sounds of the whole world swirl around you. In Fairfield, almost 60 per cent of the residents were born overseas; in Bankstown, it's 40 per cent.

Australia was once touted as a multi-cultural success story, a beacon in a xenophobic world. Now it is branded as racist. After attacks on Indian students, culminating in the murder of Nitin Garg in Melbourne, our reputation, and one of our biggest export industries, education, is imperilled.

There is no room for complacency about Australia's capacity for bigotry. Australians are not as racist as the Indian television networks shrilly assert. We like the economic benefits migrants bring. Even in the face of the global financial crisis, we supported high levels of immigration. Unlike the British or Europeans, we think of ourselves as a nation of immigrants. But nor are we as tolerant as we protest. History shows it only takes a wilful politician or hard economic times to whip up latent prejudices and bring out the worst.

As a nation we are less accepting of ethnic diversity than Americans, Italians or Swedes, the World Values Survey reveals, but more accepting than the Germans or Spanish. We have not banned minarets on mosques like the Swiss, or headscarves in classrooms like the French. But groups of Australians fight the building of Muslim schools, and the Cronulla riots are a permanent stain on the national psyche.

There is anxiety about hard-working migrants who keep their businesses open to midnight and get their kids into selective schools; we don't believe we are better than the "brown skins" as the English do; we fear we are inferior.

A hard-core 10 per cent of Australians are dead-set against immigrants. This intolerant nub can quickly expand when the times are right, or should I say wrong, to encompass the deeply ambivalent - a significant 35 to 40 per cent, research shows. When politicians make migrants a political issue, as Pauline Hanson did, or when unemployment rises, bigotry erupts like a burst boil.

The best account of how we are tracking is a new report for the Scanlon Foundation called Mapping Social Cohesion, by Andrew Markus, of Monash University. It is the source of my figures. Based on a survey involving 3800 people in July last year, it shows the glass is half full, the picture more nuanced than can be conveyed in a TV sound bite.

Racism flourishes in some locations, and among some groups. It is more prevalent in poorer areas, and where third- and fourth-generation Australians live in ethnic enclaves, feeling like minorities. It flourishes where people don't trust each other, and don't feel safe, and are financially struggling. In this lies hope. Projects to build trust between groups, increase employment and bring better policing and lighting to poorer neighbourhoods can have spin-offs in better relationships.

The shift from white Australia to ethnic diversity in 30 years is full of contradictions. There is ammunition in the Scanlon report for both sides of the debate about racism. To celebrate is the 68 per cent agreement that migrants make Australia stronger; the proportion that thinks we take too many migrants is at a record low despite immigration levels being at a record high.

Under prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, 75 per cent thought immigration was too high; now it's 37 per cent. The Labor prime ministers were considered captives of the ethnic lobby and people feared we were becoming a nation of tribes. John Howard's genius was to raise the immigrant intake while distancing himself from the multi-cultural lobby. Kevin Rudd has followed suit.

To cheer is that 88 per cent of migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds feel they belong here; and they believe, even more strongly than the rest of the population, that Australia is "a land of economic opportunity where in the long run, hard work brings a better life". Between 60 and 70 per cent of Australians say people of different ethnic backgrounds get on well together in their neighbourhoods.

Yet coexistence masks high levels of discrimination because of skin colour or ethnicity, with Indians and Sri Lankans reporting at twice the national average. Physical assaults, though reported by less than 10 per cent, have doubled since 2007.

Most Australians appreciate that the kids grinning in the school photo will help make Australia stronger, clever and competitive. The economic benefits of immigration, at least in good times, are understood. Yet there is some way to go before many Australians overcome their ambivalence and unease and embrace ethnic diversity with enthusiasm.

Foreign students tell of fear on the streets
Lauren Wilson - The Australian - January 09, 2010 12:00AM
RAILWAY stations in Melbourne's industrial north and west are the places feared most by Indian students.

It is there, after dark, as they make their way home from part-time jobs as taxi drivers, cleaners, or from staffing the counters of fast-food restaurants or convenience stores that they are most likely to face racist slurs - or, on a bad night, physical attacks.

Their attackers, they say, are Anglo-Australian teenagers and young people in their 20s who, for whatever reason, resent the presence of these foreign students in their suburbs.

"You f--ing bloody Indians," is a jeer 20-year-old Samar Abbas has heard more than once. The irony is that Mr Abbas is not Indian, but Pakistani, but he says the people who make these comments don't make distinctions.

Like 21-year-old Nitin Garg, who was stabbed as he walked through a poorly lit western suburbs park last Saturday night, Mr Abbas works nights at a Hungry Jack's restaurant to support himself while he completes a degree in business and accounting.

For the past six months he has lived in the northern suburb of Jacana, a train-stop before the flat, industrial expanse of Broadmeadows.

As news of Mr Garg's death caused diplomatic headaches and strained relations between India and Australia, Mr Abbas said it just made him more afraid living here. "I feel very threatened and afraid. I thought maybe that might be me."

Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe has faced relentless questioning this week on the high-profile murder investigation of Mr Garg's death.

Repeatedly he has stressed that there is no evidence to indicate the stabbing was racially motivated.

Official police statistic nonetheless show that crimes against Indians in Australia are on the rise.

In 2008, 1447 people of Indian origin were victims of violent crime, a jump of more than 30 per cent from the previous year.

Engineering student Piyush Shukla, 22, from New Delhi, who works with the Federation of Indian Students of Australia, says the death of Mr Garg is a reminder that Victoria's police must "provide students with security".

A close friend of Mr Shutla was released from hospital last week with a broken jaw after being set upon by eight or nine men as he tried to enter a city restaurant.

Mr Shutla has not been attacked in Melbourne, but he says racism is a problem for him: "The other day I was walking down the street and there were teenagers driving past me and they threw beer cans at me. They were saying, go back to your own country."

Of the six Indian and Pakistani students The Weekend Australian spoke to yesterday, each said they felt most threatened by Australians aged 16-26.

With most South Asian students living and commuting from traditionally working-class suburbs that have high youth unemployment, Mr Shutla believes racial discord often has its roots in young Australians feeling their opportunities are being handed over to foreigners.

"They think that we are taking their jobs. People say to me Indians are smarter, they get spots at university easier and they get jobs easier," he said. Other young students, such as 25-year-old Pakistani graduate Kamran Younas, echoed the sentiments of Australia's high commissioner to India, Peter Varghese, who this week said most crimes against Indians living and studying in Melbourne were simply "opportunistic, urban" incidents.

Mr Younas said South Asian students were at particular risk because they were vulnerable to opportunistic crime and racial intolerance. "Most Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan students . . . are doing restaurants, taxis, cleaning, those sorts of jobs, and they normally finish late and are risky."

Last year, Mr Younas was set upon by three young men at Glenroy station. They wanted his bag and kicked him down to try to snatch it. "I wouldn't say it is racist, I think they just wanted money, that would happen anywhere in the world," he said.

Mr Younas's parents have begged him to return home. His close friend, 23-year-old Sami Nisar, believes the problem is deeper than random theft and thuggery. He has lived in Melbourne for two years. "There is a lot of racism in this country," he said.

Indian man's burning in Melbourne not racially motivated - Victorian police
From: AAP - January 09, 2010 2:37PM

CRIME squad investigators say the circumstances leading up to a 29-year-old Indian man being set on fire in an alleged attack are "unusual" - but not racially motivated.
The man is recovering in hospital in serious condition with burns to his hands, face and legs after parking his car in Melbourne's northwest.

It's alleged that the man was randomly approached by four men who burned his car and set him on fire.

"I believe there's no reason at this stage to consider this in any way racially motivated," Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Neil Smyth said today.

"The circumstances of parking a car randomly on a side street and just some people approaching him are a bit strange and it's highly unlikely, therefore, to be a targeted attack on any individual."

Police were told the man and his wife left a dinner party in Essendon between 1.30am and 2am (AEDT) this morning and drove to their nearby home in Grice Crescent.

The man told police he dropped his wife off and then drove to a nearby street to park the car.

As the man was getting out of the vehicle, four men allegedly attacked him, pushed him back against the vehicle and poured an unknown fluid on him.

One of the men is alleged to have then ignited the fluid with a lighter before all four men fled.

The man then ran from the car, throwing his burning clothes into the street.

The man suffered burns to 15 per cent of his body.

The attackers have been described in only a "generalised description which is really just unspecific, just four males," Det Act Snr Sgt Smyth said.

"It is an unusual event," he said.

Neighbours across the street said they heard the car explode into flames but didn't notice any kind of fight or disturbance.

Raymond Yacoub, who has lived in the area for 30 years, said he woke up to see the car ablaze and firefighters spraying it down.

"Actually, to be honest, I thought maybe it was an insurance job," he said.

Police say their investigation into the incident is a priority and are appealing for any witnesses to contact them.

Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the federal government condemned all violence - regardless of motivation.

"The government condemns all acts of violence in the strongest possible way," she said today.

"This matter remains under investigation by the Victorian police," adding that the Government would not comment further until police could provide more information.

Exploitation in Australia

2010-01-14T12:25:00.001+08:00

Mr. Vayalar Ravi,
Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs
minister@moia.nic.in

Dear Minister,

We refer to the reports below for your information.

Sadly we have to agree with your comment about those unscrupulous employers who exploit those Overseas students. We have complained to the Immigration Minister for a number of times but to no avail. It is time the government stops this exploitation as it has been going on since the former Howard's days.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 12-Jan-2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?
India calls for end to 'exploitation'
SUSHI DAS, NEW DELHI
January 11, 2010

THE crisis involving Indian international students has widened with the Indian Government calling for an end to the exploitation of students in Australia by dodgy colleges and greedy employers, on top of increased efforts to curb violent urban attacks.

Following a week of heated argument over whether attacks on students are racially motivated, India's Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs, Vayalar Ravi, focused attention on other problems that students face. He said Australia should crack down on unscrupulous college operators and employers who paid students less than the minimum wage.

''The Government must check that,'' he told The Age.

He said Australian police were quick to arrest students for visa violations, such as working more than the allowed 20 hours a week during term time, but did little to catch those responsible for exploiting them.

''If the Government can be so strict in arresting the students who work more than 20 hours because they are violating the law, why can't they arrest the employer who is not paying the minimum wage?'' he said.

The Indian and Australian governments were aware of bogus training colleges that effectively acted as visa factories, he said.

Mr Ravi said the Indian Government was trying to ''control'' the number of students enrolling at colleges suspected of operating for the express purpose of obtaining permanent residency in Australia rather than education.

In May last year The Age revealed concerns by senior Australian Government officials that widespread rackets among private trade colleges were ''out of control'' and undermining Australia's education, immigration and employment systems.

Complex networks linking colleges, migration agents and businesses indicated the involvement of organised crime, one official said.

The leading body of overseas student educators, the International Education Association of Australia, has also warned that criminal networks operating within Australia's $16.6 billion international education industry are abusing the system to smuggle people into the country.

More than 500 Indian nationals were refused student visas in the three months to September last year because of bogus financial documents, according to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

The private vocational education sector is bracing for more college closures following a sharp drop in Indian demand resulting from a visa crackdown, violent assaults and revelations of dodgy colleges.

Student visa applications from India fell by nearly half between July and October 2009 compared with the same period last year. A spokesman for the Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin, Munish Gupta, said Indians around the world were concerned about the attacks experienced by Indian students in Australia.

''We are also cognisant of the fact that all of the cases may not be racially motivated. We've seen similar incidents in the US, Canada, UK and other parts of the world,'' he said.

He said the rapid migration of students to Australia in the past four years had prompted an increase in colleges offering courses such as commercial cookery.

''Somewhere along the line the students from India got skewed in that direction,'' he said.

Sushi Das is in India as a guest of the Indian Government.

*******************************************************************************************************

Mr. Chris Evans,
Minister for Immigration,
minister@immi.gov.au

Dear Minister,

We just got hold of a copy of your: "2010-11 Migration Program Planning consultation with key State and Territory representatives" and while some of the proposals are welcome but there is no cure for those 457 visa workers who work over 60 hours/week but get pay for 38 hours because they have to sign a false weekly time sheet or else.

Overseas students get $10/hour or less is quite normal in the "services" industries and if the 10% DIAC staff reduction is introduced, the situation will get much worst.

We sincerely hope that you will do something about that as well.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date: 16-Dec-2009.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?

Racism in Australia

2010-01-14T09:46:00.000+08:00

Ms. Julia Gillard
Minister for Education
julia.gillard.mp@aph.gov.au

Dear Minister,

While we are waiting for your reply below, would you like to comment with regard to the Sydney Morning Herald's report?

We wait for your early reply.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang.

A racial factor cannot be denied
January 11, 2010 - smh editorial
JULIA GILLARD'S is a name oft mentioned when pundits speculate about successors to Kevin Rudd. But the acting Prime Minister's handling of the issue of violence against Indian students does not recommend her. Her mantra that Australia is safe and not beset by racism looks and sounds at best like a denial of the ugly reality, at worst like her top priority is protecting the vocational training industry. The public in both India and Australia need much more explanation of what is happening.

As the Herald reported on Saturday, Victoria Police statistics reveal that Indians are 2½ times more likely to be assaulted than other Melburnians. That alone adds a racial dimension to the crime problem. This should be admitted. Instead, the denial is leading to misleading assumptions in Indian media that young Indians are somehow attracting more hatred than other visible minorities or that race is the only factor.

A better understanding suggests the problem is that very large numbers of young Indians have suddenly come to Australian cities from small-town, non-English speaking backgrounds, and been thrust by circumstances amid the social strata least prepared for competition in jobs and housing, and into work at service stations, convenience stores and fast food outlets that often requires them to be out and about in the lonely night hours.

As the Melbourne sociologist Bob Birrell points out, sheer numbers have pushed Indian students out of the usual inner-city haunts of students into the outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, where ethnic minorities and low socio-economic residents are concentrated. The limited information about the assailants suggests they are overwhelmingly teenagers, and not exclusively from the Caucasian majority but also including non-European juveniles. Robbery is most commonly the motive, and alcohol likely to increase the level of violence. But it is possible that a resentful perception of Indian students is spreading among local have-nots. The murder of Nitin Garg showed a horrifying violence, and his valuables were not taken. We await an explanation from police of the latest horror at the weekend, a petrol attack on another young Indian man.

That the numbers of Indians applying for visas to study here is falling is partly a result of the perceived prejudice and danger, but also a result of the necessary tightening up of a scheme that, as Birrell has pointed out, might have been good business for the vocational sector but ''made a monkey'' out of Australia's immigration policy. If Gillard cannot get across her appreciation of this point, then perhaps Rudd needs an education minister without a conflict of interest as employment minister.

Dear Senator Hanson-Young of the Greens Party,

We refer to your article and the other report below and wish to congratulate you for calling "a spade a spade" because racism does exist in this lucky country - Australia.

Having been in my adopted country for more than 50 years, I suspect Mr. Garg's death was caused by racism - despite the Deputy PM/Victorian Premier stated otherwise.

Not only that, Labor has re-introduced Racist Arthur Calwell's statement in the 50s: "Two Wong don't make a White".

Racism does destroy the quality of life.

Yours respectfully,

Eddie Hwang
President
Unity Party WA
UnityPartyWA@westnet.com.au
www.unitywa.org
Ph/Fax: 61 893681884
Date:07-Jan-2010.
Environmental Friendly - Save the trees - Use Email.
Can you afford to give Telstra/Bigpond a try?
Racism does exist in Australia
This week has seen tensions between Australia and India escalate, following yet another attack on an international student. Indian authorities have issued a travel warning about increased violence in Melbourne. The Australian Government is in damage control.

While police investigations into the fatal attack of accounting graduate Nitin Garg in Melbourne and the discovery of the body of an unidentified Indian student in NSW are ongoing, the motives behind these attacks remain unclear.

What is certain however is that there is growing disquiet about the way our international guests have been treated. Yet, our Deputy PM, and the acting Premier of Victoria have been quick to dismiss the possibility that racism may have been a factor in why these young people were targeted, attacked and killed.

While it's too soon to determine exactly what happened, to simply rule out the possibility that racism was involved is neither good leadership nor smart diplomacy in an environment of increased violence.

The Australian Government's indignant dismissal of the suggestion that racism exists in Australia, can only be seen as inflammatory in India, where emotions are still running high. And for those in Australia who have been on the receiving end of racial intolerance and abuse, it must simply be ignorant and insulting.

The state and federal Government's parroting of PR-lines on these attacks has increased the perception of government indifference. The response to the attack on Shravan Kumar last May, the young Indian student who was attacked with a screw-driver through his skull, while strongly condemned by politicians and Government officials, is a case in point.

If Government officials are to be believed, Mr Kumar was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The attack was "opportunistic" and it was not Mr Kumar's race that made him vulnerable, but rather the fact that he inadvertently walked into harm's way.

As the Senator responsible for establishing the Senate Inquiry in the safety and welfare of international students last year, I have spoken to many of these students about their experiences here in Australia. Most of them are extremely positive, but some have told me that after finding themselves victims of physical abuse they had been told by authorities to not carry iPods with them and to avoid speaking in their own language on public transport. What the?

Since when was it the victims fault that they were attacked by 'opportunists'? Since when do we say that victims of violent assault and fatal attacks were simply 'in the wrong place at the wrong time', or carrying one too many iPods?

Can we honestly say that racism does not exist in Australia? You only need to spend an afternoon listening to talk back radio to understand what I'm getting at.

Not everyone holds intolerant views of people from other cultural backgrounds or race, and out of those who do, very few would act on it. But nonetheless, some people are just bigots. It's true. Narrow-mindedness and racism do exist in Australia, and it's wrong.

We know this racist sentiment is unfounded and stems from an irrational fear of the unknown. But we can't address this, if we pretend it doesn't exist.

Some people are racists and politicians are kidding themselves if they think that by denying this, these people will somehow go away, or no one else will notice them. Every country has its fair share of morons; people who commit acts of violence against others simply because of the colour of their skin, their gender or their sexuality. Sadly, Australia is no exception.

Only by exposing and repudiating racism wherever it exists, are we truly able to move forward as a harmonious and unified community. Ignorant views fester, when we turn a blind eye. Racist ideas only flourish in the shadows, when they are not held up to the light of public scrutiny.

We need leaders to be honest enough to address the issue directly rather than sweep it under carpet, doing so under the guise of the 'new political correctness' that says we can't mention racism because it will whip up a Pauline Hanson style backlash. Yes, racism does exist in Australia and it is wrong. Australia is not immune from morons.

Unfortunately, if you identify racist attitudes in Australia you are all too often accused of being unpatriotic. I love my country and it is for this reason I know we can and must do better. Isn't the quest to be the best country we can be, at the heart of patriotism?

Surely, our political leaders should be mature enough to call a spade a spade and start challenging the views that should hold no place in a modern and tolerant democracy like ours. Only if we do this, can we rightfully market Australia as a prime destination for international students and visitors.

Race hate scandal rocks some of nation's most elite schools
By James Campbell and Eliza Sum - Sunday Herald Sun - January 03, 2010 7:24AM

MORE than a dozen elite schools are embroiled in a race hate scandal as many of their students join a Facebook group calling for immigrants to get out of Australia.
The group's page, which features a picture of the Australian flag with the words "F--- off we're full" written across it, tells non-English speakers "if you wanna speak your crappy language, go back to were (sic) you came from".

The Facebook group is called "Mate speak english, you're in australia now" and has more than 5000 members from across the nation. It is growing by more than 300 people a day.

Anti-racism groups and school principals yesterday condemned the site, started as a prank, and called for Facebook to delete it.

Its provocative and poorly spelled page features racist rants against Muslims, non-English speakers and migrants.

The group includes students from Scotch College, Melbourne Grammar, Geelong Grammar, Trinity Grammar, Lauriston, Mentone Grammar, Ivanhoe Grammar, Camberwell Grammar, and Haileybury as well as a number of Victorian government schools.

A 16-year-old Berwick Secondary College student told the Sunday Herald Sun the group had been founded by his friends a few months ago as a joke after hearing other languages spoken on trains.
He said they made him an administrator, but he now bitterly regretted his involvement with the group.

"I've got friends from all different cultures," he said.

"People started posting racist stuff. When I caught on, that's when I exited."

The youth said he had contacted Facebook three times asking for the page to be deleted.

"Because there are no administrators left, only Facebook can delete it," he said.

Dr Chris Hayes, Principal of Xavier College, said anyone who had joined the group had broken the school's rules.

"The school abhors this sort of behaviour because it goes against everything the school stands for," he said.

Principal Ross Bevege of Berwick Secondary College said the site was disgusting and offensive and that he had contacted a student's parents about his involvement.