We're not here to subsidize lifestyle choices, says the PM to remote aboriginal communities.
Presumably unless you're wishing to take 6 months paid maternity leave. Or apply for education allowance, or family tax benefit.
We're not here to subsidize lifestyle choices, says the PM to remote aboriginal communities.
Presumably unless you're wishing to take 6 months paid maternity leave. Or apply for education allowance, or family tax benefit.
I am broadly supportive of the idea of shutting down the less viable remote communities but to tell people who live there (or know people who do) not to get emotional about it is silly.
There are some 150 communities with less than 8 people in each....Do they expect the government to give them a school,a house, a job, power and a water and sewage system?
There are some ghost mining towns around so why don't combine the lot and shift them into one area where those facilities exist.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/op...inal-communities/story-fni0ffxg-1227258907690
But wait. Let’s separate the facts from the emoting. Abbott was defending the West Australian Government’s plan to close 150 *remote communities, so tiny that they average fewer than eight people each.
Imagine a house or two ”” taxpayer-funded ”” on the end of a taxpayer-funded road in the middle of a desert.
Imagine that settlement in the area described recently by Rachelle Irving, co-ordinator of the East Kimberley Homelessness Project: “(As a volunteer ambulance officer) I was confronted with this scene ad infinitum: a three-bedroom basic government-owned/leased house with a large number of people present.
“Yards littered with empty cans and a stench that permeated the air, consisting of stale beer, disregarded rubbish and food scraps ...
It seems that some people want to live traditional lifestyles on other people's money. If they want to live like their ancestors then they can hunt and fish and live off the land.
The victim mentality is alive and well. Other people have to move to find work, I don't see why that should be different for a particular group.
Another one, apparently the power fails and when employees arrive, the diesel fuel tanks are empty.
Of three remote communities here, why are only the two Aboriginal ones under threat?
Tony Abbott says living in remote communities is a ‘lifestyle choice’. For the thousands of Indigenous people who actually live in them, it’s a matter of life and death. A special report from Guardian Australia’s Perth correspondent
Words and photographs by Calla Wahlquist in the Kimberley
Wednesday 11 March 2015 13.29 AEDT Last modified on Thursday 12 March 2015 07.22 AEDT
There are three small communities within 30km of each other in the Kimberley, the isolated north-western corner of Australia.
Because of a new funding deal struck between Australia’s state and federal governments, two of those communities could be closed.
Two of the communities are Aboriginal. The third is not. It will not be closed.
NCRIS funding cuts: A science risk that's not worth taking
Date
March 11, 2015 - 11:45PM
Catriona Jackson
Last week, Brian Schmidt stood in the Senate Courtyard, on the same spot as the day he won the Nobel Prize, and told us a calamity was about to hit Australian science.
He warned that 27 national research facilities – all part of the federal government's National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme (NCRIS) – were on the brink of collapse. A single year of operational funding has become caught up in the universities deregulation debate, and unless it is released the nation's research effort will be permanently damaged.
These cutting-edge, high-tech 27 NCRIS facilities span all disciplines and all regions, and include the one, Astronomy Australia, that supports Schmidt's work.
Back in October 2011, when Schmidt won the prize, he told us what had lured him from his US home to work here. It was the intellectual excitement and collaborative nature of Australia scientists, but also – and this was a big factor – the brilliant infrastructure, the huge telescopes at Mount Stromlo, without which he cannot do his work.
That infrastructure doesn't come cheap, and Australia has done a great job providing it. The brainchild of the Howard government, the NCRIS scheme kicked off in 2005. Under then education minister Julie Bishop, the groundbreaking scheme got the best equipment and the best people, put them together, and let the discoveries and innovation flow.
Bishop understood that test tubes and beakers were no longer the basic equipment of science – that the modern scientific kit is big, expensive and high-tech. It is marine-observing systems that span entire oceans, huge telescopes, and the supercomputers needed to crunch all the data once it is collected.
She said the scheme was "essential to build our national capacity to generate knowledge and use it to advance our economic, social and environmental objectives".
She was right then, and is right now.
And 11 years on, the scheme has worked and worked brilliantly, attracting the best researchers from home and abroad – 1700 skilled scientists and support staff are employed across the nation; 35,000 people, including many from industry, use the high-quality services they provide.
NCRIS success stories include a nano-patch to deliver life-saving vaccines without refrigeration, very important for remote Australians and poor countries; marine models and data to search for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370; and the weather-prediction technology that picked up the recent Northern Territory and Queensland cyclones.
The facilities are the backbone of the research system. They are used by the nation's top researchers, from all sectors, to tackle the really big challenges and opportunities, and to address the issues that will determine how successful we are in the 21st century.
So what's the problem? Surely a government wouldn't put at risk a hugely successful scheme, of its own devising – a $3.5 billion capital investment? Think again.
In May's budget, Education Minister Christopher Pyne found a last-minute sum – $150 million to fund the facilities for 2015-16 – while kicking off a review to identify long-term funding options.
Scientists were pleased with the move, and fully support the review. It seems to be making good progress towards a decent set of recommendations, and will issue a final report to government in a few months.
But the $150 million has not flowed, and under pressure this week Mr Pyne has made it crystal clear that it would not, unless his package of university deregulation reforms passed the Senate. He refused to de-link the two issues.
That's why this week the nation's science, research and education sector – the National Research Alliance – stood as one to call on the Prime Minister to act to prevent this calamity.
This is not only an education issue; the impacts and work spans almost every portfolio in government, agriculture, health and environment – it is truly a whole-of-government issue.
It is hard to believe that the government could allow a highly successful, nation-building scheme, a multibillion-dollar capital investment, to fall over for want of one year's worth of operating money. With only four months before the NCRIS money runs out, on June 30, researchers are starting to panic: boards are discussing insolvency, and staff are looking for jobs elsewhere. Facilities are measuring their existence in terms of weeks, not months or years.
If the government does not move very quickly to release the funds, there is the very real possibility that a good number of the 27 facilities will close.
Standing in Parliament House last week, Professor Schmidt put it more bluntly: "We are about to take everything we have built up over a decade and crush it."
Surely nobody wants that.
Catriona Jackson is CEO of the peak body Science and Technology Australia, a member of the National Research Alliance.
It's unfortunate that the legislative agenda with the senate has become so problematic but when there are x-bench senators elected on such a small proportion of the vote, it's obvious what one area of reform is.Another particularly stupid action currently in play by the Abbott government is using the funding of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme (NCRIS) as a lever to force the Senate to agree to proposed changes to University funding.
This was a brainchild of the Howrad government and established high tech research facilities across 27 facilities to give Australia an opportunity to become technological leaders.
And now this present pack of non leaders is holding a gun to the scheme if it doesn't get its way in the Senate. If this is good government God help us.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/com...k-thats-not-worth-taking-20150311-140y69.html
It seems that some people want to live traditional lifestyles on other people's money. If they want to live like their ancestors then they can hunt and fish and live off the land.
The victim mentality is alive and well. Other people have to move to find work, I don't see why that should be different for a particular group.
We talking LNP farmers?
We talking LNP farmers?
We're talking everyone, nobody wants to change anything, so we continue down the whirlpool.lol
Let's blame Tony, that will fix it, everything can stay the same then.
If Tony goes, the handouts stay, the status quo remains, sunshine and lollipops for everyone.yeh
Do you think the vote at the last election was really about stopping the endless changes to everything that the Labs seem to fixate on when they emerge from the wilderness of the opposition benches? I know I would have liked some time to take a breather instead of worrying about the Libs devolving everthing, seemingly to remove the smell of Lab territory marking.
Sounds very earthy, I thought the last election was about fiscal mismanagement, obviously Fairfax don't agree.
It would appear, fiscal mismangement is far preferable to sustainable self reliance.
We now, no doubt will see the outcome, in 10 or so years time.
As far as removing Labor territory marking.
It may sound wonderfully poetic, and in some self deprecating way be inwardly fullfilling, for the Labor needy.
However the fact remains the debt keeps increasing, which reduces the available funds for welfare.
Shorten and Labor aren't going to fare well in the next election.IMO
Missing in action, doesn't instill confidence in the electorate.
Bill actually comes across as politically impotent.IMO
I'm not sure the bleed away from the majors won't continue at the next election. Many of my Lib party diehard friends are already vocal about the impotency of Tony and his cabinet. While they would never vote Lab, their discontent could persuade a swinging voter to side with Billyboy.
If I was 25 years old and had $25k in super, I would much rather use it as a deposit for a home, than hope I could use it in 42 years time.
I would prefer to own a home at retirement than have some extra money in super, which would no doubt reduce my pension entitlement.
It really is a no brainer, except for the Fairfax press and Labor die hards.
They seem to be fixated, on anything anti government, be it good or bad for the individual.
Drone mentality.
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