FED:Editorials, Thursday December 23, 2010

AAP General News (Australia)
12-23-2010
FED:Editorials, Thursday December 23, 2010

SYDNEY, Dec 23 AAP - On Thursday The Australian says although advocates of opening
our borders to refugees will not admit it, most of the 150 unaccompanied minors in detention
on Christmas Island are the lucky ones.
They are alive and, if their claims for asylum are accepted, they can look forward to
a new life here. But the ones who lost loved ones in last week's disaster are in a very
difficult position and it is time for those who prefer the high moral ground to the realities
of policy to accept the consequences of encouraging asylum-seekers to risk their lives
on the high seas to reach Australia. This includes refugee analyst Khalid Koser, who rejected
a return to the Howard government's offshore processing policy on ABC radio yesterday.

"There are not many arenas in the world where you support going back to policies that
perhaps did or did not work a decade ago," he said.

But it did work. By making it clear that asylum-seekers arriving by sea would be processed
on Nauru rather than here, John Howard stopped the boats and thus stopped people drowning



The Sydney Morning Herald today says once again Labor has shown that the big end of
town and the wealthy get what they want. The Premier has taken a shifty, cowardly way
out by proroguing Parliament more than three months before the election. Unfortunately,
there is not even the benefit of putting the government into caretaker mode. That will
not happen until election writs are issued in early March. The government can now make
all the executive decisions it wants, without parliamentary scrutiny or criticism under
privilege. What will be left by March 26?

The SMH in its second editorial says largely as a result of its naivety and desperation
in the hectic days after the downfall of Kevin Rudd, the Gillard government finds itself
in a dreadful mess over its bid to get a fairer deal for all Australians from the mining
boom. Hopelessly outplayed by the big resources companies, it is now facing demands that
it either abandon the proposed tax regime or let the West Australian and Queensland governments
treat it as a cut-and-come-again magic pudding. The latter must not be allowed to happen.

Sydney's The Daily Telegraph on Thursday says when we want Kristina Keneally's Government
to just get up and go, it sticks around with barnacle-like persistence. When we want it
to stay - in order to face an inquiry over its handling of the electricity privatisation
debacle, for example - it vanishes like a Labor promise.
The Premier's move yesterday to close down Parliament two months ahead of schedule is
one of the most cynical ploys ever attempted in state politics, which in NSW is certainly
saying something.

In its second editorial the Tele says ACCORDING to a popular theory of a few years
ago, the planet was rapidly approaching a moment of "peak oil" - when the amount of oil
able to be extracted finally reaches its maximum and then begins to decline.

Various parties are still locked in dispute as to the accuracy of peak oil thinking,
but we already seem to have hit peak ethanol.

An Australia-wide shortage of the cane-derived fuel, which makes up 10 per cent by
volume of the E10 petrol/ethanol blend, is driving E10 prices ever upwards.

That's bad enough, but the shortage is also placing in peril State Government plans
to completely phase out pure unleaded petrol.



Victorian police say children as young as six have Facebook accounts and are vulnerable
to predators, the main editorial in the Herald Sun newspaper said on Thursday.

The editorial follows the AFL nude pictures furore, in which candid pictures of AFL
stars were first revealed on Facebook by a 17-year-old girl.

"This is an alarming and potentially dangerous use of the social networking site ...

," the editorial said.

"The corruption of young children has now emerged as a problem for parents who may
have naively registered their children on the social network.

Facebook requires registered users to be at least 13 years old, but parents or brothers
and sisters are setting up accounts saying the children are older.

"The Victoria Police sex crimes unit has moved quickly to warn parents that sexual
predators use Facebook and other sites to make contact with children.

"The internet, while acknowledged as a revolution in social communication, is not without
risk. Responsibility in mass communication is personal.

"Where it affects children is a parent's responsibility. Whatever information is contained
on a social network is likely to be seen by the very people you might not want to see
it."

In a year of sporting disappointments, 2010 may still end with a bang courtesy of
the Australian cricket team, the main editorial in The Age newspaper said on Thursday.

In a review of the year in sport, the editorial said the Socceroos' World Cup performance,
the Melbourne Storm salary cap scandal, the AFL nude photo controversy and the exit of
Gary Ablett Jr and Mark Thompson from the Geelong AFL club among 2010's sporting lowlights.

But Australia's Test team may offer some hope after a patchy year, it said.

"Winners rarely bother to reflect. Non-winners do.

"For the first month of the Ashes series, gleeful English critics taunted Australia.

"Australia has lost its sporting vocation, they said, and could fall back on nothing else.

"It was too simple, and almost certainly wrong, but it acted as a warning to Australia
at the end of a year of living frugally: in an ever more competitive sporting world, on
new frontiers and old, take nothing for granted.

"But one of sports charms is that redemption is almost always close at hand. One good
Test win in Perth, and one Shane Warne scandal, and all is well again.

"Suddenly, Boxing Day cannot come too soon. Nor can next year."



Today Brisbane's The Courier Mail says there are, the axiom has it, only two certainties
in life, and those are death and taxes.

There is actually a third, and that is when said taxes are reformed in any fashion,
there are always going to be winners and losers.

The challenge is always getting the balance right in terms of minimising harm and maximising
the broadest possible economic benefit.

This is as true of the proposed mineral resources rent tax as it is of other major
reforms taken in Australia in recent years such as the GST, fringe benefits tax or a raft
of other changes - most of which have needed a degree of compromise to pass though our
parliaments.

The MRRT requires particularly dexterous juggling of state, national and corporate
interests. Its initial incarnation (the ill-fated resources super profits tax) came to
an unedifying end after a vociferous and well-funded campaign by the mining industry and
an equally unedifying and unscheduled change of prime minister.



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