Should people be free to bushwalk unprepared?

A Victorian bushwalker in NSW has been fined on charges of “lack of planning or preparation”. The 29-year-old man, name unknown, went off on a long walk last Saturday  in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. He was leaving from Newnes and heading east across the rugged Wollemi National Park to Colo Heights. He carried a kilo of potatoes and an unknown quantity of naan bread which he estimated would last him three days.

He told friends who dropped him off he would meet them at the other end on Wednesday at 3pm. When he didn’t rendezvous at the appointed time, his friends alerted authorities who mounted a search and rescue operation. With the help of two helicopters, they found him just four hours later on the track. The first helicopter spotted him and the second winched him out of the Wolgan Valley. According to Police, the man had suffered a minor ankle injury and declined treatment. Police took him to Katoomba station for questioning before giving him a $500 infringement notice.

None of the media covering the story stated why this was an offence (they were all too obsessed with the spuds and naan) but they did quote NSW Police Force Rescue commander Brenton Charlton who said the route through remote terrain was extremely difficult to complete safely and had taken much longer than estimated. "Getting the basics right with trekking is so easy - all people have to do is notify the police or other responsible person of their trip intention and carry a personal locator beacon," Charlton said. "Making use of available technology, together with some commonsense trip preparation, could mean the difference between life or death."

Whatever about that quantity of food being sufficient for three days,  it is clear the man was underprepared. Though some people on that bushwalk forum said the walk was possible in three days, even a modicum of research would have uncovered it was likely to take much longer. According to this site devoted to walks at Newnes, the track to Upper Colo is listed as a very hard grade walk that takes seven days. The walk “ is for experienced and well prepared walkers only! Country traversed is rugged and there are no tracks beyond Annie Rowan Creek.” Its advice is “Check with your local bushwalking club before attempting this one.”

Clearly the Victorian did not take this into account. But should that be an offence? And should all bushwalkers be forced to take a “personal locator beam”?  PLBs are distress radio beacons which transmit location information about individuals directly to Search and Rescue forces letting them know that the owner is in grave and imminent danger. They retail on Gumtree for around $225 second hand though Blue Mountains police apparently do give them out for free. When Briton Jamie Neale was found alive after being missing in 2009 for 12 nights, Blue Mountains police superintendent Tony McWhirter told media they have free PLB for bushwalkers so they can locate them. However since then, the law has changed.

The NSW police media release (which was the basis for all media stories - no journalist did original research) did state why the fine was activated. It was issued under the National Parks and Wildlife Regulations of 2009 for engaging "in activity that risks the safety of self/others". The relevant clause is 22(1)(d) which reads “Sporting, recreational and other activities
(1) A person must not in a park:
(d) engage in any activity or recreational pursuit that involves risking the safety of the person or the safety of other persons or damaging the environment.
Maximum penalty: 30 penalty units.”

As a contributor to a NSW buskwalk forum said, the fine was troubling. “Guy sounds like an idiot", said colinm, “but I don't see that it necessarily warrants a fine. Since he's a Victorian, I bet he doesn't contest the charge, so is a bit of a soft target.” So should bushwalkers be forced to be prepared or should anyone have the right to go out and do what they want? Was it necessary for an expensive search and rescue operation to be mounted when the man was just four hours late? And what equipment should be compulsory on any trip? These angles were not covered by media. In their efforts to make the trekker look like a fool, the naan bread proved more alluring than the nanny state.

Allan Macpherson and Mt Abundance

The first European in the Maranoa was likely either Thomas Mitchell or his son Roderick in 1846 (though Finney Eldershaw claims he beat both Mitchells by four years in his journey of 1842).

Roderick Mitchell was the deputy Crown Commissioner for Lands in NSW who charted several branches of the Balonne River and may have got as far as the Bungil and Bungeworgorai Creeks. His journeys, and probably his maps, undoubtedly helped his father Sir Thomas Mitchell, then surveyor-general of NSW on his trip to the Maranoa in 1846. Sir Thomas Mitchell took the same route up the Darling River system into Queensland. He was the first person to describe Mt Abundance and the rich area around it.  He called it the Fitz Roy Downs in honour of the then Governor of New South Wales, Sir Charles Fitz Roy.
It was no coincidence it was Mitchell followed his son, nor was there a coincidence about the man that followed Sir Thomas to become the first white settler of the Maranoa.

His name was Allan Macpherson.

Macpherson's father William was the clerk of the NSW parliament and just as important as Mitchell.
They were both from Scotland and good friends too. Mitchell was also fond of William’s son Allan, a determined and ambitious young man. Allan was an adventurer who ran cattle and sheep on his Keera property in the remote Gwydir district of northern NSW. While the hilly country reminded him of his native Scotland, it wasn't profitable. Macpherson was captivated by Mitchell's description of Mt Abundance as "champaign country" and was determined to claim it for himself.

Knowing that "first come first served" meant possession under British law, he set off north-west along the river system for the promised land in July 1847. Macpherson had more than just Mitchell's maps, he had an armada of help: ten thousand sheep, hundreds of cattle, dozens of horses and drays and twenty men. The going was slow - they travelled just 60km in the first two weeks - but by the end of September his team was at the natural ford or "rocky bar" on the Balonne that Mitchell (senior) called St George's Bridge because he arrived there on the saint’s day,  April 23.

St George was not just the patron saint of England, it was also the last settled part of the English realm.
Not a single white man or woman lived north of the bridge. MacPherson crossed his Rubicon but was forced to halt for lambing season. Leaving the sheep behind, he finally gazed on Mt Abundance on Friday, October 15, 1847. Macpherson found Mitchell had not exaggerated about the quality of the land. "A glorious prospect!" he enthused.

He claimed a farm 30km across from the Cogoon River (now Muckadilla Creek) in the west to Bungeworgorai Creek in the east. The sight of the first natives two weeks later scared his men witless. Macpherson shamed them as cowards and he spent the following months building huts, cattle and sheep yards and fencing. Macpherson built several outstations including a cattle station on the spot of what would later become Roma.

The distance to the port of Newcastle was forbidding and Macpherson hoped to find a closer route to Brisbane via the Darling Downs. Urgent farmwork tied him down at Mt Abundance and after Christmas he went back to Keera for more supplies and drays. In January 1848, Macpherson got caught up in what would be a formidable foe for all who would live in the area: summer floods. Macpherson was constantly wet and bogged in heavy and impassable country with swollen fast-moving creeks.

He eventually made it to Keera but his return to the Maranoa was also delayed by floods. It was again a fleeting visit as Keera and Sydney demanded his presence on urgent family business. It was on his third return to St George's Bridge, Macpherson received the bad news Mt Abundance had been attacked.
Two men in outstations were speared to death and the rest were fleeing south.

Macpherson found them where the Cogoon met the Balonne but was able to convince only one of his men to accompany him back to Mt Abundance. The blacks were gone but there was a lot to be fixed. The experience redoubled his efforts to find a more direct route to the Darling Downs. The furthest he got was to a nearby station east of the Bungil owned by James Alexander Blythe.

Blythe was one of the earliest travellers to the Maranoa after Mitchell and had come back to establish a property between Roma and Wallumbilla. Macpherson was also fortunate to survive a skirmish with Aboriginals on his return home to Mt Abundance but his servant Charley was missing presumed dead. By the end of 1848, Macpherson became convinced it was too unprofitable to run sheep due to "blacks, losses, native dogs and overcrowding."

He turned Mt Abundance into a cattle property but the native attacks continued and three of his workers were speared in March 1849.After two more wool-carriers were killed, Macpherson and the new Commissioner of Crown Lands John Durbin patrolled the area with mounted troopers gathering the wool and taking it south. But Macpherson had had enough.

He went off to Scotland to get married and Mt Abundance remained an expensive and unprofitable out station. He sold it on his return “for a song". As Macpherson said, "it was by no means the first pioneers that reaped the golden returns, but those who were prudent enough to follow in their wake."

Australian Wheat bickering

The Wheat Export Marketing Amendment Bill 2012 is one of many issues used as poorly understood political footballs in Canberra.  Wheat is important because it is the staple food of almost half the world's population and is one of the most important commodities produced by the Australian agriculture industry. Australia produces 3% of the world's wheat but its exports represent around 15% of the world wheat trade annually.

Yet there is little news about what this bill, currently staggering slowly through parliament will do for the industry. Instead media commentary is all about the drama of who will cross the floor and whether the bill will get up.  At its simplest, the bill is aimed at ending a compulsory 22c a tonne levy wheat growers pay to the Government export body for “accreditation”.  It would seem a piece of de-regulation ideally suited to free market Opposition philosophies. But the Opposition is living up to its name and opposing the bill.

The Opposition have hidden the obtuseness of their opposition behind a supposed need for a “well managed transition”.  In a joint statement released today by the leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott and his deputy Warren Truss  tried to explain it away.  “Coalition in our first term will implement measures agreed by the industry to ensure a well-managed deregulation to free and open competition while maintaining our international reputation for quality and reliability,” they said.  Abbott and Truss said deregulation had to wait until they formed government to “safeguard” port access arrangements, transparency standards on stock information and minimum quality standards.  It pointed to the Indonesian live export debacle and for good measure it threw in pink batts and over-priced school halls to show why Labor could not be trusted on this.

The pair denied they would bring back the single desk, which Truss managed during Coalition Government. The waters are muddied by several of his “agrarian socialists” who have joined Labor in wanting state interaction in the industry removed.  These are National party members in WA, the state that grows the most wheat. WA grew 11 million tonnes in 2003-2004 which amounts to over $2 mlllion dollars to the export agency, money the industry would rather keep. The Western Grain Growers' Committee of WA said Liberal policy was destroying its reputation in the bush. WGGC chair John Snooke said the will would remove “a redundant bureaucratic body which has no purpose and imposes an unnecessary cost on wheat growers in Western Australia.” Snook said there was no need legislation on issues such as wheat quality “because they already are being handled by the industry and by the market.”

That is the problem for Abbott and Truss: the industry is already deregulated. That happened in 2007 when the old Wheat Export Authority was wound up. Set up in the shadow of World War II, the WEA had grown to have wide powers. The main ones in the 21^st century were to monitor the Australian Wheat Board single desk and to manage any other party that wanted to export Australian wheat. When both the WEA and the AWB was tarnished by the revelations of  kickbacks to Saddam’s Iraq in Oil for Wheat the WEA was disbanded.

In 2006 PM John Howard stripped AWB of its monopoly. This was against the wishes of many of his Nationals who argued the single desk was the only way to give Australian wheat farmers bargaining clout in an unfairly-run international market. The AWB was privatised and later acquired by Canadian interests.

In 2008 Labor introduced a new board with more limited power replaced the WEA. It was supported by the Liberals but not the Nationals. Confusingly the new body Wheat Exports Australia had a similar name and the same acronym. But the new WEA was given just one role to play: set up an accreditation scheme for the bulk wheat exports to ensure exporters met company standards. “The Scheme allows for the accreditation of bulk wheat exporters which meet the specified 'fit and proper' criteria and for WEA to exercise its monitoring and enforcement powers,” the (new WEA) says.

The problem is that this accreditation costs money and the (new) WEA is funded by a compulsory 22c a tonne of wheat levy from grain growers, and grain growers don’t like it. As one grain grower told me “If the bill doesn't pass we'll effectively be operating in a pseudo partially deregulated market continuing to fund  the current WEA which is of no use to us that I can see.” In May, the levy, called a Wheat Export Charge was removed pending the passing of the bill. But it was automated re-instated on October 1 when the bill had not passed through parliament.

The debate was adjourned again today with the Opposition divided and Labor wasting time on wedge politics.  The wisest words went to former Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey, who lost his seat to Nationals wildcard Tony Crook who supports the bill. Tuckey also wants a free vote in the Opposition. ''In political terms, do you feed a boil, or do you lance it?'' he said 

Ukraine challenges Australia's cigarette plain packaging laws

While those who detest the loss of national power to international bodies usually blame the UN, it is a World Trade Organisation decision this week that is posing the most serious threat yet to Australian government policy. The high-stakes decision is about cigarettes smoking, a global pandemic that kills six million people a year. Accounting for one in every 10 adult deaths, smoking is the most widespread public health threat in the world and the single biggest preventable cause of cancer.  At least 15,000 people die a year in Australia from smoking related causes.

Australia is now in the vanguard of public health initiatives against this pandemic.  Last year the Government passed ground-breaking legislation for cigarette plain packaging through a hostile parliament and then a high court challenge in August this year. The legislation requires tobacco products to feature standard olive-coloured plain packaging with large health warnings.

Within hours of that court decision a challenge came from tobacco-producing country Ukraine in the WTO. Ukraine is not the first country that comes to mind when dealing with Australia trade. According to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, trade is “modest” and it favours Australia. In 2009 Australia exported $70m of goods and services to Ukraine while just half that amount went the other way mainly to pay for Ukrainian fertilisers and electrical circuits equipment. Ukraine exports a lot of cigarettes but little or none to Australia.

Nevertheless Ukraine requested a WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) panel to look at the cigarette trademark restriction. After being deferred last month, the DSB agreed to form a panel last week. Now the DSB will determine if the measures “erode the protection of intellectual property rights” and “impose severe restrictions on the use of validly registered trademarks”. Ukraine explained why IP and trademarks trump public health policy. “Governments should pursue legitimate health policies through effective measures without unnecessarily restricting international trade and without nullifying intellectual property rights as guaranteed by international trade and investment rules," they said. In arguing international trade and property rights should be a factor in health policy, Ukraine said the measures were “clearly more restrictive than necessary to achieve the stated objectives” and  an “unnecessary obstacle to trade”.

With so little trade at stake, it seems an absurd argument but as ABC Lateline discovered, Ukraine's tobacco industry is especially powerful. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, production soared through conglomerates like Japan Tobacco International (JTI) and Philip Morris peaking at more than 130 billion cigarettes four years ago. Unsurprisingly JTI supports the challenge to Australia. “Put simply, if this measure is passed, Australia will be saying to the rest of the world, ‘we're not open for business’,” JTI said. Ukraine challenges two key Australian measures, the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011 and its implementing Tobacco Plain Packaging Regulations 2011. Its case is that these Acts are inconsistent with several articles of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, some of the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) agreement and one of the 1994 GATT agreement.

Australia was furious with the interference. It said Ukraine had high death rates from tobacco and its actions were at odds with its own policies to comply with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Australia defended the tobacco plain packaging as a “sound, well-considered measure designed to achieve a legitimate objective — the protection of public health”. Australia said the WTO recognised public heath as a fundamental right of its members and the measure was non-discriminatory and not unnecessarily restrictive.

Unlike Ukraine, Uruguay understood Australian aims. Its WTO reps said Uruguay “could not remain silent in this fight against the most serious pandemic confronting humanity”. Uruguay said the Multilateral Trading System should not force members to allow a product that kills its citizens in large numbers “to be sold wrapped as candy to attract new victims.” New Zealand said that it is also considering plain packaging measures and Norway said that countries are under obligation to adopt measures to protect public health.

But other countries such as Zimbabwe, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Indonesia have backed Ukraine. Zimbabwe relies on tobacco taxes and has not forgiven Australia for its anti-Mugabe stance. It said 200,000 farmers and their families in the country depend on tobacco. How many Australian lives should die for these farmers, they did not say. Central American nations Honduras and Nicaragua supported the Ukraine too. Honduras said that the WHO Framework Convention is” indicative and non-binding” while Nicaragua said tobacco was one of their most important exports.

Big Tobacco has been careful to cover their tracks but no-one is in any doubt who is behind the charade. Fairfax economic correspondent Peter Martin said a Philip Morris International briefing note for the US trade representative in the Trans-Pacific Partnership wants an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, “including the right for investors to submit disputes to independent international tribunals.” Martin said the Howard Government FTA with the US resisted this notion but an Abbott Government might be more pliable.

Peter Jackson: The tragedy of Australia's black fistic idol

Jim Corbett v Peter Jackson

Australia's greatest ever boxer Peter Jackson never forgot his first defeat. Years later on his deathbed in Roma in Western Queensland, Jackson discussed the matter at great length with his doctor Guy L’Estrange. That loss to Bill Farnan in 1884 in Melbourne was Australia’s first heavyweight fight with gloves. Jackson was already a famous and feared fighter and expected to win, despite carrying a leg injury. But Farnan beat him in three rounds.

We don’t know what rundown Jackson gave L’Estrange about the Farnan fight on his deathbed in 1901, tragically aged just 40. But there is evidence foul play was involved. In in its eulogy for Jackson, the boxing magazine The Referee published the suggestion Jackson was nobbled in the fight and had been “given a dose”.

Despite, or perhaps because of this grievance, the loss spurred Jackson onto greater things. Born in Christiansted on the island of St Croix in what was then the Danish West Indies (and is now the American Virgin Islands) in 1861, this black kid from the Caribbean found himself in the strange world of Sydney aged 16 and standing six feet tall. He was gentle and easy going and didn’t like a fight. But his weakness for food led him to Larry Foley’s Hotel. Larry Foley was one of Australia’s first boxing champions who was undefeated at bare-knuckle fighting. He liked the look of Jackson and tried him out in the back shed. Foley gave Jackson a job and the training he needed in ringcraft.

Jackson became as good as his mentor in bare-knuckle and would sometimes fight with his right arm bound. Four months after the Farnan loss, the pair held a rematch. The bout was indecisive with police stopping the fight in the sixth round after spectators stormed the ring. Farnan retained his title by default but lost it to Tom Lees two years later in 1886. Jackson beat Lees later that year to take the title. Foley gave him a special belt to celebrate the win, now in the possession of a Sydney based collector.

Having conquered Australia, Jackson went off to take on the best in the world in America. He arrived in 1888 and started with an 18 round victory over Black Canadian George Godfrey. Godfrey had previously tried to fight John L Sullivan but after Sullivan became world champion, he refused to fight black boxers. Jackson would run into the same problem with Sullivan - he would not “lower himself to fight a nigger” - and Jackson left frustrated for England.

Jackson chalked up two years of victories in England and returned to the US hoping to get another chance to take on the champion. But Sullivan still would not get in the ring with a black man and turned Jackson down. Instead, Jackson fought Sullivan’s main contender, Gentleman Jim Corbett. Jackson was five years Corbett’s senior and was ill for ten days before the fight in May 1891 and had a sprained ankle. Yet Jackson and Corbett slogged it out for 61 rounds for an energy sapping draw with most observers saying Corbett had the worst of it.

Though Corbett would later go on to defeat Sullivan and become world champion, it was the Jackson fight he remembered best in the biography The Roar of the Crowd. “That night I thought Peter Jackson was a great fighter. Six months later still tired from the fight, I thought him a greater one. I still maintain he was the greatest fighter I have ever seen.”

But Jackson would never lift the world crown. After the Corbett draw he went back to England and defeated the snarling Australian-Irish fighter Paddy Slavin to lift the British and Commonwealth titles in a difficult bout. The pair had bad blood since Sydney days and they still hated each other intensely. In the eighth round Slavin broke Jackson’s rib and a splinter punctured a lung. In intense pain, Jackson seemed beaten but rallied in the tenth to take control of the fight and pounded Slavin to pieces. The referee insisted the fight continue until Slavin was knocked out but the damage was fatal to Jackson.

The punctured lung never repaired and Jackson went on a downhill spiral. He was forced to appear in vaudeville, giving boxing exhibitions in circuses and as Jeff Rickert and Raymond Evans said about him in “Radical Brisbane: An Unruly History”, acting as a grey-wigged Uncle Tom in stage performances of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Suffering from tuberculosis, his last fight was against the powerful Jim Jeffries in 1898 and Jeffries knocked him out in five rounds.

Though Jackson always retained Danish citizenship, it was to Australia he returned in 1899, his career in ruins. He trained fighters in Sydney for a time but his TB worsened. On the advice of doctors, he retired to the dry heat of Roma, a shadow of the giant he once was. He died on July 13, 1901 at Argyle Cottage a privately run sanatorium which was later demolished to make way for the southern end of Roma’s airstrip. Dr L’Estrange put the cause of death of the “retired pugilist” as pulmonary phthisis exhaustion.

Jackson was due to be buried at Roma but there was a last minute change of plan. Another black West Indian boxer, Jack Dowridge from Barbados, who fought under the label of the Black Diamond, sent a telegram asking for the body to be sent by train to Brisbane. Jackson’s casket was escorted to Roma Railway Station by a band with a procession of sporting bodies and dignatories. In Brisbane, the procession went from Dowridge’s Hotel to Toowong Cemetery where he was buried in an unmarked grave.

Dowridge, with the help of several journalists and Jackson’s former coach Foley began to raise funds for a Jackson memorial. After a public subscription, Sydney mason Lewis Page carved a dazzling white Carrara marble monument over Jackson’s grave with an image that looks nothing like Jackson. The inscription repeats what Shakespeare’s Antony said about Julius Caesar “This was a man”.

But the best tribute was paid by Jack Johnson, an uppity black boxer from Galveston, Texas who achieved what was denied Jackson. On Boxing Day 1908, a white Australian crowd in Sydney was stunned when he defeated Canadian Tommy Burns to become the world’s first black heavyweight champion. A few weeks later he went to Brisbane and Dowridge took him to visit Jackson’s grave in Toowong. A.E. Austin of the Brisbane Courier said the living champion spent a quiet few moments in silent contemplation at the grave of his brother-in-arms. “It was an impressive sight to see the living gladiator kneeling for a moment over the tomb of he who was Australia’s fistic idol”, Austin wrote.

Barbarians at the gate

“Behead all those who insult the prophet” is a curiously worded slogan. It says Mohammed is a figure so holy that even the mildest rebuke should be greeted by severing that person’s arteries at the throat.  It is a common punishment for trivial matters in hard-line Wahhabist regimes such as Saudi Arabia.  One such trivial matter lies behind the latest calls for such barbarism, a "clumsily overdubbed and haphazardly-edited” low budget film with no production values.  Its US-Egyptian maker Nakoula Bassely Nakoula could well be the Ed Wood of the 21^st century. But because his film contains “insults to the prophet”,  it is capable of causing world-wide riots, multiple deaths including a US ambassador  and the banning of youtube in Afghanistan. 

Yesterday's protest in Sydney was the first Australian attempt to normalise such an extreme response. It was a deliberate affront to the norms of western culture and the live and let live philosophy of multiculturalism. Saturday shoppers on Pitt Street would have been bewildered to reads signs that told them  "Our dead are in paradise, your dead are in hell''.  It was so far outside their life experience as to be surreal. But they would have noticed the anger was real enough.

It was worse in other parts of the world where protesters were taking active steps to behead the insulters. Urged on by opportunist Salafi political leaders they lashed out at whatever target was convenient. But it was contrived.  In Libya and Egypt, it was Al Qaeda-affiliated groups preaching to the disaffecting. In Yemen, it was former president Salah undermining the current administration. And behind the scenes across the region it was Iran flexing its muscles.  There is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet, but it was politicians pulling the strings.

As usual, the West had no idea how to react. The protests were cloaked in wrath so righteous, it dared not be criticised. Far easier to criticise the target of the wrath, as western countries did in the past, blaming Salman Rushdie or the Danish cartoons for antagonising Muslims, not the protesters themselves for their over-the-top response or their leaders for their cynical manipulations. It is easier to retreat into pious homilies that attack the proximate rather than political causes. Then-US president George HW Bush refused to condemn the fatwa on Salman Rushdie with a non-committal “no American interests are involved” while the British deplored his fight with a great religion.

Now the American can’t look away any longer when a work of no artistic value causes international murder and mayhem. Nakoula had every right to make a film that took Mohammed’s life to pieces and portrayed him as a flawed man, not as a flawless “prophet”.  If that was humiliating and offensive to some, then so be it. That is their problem and they could have dealt with it by ignoring it. But the Innocence of Muslims is not only a rubbish film, it is not even honest rubbish. Nakoula lied to his cast and crew about its intentions .   

Under an assumed name of Sam Bacile, Nakoula pretended he was making a “historical desert drama” called Desert Warriors.  His lead character was Master George, a philanderer and husband of multiple wives, one as young as seven. The references to Mohammed and Islam were thrown in later in the absurdly bad editing process. When one of the cast rang Bacile/Nakoula to talk about his deception, he replied, “I'm tired of radical Islamists killing each other. Let other actors know it's not their fault.”

Nakoula may have wanted to light a flame but it was up to others to burn the house down with it. Former Iranian Hezbollah leader Massoud Dehnamaki gives a clue as to how others would use the spark. Dehnamaki told the Daily Beast it was up to the US to “prove” it was not involved  The US government had to prosecute the filmmakers, he said. “Westerners see their own freedom in the ability to insult others,” Dehnamaki said. “They see freedom as a one-way freeway that moves in the direction of their demands. They don’t respect other people’s beliefs.”  

And indeed there were pictures in the news today of Nakoula being arrested. Though it was not well explained by media, his crime was not blasphemy or even deception but simply a breach of probation conditions. When he was done for a fraud crime in 2010, Nakoula was not allowed a computer or the Internet without permission for five years.  

But there is no crime in his film, except against taste. It was not as the White House said  “reprehensible and disgusting”, but the response was. Bad films don’t kill people, people kill people. No one wants to take the side of a convicted fraudster who deceived his crew and set out to deliberately offend with a ham-fisted film.  But that is what we must do.

Freedom is not a one-way freeway as Dehnamaki calls it. It is an 18^th century enlightenment value that understands complex societies need a certain tolerance of difference to survive.  No longer tied to the dictatorial value-system of any one church, some leeway of live and let live is needed to ensure a peaceful life.  It is why blasphemy was mostly wiped off the books in the west in the 20^th century but it is also why it is creeping back in the 21^st in the form of legislated race hate crimes.  

 

It makes it harder to get criticism into the public domain while doing nothing to address the root cause of the hatred.  And it is the thin edge of the wedge. There are more serious works than Nakoula's at stake. Only this week, British television canned a serious historical program that casts doubt on the authenticity of Muslim traditions. Filmmaker Tom Holland said his "Islam: The Untold Story" was a “a legitimate subject of historical inquiry”. But it was cancelled on “security advice”. British audiences should slam Channel Four’s cowardice and demand they show it. This is not war of civilisations, it is test of strength.  We must stand up for free speech. Unless we are happy for western countries to imitate the Saudis, those who demand beheading need to be disarmed. 

Birth, marriage and debt: Bankrupcty in Australia

If you are a man, in your early forties and single, then  chances are you are more likely to be bankrupt. That’s the finding of the Profile of Debtors 2011 a new report released by Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia.  This Government agency would know as anyone who becomes bankrupt must lodge a statement of affairs with ITSA. 

The law covers this off under the Bankruptcy Act 1966 which allows for trustees to distribute property fairly among creditors and prosecute dishonest debtors.  Bankruptcy lasts three years but can be extended. Since 2003 several patterns among bankrupts have been noticeable: they are mostly male (55:45), they are getting older, and they have less children than before. The primary causes are unemployment and economic conditions affecting their industry (particularly since 2009). The majority of bankrupts earn $30,000 or less and the size of their unsecured debt is increasing.
Despite their low incomes, almost half of them have unsecured debt of more than $50,000 and over a quarter per cent have unsecured debt of more than $100,000.

Over 23,000 Australians went bankrupt in 2011 and ISA constructed a profile of the average bankrupt last year. He was male aged between 35 and 54 years and single without dependants. It was his first time bankrupt. He earned less than $30,000 in the 12 months prior to bankruptcy (well below the $48,000 national average) and owed more than $20,000 mostly to the banks. He had no assets like property that could be used to repay creditors.  Tasmania and Queensland had the highest percentage of bankrupts and NT had the lowest. Three percent of bankrupts identified as Indigenous (who comprised  2.5% of the population). 

Nearly half of the liabilities is unidentified by the research with the “other” category responsible for 47% of all debt. Of the identified debt, credit cards were highest, responsible for 21 percent of unsecured debt followed by personal loans and house mortgage both on 12 percent. Credit cards also accounted for 18% of personal insolvency agreement debtors’ debt and a record 58% of debt agreement debtors’ unsecured debt.

 

According to ASIC, Australians have over $36 billion owing on credit cards, an average of $4,700 per card holder. MoneySmart’s Delia Rickard said paying off their credit card debt should be a top priority for millions of Australians.  ‘If you have $4,700 credit card debt (the national average) and only make the minimum repayments, it will take 49 years to pay it off and cost you around $14,600 in interest,” Rickard said. “But if you are able to pay off $250 each month, you’d pay off your debt in two years and save $13,700 in interest.”

Despite the RBA keeping interest rates at historical lows, banks still charge astronomical rates for their credit cards. Paul Clitheroe said the average card rate is around 17 per cent but many charge 20 per cent or more. “Monthly interest charges continue to eat away at household budgets making it hard to get ahead with card debt,” he said. “If you're serious about clearing card debt, one solution is to use a personal loan to pay off the balance.” Clitheroe said this would increase monthly repayments but the debt would  be paid off in three to five years depending on the loan term.

There are new rules in place since July 1 which will allow people be better informed against the scams the credit card companies use to fleece their customers. The company must now refrain from offering limit increases on cards, unless agreed, provide monthly statements that show how long it will take to repay the entire balance if you only make minimum repayments and provide clearer details on interest-free periods. All new credit cards must include: facts sheets to make it easier to compare offers, the capacity for consumers to nominate the credit limit, a ban on over-limit fees, notifications if you exceed your credit limit and repayments to the most costly aspect of your credit card debt first (such as cash advances) to reduce debt faster.