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The Australian defense department’s uphill struggle to control acquisition programs is progressing, but it is far from reaching fruition. The government’s decision to go ahead with the purchase of up to 100 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters will test what lessons have been learned from delays on airborne early warning aircraft, tankers and helicopters. Schedule performance has long been a thorn in the side of the department, which in recent years has rolled out a range of reform measures to try to curb these costly failings. Even more efforts are on the drawing board, in large part out of concern that...

A Victorian couple who gave their 10-week-old baby an ecstasy tablet have walked away from court with suspended prison sentences. The couple, who can not be named under Queensland law, pleaded guilty in Cairns Supreme Court on Thursday to charges of grievous bodily harm and drug possession. Prosecutor Jodie Woodridge told the court the baby girl's mother, now aged 23, had hidden the drug among the infant's reflux medication when they travelled to north Queensland in December 2008 to holiday with her brother. Ms Woodridge said the drug remained with the baby's medication throughout their stay, creating a "Russian roulette"...

Warming Scandal: The architect of climate fraud steps down, the creator of the infamous "hockey stick" is investigated, and Australia's parliament defeats cap-and-trade. We love the smell of truth in the morning. As the high priests of what Czech President Vaclav Klaus has called a "religion" prepare their pilgrimage to worship the earth goddess Gaia in Copenhagen, complete with humanity being sacrificed, the heresy of climate truth is finally being heard. The gospel of climate change, once expressed with the messianic fervor of an Elmer Gantry by Al Gore, is now expressed with the stammering incoherence of an Elmer Fudd...

Senate votes down Australian cap-and-trade billClimate bill defeated in 41-33 vote, as government insists it will put the bill before the Senate for a third time on Friday James Murray, BusinessGreen, 02 Dec 2009 Australia's plans for transitioning to a low carbon economy were thrown into turmoil today when the opposition successfully blocked the government's flagship emission cap-and-trade bill for the second time this year. The vote, which follows a dramatic week that saw opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull ousted over his decision to reach a compromise with the government over the bill, resulted in the bill being defeated by 41...

Britain's leading climate change economist, Nicholas Stern, has warned Australian politicians that they are mistaken if they think tackling climate change is too costly. New Liberal leader Tony Abbott has put his party on a collision course with the Government over its emissions trading laws, which are expected to be voted down in the Senate this morning. In London overnight Lord Stern released two new reports which he will take to this month's United Nations conference in Copenhagen. They detail 11 points which he has worked on with the United Nations to help shape a final political agreement. He says...

Australia's new opposition leader, Tony Abbott, brings a history of social and economic conservatism to the job that could drag Australia's political system to the right if he is able to consolidate his power base. After defeating former Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull by the slimmest of margins -- 42 votes to 41 -- in a vote held Tuesday morning, Mr. Abott is set to quickly undo some of the main opposition party's more centrist policy positions. He has committed the opposition to deferring or voting against a high-profile plan proposed by the Australian government to curb the country's greenhouse...

SYDNEY (AP) — Australia's Senate has rejected legislation to set up an emissions trading system in the country to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. The Senate voted Tuesday to defeat a bill that is the centerpiece of the government's plans to slash Australia's emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020 as part of global efforts to fight global warming. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wanted the legislation passed before he attends next week's U.N. summit on climate change in Copenhagen so he could portray Australia as a leader on the issue. The government's next step is unclear. Rudd...

Australia’s main opposition Liberal party appointed a climate change sceptic as its leader on Tuesday in a move that all but kills plans by Kevin Rudd, primer minister, to have an emissions trading scheme passed into law ahead of the Copenhagen climate change summit. Tony Abbott ousted Malcolm Turnbull to become Australia’s fourth leader of the Liberal party in just over two years but only after securing 42 votes against Mr Turnbull’s 41. Mr Abbott, who earlier this year said the argument for climate change “is absolute crap”, used his first press conference to take on Mr Rudd’s Labor government...

TONY Abbott has rolled Malcolm Turnbull to take over the Liberal leadership in a spill forced by deep divisions on the Opposition's climate change policy. Mr Abbott, Mr Turnbull and Joe Hockey contested a three-way spill at a special partyroom meeting in Parliament this morning. Mr Abbott won by a single vote, 42-41. Everyone had expected Mr Hockey to win in a landslide, but he was eliminated in the first round of voting. That sent Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull into a head-to-head vote for the leadership. Those deep divisions remain - as shown by the razor-thin margin in today's...

Workers at McCain's vegetable factory in north west Tasmania are asking the company to be more respectful in its negotiations about their redundancies. Workers say they have received little detail nearly 10 days after McCain announced it would close the Smithton plant. The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union is writing to the company to seek more information about exactly how many workers will lose their jobs when the factory closes next year.

Australian scientists have said they are hoping to breed sheep that burp less as part of efforts to tackle climate change. The scientists have been trying to identify a genetic link that causes some sheep to belch less than others. Burping is a far greater cause of emissions in sheep than flatulence, they say. About 16% of Australia's greenhouse emissions come from agriculture, says the department of climate change. Australia's Sheep Cooperative Research Council says 66% of agricultural emissions are released as methane from the gut of livestock. "Ninety per cent of the methane that sheep and cattle and goats...

November 29, 2009 Australia's answer to global warming - breed a burp free sheep Anne Barrowclough in Sydney The Australian Government's plans to enact a law for an emissions trading scheme are in chaos and the opposition Liberal party is in meltdown over the climate change legislation. But Australian scientists have their own cunning plan to stop global warming - breed a sheep that doesn't burp. Farting cows and sheep have been blamed for most of the methane emissions that have helped take Australia to the top of the world's carbon footprint league table. Around 12 per cent of the...

The Australian situation tonight: Today the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) decision was successfully delayed by questions until Monday. That’s good news, but there’s no Champers popping yet. The longer we wait, the longer the real story of the fraud has to filter through to our representatives, but this is a race to overcome two decades of propaganda in one weekend.This week will be written up in history books. Late yesterday a parliamentary mutiny occurred as opposition cabinet members abandoned their leader. Three on Monday: Mitch Fifield, Brett Mason and Mathias Cormann. Then Thursday: six more, and on Friday Concetta Fierravanti-Wells...

The final trial of the new new national telephone warning system has been completed in Victoria. The new system, called the Emergency Alert System begins operation next week. More than 50,000 test messages were sent to phones in Torquay, Colac, the Dandenong Ranges and Maribyrnong as part of a trial that began on Tuesday. It allows text messages to be sent to mobile phones based on a billing address, and voice messages to landlines based on location. The Premier, John Brumby, says the system will allow emergency services to send 300 text messages per second, and 1,000 voice messages per...

After 18 days on the run, Antony Waterlow has been charged with the murder of his father and sister following a dramatic standoff with police in Sydney bushland. The 42-year-old had been the subject of a massive police manhunt after the stabbing deaths. The search ended with a siege in bushland near Colo Heights in Sydney's northwest on Friday afternoon, when he threatened to harm himself with a knife as police approached. "After negotiations with local police the male placed the weapon down and surrendered to police," head of the investigation Acting Superintendent Dennis Bray told reporters. Without naming Waterlow,...

The Australian government has decided to buy 14 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters now and not review its larger commitment for operational squadrons for another few years. After weeks of discussions, Canberra says it will put A$3.2 billion ($3 billion) into the U.S.-based Lockheed Martin program to start receiving aircraft in 2014 for testing and training. The aircraft will operate in the U.S. The spending also will buy infrastructure and support. In 2012, the government then plans to make a decision on whether to proceed with buying at least 72 F-35s to equip three Royal Australian Air Force operational squadron. Plans...

Australian authorities plan to corral about 6,000 wild camels with helicopters and gun them down after they overran a small Outback town in search of water, trampling fences, smashing tanks and contaminating supplies. The Northern Territory government announced its plan Wednesday for Docker River, a town of 350 residents where thirsty camels have been arriving daily for weeks because of drought conditions in the region. "The community of Docker River is under siege by 6,000 marauding, wild camels," local government minister Rob Knight said in Alice Springs, 310 miles (500 kilometers) northeast of Docker. "This is a very critical situation...

The leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit indicate an astonishing conspiracy of the world’s leading warmist scientists, involving collusion, rigged evidence, suppression of dissent, the possibly illegal destruction of evidence under FOI request, and the smearing of sceptical scientists. now there’s also an Australian link which shows just how closely activists and these scientists, as well as possibly the CSIRO, worked together to present the most alarmist scenarios. In private, the consensus within this “team” of warmist scientists seemed to be tearing apart as the world refused to warm. Money, money, money. Global warming is...

An Oz Outback community is battling to regain control of its town from a 6,000-strong feral camel invasion, which has seen the thirsty dromedaries cause "chaos" in their search for water. According to the Times, the drought-hit beasts have descended on the Northern Territory's Docker River en masse, "trampling through homes, breaking water tanks and even damaging the emergency airstrip".

Defence Minister John Faulkner has announced the Government has approved buying the first batch of Joint Strike Fighters. Senator Faulkner says the Government will buy 14 of the next generation aircraft at a cost of about $3 billion, to be delivered from 2014. He says the fighters are expected to be ready for testing in five years and in operation from 2018. The Government plans to buy 100 of the fighters, which would be Australia's biggest defence purchase. Senator Faulkner says the Joint Strike Fighters will make sure Australia maintains its strategic capability. "This decision was underpinned by an unprecedented...

Bishop Joseph Grech / Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto Bendigo, Australia, Nov 23, 2009 / 05:06 pm (CNA).- The Vatican has said “no” to the use of a Catholic church in Australia for the ordination of four women and three men as Anglican Deacons. St. Killian's Catholic Church in the Australian Diocese of Sandhurst was proposed as the ordination site after the local Anglican cathedral was closed due to safety concerns.According to The Advertiser, the ordination was set to take place at the Catholic church before the Catholic Bishop Joseph Grech of the Diocese of Sandherst addressed the issue with Archbishop...

A VICTORIAN man was almost drowned by a kangaroo after he dived into his farm dam to save his pet dog. Chris Rickard, 49, of Arthurs Creek, is being assessed by Austin Hospital surgeons after being mauled by the 1.5m roo at 9am (AEDT). He only managed to end the attack when he elbowed the kangaroo in the throat as it tried to hold him under water, The Herald Sun reported. By then he had already suffered a deep gash across his abdomen as the kangaroo tried to disembowel him with its hind legs, as well as a deep gash...

HE has always been five miles from Gundagai [Australia] but now the nation's most famous dog and his tuckerbox are to be relocated to lure tourists to the town. Historians are outraged at the idea of moving the iconic statue from its spot of 77 years, just off the Hume Highway, to the far end of town to drag tourists through it. The town is split between those who want tourist dollars funnelled into their drought-stricken tills and those outraged at the changing of history. A consultant has been paid $20,000 by the Gundagai Shire Council to survey the community...

TWINS Trishna and Krishna are recovering after marathon surgery of almost 32 hours, described as a "perfect" operation. Royal Children's Hospital head of surgery Leo Donnan emerged from the hospital shortly about 4.30pm today to declare the twins were now recovering in intensive care following the completion of five hours or reconstructive surgery. It came about three-and-a-half hours after he revealed the twins were successfully separated after almost 27 hours of complex surgery, the Herald Sun reports. Mr Donnan said the twins were "in good condition and healthy". "They’re both where we thought they’d be." He said the large team...

A PYGMY hippopotamus has been shot dead during a pig hunting expedition in the Northern Territory. The hippo is normally native to the swamps of west Africa, in particular Liberia. The Northern Territory News reports, Nico Courtney, 27, was out spotlighting for pigs with his mate Rusty on a station in the Douglas Daly district 200km south of Darwin on Saturday night. "It was about 1am and running away from us - from the tail end it just looked like a big pig," Mr Courtney said. "We got out, had a look at it, and thought 'that's not a pig,...

A new drug billed as a mix between cocaine and ecstasy is being sold to Australians online, despite health authorities warning "human guinea pigs" to stay away because its long-term effects are not yet known. The substance mephedrone is known in drug circles as MM-Cat, Plant Food Meow and 4-MMC and is being pedalled through websites like Facebook, the Sunday Telegraph reports. But authorities are believed to be powerless to stop anyone buying it or importing it into Australia because its legal status has not yet been defined. NSW Police told the Sunday Telegraph they were aware of mephedrone and...

AN Indian student was racially vilified and assaulted by a pair of construction workers while working part-time as a cab driver - but both will walk free. Dean James Cooper, 20, and Robert Lee Kleyn, 26, pleaded guilty in a Brisbane District Court charged with assault occasioning bodily harm in company and stealing. The court was told the pair had been drinking heavily at a building industry function in June 2008 when they hailed a taxi driven by an Indian national living in Australia on a student visa. Once in the cab they began hurling racist abuse at the man,...

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has made a surprise visit to Australian troops in Afghanistan. The secret diversion was made as Mr Rudd travelled to India and was kept under wraps because of security fears. Mr Rudd stayed with the troops in Tarin Kowt overnight and marked Remembrance Day with them in a ceremony. The Prime Minister's visit came just hours after an Australian soldier was wounded by a roadside bomb near Tarin Kowt. Australia currently has about 1,500 troops in southern Uruzgan province. Mr Rudd used the Remembrance Day ceremony to praise the sacrifice of the 11 Australian soldiers who...

Her name is Sabi and she went MIA after seeing heavy combat. Her handler was wounded in the attack.

A father probably killed his son with a steak knife, uttered Allah's name and dropped the three-year-old down a disused mine shaft, the South Australian Supreme Court has been told Prosecutors in the case involving Aliya Zilic said that he had taken the boy, Imran, 3½, from his mother's Perth home a few days earlier. Mr Zilic is on trial accused of murdering his only son during an access visit in April 2008. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of mental incompetence. Horrific details of the youngster's final moments emerged in the court, with prosecutor Jim Pearce saying it...

New figures have revealed that sea levels along the coast of Western Australia are rising at a rate double that of the world average. Statistics from Australia's National Tidal Centre show levels have increased by 8.6mm a year off the coast of the state capital Perth. That compares to a global average of just over 3mm. Scientists have said that man-made climate change has played a significant role in the rise. Climatologists have said that a combination of natural variability and man-made pollution have caused sea levels to rise around the world. Double trouble For much of the past century...

THE Federal Government must stop counting trees and start counting koalas as the animals suffer dramatic declines, it was claimed yesterday. Scientists will meet today in Canberra to debate whether koalas should be made a threatened species under federal laws. The Australian Koala Foundation yesterday released figures which it claimed showed falls in koala numbers across NSW and Australia were so dramatic it was vital they were granted federal government protection. And the conservation group said it feared Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett would refuse to list koalas as endangered because there was supposedly enough bush for them.

TOKYO – President Barack Obama says he wants to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki sometime during his presidency but won't have time during this week's trip to Japan to go to the cities devastated by U.S. atomic bombs at the end of World War II. No sitting U.S. president has visited the two cities largely because of the controversy it could raise at home. In an interview with Japanese broadcaster NHK that ran Tuesday, Obama said he would be unable to visit the cities on his trip to Japan this weekend due to time constraints but would be willing to do...

Galeforce gusts blew this Maltese-shitz right off Brighton Pier in Victoria, Australia. Sue Drummond could only look on helplessly as her dog, ironically named Bi Bi, was swept into the angry waves. Luckily, Raden Soemawinata was nearby and took action. Raden stripped down and dove into the bay to save helpless dog. Raden was a humble hero about the situation saying, “It was pretty cold and windy, but it wasn’t such a hard decision to jump in, it wasn’t such a great feat.” He also added, “I’m a part-time model, so getting into my jocks isn’t so different to what...

A staff member of the right-wing NSW Liberal MP David Clarke has stood aside after being linked to a spoof You Tube video involving Adolph Hitler. Charles Perrottet is the second Liberal Party staffer to stand down over the video clip. In the clip, the Hitler biopic Downfall has been re-subtitled to portray the Federal MP Alex Hawke as an enraged Adolph Hitler, making reference to a factional stoush inside the state Liberal Party. A link to the video has been sent to a number of news outlets including the ABC. The war in the Liberal Party's right-wing has been...

<p>BRITNEY Spears was holed up in a Perth hotel yesterday as the row over her lip-synching concerts threatened to derail her Australian tour, The Sunday Telegraph reports.</p> <p>Fans walked out after only three songs at Perth's Burswood Dome on Friday, upset by her lacklustre performance.</p>

SRI Lankans are using civil war as an excuse to seek asylum abroad, the country's high commissioner to Australia says. Senaka Walgampaya said many Sri Lankan asylum seekers were actually "economic refugees" wanting a better life in Australia. "As far as we can see, all the people who are seeking asylum in Australia are seeking to come here for a better life," he told Channel 10. "Also, most of them have their friends and relatives here ... they are coming here to join up with them." Mr Walgampaya said the Sri Lankan civil war was being used by nationals as...

SOUTHEAST Queenslanders should be on the lookout for large black funnel-web spiders as big as an adult hand. As the hot, humid weather arrives, the potentially deadly spiders are on the move, with the first reports of the season this week. Queensland Museum senior curator Robert Raven said yesterday sightings of male funnel-webs had been confirmed at Mt Tamborine in the Gold Coast hinterland and Mt Glorious, west of Brisbane. With summer temperatures and rain, male funnel-webs would be active until at least March or April. Males often wandered at night searching for females, especially during rain. They are black,...

AN official Taliban publication warns Australia that it will have to assimilate into a dominant Asia or face the prospect of being overpowered and forced to take population overspill from Asia. The choice is spelled out in the latest issue of the online Taliban monthly magazine, Al Sumud (Steadfastness), whose lead article offers a sweeping view of a post-war order in which a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan becomes a moral pivot for a pan-Asian renaissance that will coincide with the decline of Western power. "The end of European leadership in the world will place the white settler diaspora in Australia before two...

TEN years ago republican campaigner Phil Cleary celebrated a glorious referendum defeat by saying that "very soon" Australians would have the republic they wanted. Cleary's Real Republic group and other supporters of direct election had thrown in their lot with the monarchists to campaign for the rejection of a republic with a president appointed by parliament, a decision that helped turn a monarchist minority into a majority of rejectionists. Their strategy, as Cleary explained, was that, following the failure of the referendum, "I'm of the view that the momentum will build immediately" for the republic that people wanted, namely one...

THE Federal Government told scientists monitoring the huge oil leak off Australia's northern coast to focus on the Indonesian side of the leaking well. The instruction meant waters closer to the Australian coast, which contain more biodiversity and include important whale habitats, were not assessed for oil contamination in a report that the federal Environment Department released on Friday. To complicate matters, fire broke out yesterday on the oil rig, which has been leaking oil into the Timor Sea for 10 weeks. Oil field operator PTTEP Australasia said the West Atlas rig and Montara well-head platform were on fire. No...

Related Story: Australia 'must prepare for cyber attack' SNIPPET: "More evidence is emerging of sophisticated attacks by criminals and foreign governments on Australia's computer networks. Government officials from the spy organisation ASIO, as well as federal police and computer security experts, have joined forces with the top-secret Defence Signals Directorate since July. The Cyber Security Operations Centre has found attacks on company information, apparently conducted by organised crime, which turn out to have national security implications."

AN eight-year-old boy has been hailed a hero after he hot-wired a two-way radio to call for help as his dad lay trapped in the wreckage of a horror truck rollover. Michael Bowron stripped the radio wires and connected them to a spare battery he found among the wreckage. Yesterday, the Bonnie Rock youngster told The Sunday Times his fingers burned from sparks flying off the battery while he desperately called for help. "I was scared, but I was trying to be brave," Michael said. "My dad had heaps of blood on his face and heaps on his leg. "I...

New subs come with a $36bn price IAN MCPHEDRAN October 30, 2009 12:01am The project will be a boon for South Australia, with the Federal Government saying the 12 next-generation submarines will be built at Osborne regardless of who wins the contract. But a report out today warns that trying to build the new subs in Australia would be fraught with danger and the purchase of smaller, short-range "off-the-shelf" overseas submarines should not be ruled out. The report, from the Government-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute, predicts the Australian-made subs would cost a "staggering" $3 billion each - three times the...

TASMANIAN police are tackling a "new generation" of street drugs, which are being made in a bid to circumvent existing laws. Police said there had been a dramatic shift in the past year towards a new type of party drug with the street name of Israeli's. The drugs are sold in capsule form and contain derivatives of methcathinone, a psychoative stimulant, the Department of Police and Emergency Management's annual report says. The report says the drugs have been produced "in an attempt to circumvent existing legislation". Southern Drug Investigation Services chief Ian Lindsay said police became aware of the drug...

THE Australian Greens have described as "despicable'' a suggestion that Australia needs to have a serious discussion about the growth of its Muslim population. At least one Liberal frontbencher has distanced the party from the views of the last immigration minister in the previous Howard government, Kevin Andrews. Mr Andrews says the issue of a growing Muslim population is a topic that has to be discussed. "To have a concentration of one ethnic or one particular group that remains in an enclave for a long period of time is not good,'' the Liberal backbencher told Macquarie Radio Network today. "You...

SKIES around the far west Queensland town of Boulia are teeming with budgerigars. This year's floods along river systems such as the Diamantina and Georgina sparked prolific breeding by the budgies which have been feasting on an abundance of grass seeds, the Courier-Mail reported. "I have been here since 1983 and never seen anything like it," Boulia grazier Ann Britton said. "The skies are thick with budgies - how they do not collide with each other is a miracle in itself. "My father, who has travelled extensively in the Outback, was with me when we saw a massive flock and...

Japan's Tokai Challenger solar vehicle has taken victory against a strong international field in the 2009 Global Green Challenge. After covering almost 1860 miles (3000km) in four days across Australia's baking red center, the entry from Japan's Tokai University crossed the finish line at 3.39pm local time. The team's run was nearly flawless, reporting only a single flat tire with just over 100 miles of the course to race and the win breaks a string of four consecutive victories by the Dutch Nuon team, which is currently battling it out for second place against University of Michigan Solar Car Team....

Wild dromedary camels, brought to Australia in the mid-19th century to help explore and develop the outback, were left to breed and survive on their own. Now they number a million in the wild and have become pests, officials say. Camels are not usually associated with Australia, but Australia is home to the largest herd of feral camels in the world. About 12,000 dromedary camels were brought to Australia in the mid-19th century to carry people and supplies during the exploration and development of the Interior but after the advent of the automobile, they were abandoned and left to fend...

"Australia: Islamic cleric harasses families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan with haranguing phone calls and letters" SNIPPET: "Mr Sher's father Felix received a phone call and letters, allegedly from self-styled Muslim cleric Sheikh Haron, just before his son's funeral." SNIPPET: "Other Australian families of men killed in Afghanistan have allegedly received similar letters in the past two years. On Tuesday Sheikh Haron was charged with seven counts of "using a postal service or similar service to menace, harass, or cause offence". He was granted bail to appear in court on November 10. [...]"