Free Republic

Australian welfare tax money at work paying millions for an illegal terrorist family to live in the country. Instead of spending time working to provide for his family, he spends his time plotting

SYDNEY (AFP) – A monster iceberg nearly twice the size of Hong Kong island has been spotted drifting towards Australia in what scientists Wednesday called a once-in-a-century event. Australian glaciologist Neal Young pinpointed the slab, which is some 19 kilometres (12 miles) long and about 1,700 kilometres south of the country, using satellite imagery. He said he was not aware of such a large iceberg being found in the area since the days when 19th century clipper ships sailed the trade route between Britain and Australia. "I don't recall any mention of one for a long, long time," Young, of...

TONY Abbott has coined the term "Abbott's army" to describe the new battlers he wants to convert to the Coalition cause and revealed he is open to sending more Australian troops to Afghanistan. The new Liberal leader also confessed today if Australia was starting from scratch the states would be abolished. Mr Abbott said he did not want to make policy on the run but would seek further briefings on whether Australia needed to play a greater role in Afghanistan and send more troops. “I don't think we should rule out an increase in commitment (in Afghanistan) provided that we...

The current treatment of young-age creationists in the scientific community and society at large is unfair and unwise. Scientists and philosophers of science, including old-age creationists and naturalists, should respect youngage creationists as legitimate contributors to science. Young-age creationists offer to the current origins science establishment a competing rational viewpoint that will augment fruitful scientific investigation through increased accountability for scientists, introduction of original hypotheses and general epistemic improvement...

THE Liberal Party's biggest gambles in decades - electing Tony Abbott as Leader of the Opposition and rejecting Labor's ETS in the Senate - appear to have paid their first dividends, and in exactly the way the Liberal Party had hoped they would. Two weeks ago Malcolm Turnbull was Liberal leader, the Coalition had embraced Labor's ETS and was about to pass it through the Senate and Turnbull was facing two by-elections which were deliberately designed to wreck his leadership. The Liberal Party was divided over climate change and the leadership, the Coalition was split over the ETS and there...

KIWI foster kids got a big serve of swearing and sex talk in a risque Christmas play put on by the country's child protection agency. New Zealand's Child, Youth and Family service is batting off criticism after arranging a theatre performance that gave 130 Wellington foster children more than just a little Christmas cheer. The free festive play, performed mostly to kids under 10, contained the use of the "f" word and one character spoke of losing her virginity and mimed a slapstick orgasm. "She loses her virginity. She shuddered and he lifted her higher, higher," the children heard. The...

THE elite RAAF jets used by Kevin Rudd and other VIPs have suffered mid-air emergencies, catering bungles and mechanical mishaps. Senior ministers have faced delays of up to five hours because of on-board fires, "errors" with aviation fuel and even bogged aircraft. Confidential briefings obtained under Freedom of Information laws reveal Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Governor-General Quentin Bryce and other VIPs have suffered a litany of problems with the VIP fleet. Families Minister Jenny Macklin was involved in a mid-air emergency last December when her VIP jet was forced to abort a Canberra to Sydney flight. Another time, a bouquet...

HOWARD'S battlers have come out for Tony Abbott in the weekend by-elections. You all know Catherine Deveny. Then again maybe not. She's a comedian and therefore a social commentator on The Age newspaper. If you do remember her at all it may be because of a recent appearance on the ABC's panel program, Q&A. Tony Abbott was also a guest. The show started with Deveny calling for more intelligent political dialogue before the discussion turned to abortion. Every time Abbott opened his mouth Deveny interrupted with "Get your rosaries off my ovaries." Very original. Abbott, knowing a trap when he...

LIBERAL Party support has bounced back and Tony Abbott has cut into Kevin Rudd's lead as preferred prime minister within a week of the newly elected Leader of the Opposition spectacularly reversing the Liberals' stand on climate change and rejecting Labor's ETS. As the Liberals declared clear victories in the Melbourne and Sydney by-elections of Higgins and Bradfield, the results were mirrored in Newspoll, which showed Mr Abbott outpointing his predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull, as the preferred Liberal leader. Mr Abbott exploited the by-election victories and continued his attack on Labor's ETS, calling for the Prime Minister to agree to a...

US OIL giant Chevron Corp has sealed a massive $90 billion contract - the biggest energy deal in Australian history - to supply natural gas to Tokyo Electric Power Company and sell the Japanese utility a stake in its Wheatstone project. The nation's latest trade coup - struck on the eve of the international climate change conference in Copenhagen - comes as Asian countries scramble to lock in long-term supplies of LNG ahead of an anticipated surge in demand for the low-emissions fuel. Chevron announced on the weekend it had signed an agreement with Tokyo Electric to deliver 4.1 million...

The Liberal Party has comfortably retained the blue-ribbon seats of Bradfield and Higgins in key federal by-elections. Candidate in the Melbourne seat of Higgins Kelly O'Dwyer was the first to claim victory and so far has 57.6 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, with 61.5 per cent of votes counted. Higgins was previously held by former federal treasurer Peter Costello. Ms O'Dwyer's closest rival Greens candidate Dr Clive Hamilton has 42.4 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. Addressing about 100 supporters at St Andrews church in the Melbourne suburb of Glen Iris, the former Liberal Party staffer thanked...

SNIPPET: "AUSTRALIA'S most notorious terrorist Willie Brigitte will be free from jail next year having served less than half his sentence for conspiring to blow up the nation's only nuclear reactor and the power grid. The Caribbean-born Muslim convert made headlines in 2007 when he was sentenced in France to a maximum nine years, following his arrest in Sydney, for joining an al-Qaida-backed Pakistani terror cell out to bomb Lucas Heights nuclear plant, the national electricity grid or a military base. The French Justice Ministry is considering releasing the 41-year-old, on an early-release good-behaviour plan."

Cheered by thousands as he marched alongside brave troops during a Remembrance Day parade, he looked every inch the battle-hardened war veteran. But on closer inspection, his striking collection of 17 medals - including the Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross - was not what it seemed. No single servicemen could have been awarded all the medals, and they were wrongly displayed, experts said last night. Last night a hunt was under way for the fraudster after he took part in a big Remembrance Day parade in Bedworth, Warwickshire. Wearing decorations without authority is a criminal offence under the Army...

WOMEN are not as fearful of Tony Abbott as Labor would like to believe, an exclusive Galaxy poll has found. And just a small number of voters think the new Liberal leader is an "extremist". A large proportion of women want to know more about him, blunting expectations of an immediate backlash against Mr Abbott from female voters. But Mr Abbott has a huge job ahead of him to persuade the electorate he knows better than Prime Minister Kevin Rudd about how to deal with climate change. Exactly half of those surveyed by Galaxy Research said Mr Rudd had the...

THIS week Tony Abbott smashed the mould of Australian politics. With the opposition divided and behind, he is forcing Kevin Rudd to an election on climate change, the issue that is supposedly owned by the Labor Party. This is either brilliance or sheer folly. Abbott does not accept the orthodoxies that have governed politics during the Rudd ascendancy, and this makes him dangerous for both Labor and Liberal. Abbott is an unpredictable and elemental force who defies the modern political rule book. No adviser can tell Abbott what to say or how to say it. After being elected Liberal leader...

Meet Tom Wigley, the Climategate insider who may finally have choked on all the deceit he witnessed. It is almost certain that the leak of 4000 documents from the University of East Anglia was not the work of a hacker but of a whisteblower. The sheer effort of retrieving, itemising and sorting all those documents, and of weeding out any that were purely personal or irrelevant, required someone who had not just the computer skills and the access, but who knew what was important, and had the motivation to put in countless hours of work....

New Zealand Climate Scientists Faked Data, Too. From Anthony Watts at Watts Up With That The New Zealand Government’s chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend that wasn’t there. The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain’s CRU climate research centre. In New Zealand’s case, the figures published on NIWA’s [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century [go to the link to see...

Natural selection and change, yes; Evolution, no --snip-- Summary 1.This episode talks much about change and natural selection, but fails to give any evidence that these produce evolution, other than for the various professors who assert that it does. 2.Darwin’s theory promoted the idea that man is “a beast with animal lusts and no morality”, and this has been gleefully accepted by much of modern society. 3.We might well ask: Why would any sane professor adopt and propagate a theory for which there is such paltry scientific evidence, which is an expression of hatred of God, and which demotes man...

NSW Premier Nathan Rees was dumped last night in favour of Kristina Keneally, the state's US-born planning minister who has lived in Australia for barely 15 years. Ms Keneally, 40, becomes NSW's 42nd premier and the first woman to occupy the office. She and Carmel Tebbutt, who retained the deputy leadership, become the first all-woman team to lead a government in Australia. Ms Keneally defeated Mr Rees by 47 votes to 21 during a leadership spill at Macquarie Street last night, after earlier seeing off former planning minister Frank Sartor at a caucus meeting of the NSW Right. It is...

Evolutionists retreating from the arena of science --snip-- Today, the Darwinian scientific consensus persists within almost every large university and governmental institution. But around the middle of the 20th century an interesting new trend emerged and has since become increasingly established. Evolutionary theorists have been forced, step by step, to steadily retreat from the evidence in the field. Some of the evidences mentioned earlier in this article were demonstrated to be frauds and hoaxes. Other discoveries have been a blow to the straightforward expectations and predictions of evolutionists. Increasingly, they have been forced to tack ad hoc mechanisms onto Darwin’s...

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"...

NSW Premier Nathan Rees has directed an extraordinary tirade at members within his own party who he accuses of undermining his authority. Mr Rees will face a leadership vote later today, with three possible candidates prepared to challenge, with MP Frank Sartor appearing the likely victor. A petition with 17 names has been signed supporting a motion for a spill. But Mr Rees has vowed to fight on as leader. He claimed his ability to lead the NSW Government had been "impaired at every turn" by "a malignant and disloyal group", and even went as far as naming the accused...

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...

PLAYING politics with policy has derailed the Rudd government's legislative, political and election agenda on the emissions trading scheme. Because it was too cute by half in playing politics with the Liberal Party's leadership, the government is left with a double-dissolution election trigger it cannot pull and doesn't even want to acknowledge it has. It has a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in a form it cannot take to an election, which will turn industry campaign funds towards the Liberal Party and that is wide open to Tony Abbott's threatened GST-style tax attack. The CPRS bill, which forms the basis of...

THE Irishman who helped Queensland police crack one of the most baffling crimes of the decade has been told he will have to share his reward with a workmate who stood back and did nothing. Kieran O'Neill said he was stunned when contacted by Detective Chief Superintendent Mike Condon this week about the $50,000 reward posted for information leading to an arrest in the bikepath sex attacks. He became eligible for the reward when Luke Colless pleaded guilty in the District Court in August to attacks on 11 women over 27 months. Police have already acknowledged Mr O'Neill's "significant" contribution...

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has dramatically thrown out the Liberal Party's policy on climate change. He has ruled out support for an emissions trading scheme (ETS) or a pollution tax - gutting the policy adopted by former prime minister John Howard and the man he deposed, Malcolm Turnbull. Mr Abbott has backed bipartisan emissions targets, but he won't yet say how they could be achieved if he was elected to government. Further, he has given no guarantees he will abide by any international agreement that comes out of climate change talks in Copenhagen. The harder policy stance came after the...

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd's plane has broken down for the second time in as many days. But instead of being stuck in Washington DC, the plane is stuck in Honolulu. Early yesterday (AEDT) the plane had been forced back to Washington DC because of a mechanical fault. Australian Labor Party (ALP) Queensland secretary Anthony Chisholm said Mr Rudd's chief of staff called him about noon today and told him the jet was now stuck in Honolulu. Mr Rudd was supposed to be guest speaker at ALP celebrations to mark the 20th anniversary of the former Queensland premier Wayne Goss's election...

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...

THE Coalition managed to block the the Government's plan to fight climate change. The senate eventually voted 41-33 to defeat the government's climate change scheme despite two key Liberal moderates, Judith Troeth and Sue Boyce, crossing the Senate floor. The crossbench, including the five Australian Greens, voted with other coalition senators. Blocking the emissions trading scheme (ETS) - which would set a limit on carbon pollution, then allow companies to trade permits to pollute within that cap - has handed Kevin Rudd a trigger for an early election. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong hit out at opposing senators before the...

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's parliament rejected laws to set up a sweeping carbon emissions trade scheme on Wednesday, scuttling a key policy of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and setting a trigger for an early election. The defeat by parliament's upper house Senate ends Rudd's hopes of taking his legislated climate commitments to next week's global talks in Copenhagen, where world leaders will discuss new targets to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The rejection gives a legal trigger to allow him to call an early election on climate change, that could come in early 2010, and to then ram his laws through...

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 parliament is poised to reject the government's plan to cut carbon emissions on Wednesday, handing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd a constitutional trigger to call snap elections that could come as soon as March. Opponents of the cap-and-trade scheme are set to vote it down in the Senate after a climate-change skeptic seized the opposition leadership on Tuesday, reducing the chance that it might pass with the support of opposition rebels. "There is no bigger reform at this time in our lives and reforms of this type are never easily won," Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told Australian radio ahead...

TONY Abbott's victory is a fundamental change in the power and ideology of the Liberal Party. It is a smashing win for the conservative wing that has outsmarted and outmuscled the progressives. Though partly an accident, its meaning is unmistakable: it is a vote to sharpen the choices and divides in politics and force Kevin Rudd to a climate change election. The people will decide the wisdom of this Liberal outcome. Abbott knows the consequence of his position is to provoke Rudd into an election on climate change. With a touch of Churchillian rhetoric Abbott declared he "was not frightened"...

TONY Abbott will steer the Liberal Party back to its conservative roots with a 2010 election campaign portraying Kevin Rudd as a Whitlamesque big spender whose climate change policies will smash Australian jobs. The new Opposition Leader's first act after ousting Malcolm Turnbull in a partyroom vote yesterday was to scrap his party's support for Labor's carbon emissions trading scheme, which he dismissed as "a great big tax". And Mr Abbott immediately moved to repair the Liberals' shattered relations with the Nationals, embracing their contempt for the ETS after months of Mr Turnbull dismissing their views as irrelevant. As Senate...

Australian conservatives have shown the way by dumping the party leader who was in favour of massive carbon taxes and replacing him with one who stated last month that AGW is “crap.”This makes Malcolm Turnbull, the suddenly-ex-leader of Australia’s Liberal party, the first major political victim of the Climategate furore. And his replacement Tony Abbott, the first politician to reap the benefits of the world’s growing scepticism towards ManBearPig. Of the three candidates, he was the only one committed to delaying the Australian government’s proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).The trouble began last week when Australia’s opposition Liberal party began haemorrhaging...

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd's private jet has been forced back to the US because of a mechanical fault. "Due to a minor mechanical fault, the prime minister's RAAF plane has returned to Washington," a spokesman for Mr Rudd said. "The Prime Minister will (stay) overnight in Washington, his return to Australia has been delayed."

TONY Abbott has told his party to get ready for the fight of their lives after he was elected Liberal leader this morning. In his first press conference after ousting Malcolm Turnbull, Mr Abbott said he was "humbled but exhilarated" by his new position. He took a thinly veiled swipe at Mr Turnbull, promising to be a "consultative, collegial" leader. He said leaders who merely told colleagues what was happened whether they liked it or not would always find the going tough. He then paid tribute to Mr Turnbull, whom he beat by just one vote in a shock result....

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...

ACTING Prime Minister Julia Gillard has refused to be drawn on whether the Government will call a double dissolution election if Tony Abbott becomes opposition leader. Ms Gillard said the Federal Government was not focused on calling a double dissolution election if agreement couldn't be reached on the emissions trading scheme (ETS) bills. A win for Mr Abbott would mean there was no hope of agreement. A double dissolution would be followed by a joint sitting of both houses of Parliament at which a re-elected Labor government would have the necessary majority to pass the legislation.

Hopes for a new global climate pact have risen after rich nations at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Trinidad and Tobago offered to help poorer countries bear the costs of implementing any deal. Commonwealth countries are home to two billion people, or a third of the planet's population - including major global players like Britain and India, and smaller island states like Nauru and the Maldives. The United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen joined 53 Commonwealth leaders to work on the issue of climate change ahead of...

TONY Abbott, Joe Hockey and Malcolm Turnbull will go head-to-head to win control of the Liberal party when a leadership spill is called this morning. Mr Hockey has confirmed he will stand if a spill it called. It certainly will be - and Mr Hockey is expected to win in a landslide. But that does not necessarily mean an immediate end to the deep divisions in the Liberal party. Yesterday Mr Hockey was understood to be demanding a free vote to decide Coalition policy on climate change early next year, if he were to agree to take on the leadership....

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's major rivers are shrinking and farms are gripped by drought as scientists warn of climate change, but that has not convinced some skeptical politicians to back carbon-trade laws. "For the extreme left it [AGW] has provided the opportunity to do what they've always wanted to do, to sort of de-industrialize the Western world," Minchin recently told Australian television. "The collapse of communism was a disaster for the left. They embraced environmentalism as their new religion," Minchin said, sparking a blizzard of controversy. Minchin's climate skeptic views are being echoed in other countries, like the United States,...

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.

AUSTRALIANS have the world's largest houses, beating traditional champion the United States, however the cost of renting is similarly expanding. Data commissioned by CommSec shows the Australian house has grown on average by 10 per cent in the past decade to a record high of 214sq m, three times the size of the average British house.

AFTER a tumultuous two weeks, the leadership and policy of the Liberal Party appears on track to match the sentiment of the Liberal Party faithful. Joe Hockey is set to replace Malcolm Turnbull, but based on a policy of voting against the ETS until after the Copenhagen climate conference next month. Hockey's popularity over Turnbull and his other potential rival, Tony Abbott, is carrying the day for him among the public and Coalition supporters. Turnbull's unpopularity with the public as an alternative prime minister and among Coalition supporters who favour both Hockey and Abbott over the Liberal leader, is reflected...

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...

A TOUGH-talking Malcolm Turnbull has attacked his challenger Tony Abbott and Senate leader Nick Minchin ahead of Tuesday's expected leadership ballot. The opposition leader accused the "hard right" critics within the Liberal Party of waging a climate change war that could destroy the party, but declared "I will win on Tuesday". "I am unbowed," he told Channel 9, adding opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey had pledged his support on Saturday night. "Joe Hockey has told me as recently as last night that I have his complete support," Mr Turnbull said. "Joe is absolutely at one with me on the need...

PORT OF SPAIN (AFP) – Commonwealth leaders representing two billion people on the planet on Saturday threw their combined weight behind upcoming climate talks, driving momentum towards a new carbon-cutting treaty. "We, as the Commonwealth, representing one third of the world's population, believe the time for action on climate change has come," Australian Prime Minister Rudd said as he unveiled an agreement struck at a summit in Trinidad. The Port of Spain Climate Change Consensus, backed by all 53 member states of the Commonwealth, supported the December 7-18 climate talks in Copenhagen and committed to seeking a legally binding treaty...

JOE Hockey sought out John Howard at his Sydney home for advice on whether to run for leader of the party to end the crisis enveloping the Opposition. During a two-hour lunchtime meeting, Mr Hockey asked his old boss about whether he should succumb to mounting pressure to unite the hopelessly divided Liberal Party at a special meeting of MPs in Canberra on Tuesday. Mr Howard said "good on you mate" as he farewelled a tight-lipped Mr Hockey. Mr Hockey arrived at Mr Howard's northern Sydney home shortly after 11.30am. The pair spent two hours in private discussions, with Mr...

JOE Hockey's stocks as future Liberal leader have surged after a new poll found he is Coalition voters' favourite to lead the embattled party. Thirty-nine per cent of Coalition voters said they preferred Mr Hockey, while 26 per cent favoured Tony Abbott and 25 per cent wanted encumbent Malcolm Turnbull to remain. The poll also shows Mr Turnbull's hopes of fighting off an internal rebellion to his leadership over climate change have been shattered with 60 per cent of Australians against rushing the Emissions Trading Scheme through Parliament. Despite Mr Turnbull insisting the ETS must be passed now - ahead...