FED:Editorials, Saturday April 16, 2011

AAP General News (Australia)
04-16-2011
FED:Editorials, Saturday April 16, 2011

SYDNEY, April 16 AAP - The Prime Minister should use the opportunity provided by her
government's first budget, in May, to put substance behind the direction in which she
aspires to lead the nation, The Weekend Australian says in its editorial on Saturday.

Today's strong demand for skills and labour provides Julia Gillard the best possible
time to break the curse of long-term welfare dependency.

Welfare-to-work reform will not deliver short-term savings, and to be effective will
require parallel reform to our incentive-sapping tax system. That's where the worries
start.

Ms Gillard needs to junk her rejection of a "big Australia", recalibrate immigration
levels and fix urban infrastructure bottlenecks. Australians will benefit by welcoming
more migrants.

Labor's policy failures in budget stimulus spending, tax, infrastructure and labour
market reregulation have compounded the structural adjustment pressures from the multi-speed
economy and the strong dollar.

It should rethink the $40 billion or so national broadband network to get value for
money and relieve inflationary pressures that will inevitably exacerbate.

Brisbane's The Courier-Mail says Australia is getting perilously close to the point
at which a tight labour market starts to put pressure on wages and inflation.

Managing the nation's skills needs will be one of the government's most challenging tasks.

The logic behind the Gillard government's plan to slug companies with a $5000 levy
for every low-skilled foreign worker they import is somewhat understandable. However,
businesses that use foreign workers are already required to spend 1-2 per cent of payroll
costs on training.

Instead of piecemeal initiatives in relation to employment, training and skilled labour,
what is needed is a full suite of co-ordinated and complementary measures.

The government must explain the benefits of all the policy ingredients as a whole,
and how they interact to create a harder-working, higher-skilled and more productive Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald says action against climate change requires a wholesale review
of how modern urban living uses energy produced from greenhouse gas-producing sources
such as coal and oil.

Electricity prices will have to rise, to indicate to consumers the true cost of power,
but rising electricity prices affect everyone.

That is one reason Prime Minister Julia Gillard is finding the going so hard in her
campaign to tax carbon dioxide emissions.

To this situation, NSW's Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal has recommended
that the state authorise steep rises in power charges - to allow for extra investment
in equipment and networks.

Premier Barry O'Farrell will probably do best to allow the power rises, or most of
them, this early in his term, to avoid problems closer to an election. But he should also
put effort into programs which show electricity consumers how to waste less power.

Federal Climate Change Minister Greg Combet has promised to compensate households on
lower and middle incomes for cost increases due to the carbon tax. Since this is not a
welfare measure but an environmental one, the government should explain why all households
are not compensated.

Melbourne's The Age says the government must better explain what the future holds under
its carbon tax proposals.

There are major risks of lost opportunities and penalties for Australia, as the world's
highest greenhouse gas emitter per person, if it continues to lag behind other countries.

Most nations at least have a bipartisan view on carbon pricing, as Australia did until
16 months ago.

Since the coalition under Tony Abbott changed its stance, the Gillard government has
struggled to get Australians to look past narrow self-interest to the sustainable economic
prospects that transformational policy can create.

For that to happen, the government must paint a much clearer picture of what that future holds.

Sydney's The Daily Telegraph says the one man who just happens to hold the balance
of power in a tense federal parliament, independent MP Andrew Wilkie, claims not to recall
an allegation that he demanded Nazi salutes from the cadets under his charge in 1983 but
does allow that his behaviour was poor enough to require disciplinary action.

Mr Wilkie's lapses were clearly newsworthy, not just because they were associated with
a developing news story, but because he seeks to make himself newsworthy at every available
opportunity.

Recently he has thrown around hints that he'll bring down the government if it rejects
his poker machine legislation.

So now we have a perfect storm of pokies, a fractured Labor government, military mistreatment,
Tasmanian independents and Hitler all in the one basket.

You wouldn't read about it.

Melbourne's Herald Sun says independent MP Andrew Wilkie is hiding behind what he claims
is a smear campaign by the pokies industry to distract people from his acts of bastardry
at Duntroon.

After News Ltd revealed allegations the federal independent MP ordered junior cadets
to salute the 50th anniversary of Hitler's rise to power in Nazi Germany, Mr Wilkie said
he had no recollection of the incident.

Mr Wilkie should give permission for his personal records to be released.

This is a man who rode into parliament as an independent on his reputation as a whistleblower
during the Iraq war.

Now that others are blowing the whistle on him, he is shielding himself by saying that
Duntroon, as well as the Australian Defence Force Academy should be investigated to clear
the air.

AAP md/rs

KEYWORD: EDITORIALS

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