CANdo is Australia's independent, grassroots Community Action Network. We say all Australians should have the tools needed to preserve, protect and defend their individual rights, freedom and traditional values!
The barbaric slaying in London of the 25 year old drummer Lee Rigby of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers by two Islamic terrorists is a wakeup call not only for the United Kingdom, but for Australia too.
The terrorist threat is accelerating here in several ways, according to the well regarded Foreign Editor of The Australian, Greg Sheridan. (24/5). A particular problem is that 200 men claiming Australian nationality have gone to join the Syrian civil, often with jihadist forces.
Some will come back endowed with terrorist-related skills. And if they weren’t before they left, the chances are they’ll be radicalised islamicists.
We have not escaped the scourge of terrorism. Two young Australians were murdered in the Netherlands in 1990 by the Irish Republican Army who later claimed they mistook them for British soldiers. After the two Bali bombings, he points out that we rank relatively highly among OECD nations for citizens murdered by terrorists since 9/11.
Nearly two dozen people are in Australian jails for terrorist offences. But while many terrorist plots have been thwarted, the offenders have not been convicted. This is probably because of the way evidence is kept from the jury in our criminal justice system or because the offenders are overseas.
Believe it or not two government-appointed committees have recommended watering down or scrapping several key anti-terror laws, even though as Greg Sheridan says, there is scant evidence of any abuse. But Professor George Williams wrote in his regular column in the Fairfax press (21/5) slammed these laws as "inept" and needing “urgent repair or even repeal”.
As Greg Sheridan rightly warns, just as we are considering disarming the enemy is ramping up his forces.
He says the single most important and effective counter-terror tool used by Australian agencies has been telephone and electronic communications intercepts - wire tapping. But with more phone calls migrating to the internet these will escape scrutiny without adequate data retention. With all the gunk that has been put before the Parliament there is no data retention bill waiting, although a committee is considering the issue.
As a result, warns Greg Sheridan, our ability to combat terrorism is in slow but steady decline.
And in the meantime the government has run down the defence forces as badly as pre-world war governments, and completely lost control over the borders.
Politicians everywhere seem to have a policy of importing people not on merit and assimilability but who or whose progeny are unlikely to be able to live peacefully in a civilized country. You may not agree with Geert Wilders who totally opposes Muslim immigration, but when he has tried to speak in Australia, most politicians have ignored him with some attempting to censor him. They made it very difficult to let him speak. A different approach has been adopted for Islamic extremists.
Meanwhile Afghanistan has come to London as it has to other Western capitals. Why? Because the politicians have failed in their primary duty to ensure that the only immigrants allowed in are those who will be good citizens.
Politicians have to be made accountable everywhere, just as they are in Switzerland. That’s democracy.
Incidentally Afghan President Hamid Karzai says the 1550 Australian troops stationed in Afghanistan have had a "minimal negative impact where they were serving". Thirty nine Australians died there. Thanks Mr. President. See your family is getting rich, very, very rich.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/afghanistan-comes-to-london/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=714159a3a4-Mailchimp_FrontPageMag&utm_term=0_57e32c1dad-714159a3a4-156549565
If the government genuinely wishes to secure our borders against the invasion of illegal immigrants, it should immediately legislate to provide that no person coming from Indonesia without a valid passport should be allowed to make application for asylum as a refugee. They should be sent back immediately.
If the Parliament refuses to do its obvious duty, the Constitution should be changed to allow the people to initiate laws themselves.
We have seen an example of persons admitted as refugees who have not only hoodwinked the Australian authorities, they have even been involved in people smuggling. They are criminals and they are being recorded refugee status
Indonesian police recently arrested an Iranian who had been granted refugee status in Australia. They say that the Iranian Mohammad Abdi is in fact a major people smuggler.
Not only are criminals being given refugee status , it is possible that security risks including terrorists may also have succeeded in satisfying the Australian authorities that they are refugees.
The illegal immigrant industry will say that this cannot be done. They will say that this will breach the refugee convention. How we interpret our obligations under the Convention are a matter for us. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that people arriving from Indonesia without passports are not bona fide and our clients of criminals.
It is well known and undisputed that potential illegal immigrants enter Indonesia as tourists. They would not be allowed to enter without valid passports. The passports are destroyed or hidden on the instructions of the criminals.
There is of course a potential for genuine cases to arrive having lost their papers. The onus should be on them to prove this to the satisfaction of the Minister who should be required to certify that he is satisfied that this is so and the grounds on which he has come to that conclusion. Further he should be required that certificate in Parliament.
It is obvious that the system is weighted in favour of a finding that an illegal immigrant is a refugee. There have been some very obvious examples.
We learned last year that Captain Emad, was actually admitted as a refugee, as was his family.
He was given almost immediate access to a housing commission home, from which he continued to run his people smuggling business.
When this was revealed on ABC program, the Gillard government did not restrain her but actually allowed him to leave the country.
Now we learn that his family has been granted permanent visas notwithstanding the fact that they lied to immigration officials.
Read more: ‘Refugee resident Mohammad Abdi caught in Indonesian smuggling net’ by Peter Alford and Telly Nathalia additional reporting Paul Maley , The Australian, 21 May, 2013.
It is hard not to disagree with The Australian’s editorial of 22 May 2013 on the saga of education under the Rudd and Gillard governments, “So much was promised but so little delivered “.
They say this was “one of extravagant promises, lost opportunities, overblown rhetoric, dispiriting utilitarian thinking and wasted billions”.
“Never in the history of public education has so much money been spent for such little benefit. The problems Labor's 2007 education policy promised to fix - teaching standards, the neglect of basic subjects such as English, science and maths, declining results by international standards - are piled high in the in-tray of a future administration. This government's unimaginative response had been to throw more money at the sector and, when the money runs out, to blow smoke and position the mirrors.
“In practice, education policy under Labor quickly degenerated into stunts and announcements of questionable impact, contributing to the exhaustion of commonwealth revenue. There was the $1 billion digital education revolution, the distribution of the "toolboxes of the 21st century", the boxes the rest of us describe as laptop computers, delivered through cumbersome bureaucratic machines. Labor told us computers would "enhance the learning experience of every high school student in the country, giving them the tools they need to engage more effectively in the classroom and with the world". How much the "learning experience" was enhanced is an open question, but the march of technology has ensured that today's students are more attuned to digital technology than their parents or, often, their teachers. In hindsight, mandated laptops were a costly and foolish mistake.
“The global financial crisis provided an excuse for the Building the Education Revolution program, the wasteful and unnecessary construction of cookie-cutter designed school halls, outdoor learning centres and canteens managed through multiple layers of bureaucracy. As stimulus spending, it was badly planned and poorly executed. Much of the scheme was still being rolled out long after the worst of the financial crisis had passed. There is no evidence the grandly named BER made the slightest difference to education standards. The best that can be hoped is that the bureaucrats learned their lesson and such a centrally planned shemozzle is never contemplated again.
With the universities mishandling teacher education, the editorial goes on to point out that in December, 2012 “we learned that Australia's Year 4 students came 27th out of 48 countries - on a par with Bulgaria - in reading and last among English-speaking participants in the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. In science, the Australian children ranked 25th behind leaders South Korea, Singapore and Finland. In maths Australia's Year 4 students were ranked 18th. In March, the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute sought action to address the shortfall of qualified maths teachers, especially in regional areas, because almost 40 per cent of maths high school teachers are unqualified to teach the subject. A year ago, the Productivity Commission's Schools Workforce report noted the shortage extended to science, technology and languages, including English, as well as those qualified to instruct special-needs students.
“Despite such critical shortages in key areas, it is a measure of the need for reform that tens of thousands of newly graduated primary teachers are on waiting lists in NSW and Queensland to find jobs. Tens of millions of dollars are being wasted training teachers at an annual cost of $16,500 each a year, but they never enter a classroom. That anomaly arises from the Gillard government's removal of the cap on subsidised university places, which has encouraged universities to enrol as many students as possible, casting a faux academic veneer on a poorly chosen curriculum that does nothing to equip student teachers for the realities of the classroom. Entry standards have suffered, which is at odds with Labor's pledge to improve teaching standards. This is a serious downside of the Bradley review's target of ensuring that 40 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds hold degrees by 2020. After a quarter of a century, the Dawkins reforms can be judged a failure in terms of teacher education.
“None of these serious challenges is addressed in Ms Gillard's endorsement of the Gonski plan or in her haste to lock in funding arrangements with states. Again the government has confused policy with politics. Either way, the fiscal foundations of the Gonski plan as now proposed are inadequate for the task. The federal government insists that $16.2 billion has been committed over the next six years, but the figure may just as well be written in candyfloss. The four-year forward estimates' spending of $2.9bn is all that Wayne Swan controls. The rest of the plan, stretching far into the future, is built on optimistic estimates of growth.”