the bushfires - Letter from Melbourne

LETTER FROM MELBOURNE
will begin accepting applications from SMEs around
the middle of the year. The initiative follows the
announcement in August that the state would spend
$145m through Victoria’s science agenda and the
$40m Boosting Highly Innovative SMEs initiative,
the Financial Review reported.
Agriculture
Come again
The Weekly Times reported that as of mid-February
dozens of (mostly northern) Victorian and New
South Wales towns were still yet to receive a drop
of rain this year.
Dry, dry, dry
Victoria has endured its second dry start to the year
on record, with high temperatures and devastating
bushfires testing the rural spirit, the Weekly Times
reported. Average rainfall across the state in
January and February was just 13 millimetres – 1
millimetre less than Victoria’s driest start to the year
in 1965. Elsewhere, Australian agriculture has been
a better contributor to the national interest than for
many years. Especially the wheat states other than
Victoria, ie Western Australia, South Australia and
New South Wales.
Harvest members from the population
Victorian Farmers Federation president Simon
Ramsay wrote in the Weekly Times that too
many farmers are benefiting from the work of
Victoria’s peak farming body without belonging to
it. He notes declining membership of representative
organisations seems to be a feature of modern
society. Political parties, unions and even service
organizations are all experiencing the same – or
similar – problems. Declining Victorian Farmers
Federation membership has been occurring since a
peak of 20,000 members was reached in the mid-
1980s.
Justice
Overjoyed-land
Simon Overland, 46, is Victoria’s new (and
twentieth) police Chief Commissioner, with a fiveyear
contract, The Age reported. Overland wants to
shut down some of the states pubs, clubs and bottle
shops to try to curb alcohol-related violence. He
says it is too easy to sell alcohol, which he believes
is the state’s number one drug and social problem,
the Herald Sun reported.
Ned’s corner
Proposed legal changes giving Chief Commissioner
Simon Overland more power to sack police were
worse than Work Choices’, the police union has told
its 11,000 members, The Age reported. In an opinion
piece in the same paper, Overland wrote that muchneeded
reform has been delayed for years. Now,
it’s time to act. Honest, hard-working police should
have nothing to fear from these changes.
Nixon off to help
Christine Nixon has stayed in town to help with the
bushfire rebuilding effort, as head of the Victorian
Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority.
Scared stiff
Marcus Einfeld has spoken on camera about his
fear of going to jail and begged for forgiveness
for lying about his unpaid speeding fine (he was
sentenced in the New South Wales Supreme Court
to a least two years in prison after pleading guilty to
making a false statement under oath and to making
a false statement with intent to pervert the course
of justice). While admitting his guilt, the former
Federal Court judge tried to defend his integrity as a
basically honest man who made a ‘mistake’ by lying,
The Age reported.
In something that hardly seems newsworthy,
footage screened on the ABC’s four Corners
program showed Einfield not wearing a belt while
traveling to court in the back of the car. Police issued
a statement saying that ‘New South Wales police
traffic services branch will be reviewing footage to
determine what action if any may be taken.’ Give a
dog a bone.
Drat modern technology
The Age reported that Victoria Police’s information
system is served by an IT department that is
overwhelmed by increasing technology demands.
A copy of the Police’s Risk Register, a catalogue
of issues facing the force, reveals a failure of
management to commit to an appropriate standard
of information security controls. The register also
reveals a high risk of police losing information,
including sensitive operations material, because
data stored on servers exceeds the amount that can
be backed up on a single tape.
What does Sue do now?
John Brumby is on a collision course with Victoria
Police command over liquor laws that will give
greater powers to the director of liquor licensing,
the Herald Sun reported. Legislation will give the
director of liquor licensing, Sue Mclellan, greater
powers (what did she have and use before this) than
police to suspend pubs and clubs’ licences. Police
Association secretary designate Greg Davies
questioned the logic behind establishing a liquor
control squad when police could do the job with
more authority.
Tell Stephen tell
Former media director at Victoria Police, Stephen
Linnell, 40, pleaded guilty in the Melbourne
Magistrates’ Court to three counts of perjury and
three of disclosing a confidential hearing, The Age
reported. He avoided jail by agreeing to testify
against a colleague.
Integrity compromised
A senior investigator with the Office of Police Integrity,
accused of serious misconduct after another officer
claimed he had forced him to sign false statutory
declarations to cover up dubious expense claims,
was sacked. He was in charge of the OPI’s integrity
testing unit when the alleged misconduct occurred,
The Age reported.
Up there
A Hells’ Angels bikie was killed in a huge brawl at
Sydney airport with rival club the Comancheros,
in one of the most brazen attacks in outlaw bikie
history, The Age reported. We should all reflect and
form views on the circumstances of this attack
in an airport environment – and the plane trip
beforehand.
Another two men believed to be bikies were shot
dead in Canberra a few days later. Outlaw bikie
gangs have infiltrated security and maritime
industries and represent a ‘real and present’ threat
to Australia, Australian Crime Commission chief
executive John Lawler said.
An editorial in The Australian said that Australian
Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty must
respond to the Airport Outrage.
In the Herald Sun, Andrew Bolt wrote that bikie
gangs are now so contemptuous of our laws that a
man can be bashed to death in broad daylight in an
airport lounge. How has it come to this?
Big time
Ronnie Biggs, the ‘great train robber’, will be freed
from prison in time for his 80th birthday. He was
sentenced to 30 years for his part in the robbery of a
Glasgow-to-London mail train in 1963 when a gang
made off with the equivalent of more than $90m in
today’s money. After only 15 months behind bars,
he escaped prison and was on the run for three
decades in Australia and Brazil, the Herald Sun
reported.
Life moves on
The masters of Victoria’s Supreme Court are now
known as associate judges.
Melbourne
The city cares
City people came together at Federation Square on
February 27 in an event called ‘The City Cares’. City
workers, visitors and residents were encouraged to
pledge time or skills to help those affected by the
bushfires, or record their own personal messages
of support, the Herald Sun reported.
Below the radar
Indian students will be encouraged not to speak
too loudly in their native tongue or display signs
of wealth such as iPods, when travelling on trains
at night, as part of a strategy to crack down on
violent robberies. Robberies in Melbourne’s western
suburbs jumped by 27 per cent last financial year.
Police estimated almost one third of victims were of
Indian appearance, The Age reported.
Wheelly bad news
Melbourne’s $100 million Southern Star Observation
Wheel will be out of action for at least six months
(only seven weeks after it opened) after engineers
discovered damage caused to the structure during
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