Sarah Hanson-Young is dreaming if she thinks releasing them to the community would be cheaper. In detention centres they are housed fed and cared for with shared facilities. In the community they would expect separate housing, food, medical care and welfare. There would be no scales of economy, unless she was going to share her place with 5600 asylum seekers.....Not likely

The original article and story can be found here: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-nsw/australias-billion-dollar-boats-detention-centre-contracts-blow-out-to-103-billion/story-e6freuzi-1226266158906

They are NOT Asylum Seekers as portrayed in the media. Asylum seeking is escaping to the nearest safe haven and out of danger. Not skipping 10 countries and getting on a boat to come to Australia with it's soft border laws. They are Illegal Immigrants and should be treated as such. Half of them throw away all their ID docs and claim to be Afghanis despite coming from Pakistan or Iran. And guess what we do within 90 days without actually knowing their past history or real name we fly them to Melbourne of Adelaide. Give them a house and the dole, what a joke we are. They could be anybody and before long we will start to get real terror problems all thanks to our lazy left wing government. Don't sit quietly and say nothing below are links to the big shots, if enough people agitate something might get done. But the biggest joke of all is we had a working border policy that kept people off boats and allowed us to bring safely people in real need from camps around the World. But what did Rudd and Gillard do yes as usual with this Government stuffed it up completeely and on some counts that works out as up to 1000 womena nd children dead. So give me a break about Abbott this and Abbott that!

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/deadlock-on-asylum-issue-strikes-at-the-heart-20111226-1pah8.html#ixzz1hh4NGfgd

Posted by: 'mick e mause' December 27, 2011, 7:32AM

The comment attracted many negative responses!

1. Qantas' primary responsibility is to deliver a profit to its shareholders: Qantas as a public business listed on the Australian stock exchange has a responsibility to the shareholders/investors in the company to ensure that a profit and growth occurs. Qantas must prioritise the various interests from the stakeholders in the company, and the shareholders must always come first in such a matter.
2. Qantas cannot afford to pay their workers any more money: Qantas is already losing money on its international routes and drastic cuts in spending need to be made to ensure that this arm of the business remains profitable. Pay increases for their employees are simply not possible to be made.
3. Qantas employees are already the highest paid in the world: Qantas already finds it difficult to compete with other airlines as they currently pay their workers some of the highest wages in the world. How can these employees possibly want any more money? It's just plain greed!
4. As aircraft become more efficient, less employees are required: Just like many other technological advancements around, aircraft become far more efficient and thus require less employees to service and maintain the airline's fleet. Therefore, Job Security for all workers simply cannot be agreed upon, as a number of the workers eventually will become redundant.
5. Unions had already been taking action against the company for months: The various unions had already been undertaking industrial action against the company since September in a series of rolling strikes, aimed at bleeding the company slowly and painfully.
6. Qantas was already losing significant amounts of money from union Industrial Action: Qantas was already making losses of approximately $20m per week as a result of customers using other airlines due to uncertainty surrounding flights and disruptions.
7. Unions that same day announced increased industrial action:  The Transport Workers Union the morning after the AGM said that they planned to increase the amount of industrial action, until the airline agreed to their conditions.
8. Qantas deals with many unions and has managed successfully to negotiate with a majority of them.
9. The only effective industrial action available to Qantas was a lockout!! The employees have the right to take action against Qantas, so why can't this company take action against its employees? It would seem that many people in the Australian community believe that employees should simply be allowed continually to make threats to their employers, yet no kind of retaliation be expected.

I certainly didn't like seeing the airline grounded, but it seems that this was the only way to show the greedy unions that they don't always get what they want, and that they do not own nor do they run the company!

Let me know your thoughts in the poll or comments below! Please spread the word! 

"Google+ makes connecting on the web more like connecting in the real world. Share your thoughts, links and photos with the right circles. Use easy, spontaneous video chat to strike up conversations with as many as nine people at once. Get everyone on the same page with fast, simple group chat. We’re very excited about the new approach to sharing we’ve created through Google+, but this is really just the beginning."

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 20/10/2011
Reporter: Leigh Sales

Migrating Gmail Messages to iCloud Mail

You can start fresh with your new iCloud account, but maybe you want access to your email archives all in one place. In that case, you'll have to migrate your current Gmail inbox over. It isn't the quickest process, but we've found that plugging both accounts into an IMAP program—like Apple's Mail—makes it fairly straightforward. Just make sure you follow the instructions below to the letter. Read through them first, so you understand what you're doing, and then go through each step, one by one. If you make a mistake, you could severely confuse your iCloud inbox and have to start over. Here's what you'll want to do:

1. First, set up both Gmail and iCloud in Mail.app. Setting up Gmail is easy, and creating a new iCloud email address is as simple as going into System Preferences > iCloud, signing in with your Apple ID, and creating a new Mail account. It should show up in Mail when you're done.
2. Let Mail download all your messages. You'll see all your Gmail labels set up as folders. Note that iCloud doesn't use labels like Gmail does, so you'll need to go into Gmail and make sure all of your messages are assigned only one label—otherwise, you'll get duplicate messages in your iCloud account.
3. When you're ready to migrate, head into Mail.app and click on Gmail's "Sent Messages" folder. Go to Mailbox > Use This Mailbox For > Sent. Repeat this process with the Deleted Messages folder as well.
4. Now, you're ready to start moving messages over. Start with the inbox. Go to Gmail's inbox in Mail.app and select all the messages within. Right-click on them and hit Copy To > Inbox > iCloud. This should copy all those messages over to iCloud's inbox. Do not drag and drop the messages; that will remove them from Gmail, which we do not want yet.
5. Repeat this process for each of your user-created folders—that is, all your Gmail "labels" except All Mail, Important, Starred, and Spam. Create a new folder on the iCloud account (by right-clicking on the iCloud inbox and hitting "New Mailbox), click on the corresponding folder from your Gmail account, select all the messages, and copy them to the new iCloud folder. Be sure to copy over all your sent messages, too, even though they're a Gmail-created folder! Note that if one of your folders is particularly big, you may run into some errors when copying messages. If you get an error, delete all the messages in the iCloud folder you're trying to fill and try the copy again. After another try or two, it should work.
6. When you're done, you should have a good portion of your messages migrated to the iCloud account. The only messages missing will be the ones that didn't have a label, and weren't in your inbox or sent messages folder. To migrate these, we'll need to delete everything we've migrated so far, and move them from the "All Mail" folder into a new "Archive" folder in iCloud. So, go back to your Sent Messages, Inbox, and other user-created labels and delete all those messages—using the Mail.app interface—from your Gmail account.
7. Lastly, copy everything from the All Mail folder in to iClouds Archive folder, as you did with the other folders. When you're done, your inbox should look just like it did in Gmail, and you're ready to start using iCloud Mail.

If you want to undelete those messages from your Gmail account just in case, you can head to the Gmail web interface, select all the messages in your Trash, and move them to your inbox. Then, re-archive them all in case you want to move back to Gmail later.

Migrate Google Calendar to iCal

Migrating your calendars is much easier than migrating your email. Open up Google Calendar, go to Settings > Calendars, and hit the "Export Calendars" link. This will download all your calendars in a ZIP file to your desktop. Extract the ZIP file somewhere, then open up iCal and go to File > Import. Choose one of your calendars in the folder you just unzipped, and assign it a new calendar in iCal. Repeat this for each of those calendars. As long as the Calendars box is checked in System Preferences > iCloud, all those calendars should sync right up to iCloud with no problem.

Migrate Google Contacts to iCloud Contacts

Migrating your contacts is extremely easy:

1. First, go into System Preferences > iCloud and uncheck the contacts box (that's right).
2. Open up Address Book and go to Preferences > Accounts. Check the "Synchronize with Google" box and enter your Google credentials when prompted.
3. Head back into System Preferences > iCloud and recheck the Contacts box. It will ask you if you want to merge your computer's Contacts with your iCloud contacts; pick Merge. Then, it'll tell you that it's going to turn off Google sync, which is okay, so hit OK.

When it finishes, head to the iCloud web interface, you should see all your Google contacts there, imported and ready to go.

Migrate Your Google Docs to iWork

Google offers an easy way to download any documents you want to your desktop, after which you can just drag them into iCloud:

• Start by going to Google Docs' web interfaceand select the documents you want to transfer over. You can select all the documents in your account by clicking the check box at the top of the list.
• the "More" button that appears and choose "Download" from the list. Make sure you download the documents in Microsoft Office format.
• Unzip the resulting file anywhere on your computer, like the desktop.
• Open up the iCloud web interface and hit iWork. Drag all those files you extracted into the iWork interface. They should upload right then and there, and pretty soon you'll see them on all your iOS devices, ready for editing.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Coming Soon (will update soon)

There is clear logic in the judge's ruling, but my contention is that it fails to establish why Bolt’s writings did not qualify under the freedom of expression exemptions within the Act and it falls short of establishing that Bolt's motives were as debased as the ruling suggests.

In essence this case was lost on this point - the belief by the judge that "people should be free to fully identify with their race without fear of public disdain or loss of esteem for so identifying".

Bolt did not get an exemption under the Act because of "the manner in which those articles were written" and because "they contained errors in fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language".

I think the ruling is dangerous because it asserts as indisputable fact that Bolt's articles were not reasonable and were not written in good faith and do not classify as "fair comment". The Judge clearly believes they were not written with a genuine public interest in mind.

But in the end this is just one person's view. Although those of us that don't like Bolt's writing might think we understand his motives, we really don't have a clue whether Bolt honestly held these views. Perhaps he was being courageous, rather than reckless, in seeking to talk openly what many would say quietly. I don't share his views but I can see some merit in the argument that true racial tolerance is only achieved when we can ventilate unpopular views openly and have a robust discussion about them.

- The Bolt decision will have implications for us all, Andrew Dodd, ABC

Great to see others that have similar views to me on this issue.

• Victorian Indigenous Art Award
• Ambassador for the Australia Council’s Indigenous Literacy Project
• University of Technology in Sydney’s Indigenous House of Learning
• Scanlon Prize for Indigenous Poetry
• position at the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board; and
• Macquarie University’s Warawara Department of Indigenous Studies
• (the list just goes on and on!!)

The court found that Bolt's article had numerous factual inaccuracies and this may be true, but I find the overall message and intention of the article in no way racist where Bolt states:

"I think it sad if we keep harping on about differences and rights based on trivial inflections of race."

"To me, this blacker-than-thou offends the deepest humanist ideals"

"In fact, let’s go beyond racial pride. Beyond black and white. Let’s be proud only of being human beings set on this land together, determined to find what unites us and not to invent such racist and trivial excuses to divide. Deal?"

Bolt added outside court after receiving the judgement (as reported by The Age):

"This is a terrible day for free speech in this country," he said, which drew heckles from some supporters of the applicants in the case.

Bolt responded with a glare and an appeal. "Can I at least have my free speech now," he asked before returning to his hand-written prepared text.

"It is particularly a restriction on the freedom of all Australians to discuss multiculturalism and how people identify themselves. I argued then and I argue now that we should not insist on the differences between us but focus instead on what unites us as human beings. Thank you."

Extraordinarily, Jonathan Holmes from the ABC's Media Watch programme also agreed that Bolt perhaps has a right to say his opinion in an episode broadcast on 4th April 2011 (although I don't entirely agree with other parts of the episode).

"To my mind, to declare something unlawful just because it causes offence - on the grounds of race or anything else - is an unjustified curtailment of our freedom of speech."

So what protections are put in place by the Racial Discrimination Act 1975? Section 18D of that act states:

Section 18C does not render unlawful anything said or done reasonably and in good faith:

(b)  in the course of any statement, publication, discussion or debate made or held for any genuine academic, artistic or scientific purpose or any other genuine purpose in the public interest; or

(c)  in making or publishing:

(i)  a fair and accurate report of any event or matter of public interest; or

(ii)  a fair comment on any event or matter of public interest if the comment is an expression of a genuine belief held by the person making the comment.

Justice Bromberg concluded that Bolt's conduct was not exempted from Section 18D due to the "manner in which the articles were written, including that they contained errors of fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language." They further added that Bolt did not act "reasonably and in good faith" and that it did not have "a genuine purpose in the public interest."

"Nothing in the orders I make should suggest that it is unlawful for a publication to deal with racial identification, including by challenging the genuineness of the identification of a group of people," Justice Bromberg said. Effectively however, many journalists/broadcasters will be unlikely to raise the issue as there is the potential for further legal action to take place under the Racial Discrimination Act.

Let me know if you agree with the judgement in the comments below or on twitter using hashtag #Bolt and please be sure to send it to your family/friends to help spread the real facts over this clear injustice. I'm sure there will be much debate on this issue over the coming days.

Further Reading:

• Read the full judgement
• Read Bolt's article that sparked the controversy
• Racial Discrimination Act 1975
• Read Bolt's thank you to his supporters