What Australian papers say today, Thursday, 15 Feb, 2001

AAP General News (Australia)
02-15-2001
What Australian papers say today, Thursday, 15 Feb, 2001

SYDNEY, Feb 15 AAP - Sydney's The Daily Telegraph leads with the story of a man yesterday
being awarded $2.5 million compensation for a caning he received as a schoolboy 17 years
ago.

The amount of damages the New South Wales Supreme Court jury awarded Paul Hogan, 30,
under Common Law was more than eight times the maximum allowed for workers compensation
payouts.

Mr Hogan complained of lasting soreness to his hand, but surely the award was out of
step with the damages which could be achieved by people who have suffered far more serious
injuries, the paper said.

The outcome augured the possibility of a flood of litigation from similarly injured students.

The Catholic Church intended appealing the verdict.

"On the face of it, Mr Hogan's verdict does seem to set an astounding, not to say dangerous,
precedent."

The Sydney Morning Herald says Austeel's $2.8 billion steel mill proposed for Newcastle
is good news for a city having suffered its fair share of pain.

The project would need 10,000 workers during construction and create 20,000 new indirect jobs.

The company said about 2,500 new jobs would be part of the permanent workforce running
the Newcastle mill and Pilbara operation, the paper said.

While not quite a sure thing, the mill would go a long way to filling the vacuum left
by BHP's 1999 departure after 84 years operation.

"For Novacastrians, the announcement was perhaps felt more in the heart, allowing them,
after years of doubt, to build a new future on their proud past," the paper said.

The paper also examines the detention of illegal immigrants in Australia.

"The revelation that some illegal immigrants are held in jails for reasons of administrative
convenience highlights the moral dilemmas inherent in the federal government's hardline
approach to unwelcome strangers," the paper said.

The Financial Review says the political issue of privatising Telstra is now established
as a federal election issue.

Telstra's successful $150 million tender to provide improved telephone services in
rural areas was a case in point.

"The government has done just what it should be doing to provide equitable access to
basic telephone services in a modern, competitive telecommunications market," the paper
said.

"But the ALP and much of the National Party (in opposing full privatisation) want to
turn back the clock without accepting the risk that this will only retard the long-term
development of high quality telecommunications services."

Those opposing privatisation should be looking further afield rather than setting up
a situation where Telstra was seen as the only possible provider of rural services, the
paper said.

The Australian says the losers in the government's decision to award Telstra a $150
million regional telephone contract are crying foul, believing the government has favoured
the communications giant to make its full privatisation more palatable to the bush.

Deregulation of the industry had failed to impact largely on Telstra's economic and
political dominance, the paper said.

The awarding of the contact had reignited the Telstra privatisation issue at a politically
sensitive time, the paper said.

"While it might make political sense right now, Mr Howard's reluctance to commit himself
to Telstra's full privatisation is cowardly," the paper said.

The privatisation delay was damaging Telstra's credit rating and economic growth into
new markets such as the Internet and data casting.

"The best course of action for the government now would be to use Telstra's contract
as the first step in its program to improve regional communications services and come
clean on its timetable for privatisation," the paper said.

The paper also questions the federal government's understanding of modern Australia
given its sacking of political staffers romantically linked with Labor party figures.

There has been a chilling reminder this week that along with its incredible benefits,
the Internet poses grave risks, Melbourne's Herald Sun says in its editorial.

In London, seven pedophiles pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography and received
extraordinary lenient jail terms from 12 to 30 months, it says.

The British will now increase the penalties for Internet pedophiles, the newspaper says.

"Australian governments must ensure that our penalties match the vileness of the crime," it says.

The Herald Sun also says Canberra's welcome decision to bar New Zealanders from the
dole in Australia will end a trans-Tasman rort.

NZ prime minister Helen Clark said New Zealand could not afford to support its unemployed
living here, it says.

"Tough", the newspaper says. Kiwis are welcome to come here without visas but not to
sponge on us."

The Canberra Times says questions remain unanswered about responsibility over the $2.9
billion federal roads funding bungle.

Transport Minister, Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson sacked two of his advisers
for failing to warn him about the problem.

"Yet there are wider questions about the affair inviting speculation about the responsibility
of Mr Anderson and other ministers, and about the responsibility of Mr Anderson's department,"

the paper said.

If the advisers failed then so did Mr Anderson, and "he does not escape accountability
simply by pointing to the blood on the floor", the paper said.

"A dead silence remains about a continuing failure by ministers and bureaucrats to
follow procedures laid down for the spending of public money, about the fact that Mr Anderson
and several other ministers were apparently well aware, if not in fine detail, of that
failure," the paper said.

"And there are questions about the department's own failures to follow procedures laid
down by law, and its apparent failures to flag the issue, and the impending audit report,
of whose contents it was well aware, better to the ministerial office."

South Australia has been well served by governors who have bestowed style and personality
on the vice-regal office, Adelaide's Advertiser says in its editorial today.

Sir Eric Neal, and very much Lady Neal, is in that tradition and has extended it,
the newspaper said.

In the ordinary course of events Sir Eric would now be nearing the end of his term.

We were not privy to the thinking of the government officially or the Neals personally,
it said.

"We can, however, assert that if Sir Eric and Lady Neal's term was formally extended,
the decision would be astute, popular - and for the good of South Australia," the paper
said.

The Advertiser also said South Australians were accustomed to stories of resourceful
people in the - broadly defined - bush.

So it came as little surprise to learn that the winner of SA's 2001 Rural Women's
Award was so pregnant she cannot make the journey from Kangaroo Island to the mainland,
it said.

Mrs Jeanette Gellard said cheerfully that she would get into the job of spreading her
latest message of rural opportunities available to young people as soon as possible after
the birth of her own youngest person, the paper said.

"Why not? She has done this much already as the mother of two children," it said.

If a union negotiates improvements in wages or conditions on behalf of its members,
then non-members who stand to receive those benefits should be expected to make a financial
contribution to the union, The Age says in its editorial.

Unions must now provide a range of services in order to justify their existence, it says.

"They should not be expected to provide those services to anyone for free," the newspaper says.

The Age also says the Federal Attorney-general Daryl Williams has asked the office
of Film and Literature Classificiation to re-examine its decision to award the film, "Hannibal"

an MA rating, which means children under 15 can see the film.

It contains graphic scenes of violence, including a sequence in which the character
Lecter eats a living man's brain, the newspaper says.

"Although The Age believes that responsibile adults should have the right to read or
see what they want, we also believe that Mr Williams is right to send the film back to
the office's Classification Review Board... " it says.

AAP /pc/gfr

KEYWORD: EDITORIALS

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