The Concatenate

Welcome to the first Question Time fashion wrap. It’s worth noting this is a picture-heavy story, so if you’re reading this in your email, you’ll need to click the link above to see the pictures. All the pictures are taken from the ABC’s daily broadcast of Question Time.

Pink jackets appeared to be the order of the day for any women wanting to break the basic black mould. I counted six pink/red suit jackets (plus a bronze one), as you can see below (though one of the Labor pink-jacket wearers left her seat).

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The Queensland Nationals had a problem. Having allowed their electoral base to massively decline they faced three cornered struggles in every seat they hoped to win back. Three cornered struggles the Liberals were more likely to win.

Queensland Liberal leader, Bob Quinn, had a problem. He was in danger of losing the leadership.

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When Hooters first tried a launch in Australia Larry Adler was an investor in the franchise. So we can assume it was long on hype, involved cosy deals with colourful characters, and short on hard work and astute management. As it quickly closed down that assessment is doubly confirmed.

News have got an AAP story informing us that a new management team is going to have another go with the first restaurants to open in entertainment starved Parramatta and Cronulla.

The Hooters concept is friendly, attractive waitresses in tight clothes and it plays well in straight laced middle America where racy, but not too racy is a winning formula. In the US they pay their staff very well too. There’s nothing to say it can’t work in Australia (and Parramatta and Cronulla are good places to try) but the management team are going to need to put in the hard work and not try and rely on a limited gimmick appeal.

Iinet’s long suffering customers can expect another change of ownership as they’re bought and sold like cattle. The beleaguered ISP has had a 20% chunk bought out by Amcom according to an AAP story via Yahoo.

This is on top of Powertel taking a pile of equity in the company.

[First filed: May 31, 2006 @ 09:14
Second filing: May 31, 2006 @ 14:25]

Last week Tony Abbott got away with moving that a “snivelling grub” no longer be heard. Julia Gillard put out a media release on 25 May and yesterday in Parliament there was a lengthy debate with the Speaker as to exactly how this precedent could be applied by others.

On the opening of this morning’s session Julia has used an identical form to Tony Abbott and has promptly been flung out of the chamber (suspended from the service of the house) for 24 hours.

UPDATE 1: AAP, via News, have a story on Julia’s explanation for her actions, saying she was highlighting the inconsistent standards.

“I think people will make of that that Tony Abbott, because of his bully-boy demeanour, because of his less-than-intelligent tactics as leader of government business, has driven this house to new lows”

UPDATE 2: Julia Gillard has put out a transcript of her outraged doorstop.

ABC, via Yahoo, is running a story on computer games being the real cause of violence in indigenous communities. They quote an Amelia Turner of the Eastern Aranda.

“It’s really affects their mind and really their mind should be clear thinking and another thing is because the kids tend to copy it, you know being copy cats, especially the young ones, you know the 13-year-olds, and it’s sort of stuck in their mind about those sort of things”

Having to aspire to owning a console, a TV, a house with electricity to put these things in, and then buying the $70+ games would, you’d think, be quite positive.

This morning the rather young Chris Pyne (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health) put out a media release celebrating “World No Tobacco Day” by asking young people to decide not to smoke. This auspicious day was even more enthusiastically celebrated in the ACT with the toytown parliament announcing draconian measures to stamp out this legal practice.

AAP, via News, now reports that Mr. Pyne is concerned that smokers are covering up the garish anti-smoking warnings on packets of cigarettes and seems to be demanding that anything which might cover these warnings should also be so adorned.

“Good taxpayer dollars are being spent promoting these new warnings and for people to try and cover up those warnings is essentially covering up an important health message to the public.”

How dare people stymie the will of the Government by modifying their own property!

The ABC has a report on an announcement by the Chief of the Defence Force (CDF), Air Marshall Angus Houston (hilariously described as “Air Chief Marshall” by the ABC), that in future dead Australian personnel will be returned to Australia in an Australian plane with two other Australians (in addition to the flight crew on the plane one imagines).

This of course stems from the Kovco fiasco.

Surely making a single person responsible for the safe return of the body would achieve the desired results at massively less expense? At the end of the day this knee jerk response is meant to look good on TV and then be forgotten in the event we start suffering more than one casualty every couple of years.

A blow for all those hoping Microsoft might one day smarten up the atrocious security of their software. Forbes has an AP story the launch of an MS security product, “Windows Live OneCare, which will protect up to three computers for $49.95 per year”.

It’s one thing to go to a third party (however annoying it might be) to secure the failings of the software you’ve purchased. But now you have to rent protection from the initial vendor?

Given the growth of the Windows security market over the years it was perhaps inevitable that the company would turn against the likes of Symantec and McAfee. Although it’s worth noting that Symantec have been having significant problems of their own.

In any event expect the legion of Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer in corporate IT to start pushing for the mothership’s security product.

The London Telegraph (amongst others) has a story on new research showing fewer treatments of radio therapy (with larger doses) can be effective in treating breast cancer without increasing side effects.

If the research is confirmed it would mean a lot less trauma for women while freeing up more hospital resources.

A problem with any bi-polar view of the world is that when tallying nations onto “sides” it’s easy to forget the one side every country always tries to be on is their own. Recent efforts to groom India as a counterweight to growing Chinese influence all seem to have neglected to ask “what’s in it for India?”.

On that note it’s very interesting to see a story in The Hindu that China and India have signed an MoU on joint exercises and defence cooperation “so as to add more content to the two countries’ emerging strategic relations”.

Just as interesting is The Hindu’s accounts of Chinese efforts to keep the the MoU secret. The robust Indian media is having none of that.

There are a lot of angry investors out there right now and, as we reported, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) is being squeezed from both sides as the powerful investment advisors lobby has the ears of the Treasury Ministers.

In an attempt to help the wealthy but credulous from doing their dough, ASIC has released a set of tips for choosing a financial adviser. Their key points are:

â–  Deal only with professional financial advisers and planners who hold an Australian financial services licence (AFSL)
â–  Think about your financial situation and what financial goals you want to achieve.
â–  If you decide you need professional advice, talk to family, friends or work colleagues to see if they can recommend anyone to you.
â–  Speak to a few financial advisers from different firms before deciding who to get advice from.
■ Ask about the financial adviser’s experience and qualifications.
â–  Always ask about what the advice will cost. Expect to pay for professional advice.
â–  Find out whether there are any restrictions on the financial products that the financial adviser can recommend.

Which is all very nice but I still can’t see how following this advice would avoid a repeat of the Westpoint scenario where advisors were on such great commissions to push the product it didn’t much matter what other products were available to them. The real point is that if you’re not paying the advisor then someone else is.

AAP, via News, has a story about new legislation to be introduced into South Australia. Trafficking petrol is now to be an offence.

No seriously, be careful where you go with the full tank of petrol and a jerry can in case you get into trouble.

Rather than providing the resources and infrastructure to make indigenous communities places where people want to get on with their lives, the SA government is going to criminalise a commodity essential to basic transport.

Just when you thought the “dust diseases” like mesothelioma were a known quantity with the dangers of asbestos, the Senate’s Community Affairs Committee has released a report “Workplace exposure to toxic dust”.

They report at length about known dangers such as crystalline silica (asbestos) beryllium, timber dust, alumina and textile dusts. More intriguingly they also devote the final chapter to the future dangers posed by nantotechnology particles in the air. The Committee notes that the smaller a particle is the more likely it is to cause damage, and nano particles are very small indeed.

“it is generally considered that there is an inverse relationship between toxicity of insoluble materials and particle size, irrespective of parent material. The UK Health and Safety Executive noted that ‘the toxicity of insoluble materials increases with decreasing particle size, on a mass for mass basis’. It was also noted that unlike larger microparticles, nanoparticles are highly mobile and readily enter the blood stream following inhalation or ingestion. Nanoparticles may also penetrate human skin.”

If you thought nanotech was a problem not yet upon us, back on 6 April the Washington Post reported on a recall of a German spray which made surfaces dirt resistant because of its effects on people who inhaled it.