The Concatenate

This advertisement appeared in today’s Canberra Times classifieds.

The US Embassy is certainly getting rid of an awful lot of gear, one wonders if the wife of the new ambassador, Robert D. McCallum, Jr was displeased with the furnishings at the big house on the hill? It is, however, a pretty refined aesthetic that can find fault with a wheel barrow.

I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want a mobile phone associated with the US embassy unless you’re into being eavesdropped on (although a bonus to someone wanting to have some counter-intelligence hijinks!). Members o the Australian-American club however might be thrilled to pick up the dining suites.

Back on 30 May we ran a tip that the Telstra sale would occur in October.

Today Nick Minchin has announced that advertising for the sale is starting on 2 October with the prospectus going out on 9 October.

So all the sound and fury in the interim really signified very little.

Peter Costello has announced that the 2005-6 budget surplus has come out at $15.8 billion (that’s a whole 1.6% of GDP) which is $1 billion higher than expected.

So is this money going on Defence? Roads? Hospitals? Schools? Coming back to the people it was taken from perhaps?

Nope, in a second media release he explains that he’s ploughing the cash into the stock market via the Future Fund at a time when the market is at historic highs (soon to be higher with 1.6% of GDP being hosed into it).

Some stockbrokers down to their last helicopter are they?

On last night’s Lateline the Minister for Health, Tony Abbott, addressed concerns that service stations in central Australia were rolling back the deployment of unsniffable opal petrol despite Government subsidies.

The petrol stations are citing customer demand but there are suspicions that rivalry between petrol companies is driving the push back against a BP invention.

Tony Abbott is threatening to legislate to force certain petrol types only to be sold in certain areas, which is a natural reaction for a paternalistic authoritarian.

But like all of history’s doomed prohibition efforts it seems not only to be doomed, but certain to be counterproductive serving only to empower criminals and drive the otherwise law abiding into criminality. What could be easier than smuggling unleaded petrol?

Even if they could remove all sniffable petrol from Central Australia, the same dismal conditions which have lead people to getting high on petrol and alcohol will see them abusing some other seemingly innocuous substance.

This is not to say things are hopeless, the numbers of people in Central Australia are so small that extravagant treatment and incentive schemes are not beyond the powers of Government. Punitive control measures however seem doomed to fail.

AAp, via News, reports that a staggering 380 sex workers in Melbourne have been found to be rorting Centrelink.

“Investigators found the welfare cheats had failed to declare earnings from their work in the sex industry while collecting government handouts. Several cheats may face criminal charges after a crackdown on Victoria’s adult services sector which could save taxpayers almost $1 million, Human Services Minister Joe Hockey said.”

The 380 were responsible for a measly $789 each of alleged fraud (totalling $300,000, another $700,000 is alleged to have been rorted in a different investigation), so they’re not exactly in the big league.

Defence has put out a media release trying to put to rest exactly what happened in Iraq on 26 December.

“elements of the Overwatch Battle Group (West) [OBG(W)] were conducting a meeting at an Iraqi Army Barracks in Al Rumaythah in Al Muthanna Province. The attack lasted almost an hour and appeared to be well coordinated, including rocket propelled grenades and small arms fire. The Australian soldiers withdrew from the area - under considerable fire - without loss of life, injury or serious damage to equipment and vehicles.”

Apparently there are exciting emails doing the rounds, describing what went on, which Defence assures us are fakes.

Cole’s rage

The SMH relates Commissioner Cole’s anger with AWB after an email was finally produced which could have significantly shortened the inquiry if the monopoly wheat exporter was playing with a straight bat. The Australian has more on this.

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Run down schools

The Age is displeased that Victorian schools need $268 million in repairs after years of neglect.

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Beazley in the marginals

The Australian is attacking Kim Beazley in a number of articles today and is pointing out his lack of appeal in marginal seats, and with women, despite his sustained overall poll lead.

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The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has put out a media release announcing that LG has agreed to refund up to $3.1 million to customers who were mislead about the efficiency of their air conditioners.

“LG will also implement new testing procedures to ensure that the energy efficiency of its air conditioners matches the performance indicated by their stated energy efficiency star rating and, where applicable meet, ‘minimum energy performance standards’”.

Apparently there are 15,000 affected units.

The ABC reports that the Reserve Bank is becoming increasingly worried by bad debts as credit standards are relaxed by banks desperate to hand out mortgages.

“The Reserve Bank is challenging banks and other lenders to avoid a further erosion of credit standards as they chase business in a competitive home loan market.”

The ABC is reporting what many have long suspected, that exercise is a very good way to shake off the blues.

“The Exercise Physiologists Association’s New South Wales president, Chris Tzar, says exercise has been proven to be as effective in fighting depression as medication or psychotherapy… Beyondblue’s chief executive, Leonie Young, says while studies show these results, exercise has been largely neglected as a method to manage depression… we’re really keen to get the message out that depression and exercise are a good fit and keeping active can be a great way of helping manage depression and anxiety.”

AAP, via News, is relating the fears of Kim Beazley that the Government might give people back their money before the next election.

Kim would rather the money be splurged on “nation building” which would funnel billions of dollars to the comrades in the CFMEU and AWU.

Drivers and drugs

The SMH has discovered that bus, truck and taxi drivers use amphetamines to keep their eyes open, adding to the shock and horror today’s bogey-drug “Ice” is among the amphetamines used. Furthermore: “Use of the drug is prevalent in the hospitality, transport, agriculture and construction industries”. By drug they just mean amphetamines, Ice is just being dangled around at the start of the story to make it sexy. This isn’t even new research, just data mining of the 2004 National Drug Strategy Household Survey to determine the bleeding obvious.

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All football all the time

The Age has the grim news that Channels 7 and 10 are preparing to show every single game of AFL on free to air television leaving precious little time for anything else.

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Trujilllo’s bonus

The Australian is unkindly pointing out that Sol Trujillo’s grand strategic plan for Telstra, for which he’s earned a $1.5 million bonus despite the share price slumping, cost $54 million in consultants to develop. One would think it’d be cheaper to poach the consultants from Bain & Co.

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The Age has a story on breakthroughs in DVD production which will allow a single disk to play in both HD-DVD and BluRay.

The looming format war was looming as a possible die back point for the movie industry as consumers tend to shun the whole field when incompatible formats are out there.

This will please content producers and consumers but Sony and Toshiba will be left wondering why they bothered.

Childcare shortage? What childcare shortage!

Minister for Family, Mal Brough, has sent out his minions to ind a result and has jubiliantly announced the results of their research:

“Figures provided from the Childcare Access Hotline show that there are between 97,000 and 120,000 childcare vacancies depending on the day of the week across Australia”

So there’s no problem! The statistics tell us so!