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https://time.com/5683862/australia-technology-drivers-driving-phones/
2019-09-23 09:43:41Z
52780390040904
Senin, 23 September 2019
Australia Is Using New Technology to Catch Drivers on Phones - TIME
https://time.com/5683862/australia-technology-drivers-driving-phones/
2019-09-23 09:43:41Z
52780390040904
Jumat, 20 September 2019
Donald Trump hosts Australia PM at the White House - BBC News
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is only the second leader to receive a state dinner under President Trump. What does this visit have in store for the Aussies?
James Glenday from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation explains all you need to know.
Edited by Chloe Kim
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-49730164/donald-trump-hosts-australia-pm-at-the-white-house
2019-09-20 09:23:21Z
52780387854098
Donald Trump hosts Australia PM at the White House - BBC News
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is only the second leader to receive a state dinner under President Trump. What does this visit have in store for the Aussies?
James Glenday from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation explains all you need to know.
Edited by Chloe Kim
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-49730164/donald-trump-hosts-australia-pm-at-the-white-house
2019-09-20 05:43:04Z
52780387854098
Kamis, 19 September 2019
Australia Is Fighting Over Whether or Not to Kill 'Man-Eating' Sharks - Newsweek
Australia is in the midst of a battle over whether to cull "man-eating" sharks on the Great Barrier Reef as one of its states argues for a change in federal law so that it can continue the practice.
In a win for wildlife campaigners, the government of the state of Queensland—located in the northeast of the country—lost a federal court appeal Wednesday in which it was fighting for the right to continue implementing a controversial shark management program, The Guardian reported.
This program involved the deployment of nets and drum lines—a type of unmanned aquatic trap—to catch and kill sharks representing 19 different species, in an attempt to protect swimmers.
Critics of the program say there is no scientific evidence that the "lethal component" of the program reduces the risk of unprovoked shark attacks on humans. Furthermore, they say these methods lead to the unnecessary deaths of large numbers of sharks, harming the marine ecosystem.
Earlier this year, animal rights group the Humane Society won a case against the Queensland government which forced it to make several changes to the program.
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal said that euthanasia would only be allowed as a last resort in certain circumstances, "specifically when a shark is unlikely to survive release due to its condition or an injury, or which cannot be safely removed alive due to weather conditions or hooking location."
"We are satisfied that the euthanasia of any species of sharks... caught on drum lines should be a last resort and not occur as a matter of practice," the tribunal said, according to The Brisbane Times.
The Queensland government appealed the verdict of the tribunal, but it has now lost its appeal meaning it can only continue the program in a manner that avoids the killing of sharks "to the greatest extent possible," the Australian Associated Press reported.
However, on Thursday, the state government demanded that the law be changed so that the culling of sharks could continue in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
"We fought this in the courts because we simply believe that human life must be prioritised over the lives of sharks," Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told the Australian parliament today. "The decision effectively means that the program would become a catch and release program within the marine park."
Mark Furner, the state's agriculture minister, also urged the government to allow the culling of "man-eating" sharks to continue.
The state tourism minister, Kate Jones, called on Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to intervene in the case.
"I'm sure the prime minister does not want to have blood on his hands through this decision in relation to the federal act," Jones told reporters on Wednesday.
https://www.newsweek.com/australia-fighting-over-whether-not-kill-man-eating-sharks-1460171
2019-09-19 12:34:31Z
CAIiEEVZUSlWm1QflsFTQq1WUhcqGQgEKhAIACoHCAow77zbCjDiq8wBMMiCsgU
Australia’s Toughest Question: How Close Is Too Close to China? - The New York Times
SYDNEY, Australia — It was an extraordinary question for a member of Australia’s Parliament to be asked on live television: Are you a spokeswoman for the Chinese Communist Party?
“The simple answer,” the lawmaker, Gladys Liu, responded, “is no.”
But little else was simple about the interview that Ms. Liu — Australia’s first Chinese-born member of Parliament — gave last week to respond to reports of her not-long-ago membership in groups linked to the Communist Party.
Her fumbled answers, and the outcry that followed, have exposed the country’s struggle to integrate a growing community of immigrants from China who have tended to be overlooked by the political system except as a source of cash.
Two forces are now colliding: Australia’s ethnic Chinese community is increasing in size and power just as the country is becoming more skeptical of its economic dependence on China and raising alarms about Chinese influence in Australian institutions.
Countries around the world are grappling with how to handle China’s sweeping ambitions, but the challenges are especially pronounced in Australia.
“The Gladys Liu controversy is a warning that Australia, like many nations, needs more maturity in its China debate,” said Rory Medcalf, the head of the National Security College at the Australian National University.
“The real fault lies in the long complacency of Australia’s political class,” he said, adding that as the country’s “major political parties saw nothing wrong with treating Chinese communities as cash cows,” the Chinese Communist Party’s “pervasive intelligence and interference apparatus saw Australia as a place of great opportunity.”
The tensions are particularly acute in Australia, where there are more than one million people of Chinese descent. Chinese have been coming to Australia for two centuries, but significant numbers of ethnic Chinese migrants began arriving after the end of the White Australia Policy in the early 1970s. While most were once migrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan, the number of immigrants from mainland China has been soaring for more than a decade.
In a reflection of the sheer heft and reach of China, many Chinese-Australians straddle two worlds, with financial success sometimes dependent on ties to the mainland. Given this reality, and the nationalist pressure Beijing exerts on what it calls “overseas Chinese,” a question is increasingly being imposed on the country’s Chinese immigrants: Can you prove your loyalty to this country? Or, put another way: How close to China is too close?
That was the backdrop to the interview that Ms. Liu, who rose in politics on the strength of her fund-raising and networking in the Chinese community, gave on Sky News to Andrew Bolt, a conservative commentator.
It was seen almost universally as disastrous. Ms. Liu said she could not recall her long membership in local Chinese organizations connected to the Communist Party’s foreign influence efforts. She had difficulty articulating a position on Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea, or even on the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, where she was born. Critics said she appeared to weigh her words so as not to offend Beijing.
Her political opponents called on her to declare her allegiance to Australia, where she has lived since the 1980s, and asked intelligence agencies to look closer at any links she might have to the Chinese government. The leader of her conservative party, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, branded these demands racist — a claim echoed by the Chinese government.
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Public opinion is also divided. Some Australians worry that the country is casting suspicion on an entire ethnic group and demonizing a first-term lawmaker whose association with Chinese organizations may have had less to do with ideology than with the potential for wealth and power. Others believe that Ms. Liu’s case raises legitimate worries over sovereignty and national security.
Many experts say these are the kinds of questions Australia has spent far too long avoiding as China’s hunger for natural resources and university degrees helped fuel a generation of uninterrupted Australian economic growth.
“It’s only in the last two years that Australia has spoken about the downside of China’s rise. The last 15 years we spoke only of the upside,” said John Lee, a onetime adviser to the former foreign minister Julie Bishop, who is now at the United States Studies Center in Sydney.
Last year, Australia passed laws against foreign interference that require anyone lobbying on behalf of another country to enroll in a national register. Two years ago, Sam Dastyari, a politician in the left-leaning Labor Party, quit the Senate amid allegations that a Chinese billionaire paid his legal bills, and that he pushed his party to change its position on the disputed waters of the South China Sea to match China’s posture.
The Australian federal government has also taken some steps to distance itself from Beijing, like declining to sign on to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, turning away Chinese bids to build national electricity or gas pipeline grids, and banning Chinese tech giants from installing 5G wireless networks.
But after years of vocal China boosterism, Australia’s leaders have said little to the public about why they have taken these steps. They have instead issued vague statements, for instance accusing “sophisticated state actors” of carrying out intrusions like the cyberattack on Parliament this year.
On Monday, Reuters reported that the country’s intelligence agencies had concluded that China was behind that attack, but that government officials had recommended keeping the finding secret to avoid hurting trade ties.
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The government’s ambivalence and lack of transparency has discouraged open public debate, experts say, leading to oversimplified arguments and conspiratorial rumors.
“I think the intelligence agencies should release more information about what they know, because unless they do that, it’s up to the imagination of the population what the Chinese do and don’t do,” Mr. Lee said. “Having been in government, I know what the Chinese do, but I think it should be released so the public can be critical and not overreact.”
But until that happens, Mr. Lee said, the debate about China will continue to falter, and the impact on Chinese-Australians, especially those with political aspirations, will only grow.
“It could go the way we fear, which is Chinese-Australians feel that everything they do is under suspicion, purely because they hang around Chinese groups or are part of Chinese organizations,” he said.
Clive Hamilton, whose book on Chinese Communist Party interference in Australia was published after three other publishers pulled out over fears of angering Beijing, said that work over decades by the party to infiltrate Chinese organizations in Australia had now “poisoned the well” for future politicians of Chinese origin.
“Almost all Chinese organizations and Chinese media are now dominated by people sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “That means that the candidates of Chinese ethnicity who are put forward in the political process and work their way up through the system are likely to be those trusted by Beijing.”
Damien Cave contributed reporting.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/world/australia/gladys-liu-china.html
2019-09-19 06:24:00Z
CAIiEGSaevC2i0crHBwhTIkgpUIqFwgEKg8IACoHCAowjuuKAzCWrzww5oEY
Rabu, 18 September 2019
Australian hiker rescued after crawling with broken leg for two days - CNN International
Neil Parker, 54, was hiking on Mount Nebo, northwest of Brisbane, on Sunday when he tumbled six meters from the top of a waterfall, fracturing his leg and wrist.
Parker splinted his shattered leg with hiking sticks before crawling for two days to find a clearing, where he hoped he would be spotted by emergency services.
"I had to carry my leg, and it was very heavy," he told reporters from a hospital bed on Wednesday. "I had a bandage on my elbow so I could use my elbow and scrambling, lifting, inch by inch."
The seasoned hiker said that he had to move slowly because of the immense pain. "I was constantly struggling... I got about a meter and a half each time each time before I had to stop and take a break," he said.
For two days, he barely slept but drank water from a creek and had some food supplies. The weather at Mount Nebo was largely clear during his ordeal, with daytime temperatures around 31 degrees Celsius, (87.8 Fahrenheit) falling to as low as 6 degrees (42.8F) overnight.
Parker said thoughts of his family kept him going -- no one knew where he was and he worried that in the dense bush he would never be found.
"I was getting very emotional thinking it's not a nice way to die laying here waiting, waiting. I just thought I'd hope to go to sleep and I wouldn't wake up again."
A rescue helicopter eventually saw him on Tuesday afternoon. Tied to a stretcher, he was winched on board and flown to a hospital for treatment, the Queensland Government Air Service posted on Facebook.
"(The) first thing I thought of (when rescued) is I'm not going to die out here, I'm going to live and it's all through what I've been trained to do, what I've learned and the experience people have given me that made a difference."
An experienced guide
Parker is an experienced guide with the Brisbane Bushwalkers Club, which promotes hiking in the Australian state of Queensland.
Stephen Simpson, who heads the club, told CNN that Parker had been a "trained leader" with the club for seven years. He said that Parker was "very capable and competent," but did not follow club guidelines when he ventured to the mountain by himself on Sunday.
"Normally, we recommend walking with a minimum of four people," Simpson said, as that would allow the team to have enough people to stay with the injured person while also seeking outside help.
Parker said he had only intended to go out for three hours to assess the walk -- he had no idea it would turn into two days.
Simpson said as soon as the club heard that one of its members was missing it arranged a search party in the mountain. "The fact that he has been found alive after 48 hours -- which is a long time -- is worth celebrating," he added.
Simpson advised future hikers that they should always inform someone where they plan to go, and carry navigation equipment to reduce the risk of getting lost.
Lying on a hospital bed, Parker agreed that hikers should avoid the mistake of going hiking alone.
"Preparation is the key, knowing and understanding what the terrain is," Parker said. "But there are sporting activities you should never do by yourself."
"Simply don't go alone."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/18/australia/australian-hiker-rescue-two-days-intl-hnk/index.html
2019-09-18 08:36:00Z
52780386517987
Selasa, 17 September 2019
Qantas CEO Was Australia's Highest Paid Executive - One Mile at a Time
Executive compensation is an especially contentious topic in the US, though it seems we’re not alone.
Qantas CEO Was Australia’s Highest Paid Executive
There’s now widespread coverage around compensation for executives in Australia during the 2018 fiscal year, with Australia’s highest paid executive being Qantas CEO Alan Joyce.
He took home nearly 24 million AUD, making him the highest paid ASX100 CEO. His 23,876,351 AUD in compensation just barely beat out Macquarie Group’s CEO earning 23,855,580 AUD.
To me that’s pretty remarkable. While airline CEOs are generally well paid, I can’t think of another situation where an airline executive was the top paid executive in the entire country.
As a point of comparison, the previous year Joyce earned “only” ~11.2 million AUD, making him the eighth best paid executive in the country.
So, how did he earn so much, and how did his pay jump that much? His base pay was just over 2 million AUD, and a large part of that compensation came in the form of the increased stock value.
It’s pointed out that Qantas’ value increased from 2.5 billion AUD to 10 billion AUD during that period, so the share price increased by about 350%.
While there will be strong opinions on both sides for executive compensation, we can all agree that’s a period during which Qantas did really well. To what extent the CEO should be rewarded for that (rather than employees) is something that’s up for debate.
Comparing That To Another CEO
In my opinion what’s much worse is when CEOs at airlines get compensated well for poor performance. I’m not thinking of any airline in particular, but theoretically:
- Imagine if you ran an airline where the stock price started the year at $52.33 and ended the year at $32.09
- Imagine earning pre-tax profits of $1.9 billion, or $2.8 billion excluding net special items, when you promised that your airline would earn a minimum of $3 billion in profits in a bad year
- Imagine still earning $12 million, and being the second highest paid airline executive in the US
Like I said, this is all theoretical. 😉
What do you guys think — is Alan Joyce’ nearly 24 million AUD in compensation well deserved, or excessive?
https://onemileatatime.com/qantas-ceo-highest-paid/
2019-09-17 12:42:46Z
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