Bushfires are bound to recur and wreak even more devastation unless we undertake pre-emptive fuel-reduction burn-offs, writes Peter Westmore. The tragic loss of four lives and the destruction of 500 houses in the January 2003 bushfires in and around Canberra were the subject of a Coroner’s inquest concluded last December. Most media reports focused on…
Another interest rate rise would hit families, small business and farmers. At the time of going to press, the December quarter Consumer Price Index (CPI) figures are due to be released. The CPI figures are expected to have a decisive influence on whether the Reserve Bank lifts official interest rates at its meeting on February 6.…
The outcome of the trial of East Timor’s Interior Minister is far from a foregone conclusion, writes Peter Westmore. Rogerio Lobato, formerly Interior Minister of East Timor, has been tried in Dili on charges relating to the supply of guns and ammunition to a death squad in 2006. The death squad was established by East Timor’s…
Authorities will not take the necessary measures to prevent bush fires for fear of offending radical environmentalists. With dismaying predictability, bushfires in south-eastern Australia have devastated some of the country’s state forests and national parks, put at risk the lives of thousands of firefighters who have heroically sought to contain them, and caused substantial loss…