Perth to become a waterfront city, says Premier Colin Barnett

PERTH is to become a vibrant waterfront city, says Premier Colin Barnett, who today unveiled plans for a massive redevelopment featuring an inlet connecting the CBD and the river.

Mr Barnett plans to create a vibrant new area for the city and ‘finally’ connect the waterfront to the CBD.

The centrepiece will be a 2.8ha inlet that will bring the river back to near its original shore line. 

The inlet will be surrounded by landscaped terraces, boardwalks and promenades, and fringed by shops, cafes, restaurants, bars and other activities.

 “The Swan River – our greatest natural asset – is effectively cut ff from the city by Riverside Drive and by an expanse of lawn,” said Mr Barnett at today’s unveiling.

“Other major Australian cities have done far more with much less.  This will assist Perth to mature as a vibrant, sophisticated capital city, providing an attraction for locals and tourists.” By removing a section of Riverside Drive, the development encourages the use of public transport, taking advantage of the nearby Esplanade train station, Busport and commuter ferry services. Some changes to existing roads will be made to create more pedestrian-friendly routes.

Mr Barnett was joined by Planning Minister John Day,Tourism Minister Liz Constable and Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi at the unveiling.

The development will cover nearly 10ha, focused between Barrack and William streets.

“The development is designed for pedestrians and cyclists – not cars,” said Mr Barnett:.

“It will be an attractive destination for families, young people, city workers, national and international tourists and seniors to gather and enjoy.

“The State Government will take the lead on this development, along with Perth City Council, and we will be looking – indeed asking – the private sector to join with us.  I am also confident the Federal Government will be supportive.”

Mr Barnett said there was significant work to be done on road realignment, drainage and dredging but preliminary works would begin as soon as possible, with major construction starting in 2012.

The plans signal a new era of city building, as a logical and seamless extension of the city.  Together with The Link, major works to the Cultural Precinct and other CBD projects, the city’s axis will be redefined through the strengthening of the Barrack and William streets links.

In addition, Howard Street and Sherwood Court will provide direct links between St George’s Terrace and the waterfront, enhancing the capacity for these laneways to become vibrant places with shops, cafes and small bars.

The inlet, designed to reflect the historical characteristics of Perth Port, will have room for public boat mooring facilities.

At the heart of the new inlet will be an island, a landscaped parkland offering a unique experience for visitors. This family-focused destination will provide opportunities for relaxation in sheltered open spaces with 360 degree views of the surrounding city.  It may also include a safe, child-friendly beach and swimming areas.

Land at the foot of William Street has been preserved for a significant public building.  The Government’s preference is that this building be a national centre for indigenous art and culture, providing a major focus for the project.

Event spaces will be dotted throughout the waterfront, including a public square next to the Esplanade train station, the promenade, the island and a new road which can be closed to accommodate events.  Larger events will be held at the Supreme Court Gardens, which will be improved under the plan.

 There is also the potential to include a swimming pool, which could be an attractive recreational asset for city workers.

Full details of the Perth Waterfront concept plan can be found on the PlanningWA website at http://www.planning.wa.gov.au/waterfront 

Source  :  www.news.com.au

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Sunshine Coast family faces deportation

JANNIE and Amanda Klue, their eyes wide with desperation, are staring at two distinctly different futures.

One future embodies the Australian dream: running their own business, living in their own house, building community ties and watching their two children, Jan-Sari, 9, and Pieter-Nick, 6, flourish in an environment that is far removed from their homeland.

The Klues have been living that dream since migrating to the Sunshine Coast from South Africa 22 months ago.

The other future is a bleak one: a barb wire-fenced home with security cameras, guard dogs and streets deemed too unsafe for their children.

The Klues lived that nightmare in South Africa. And now they have been told they must return to it.

Having sold everything before moving to Australian on Christmas Day, 2007, the family must leave the country after their application for a state-sponsored business-owner visa has been rejected.

On Monday, the Klues learned they have until October 19 to get out of the country after they received two-week bridging visas.

In a bid to stave off deportation. Jan-Sari wrote a letter to Anna Bligh this week, in which she pleaded with the premier to help her family.

“We don’t want to leave Australia,” she wrote. 

“My mum and dad has (sic) come to Australia for my brother and my future.”

Mr Klue said on Friday that he had bought a business – Middy’s grocery store at Buderim – as required under the business-owner visa and had ticked every other box, bar one.

He said he couldn’t sufficiently prove to immigration officials that one of the two money-lending businesses he had owned in South Africa was actually his and, as a result, the family didn’t meet the visa’s minimum-assets requirement.

“I thought everything would work out,” Mr Klue said.

“I’m not a fugitive or a criminal … they will show discretion and let commonsense prevail.”

Fighting tears, Mrs Klue described the situation as “unreal”.

“It shouldn’t have come to this,” she said.

Mrs Klue said her children were well-established at Buderim Mountain Primary School and the family now considered themselves Aussies.

An immigration spokeswoman said the Klues simply didn’t meet the criteria for a state-sponsored business-owner visa, and then failed to lodge their appeal against the ruling on time.

She said applicants must show they owned and directly managed a business with a turnover of at least $300,000 for two of the past four fiscal years, or had a successful record as a senior manager.

“Entering Australia on a temporary visa does not mean you have an ongoing right to remain in Australia,” she said.

A spokesman for Ms Bligh said while immigration was a federal government matter, state officials were talking to immigration officials about the Klues’ case.

Source  :  http://www.finda.com.au/story/2009/10/10/sunshine-coast-family-faces-deportation/

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‘We’re selling education, not visas’

AUSTRALIA has delivered a blunt message to India that it is selling education, not visas, even as the Rudd government deploys its most senior ministers to patch up relations damaged over a series of Indian student assaults.

Trade Minister Simon Crean, whose visit to India this week overlaps that of Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, outlined to the Confederation of Indian Industry yesterday federal government measures to crack down on shonky education and training providers in Australia.

But he said the crackdown could be successful only if similar action were taken in India to close down shonky education and immigration agents running scams to secure permanent Australian residency through student visas.

“Let’s be clear, we are offering a quality education in a safe environment,” Mr Crean said yesterday. “The quality of our education is what we are promoting, not the visa attached to it.

“For this to succeed, we also need the co-operation of the Indian government. The fact that politicians in both countries have been forced to focus on the issue improves the odds of coming up with a better system.”

Ms Gillard is understood to have delivered a similar message during meetings with Indian Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal and, late on Tuesday night, with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, where greater engagement between the two countries on defence, energy and climate change were also discussed.

Mr Crean denied Australia’s international education industry needed to be remarketed in India, despite the fact it is widely seen — and in some areas promoted — as a pathway to permanent residency.

But he conceded better co-operation between Australian government agencies was also needed to help stem student visa abuses.

What the student issue has done is shed a light on the importance of interaction between Austrade, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and those that market our services in the Department of Education, Employment and Work Relations in the protection of our brand,” he said yesterday.

In just eight days, India will have hosted three of Australia’s most senior politicians, Mr Crean, Ms Gillard and Wayne Swan.

By the end of the year, a total of eight Australian ministers will have graced Indian soil.

The ministerial offensive is aimed at patching bilateral relations, damaged by a recent series of attacks on Indian students in Australia, as well as building trade relations with the emerging Asian superpower.

Mr Crean, who is in India for a two-day meeting of G20 trade ministers ahead of the next Doha round of WTO talks in Pittsburgh later this month, said Australia’s trade relationship with India had historically been “underdone”.

The ministerial visits — which will culminate in a tour by Kevin Rudd later this year — were designed to correct that.

“We understand the fundamental importance of India to our future, just as we do China and the rest of Asia. This is going to be the fastest-growing region in the world for the next couple of decades, it is the place to be,” he said. “Australia fortunately positioned itself for that a couple of decades ago but we have to renew the effort.

“Obviously, if there is a hiccup in the relationship, as there has been here over student safety, of course we have to address it. Visits here are an important part of that.”

Canberra hopes that a successful culmination of the Doha talks — aimed at reducing international trade barriers — will help accelerate free trade agreement negotiations between Australia and India, still at the feasibility stage.

It was also concentrating on building trade ties in infrastructure and energy security areas, with particular focus on investments in gas and coal.

Mr Crean denied that Australia’s refusal to sell uranium to India — a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — would hurt the progress of the talks, despite Mr Singh again raising the issue during his meeting with Ms Gillard.

Source  :  The Australian

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Premier says WA needs skilled Chinese workers

PREMIER Colin Barnett may ask the Federal Government to relax foreign worker allowances to prevent labour shortages at major WA projects.

WA faces severe shortages of skilled workers in 2011, when there is expected to be peak activity in WA’s resources sector, Mr Barnett told a media conference in Perth yesterday.

The premier’s comments come as a large Chinese steel maker, Ansteel, contemplates the viability of developing WA’s first steel mill.

Other massive projects planned for the state include Woodside Petroleum Ltd’s Pluto Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project, Chevron’s Gorgon LNG project, a new deep water port at Oakajee and CITIC Pacific’s Sino Iron project.

“I expect we will face serious skills shortages if these projects go together at the same time,” Mr Barnett said.

“Hopefully,  we can build these projects with Australian labour but I expect there will be skill shortages, in particular trades areas.

“We need to be prepared to bring in some of their (Chinese) workers.”

Source  :  www.news.com.au

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Universal dental care for Australians

Australians will have access to universal dental health care under reforms suggested by a federal government health commission.

The commonwealth will take over responsibility for all primary health care outside of hospitals and fund all outpatient services in hospitals.

The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission has stopped short of calling for a full federal takeover of hospitals, but left open the option of the commonwealth funding 100 per cent of hospital admissions further down the track.

The annual cost of the reforms is estimated to be between $2.8 and $5.7 billion.

In addition, capital investment over five years of up to $7.3 billion is needed.

But the report says the changes could save $4 billion a year by 2032-33.

Of the 123 recommendations, one that could be most welcomed is the suggestion that commonwealth fund a new Denticare Australia.

The commission’s final report, released publicly on Monday, says there are more than 650,000 people currently on public dental waiting lists and the dental health of children is worsening.

‘To address these problems we are recommending a new universal scheme for access to basic dental services – Denticare Australia,’ the report says.

It will cost an estimated $3.6 billion a year. Under the scheme every Australian will have access to basic dental services ‘regardless of people’s ability to pay’.

It will be funded through an increase in the Medicare levy of 0.75 per cent of an individual’s taxable income.

source  :  www.bigpondnews.com

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Australians caught in terror attacks

THE Federal Government is trying to confirm the identities of three Australians believed to have been killed in the Indonesian terrorist hotel blasts.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told a press conference tonight that he had grave concerns for one embassy official and two other Australians in Jakarta.

Perth businessman Nathan Verity is believed to be one of the Australians killed in the bombings, which Mr Rudd described as “appalling”.

Jim Truscott, a personal friend, said Mr Verity had run a human resources and recruitment business out of Jakarta, but lived in Perth with his wife Vanessa and five-year-old son.

“He only lived in Jakarta for work. He would spend a couple of weeks in Jakarta and couple of weeks in Perth,” Mr Truscott told Fairfax Radio.

More Information  :  www.news.com.au

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Foreign students could be forced to leave – Research your migration agent first

SCORES of foreign students, suspected of using bogus documents to support permanent residency applications, have been discovered by Federal Government migration fraud investigators.

More than 60 students, whose documents were initially accepted as genuine by the Government, will be forced to leave Australia if they are unable to prove their documents are authentic.

It is the latest indication that rorting in the lucrative $15.5 billion international education industry — the nation’s third-biggest export earner — is a serious problem, which could undermine the integrity of Australia’s education and immigration systems.

The students are suspected of using fake references from employers, which claim to show they have 900 hours’ work experience in a job related to their area of study.

Foreign students are required to provide evidence of 900 hours’ work experience to support their applications for permanent residency.

Sources in the international education industry have told The Age some students pay up to $20,000 to rogue college operators or middlemen, such as unscrupulous migration agents or education agents, to obtain fake paperwork.

Trades Recognition Australia (TRA) is the body nominated by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to assess skills, including those of foreign students. Under the Australian migration system, a successful skills assessment by TRA can be used by foreign students to support their permanent residency applications.

In the last financial year, TRA received 34,180 applications for skills assessment, about 10,000 of which were from foreign students. TRA initially accepted the documents of the students in question as genuine. But after the Federal Government received information suggesting their paperwork could be bogus, it sent letters to the students threatening to revoke their successful skills assessments if they did not prove their documents were authentic within 28 days.

More than 60 such letters have been sent to foreign students since the start of the year, with 48 sent last month alone.

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, which investigates matters relating to international education refuses to say how many students have already had successful skills assessments revoked.

“Disclosing departmental actions as part of quality control and fraud measure could adversely impact on the administration of the program,” the department said in a statement to The Age.

The students are believed to be either close to the expiry of their student visas or on bridging visas. Either way, they will be expected to leave the country within 28 days if they are unable to prove their documents are genuine.

The identification of students suspected of using bogus documents follows the discovery of an alleged racket uncovered by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship in March.

Three migration agents were allegedly providing fake documentation to support permanent residency applications for foreign students based on their claimed skills in a number of occupations, including cooking, hairdressing, horticulture work and car mechanics.

Investigations are continuing into possible offences relating to forgery and migration fraud, which carry penalties of up to 10 years’ imprisonment.

Source  :  www.theage.com.au

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Woodvale nets $2.2m funding

WOODVALE Senior High School will receive $2.2 million of Federal Government funds to build a new covered, four-court basketball facility.

Woodvale principal Paul Leech said the school’s four existing basketball courts would be resurfaced with a synthetic surface and covered with a roof.

“At the moment we only have one small gym, so many of our gym classes have to be held outside the school,” he said.

“At the moment we only have one the funding and thanked them for all their hard work.

WA Senator Louise Pratt said the facility would provide students and community sporting groups with much needed sporting infrastructure.

“This new sporting facility will provide a secure and comfortable sporting venue for players and spectators alike to benefit from,” she said.

Cowan MHR Luke Simpkins said he had been trying to secure the money for some time, and that the funding had taken 18 months too long.

Source : http://wanneroo.inmycommunity.com.au/news-and-views/local-news/Woodvale-nets-22m-funding/7527284/

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Australia stocks close at seven-month high

The Australian share market closed at its highest level in nearly seven months as better-than-expected local and overseas economic data heartened investors and boosted resources stocks.

At the 1615 AEST close, the benchmark SP/ASX200 index had lifted 60.9 points, or 1.56 per cent, to 3955.3, while the broader All Ordinaries index advanced 61.7 points, or 1.59 per cent, to 3949.6 points.

The last time the local market had closed at those levels was in mid-November 2008.

The local bourse rose as a narrowing current account deficit and improving trade position raised expectations that the Australian economy had managed to avoid a contraction in the March quarter.

Building approvals rose for the third consecutive month as low interest rates and grants from the federal government enticed home buyers.

Resources stocks have been lifted by data released by China on Monday showing that China’s manufacturing activity had expanded in May for the third consecutive month.

In the US overnight, better-than-expected readings on manufacturing, consumer spending and construction spending boosted Wall Street.

The Reserve Bank of Australia, which kept interest rates unchanged on Tuesday, also said there was evidence the global

economy was stabilising and the turnaround was clearest in China.                                                                                                                            

City Index markets strategist Alex Douglas said the positive data releases over the last few days were driving the market.

‘If we go back to yesterday, there was positive data from China.

‘That was backed up with some manufacturing data in the States overnight which was slightly firmer than anticipated,’ Mr Douglas said.

Locally, the building approvals figures were also positive.

‘So little bits of evidence like that of growth emerging – that’s helping to support the markets,’ Mr Douglas said.

In the resources sector, global miner BHP Billiton gained 96 cents to $36.70.

Rio Tinto jumped $2.67 to $69.00 after the company announced it had settled terms of iron ore contracts with many Asian customers.

Oil and gas producer Woodside Petroleum rose 88 cents to $44.90 as it said it planned to retain at least 50 per cent equity in the second and third stages of its Pluto liquefied natural gas (LNG) development at Karratha in Western Australia.

Santos firmed five cents to $14.90.

Among the major banks, Commonwealth Bank strengthened 17 cents to $36.33, Westpac surrendered 18 cents to $18.76, ANZ gave away 21 cents to $15.98, and National Australia Bank gained 28 cents to $22.80.

Investment bank Macquarie Group was up 91 cents at $36.30 as it said it was not aware of any reason or information not already announced that could have prompted a lift in its share price since late last week.

On Wall Street overnight, the Dow Jones Industrial Average index rose 221.11, or 2.6 per cent, to 8,721.44.

In the gold sector, Lihir slipped one cent to $3.30, Newmont lost 24 cents to $6.00, and Newcrest picked up 15 cents to $33.89.

The price of gold in Sydney at 1628 AEST was $US973.85 per fine ounce, down $US10.25 on Monday’s close of $US984.10.

Telco Telstra was off two cents at $3.07, and Optus-owner Singapore Telecommunications shed six cents to $2.50.

Retailer Woolworths ascended 60 cents to $26.00, and Wesfarmers, which owns Coles, was $1.09 heavier at $23.37.

In the media sector, News Corp was 25 cents richer at $14.68, and its non-voting stock improved 20 cents to $12.75.

Consolidated Media lifted three cents to $2.38, and Fairfax gained six cents to $1.26.

Among other stocks, automotive brakes supplier Pacifica Group was steady at 13.5 cents after it said the bankruptcy of car-making giant General Motors Corp in the United States was likely to hurt Pacifica’s earnings in 2009.

The top-traded stock by volume was property developer GPT group, with 74.74 million shares worth $36.4 million changing hands.

GPT was 1.5 cents lower at 48 cents.

Preliminary national turnover was 2.43 billion shares worth $5.85 billion, with 657 stocks up, 412 down and 324 unchanged.

Source www.bigpondnews.com

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$236 Million Northbridge Link Project

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was in Perth yesterday to formally announce the federal  government committing $236 million for the Northbridge Link project. 

The underground construction is estimated to cost about $470 million, with the sitework set to start later this year.

The  construction will be commencing in approximately a years time.

The transformation of the the city precinct will include commercial, residential and entertainment opportunities, which would transform the city.

Added will be a waterfront development which will be the greatest transformation of the city of Perth.

This will connect the city with Northbridge and will result in a better integration of rail and bus services.  

Mr Rudd said the project would create about 350 job opportunities for the construction and business sectors and attract an additional 600 passengers on the public transport network each day.

Tendering will be concluded  later this year and construction due to commence next year.

This is an important contribution to employment as well.

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