quote:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has today detailed the government's plan to reduce the risk of home-grown terrorism.

Speaking in Melbourne today, Mr Abbott announced $64 million would go security agencies and community groups.

Mr Abbott said the new measures would address the issue of home-grown terrorism at a community level.

"Obviously we are boosting our security services generally," he said. "We have got new laws to ensure that people who are coming back from terrorist activity in the Middle East can be arrested and detained."

"It's also important, though, that we engage with the community so that everyone understands that the enemy here is terrorism."

Last month, the government announced a range of new measures to counter what it described as a heightened concern about terrorism.

Mr Abbott said the measures aimed at “targeting extremism,” rather than any particular religion or community group.

The government believes that there are at least 60 Australians fighting with the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria.

"We need to understand that this is a very, very significant issue and it is more of an issue today than it was a couple of years ago because of the unfolding disaster in northern Iraq and eastern Syria," he said.

"(IS) is a movement, as we have seen on our TV screens and on the front pages of our newspapers, of utter ferocity, medieval barbarism, that is how serious and dangerous this movement is."

"Because of the Australians who are involved with this movement, what might otherwise be a problem in a far-away country is a problem for us."

The package also includes $6.2 million to establish a new Australian Federal Police Community Diversion and Monitoring Team to target returning foreign fighters and their supporters.

Some $32.7 million will go toward a multi-agency national disruption group to investigate and disrupt foreign fighters and their supporters.

Mr Abbott said the best defence against radicalisation was "well informed and well equipped" families and communities.

"We want to stop radicalised youngsters from leaving this country to join terrorist groups overseas, we want to work with our allies and partners to try to monitor them while they are overseas," Mr Abbott said.

"We want to be able to charge them and jail them where they have been working with terrorist groups overseas."

Earlier this month, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said preventing Australian citizens from becoming involved in terrorist activities was one of Australia's highest national security priorities.

"We are deeply concerned this security challenge will mean that Australian citizens fighting in these conflicts overseas will return to this country as hardened home-grown terrorists who may use the experiences and skills they have gained to carry out attacks in this country," she said.

quote:

Mr Abbott said the best defence against radicalisation was "well informed and well equipped" families and communities.

Lid posted:

The government believes that there are at least 60 Australians fighting with the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria.

xutech posted:

Is it still Tinkler tuesday? This should be exciting.

Kartharine Murphy posted:

While we cool our heels and keep our heads for the [Paul Kelly] book launch, I’ve managed a couple of trips down to the comments thread.

Gerpac has made this contribution – which contains a little bit of snark, which I’ll look through, and a serious point which I’m happy to address.

quote:

An observation: is News Ltd , the Tele and the Australian in particular the governments media managers. It appears that the govt. drops all its press announcements through the one media outlet only. Have they now taken over as the Govt. press bureau which allows the government to save money and have their own press office downsized or is this a way for the Govt. to help prop up News Corp.s bottom line , Now that we know how bad their financial position is. By giving them and them alone selective leaks the govt seems to be hoping that they improve their circulation. What do others like the Guardian do ? How do you get news when its so tightly controlled and selectively leaked?

It is quite an interesting phenomenon, this. The government is largely briefing just the News Corp papers for various announcements. This is a fact, not a contention.

In addressing this point, we need to acknowledge first up that not all stories that look like “drops” or briefings are in fact “drops” or briefings. Some of the stories are genuine scoops from the hardworking reporters in the tabloids and at The Australian. They aren’t drops, they are scoops in the truest sense of the word. But some of them are drops.

So why just News? Well, all governments follow different media strategies. The previous Labor government was not inclined to favour individual outlets if it was in briefing mode – briefings (of the sanctioned kind) generally went everywhere, or they were shared around various outlets.

The Abbott government, or more precisely, the prime minister’s office, has thus far favoured News and tried to shut out other outlets it considers unhelpful. Again, that’s a fact, not a contention.

It does this basically for very straight forward reasons: to try and land a clean message into the morning news cycle. It’s very hard to land a clean message into the morning news cycle.

The internal view is a front page story in the tabloids or The Australian moves promptly to the radio airwaves and the breakfast TV programs. This view is demonstrably correct. A lot of material in the first instance runs unfiltered across various news outlets and platforms.

This allows the government to frame a message. For five minutes or so. The shelf life these days is literally, minutes. A lot of the problems faced by the government relate not only to obvious missteps and gaffes but to the limited shelf life of a message.

So with that context and explanation in mind – the question from Gerpac is what do other news outlets do?

Well, we do what we always do. We chase our own information. We speak to the people we have always spoken to and will go on speaking to whether that conforms with the government’s media strategy or not. We have normal transactions with political offices.

It’s somewhat perplexing, the playground politics of ‘access’ or ‘no access’, or ‘limited access’ – people inside the government find these tactics from the prime minister’s office somewhat puzzling, and not necessarily in the government’s best interests – but in truth, it’s not particularly troublesome from our perspective.

Hope that explanation helps.

Halo14 posted:

Think I read that he was moved to Thursday.

ICAC posted:

Tuesday 26 August 2014
David Sharpe
Darren Williams
Tony Kelly
Ross Cadell

Wednesday 27 August 2014
Joe Tripodi
Eric Roozendaal
Ian McNamara (not before 1.45pm)

Thursday 28 August 2014
Kristina Keneally
Nathan Tinkler
Craig Baumann

Friday 29 August 2014
Garry Edwards
Mark Regent
David Simmons
Bart Bassett

quote:

Sick and injured asylum seekers held in detention on Christmas Island are suing the federal government and its immigration minister, Scott Morrison, who they say failed to provide the medical care they were entitled to.

Law firm Maurice Blackburn filed the class action proceedings in the supreme court of Victoria on Tuesday on behalf of all injured asylum seekers held in detention on Christmas Island over the past three years.

quote:

A hypersonic weapon being developed by the US military was destroyed four seconds after its test launch after a problem was detected with the system.

The weapon is part of a program to create a missile that will destroy targets anywhere on Earth within an hour of getting data and permission to launch.

The mission was aborted to ensure public safety and no-one was injured in the incident, which occurred at the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska, Pentagon spokeswoman Maureen Schumann said.

"We had to terminate," Ms Schumann said.

"The weapon exploded during take-off and fell back down in the range complex."

The incident caused an undetermined amount of damage to the launch facility, Ms Schumann said.

Riki Ellison, founder of the non-profit Missile Defence Advocacy Alliance, said he did not think the failure would lead to the program's termination.

"This is such an important mission and there is promise in this technology," he said.

Mr Ellison said officials aborted the mission after detecting a fault in the computers.

quote:

Speaking in Melbourne today, Mr Abbott announced $64 million would go security agencies and community groups.
...
The package also includes $6.2 million to establish a new Australian Federal Police Community Diversion and Monitoring Team to target returning foreign fighters and their supporters.

Some $32.7 million will go toward a multi-agency national disruption group to investigate and disrupt foreign fighters and their supporters.

Mad Katter posted:

The weapon is part of a program to create a missile that will destroy targets anywhere on Earth within an hour of getting data and permission to launch.
...
The incident caused an undetermined amount of damage to the launch facility, Ms Schumann said.

Endman posted:

A missile that can strike any target anywhere on the planet within an hour doesn't seem particularly defensive in my book.

quote:

Higher education changes must pass before December, Coalition warns

Crossbench told that students would be in the dark about fees and universities wouldn’t be given enough time to adjust unless bills are passed soon

The Abbott government has warned the crossbench of the need to pass the contentious higher education changes by the start of December to prevent leaving prospective students in the dark about the likely fees they face.

Setting out its case for relatively quick consideration of the education bill, the government also cited the need to give universities time to make “significant modifications to IT and administrative systems” ahead of the deregulation of fees in 2016.

The government outlined the arguments in a document issued to MPs and senators on the eve of the resumption of parliament for the spring sittings.

The education bill – which includes an average 20% cut to commonwealth subsidies for university degrees, the removal of caps on domestic tuition fees, and higher interest rates on student loans – is due to be presented to parliament on Thursday.

The government wants the bill passed during the spring sittings, which are scheduled to end in the first week of December.

The education minister, Christopher Pyne, said last week the government’s negotiations with crossbench senators could be a “slow process” but he was “a patient man” and was prepared to take his time because the reforms were important.

In the “reasons for urgency” material, seen by Guardian Australia, the government said its bill would “substantially change the way that the sector operates” and passage of the bill in the spring sittings of this year was “vital given the complexity and impact of these changes”.

The Department of Education and universities needed “time to undertake the necessary communications activities, including ensuring that universities are able to provide timely information to students on tuition fees under the new arrangements”, it said.

This line of argument echoes concerns raised by the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, that prospective students would be attending university open days and “not able to get a straight answer to how much the courses are going to cost”.

Fees are due to be deregulated on 1 January 2016 for anyone who enrolled in a course after the 13 May 2014 budget announcement. This means people signing up now face uncertainty about potential changes to fees part-way through their courses. Information supplied by the department indicates that people who were already enrolled when the budget was handed down would be shielded from the fee increases.

The government’s explanation to MPs and senators suggested higher education providers would have to implement IT changes and new administrative processes, develop familiarity with government reporting requirements, and train staff.

“The normal practice is to give providers 12 months to implement changes to their system and administration processes,” the document said.

“Given the extent and complexity of the changes, it will be important to provide as much time as possible. Passage of the bill by the end of the 2014 spring sittings would allow at least 12 months for implementation of the budget measures and therefore would minimise any disruptions to providers and students.”

The legislation would also include a measure “allowing certain New Zealand citizens who are Special Category Visa holders to access HELP loans” from January 2015.

The Greens’ spokeswoman for higher education, Lee Rhiannon, said Pyne was “scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for arguments” to support his higher education cuts.

“After failing to convince the community to support his regressive proposals, Mr Pyne tried to blackmail the Senate by threatening research funding cuts,” Rhiannon said.

“If ‘IT upgrades’ is the best the argument the government can come up with it should drop its regressive proposals and present a new plan to build up public higher education in Australia, not tear it down.”

Labor and the Greens oppose the higher education reforms, arguing they would place too great a burden on students. This means the government needs to secure support from six of eight crossbench senators to pass the legislation.

The Palmer United party has stated its opposition to fee deregulation and, with its three Senate votes, has the power the block the changes. Pyne has repeatedly expressed optimism that a compromise could be reached with the crossbench.

On Sunday Pyne refused to rule out research funding cuts if the Senate did not legislate the reforms. He said the “worst-case scenario” was “cuts without reform” and the government must work with the crossbench to secure a better future for universities.

Mad Katter posted:

Hypersonic weapon destroyed seconds after test launch in Alaska, Pentagon says

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-26/hypersonic-weapon-destroyed-seconds-after-test-launch-in-us/5696752

Hahaha, how is that even a thing. World is fukt.

Endman posted:

A missile that can strike any target anywhere on the planet within an hour doesn't seem particularly defensive in my book.

hooman posted:

That's exactly what 'the best defence' is.

EDIT: poo poo, beaten like the French navy.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Seriously though, what is the actual weapon? A non-nuclear ballistic missile?

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Seriously though, what is the actual weapon? A non-nuclear ballistic missile?

Captain Pissweak posted:

I choose to believe it really is a Metal Gear.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Ballistic missiles can hit anywhere on the planet in about 30 minutes, so I figured it might that.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Non-nuclear ballistic missiles are a fairly frightening idea.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Metal Gear?

Doctor Spaceman posted:

It’s somewhat perplexing, the playground politics of ‘access’ or ‘no access’, or ‘limited access’ – people inside the government find these tactics from the prime minister’s office somewhat puzzling, and not necessarily in the government’s best interests – but in truth, it’s not particularly troublesome from our perspective.

Endman posted:

The best defence isn't inciting people into armed conflict to begin with. If you build your wunderwaffe, someone will build something designed to counter it. The potential conflict continues to escalate and the military-industrial complex continues to eat your economy, building an arms bubble that will eventually burst and plunge you into depression.

hooman posted:

You have excellent defence against irony.

Endman posted:

I call it Sarc Wars.

hooman posted:

Endman posted:

me @ ur poasting

Night Shade posted:

^^^ That sounds eerily familiar, like it's happened before somewhere or something.


Not with an hour to anywhere on the planet, ballistic's too slow for that. It'd have to basically be a high altitude cruise missile.

Endman posted:

METAL GEAR?