What the nation s newspapers say, Wednesday April 7, 1999

AAP General News (Australia)
04-07-1999
What the nation s newspapers say, Wednesday April 7, 1999

SYDNEY, April 7 AAP - Melburnians will be deeply angered to learn that a US warship will
not dock here for fear its sailors may be targets of Serb extremists on our streets, the
Herald Sun says in its editorial today.

It must be said that the majority of Serbs here and their community leaders are content to
protest peacefully against the NATO bombing. That is their right.

"Melburnians will find it sobering that the Americans believe we cannot protect their
servicemen and women on the streets of Australia's second biggest city."

Never was the wisdom of the old saying that "second thoughts are usually wiser thoughts"
more apposite than with the Howard Government's overnight reversal of policy on the admission
of Kosovars, the Adelaide Advertiser said today.

Here is the biggest humanitarian crisis to confront Europe since the end of World War II.

In applauding his rethink we remind Mr Ruddock and the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, of what
happened when Europe was last a wasteland of the dispossessed.

"Australia quickly created the imaginative, enlightened postwar migration program which
forged today's nation. Times change. We do not suggest the doors be opened to all. But there
few thousand? We owe them a life," says The Advertiser.

Aid agencies have described as "magnificent" the response of ordinary Australians, who in
just a few days have given $1.5 million to help refugees in the Balkans, says the Age in an
editorial.

Unfortunately, no such adjective could be applied to the initial response of the Federal
Government, which, in the face of the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War II,
announced that it would not offer asylum to any of the ethnic Albanians who have been driven
out of Kosovo.

After an overwhelming public reaction the Government said yesterday that it would grant
temporary refuge to 4000 people, and would give an extra $4 million to aid agencies working
with displaced persons on Kosovo's borders.

The Government's rethink is welcome, even if it did take the weight of public opinion to
persuade the move towards a more honorable position.

"The heartfelt public response to the Kosovo crisis shows we are still a generous society.

The Government's policy settings must continue to reflect that reality," says The Age.

Fortunately, the prime minister had stepped in to change the announcement that Australia
would adopt a wait-and-see attitude to taking Kosovo refugees, The Canberra Times says in its
editorial today.

A rich country in the scale of the community of nations, Australia had a moral obligation

to look sympathetically on people driven from their homes.

But the editorial also noted the larger-than-usual immigration programs of the Hawke
government which with their larger-than-usual family-reunion components, has run in defiance
of public opinion.

A larger amount of goodwill had been consumed by that wave of immigration and it was
important to run modest immigration programs not too far apart from public opinion, the
Canberra daily says.

The Brisbane Courier-Mail editorial says Australia could do nothing less than yesterday's
agreement to give temporary shelter to 4,000 Kosovo refugees and increase humanitarian aid.

Given the contribution of Yugoslav people and Albanians during the past 50 years, Australia
could do nothing less.

"This is a time when all other considerations, especially political factors, must give way
to a common humanitarian concern," The Courier-Mail says.

The Sydney Morning Herald says the government's turnaround on taking Kosovo refugees means
that belatedly, but necessarily, it has decided not to tarnish Australia's long and proud
reputation of responding to humanitarian crises around the world.

"Clearly, policy is being made on the run. But the refugees for whom it is being made don't
have the luxury of time to ponder their options," The Herald says.

"It is true that Kosovo is on the other side of the world but its people are no less a part
of the human family and distance does not diminish our responsibilities towards them."

The Daily Telegraph editorial says today that if there is one consolation for NSW voters in
the new-look Carr ministry it is the fact that Pam Allan is no longer on the frontbench.

"As an environment minister she was a major disappointment. She lost the support of the
Cabinet which excluded her from decisions on State forests - one of the main areas of her
portfolio."

She had also embarrassed the government over her family's flights to Lord Howe island at
taxpayer expense, the editorial also said.

But the Telegraph said that some appointments in the new cabinet - including that of
fundraiser and ethnic-vote deliverer, Eddie Obeid, and Newcastle's Bryce Gaudry, were open to
question.

The Australian says that in seeking to to claim leadership of the Liberal Party come the
retirement of Prime Minister John Howard, Peter Reith has marked out labour reform as his
territorial area of influence.

And he has been secretly targeting the automotive industry for support in a campaign to
reduce union power, it says.

Vehicle companies clearly had an incentive to reduce labour costs responsible for 20 per
cent of the price of a car, but this was reduced when they could shelter behind a tariff
fence. The government decision on tariffs ran counter to Mr Reith's labour reform intentions.

"Clearly the Government's right hand needs to know more about what its left hand is up to."

The Australian also says that the pursuit of terrorists is worth the effort involved - even
the estimated $127 million cost of the trial of two men accused of the Pan Am Lockerbie
bombing 10 years ago.

"If this trial demonstrates that acts of terrorism will be punished, no matter how long it
takes, the effort will be worthwhile," The Australian says.

The longer waterfront reform is left unfinished, the longer we will bear the cost of dock
inefficiency, says The Australian Financial Review in its editorial today.

"A year after Patrick Stevedores and the Howard Government tried to remove the shame of our
wharves, there remains a great deal of unfinished business before Australia achieves a
genuinely competitive and efficient waterfront," the paper says.

The monopoly of the labour market and the virtual duopoly of the product market - the two
features contributing most to poor performance on the docks - remain strongly entrenched.

"... until a competitive market emerges for stevedoring services, particularly container
handling, there is a role for regulation to make up for the still inadequate reform of the
waterfront and the labour market in general," says The Financial Review.

AAP cjh

KEYWORD: EDITORIALS

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