For small group we get the Headlines, just not us talking

Forrest corrals tycoons behind training project
March 17, 2010
There are few individuals in Australia who could harness the business elite, collect them in the same room and have them give of their time and money for a common cause.
Australia's richest man, Andrew Forrest, has done just that.
On Friday night at the Overseas Passenger Terminal in Sydney a clutch of billionaires, a swathe of chief executives, plus a few Hollywood luminaries such as Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett, will get together to project their hands via a colourful laser display on the Opera House to launch GenerationOne - an ambitious project to secure appropriate training and employment for indigenous Australians.
It sounds a little like a billionaires' pact - one in which the likes of Forrest, Kerry Stokes, James Packer, the Lowy clan and Lindsay Fox make the running on a cause they have taken into their own hands.
Kevin Rudd is the first of our modern-day leaders to have given a proper voice to the social dislocation felt by indigenous Australians. But saying sorry is not enough.

ED'S Note

We as Billionaires would like to thank the poor blackfella for which land we stand on.
We would not be here today to help them if we didnt steal thier land, resourses and dignity.

"But we are here for you"


The great Protector Macklin's welfare fight is only the beginning

WELFARE in Australia will enter a new phase of ideological struggle with the Rudd government, spearheaded by Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, embracing and extending the income management principle.
In a justified move Tony Abbott this week reversed the Coalition's rejection of Macklin's bill. Abbott decided to back this reform. It means the Labor Party's historic break with 100 years of welfare policy tradition will now pass into law. It also means a vital theme of the Howard government's Northern Territory intervention will endure and be entrenched, despite Macklin's significant modifications to that intervention.
When Macklin's blueprint was authorised by cabinet's strategic budget and priorities committee, it won firm backing from Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. This is an authentic new project for the Labor Party, though much of the party's constituency is horrified. By contrast, many Coalition MPs are sceptical about Labor's delivery on its reformist claims.

Useful consensus on tough love
The Australian March 17, 2010 12:00AM
• Extending income management is good policy
TONY Abbott has made the correct call in supporting the Rudd government's move to extend income management to eligible welfare recipients across the Northern Territory, regardless of race. Not that any liberal or conservative leader worth his salt had an alternative.
The worthwhile legislation reflects the common sense and pragmatism of Families and Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin. A member of the ALP's Victorian Left, Ms Macklin, like many of her colleagues, has come a long way to embrace welfare reform and some of the tenets of the NT intervention, initiated under Mal Brough at the end of the Howard era. Such bipartisan support for meaningful reform, all too rare in Australian political history, is a fortunate development that opens the way for further initiatives.

ED'S NOTE

Define Embrace welfare: handcuffs, deaths, incarceration, roll on 2067 Maybe Wilson will be dead.