Australia Archive

Sydney, Nov 3 (DPA) Australia’s Reserve Bank increased interest rates by 25 basis points Tuesday, the second increase in as many months, in an attempt to contain inflation as the economy emerges out of the global financial crisis.

Interest rates are now at 3.5 percent, marginally above the 50-year lows ushered in by the bank to stimulate economic investment.

The Australian government has started reining in its unprecedented economic stimulus package after figures released last week showed Australia’s job market and economic growth prospects had survived the global financial crisis in better shape than predicted.

Economic growth is now at 1.5 percent. In May, the government’s budget predicted growth at this time would shrink by 0.5 percent.

Unemployment is at 6.75 percent, far batter than the 8.25 percent predicted six months ago. The level of personal debt failed to rise anywhere near the level expected.

The only downside was inflation rising to 2.25 percent, half a percent higher than expected.

The Reserve Bank is anxious to keep inflation under control as the economy recovers and the stock market rises, and took the decision to nudge interest rates higher as Christmas approaches.

It is the second rate rise in two months. Last month, Australia became the first developed nation to raise interest rates since the global financial crisis struck.

Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan said the economy was now forecast to hit full capacity in 2014, two years earlier than predicted last May.

Sydney, Nov 3 (DPA) A heated debate broke out in Australia Tuesday over the government’s refugee policy after a boat carrying 39 asylum seekers sank in the Indian Ocean with 12 feared drowned.

Australian rescue planes and vessels raced to the remote site in the Indian Ocean Monday, looking for survivors.

A Taiwanese fishing boat and a Bahamas-registered gas tanker rescued 27 of those on board, believed to be Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, but despite search planes flying 2,900 km from Australia to reach the search area 650 km from remote Cocos Island, 11 people remain missing. One body was found Tuesday.

A Japanese fishing vessel joined the search as the Taiwanese boat had to leave to refuel.

The maritime tragedy turned into a political wrangle in Canberra when senior conservative opposition frontbencher Tony Abbott blamed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s border protection policies for the loss of life.

Abbott said the refugees would not be trying to reach Australia in leaky boats if the government had a tougher policy which deterred them from trying to reach Australia.

The boat was sailing towards Australia well out to sea and keeping clear of Indonesian islands where they might be detained.

The Rudd government has signed a deal with Indonesia to take refugees picked up in their waters and keep them in camps until their refugee status is processed.

An Australian customs ship, Oceanic Viking, that rescued 78 Sri Lankan refugees three weeks ago, remains moored off Indonesia. It is caught in a two-week standoff with the asylum seekers on board who refuse to go ashore, and demand to be taken to Australia.

‘You look at this terrible tragedy that’s unfolding in the Indian Ocean at the moment and you’ve got to say this is a comprehensive failure and it’s all the prime minister’s fault,’ Abbott told a Sydney radio station.

‘What’s so moral about policies which encourage people to take to the sea in leaky boats and give us the kind of tragedy that seems to be unfolding now in the Indian Ocean?’ Abbott said.

Opinion polls Tuesday showed support for Rudd’s government fell seven points over the past two weeks as stories of boat refugees dominated the news, to 41 percent, putting it level with the opposition which wants a tougher policy of not allowing boat refugees to reach Australian soil.

Rudd said he would not change government policies. ‘There are many hard decisions before the government,’ Rudd said. ‘I understand that it won’t necessarily be popular. People from the right of politics won’t like it. People from the left of politics won’t like it but my job is to get on with the business of doing it.’

But former liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser said a hardline policy was inhumane.

‘Both parties, the government and opposition seem to be competing as to who can be toughest,’ Fraser told ABC Radio.

Sydney, Nov 2 – An increased waistline is not only bad for your health but can lead to decreased bedroom activity, according to researchers.

‘I’m exploring the effects of being overweight or obese on sexual relationships, both the frequency of, and intensity of sexual activity,’ Frances Quirk, a professor at James Cook University said.

There are several biological and physical factors that can lead to a decrease in sexual functionality.

‘Sexual dysfunction is very personal and even within a relationship lots of couples find it very difficult to talk about changes. One partner may say, ,I think something has changed and I don’t know what it is’ while the other is thinking ,they’ve gone off me” she said.

‘Excessive weight gain may lead one partner to find the other less physically attractive; a change in hormone production and lower energy levels and all these things can have a negative impact on your sex life.’

Quirk said people are likely to be attracted to certain body shapes in the opposite sex.

‘When men see women with a small waistline and broad hips they are just primed to respond to those shapes, while women are attracted to the triangular shape of a man,’ she said.

These body types are indicative of hormonal and physiological characteristics that are naturally attractive, the website Science Alert reported.

‘With a round body shape all of those cues are hidden so what you’re relying on in terms of your own sexual response to someone are subjective feelings,’ she said.

Sydney, Nov 2 – Teenage boys are less likely to gain university entrance than their female classmates and are more likely to leave school before 17, according to a new report.

The report, ‘Boys’ achievement: A Synthesis of the Data’, gives a number of examples of this discrepancy between the sexes including that as many as 72 percent of all suspensions and stand downs in 2006 were boys, and that 10 percent more girls will gain university entrance than boys.

The answer, the reports says, involves ensuring male students are ‘engaged in, and excited by, their learning, and able to achieve their full potential’.

A new initiative from Auckland University of Technology (AUT) aims to address these concerns and the discrepancy between males and females in education by reaching out to male students in year 10, before they lose interest.

The programme, Males in Education Now (MEN), sets out to equip students with skills, experiences and new role-models so that the students don’t give up on education before they gain valuable qualifications.

MEN coordinator Paul Tupou-Vea says while the problems are there, these students aren’t beyond help.

‘This isn’t out of our control. We believe if we can reach out to these students before they have given up altogether we can prove to them the value and importance of sticking with it,’ Tupou-Vea says.

Melbourne, Nov 2 – A group of Indian men, who were sharing a flat above an Internet cafe in this Australian city, were forced to flee after an explosion early Monday morning, a media report said.

Eight residents fled after the blast at the cafe in Melbourne’s inner north area early Monday morning, minutes after a suspicious fire at a nearby warehouse, The Age reported Monday.

None of the upstairs residents were injured. The damage to the cafe was estimated at about $200,000.

The Indian men, who were sharing the flat above the Internet Cafe in Sydney Road, Brunswick, were woken by a loud bang just before 1.30 a.m.

The group was prompted by smoke alarms to escape as the cafe’s front windows blew out and the brick two-storey building began to burn, Metropolitan Fire Brigade acting commander Steve Dorman said.

The fire gutted the cafe and and a ground-floor residence at the rear of the building where the cafe owners lived.

The upstairs flat escaped damage as about 25 firefighters spent an hour bringing the fire under control.

Minutes before, a fire had spread quickly through the Nutex Paper warehouse in Nicholson Street in East Brunswick as paper products fuelled the flames.

Firefighters managed to contain the damage to the rear of the brick single-storey building.

Both the fires are considered suspicious and are being investigated by police.

The cafe fire led to a large gas leak and barricades were erected to ensure the building did not collapse.

Melbourne, Nov 2 – A man of ‘Indian appearance’ assaulted several female clothing shop assistants in Australia’s Brisbane city, a police official said.

Police are investigating a number of complaints of indecent assaults on female shop assistants in Brisbane between 9.15 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. Saturday, The Age reported Monday.

The man entered five clothing stores in the city’s central business district where he asked the shop assistant to hold a piece of clothing up against them to gauge sizing, a police spokeswoman said.

‘The man then touched the women inappropriately,’ she was quoted as saying.

The man is described as around 20 to 30 years old and of ‘either Middle Eastern or Indian appearance’.

Sydney, Nov 2 (DPA) About 23 people were feared drowned Monday after a boat carrying 40 passengers sank in remote waters of the Indian Ocean.

A search plane was launched from western Australia to join the search for survivors after a liquid natural gas tanker rescued 17 people spotted struggling in the water in the early morning about 1,600 nautical miles (2,900 km) northwest of Perth.

Australia’s Defence Force chief Angus Houston said in Canberra an Australian navy ship was steaming towards the search site but it would take another 28 hours to get to the area, about 650 km northwest of Cocos Islands.

Officials feared for the lives of the missing people as waves in the area were high.

Air Marshall Houston said a Taiwanese fishing boat heard radio calls for help and got to the scene late Sunday night. The Bahamas-registered LNG tanker Pioneer arrived shortly afterwards to join the rescue.

‘When the first ship got there this vessel was still intact,’ Houston said.

‘Somehow or other during the process of the interaction between the ship and the trawler, and also the stricken vessel, there’s been a capsize and people have ended up in the water.’

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority received calls for help from the tanker late Sunday and at daylight dispatched spotter planes.

The sinking came as a string of rickety boats set out from Sri Lanka in recent weeks carrying Tamil refugees, trying to reach Australia.

Australian authorities have yet to determine whether the boat was carrying asylum seekers or their nationality.