What Australian newspapers say Wednesday, April 7, 2004

AAP General News (Australia)
04-07-2004
What Australian newspapers say Wednesday, April 7, 2004

SYDNEY, April 7 AAP - The Pacific Forum annual meeting has been a reality check, The
Australian says in an editorial today.

"By increasing centralised oversight and authorising the forum secretariat to convene
'crisis meetings' of Pacific leaders in response to security emergencies or disease outbreaks,
the meeting in Auckland takes us one step further from Pacific meltdown," it says.

"The measures adopted ... are less significant in themselves than for what they tell
us about the collective mind and will of the Pacific community."

Australia and New Zealand cannot simply keep throwing aid money at the region's problems.

"Higher standards of governance were needed so that the money was not simply siphoned
off by corrupt officials, and better policing and border security were needed to keep
out the money launderers, passport sharks, drug-runners and would-be terrorists."

The Australian Financial Review says state governments must tackle the unions.

""Budgetary reform needs structural reform. Until the Labor states are prepared to
take on their public sector unions and deal with that problem, they will face budgetary
pressures, even in times of plenty."

The NSW mini-budget was a political exercise - its centrepiece a regressive new stamp
duty on investment property sales - that papers over the failings of its Labor government
of Premier Bob Carr.

"The Carr government has squandered nine years of plenty, played Santa Claus to public
sector unions, neglected the state's essential infrastructure and put off vital reforms
while frittering away the windfalls of the property boom".

The Daily Telegraph says the decision to scrap much of the stamp duty for NSW first
home-buyers took far too long.

Finally, belatedly, it has abolished the tax on the Australian dream for almost every
first home-buyer in NSW.

" ... driven by the genuine despair of young couples trying to break into the Sydney
property market, the Carr Government has done what it should have done two years ago,
when its coffers began to burst with multi-million dollar stamp duty windfalls."

The Sydney Morning Herald says the budget shows at least the beginnings of a resoluteness
to tackle the roots of some of the Carr Government's underlying financial frailty.

"He (Treasurer Michael Egan) deserves credit for rationalising property taxes and boosting
spending on the frontline services of hospitals, schools, rail and child protection, even
though these increases come at the expense of what over constituents justifiably would
regard as much needed programs now deferred or wound back.

"In the debit column, the Government must show a lot more courage and stamina in eradicating
bureaucratic waste by showing that it governs for all and offers no special privilege
to its political allies, such as the trade unions."

The Herald Sun says the decision by Tattersalls to float on the Australian share market
raises important matters of public interest.

The move is seen as an attempt by the secret society that runs Tatts to secure its
multi-billion dollar pokies licence beyond the 2012 expiry date, the paper says.

There is no reason why Tatts should continue to enjoy its privileged right to take
the public's money if the Government can do a better deal with another bidder, it says.

The Adelaide Advertiser says a federal parliamentary committee report urging the postponement
of the pumping of 500 billion litres of water into the ailing River Murray deserves scepticism.

What reasonable evidence could have prompted the committee to effectively claim a giant
conspiracy theory to needlessly send billions of litres of water down the Murray, it asks.

The future of the ailing river is too important to be hijacked by crude politics.

The Courier-Mail says Brisbane's Lord Mayor-elect Campbell Newman needs a reality check
on the number of Liberals in the city's Labor dominated council.

As a candidate for Lord Mayor, Cr Newman nominated a reduction in the council's bureaucracy
as an important part of his proposed budget realignment to achieve cost savings.

But he has proposed increasing the civic cabinet by two positions to reward Liberal
councillors across factional divisions.

"A hefty bureaucratic increase was not what ratepayers had in mind when they catapulted
him into the job," the paper says.

The Age says the memory of a million lives lost in Rwanda demands more work to honour
the vow "never again".

United Nations Secretary-General Koffi Annan has acknowledged the international community
could have averted genocide in Rwanda but lacked the will to intervene, the paper says.

The question the 10th anniversary poses is would the response be different today.

Tackling such problems is the work of generations and this means the UN and its member
nations must continue improving their capacity to recognise and act on early warnings
of genocide.

AAP rad/clm/cjh

KEYWORD: EDITORIALS

2004 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.