Positive signs lost to latest boat

IT WAS a rare moment for Julia Gillard. At the end of her five-day visit to China, praise was being heaped upon her from all sides.

Her talks went so well that Chinese President Xi Jinping predicted a "new level" in economic and strategic ties.

An agreement was signed providing for annual meetings between Australian and Chinese leaders.

There will also be formal dialogues every year between economic and foreign ministers from the two countries.

It was dubbed a "historic pact" and a new "strategic partnership".

The Australian newspaper, often highly critical of the Prime Minister, called Gillard's achievement "a foreign policy coup" and "one of the most significant breakthroughs in the Australia-China relationship since Gough Whitlam recognised the communist state more than 40 years ago".

The Fairfax press described it as "a triumph" that will give Australia "greater access than the superpower has granted virtually any other western nation".

For a while, the PM and her advisers, far more used to brickbats than bouquets, were feeling pretty chuffed.

Then a rickety fishing boat carrying 66 Sri Lankans chugged into Geraldton harbour, and everything was back to normal.

China was largely forgotten as the asylum-seeker issue revved up again and talkback jocks were back in familiar territory.

"Border protection trumps foreign policy," said a Liberal strategist, happily.

And the Gillard government handled the situation with its usual lack of finesse.

In political terms, the boat's arrival was clearly a major embarrassment for the Gillard government.

Instead of heading for Christmas Island, or being intercepted in waters to our north, this one made its way undetected to the Australian mainland just 430km from Perth. When federal Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare, responsible for border security, blundered in with a statement that he would review "whether there need to be changes in the way we patrol seas in the northwest", an exasperated West Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, had to put him right.

Barnett pointed out that Geraldton is in the southern half of WA, not the northwest. It is 2000km from Christmas Island. He suggested the feds buy an atlas.

But it was Gillard's immigration minister, Brendan O'Connor, who had annoyed Barnett initially by accusing him of using language "bordering on hysteria" in his comments about the latest boat's arrival.

Barnett had said: "This is a serious, unprecedented and unacceptable breach of Australia's border security. That a boat, laden with people, can sail into a busy regional port in broad daylight is shocking."

I'd bet most Western Australians agreed with their premier, even taking the view that he was merely stating the bleeding obvious. (Except, perhaps, for the use of the word "unprecedented". Asylum seeker boats have reached the mainland before, though not for a very long time.)

Certainly O'Connor's bagging of Barnett did not go down well in the West, where it is common knowledge that state authorities, not federal agencies, had to deal with the situation after the boat was spotted 500m from shore.

WA police took charge. About 20 of them were assigned to it -- a lot of bodies to divert from other duties for 24 hours or more in a town like Geraldton. State health officials and child protection people were quickly involved. I understand that, until reinforcements could be flown or driven in from Perth, the only feds on the spot were a customs officer and a quarantine official. According to a well-placed source: "The WA police were getting instructions from Customs in Fremantle. It was clear the feds were absolutely floundering.

"The state people needed information, but at the federal level they were buck-passing all over the place."

The Gillard government thinks about asylum seekers primarily in the context of endangered Labor electorates in western Sydney where the policy failure resonates loudly.

But it should not forget that voters a lot further west, on the other side of the continent, will also have a say in the September 14 election and they don't need any more reasons to feel aggrieved about Canberra.

The other major political issue of the week -- the unveiling of Malcolm Turnbull's broadband policy -- was also bad news for Gillard, in that it seriously blunted one of the few advantages Labor had over the Coalition.

It would result in an inferior National Broadband Network, relying heavily on Telstra's old copper wire connections to homes rather than "fibre to the premises" as provided for in the government's plan.

Because the Turnbull NBN would be cheaper, but with download speeds a lot slower than those Labor is rolling out, there was much derision on social network sites and not just from tech-heads.

Russell Crowe, for example, tweeted: "Coalition NBN plan, half the cost to be as efficient? Obviously somebody needs to explain to them the point of the NBN."

But the Coalition used to be against an NBN. Turnbull has dragged Tony Abbott and co. to a point where they accept the need for such a network, even if only the economy-class version.

In the words of that Liberal strategist I quoted earlier: "Now Gillard can't go to the election saying, 'If you want

an NBN you have to vote Labor'. She was able to do that last time."

Gillard can hardly be blamed for basking in that brief period of foreign policy glory in Beijing. There is very little prospect of anything similar on the home front.

Laurie Oakes is political editor for the Nine Network. His column appears every Saturday in The Daily Telegraph.

View the original article here

Positive signs lost to latest boat

IT WAS a rare moment for Julia Gillard. At the end of her five-day visit to China, praise was being heaped upon her from all sides.

Her talks went so well that Chinese President Xi Jinping predicted a "new level" in economic and strategic ties.

An agreement was signed providing for annual meetings between Australian and Chinese leaders.

There will also be formal dialogues every year between economic and foreign ministers from the two countries.

It was dubbed a "historic pact" and a new "strategic partnership".

The Australian newspaper, often highly critical of the Prime Minister, called Gillard's achievement "a foreign policy coup" and "one of the most significant breakthroughs in the Australia-China relationship since Gough Whitlam recognised the communist state more than 40 years ago".

The Fairfax press described it as "a triumph" that will give Australia "greater access than the superpower has granted virtually any other western nation".

For a while, the PM and her advisers, far more used to brickbats than bouquets, were feeling pretty chuffed.

Then a rickety fishing boat carrying 66 Sri Lankans chugged into Geraldton harbour, and everything was back to normal.

China was largely forgotten as the asylum-seeker issue revved up again and talkback jocks were back in familiar territory.

"Border protection trumps foreign policy," said a Liberal strategist, happily.

And the Gillard government handled the situation with its usual lack of finesse.

In political terms, the boat's arrival was clearly a major embarrassment for the Gillard government.

Instead of heading for Christmas Island, or being intercepted in waters to our north, this one made its way undetected to the Australian mainland just 430km from Perth. When federal Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare, responsible for border security, blundered in with a statement that he would review "whether there need to be changes in the way we patrol seas in the northwest", an exasperated West Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, had to put him right.

Barnett pointed out that Geraldton is in the southern half of WA, not the northwest. It is 2000km from Christmas Island. He suggested the feds buy an atlas.

But it was Gillard's immigration minister, Brendan O'Connor, who had annoyed Barnett initially by accusing him of using language "bordering on hysteria" in his comments about the latest boat's arrival.

Barnett had said: "This is a serious, unprecedented and unacceptable breach of Australia's border security. That a boat, laden with people, can sail into a busy regional port in broad daylight is shocking."

I'd bet most Western Australians agreed with their premier, even taking the view that he was merely stating the bleeding obvious. (Except, perhaps, for the use of the word "unprecedented". Asylum seeker boats have reached the mainland before, though not for a very long time.)

Certainly O'Connor's bagging of Barnett did not go down well in the West, where it is common knowledge that state authorities, not federal agencies, had to deal with the situation after the boat was spotted 500m from shore.

WA police took charge. About 20 of them were assigned to it -- a lot of bodies to divert from other duties for 24 hours or more in a town like Geraldton. State health officials and child protection people were quickly involved. I understand that, until reinforcements could be flown or driven in from Perth, the only feds on the spot were a customs officer and a quarantine official. According to a well-placed source: "The WA police were getting instructions from Customs in Fremantle. It was clear the feds were absolutely floundering.

"The state people needed information, but at the federal level they were buck-passing all over the place."

The Gillard government thinks about asylum seekers primarily in the context of endangered Labor electorates in western Sydney where the policy failure resonates loudly.

But it should not forget that voters a lot further west, on the other side of the continent, will also have a say in the September 14 election and they don't need any more reasons to feel aggrieved about Canberra.

The other major political issue of the week -- the unveiling of Malcolm Turnbull's broadband policy -- was also bad news for Gillard, in that it seriously blunted one of the few advantages Labor had over the Coalition.

It would result in an inferior National Broadband Network, relying heavily on Telstra's old copper wire connections to homes rather than "fibre to the premises" as provided for in the government's plan.

Because the Turnbull NBN would be cheaper, but with download speeds a lot slower than those Labor is rolling out, there was much derision on social network sites and not just from tech-heads.

Russell Crowe, for example, tweeted: "Coalition NBN plan, half the cost to be as efficient? Obviously somebody needs to explain to them the point of the NBN."

But the Coalition used to be against an NBN. Turnbull has dragged Tony Abbott and co. to a point where they accept the need for such a network, even if only the economy-class version.

In the words of that Liberal strategist I quoted earlier: "Now Gillard can't go to the election saying, 'If you want

an NBN you have to vote Labor'. She was able to do that last time."

Gillard can hardly be blamed for basking in that brief period of foreign policy glory in Beijing. There is very little prospect of anything similar on the home front.

Laurie Oakes is political editor for the Nine Network. His column appears every Saturday in The Daily Telegraph.

View the original article here

Positive signs lost to latest boat

IT WAS a rare moment for Julia Gillard. At the end of her five-day visit to China, praise was being heaped upon her from all sides.

Her talks went so well that Chinese President Xi Jinping predicted a "new level" in economic and strategic ties.

An agreement was signed providing for annual meetings between Australian and Chinese leaders.

There will also be formal dialogues every year between economic and foreign ministers from the two countries.

It was dubbed a "historic pact" and a new "strategic partnership".

The Australian newspaper, often highly critical of the Prime Minister, called Gillard's achievement "a foreign policy coup" and "one of the most significant breakthroughs in the Australia-China relationship since Gough Whitlam recognised the communist state more than 40 years ago".

The Fairfax press described it as "a triumph" that will give Australia "greater access than the superpower has granted virtually any other western nation".

For a while, the PM and her advisers, far more used to brickbats than bouquets, were feeling pretty chuffed.

Then a rickety fishing boat carrying 66 Sri Lankans chugged into Geraldton harbour, and everything was back to normal.

China was largely forgotten as the asylum-seeker issue revved up again and talkback jocks were back in familiar territory.

"Border protection trumps foreign policy," said a Liberal strategist, happily.

And the Gillard government handled the situation with its usual lack of finesse.

In political terms, the boat's arrival was clearly a major embarrassment for the Gillard government.

Instead of heading for Christmas Island, or being intercepted in waters to our north, this one made its way undetected to the Australian mainland just 430km from Perth. When federal Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare, responsible for border security, blundered in with a statement that he would review "whether there need to be changes in the way we patrol seas in the northwest", an exasperated West Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, had to put him right.

Barnett pointed out that Geraldton is in the southern half of WA, not the northwest. It is 2000km from Christmas Island. He suggested the feds buy an atlas.

But it was Gillard's immigration minister, Brendan O'Connor, who had annoyed Barnett initially by accusing him of using language "bordering on hysteria" in his comments about the latest boat's arrival.

Barnett had said: "This is a serious, unprecedented and unacceptable breach of Australia's border security. That a boat, laden with people, can sail into a busy regional port in broad daylight is shocking."

I'd bet most Western Australians agreed with their premier, even taking the view that he was merely stating the bleeding obvious. (Except, perhaps, for the use of the word "unprecedented". Asylum seeker boats have reached the mainland before, though not for a very long time.)

Certainly O'Connor's bagging of Barnett did not go down well in the West, where it is common knowledge that state authorities, not federal agencies, had to deal with the situation after the boat was spotted 500m from shore.

WA police took charge. About 20 of them were assigned to it -- a lot of bodies to divert from other duties for 24 hours or more in a town like Geraldton. State health officials and child protection people were quickly involved. I understand that, until reinforcements could be flown or driven in from Perth, the only feds on the spot were a customs officer and a quarantine official. According to a well-placed source: "The WA police were getting instructions from Customs in Fremantle. It was clear the feds were absolutely floundering.

"The state people needed information, but at the federal level they were buck-passing all over the place."

The Gillard government thinks about asylum seekers primarily in the context of endangered Labor electorates in western Sydney where the policy failure resonates loudly.

But it should not forget that voters a lot further west, on the other side of the continent, will also have a say in the September 14 election and they don't need any more reasons to feel aggrieved about Canberra.

The other major political issue of the week -- the unveiling of Malcolm Turnbull's broadband policy -- was also bad news for Gillard, in that it seriously blunted one of the few advantages Labor had over the Coalition.

It would result in an inferior National Broadband Network, relying heavily on Telstra's old copper wire connections to homes rather than "fibre to the premises" as provided for in the government's plan.

Because the Turnbull NBN would be cheaper, but with download speeds a lot slower than those Labor is rolling out, there was much derision on social network sites and not just from tech-heads.

Russell Crowe, for example, tweeted: "Coalition NBN plan, half the cost to be as efficient? Obviously somebody needs to explain to them the point of the NBN."

But the Coalition used to be against an NBN. Turnbull has dragged Tony Abbott and co. to a point where they accept the need for such a network, even if only the economy-class version.

In the words of that Liberal strategist I quoted earlier: "Now Gillard can't go to the election saying, 'If you want

an NBN you have to vote Labor'. She was able to do that last time."

Gillard can hardly be blamed for basking in that brief period of foreign policy glory in Beijing. There is very little prospect of anything similar on the home front.

Laurie Oakes is political editor for the Nine Network. His column appears every Saturday in The Daily Telegraph.

View the original article here

Positive signs lost to latest boat

IT WAS a rare moment for Julia Gillard. At the end of her five-day visit to China, praise was being heaped upon her from all sides.

Her talks went so well that Chinese President Xi Jinping predicted a "new level" in economic and strategic ties.

An agreement was signed providing for annual meetings between Australian and Chinese leaders.

There will also be formal dialogues every year between economic and foreign ministers from the two countries.

It was dubbed a "historic pact" and a new "strategic partnership".

The Australian newspaper, often highly critical of the Prime Minister, called Gillard's achievement "a foreign policy coup" and "one of the most significant breakthroughs in the Australia-China relationship since Gough Whitlam recognised the communist state more than 40 years ago".

The Fairfax press described it as "a triumph" that will give Australia "greater access than the superpower has granted virtually any other western nation".

For a while, the PM and her advisers, far more used to brickbats than bouquets, were feeling pretty chuffed.

Then a rickety fishing boat carrying 66 Sri Lankans chugged into Geraldton harbour, and everything was back to normal.

China was largely forgotten as the asylum-seeker issue revved up again and talkback jocks were back in familiar territory.

"Border protection trumps foreign policy," said a Liberal strategist, happily.

And the Gillard government handled the situation with its usual lack of finesse.

In political terms, the boat's arrival was clearly a major embarrassment for the Gillard government.

Instead of heading for Christmas Island, or being intercepted in waters to our north, this one made its way undetected to the Australian mainland just 430km from Perth. When federal Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare, responsible for border security, blundered in with a statement that he would review "whether there need to be changes in the way we patrol seas in the northwest", an exasperated West Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, had to put him right.

Barnett pointed out that Geraldton is in the southern half of WA, not the northwest. It is 2000km from Christmas Island. He suggested the feds buy an atlas.

But it was Gillard's immigration minister, Brendan O'Connor, who had annoyed Barnett initially by accusing him of using language "bordering on hysteria" in his comments about the latest boat's arrival.

Barnett had said: "This is a serious, unprecedented and unacceptable breach of Australia's border security. That a boat, laden with people, can sail into a busy regional port in broad daylight is shocking."

I'd bet most Western Australians agreed with their premier, even taking the view that he was merely stating the bleeding obvious. (Except, perhaps, for the use of the word "unprecedented". Asylum seeker boats have reached the mainland before, though not for a very long time.)

Certainly O'Connor's bagging of Barnett did not go down well in the West, where it is common knowledge that state authorities, not federal agencies, had to deal with the situation after the boat was spotted 500m from shore.

WA police took charge. About 20 of them were assigned to it -- a lot of bodies to divert from other duties for 24 hours or more in a town like Geraldton. State health officials and child protection people were quickly involved. I understand that, until reinforcements could be flown or driven in from Perth, the only feds on the spot were a customs officer and a quarantine official. According to a well-placed source: "The WA police were getting instructions from Customs in Fremantle. It was clear the feds were absolutely floundering.

"The state people needed information, but at the federal level they were buck-passing all over the place."

The Gillard government thinks about asylum seekers primarily in the context of endangered Labor electorates in western Sydney where the policy failure resonates loudly.

But it should not forget that voters a lot further west, on the other side of the continent, will also have a say in the September 14 election and they don't need any more reasons to feel aggrieved about Canberra.

The other major political issue of the week -- the unveiling of Malcolm Turnbull's broadband policy -- was also bad news for Gillard, in that it seriously blunted one of the few advantages Labor had over the Coalition.

It would result in an inferior National Broadband Network, relying heavily on Telstra's old copper wire connections to homes rather than "fibre to the premises" as provided for in the government's plan.

Because the Turnbull NBN would be cheaper, but with download speeds a lot slower than those Labor is rolling out, there was much derision on social network sites and not just from tech-heads.

Russell Crowe, for example, tweeted: "Coalition NBN plan, half the cost to be as efficient? Obviously somebody needs to explain to them the point of the NBN."

But the Coalition used to be against an NBN. Turnbull has dragged Tony Abbott and co. to a point where they accept the need for such a network, even if only the economy-class version.

In the words of that Liberal strategist I quoted earlier: "Now Gillard can't go to the election saying, 'If you want

an NBN you have to vote Labor'. She was able to do that last time."

Gillard can hardly be blamed for basking in that brief period of foreign policy glory in Beijing. There is very little prospect of anything similar on the home front.

Laurie Oakes is political editor for the Nine Network. His column appears every Saturday in The Daily Telegraph.

View the original article here

N. Korea puts artillery forces at top combat posture in latest threat on S. Korea, US

• 

SEOUL, South Korea –  North Korea's military warned Tuesday that its artillery and rocket forces are at their highest-level combat posture in the latest in a string of bellicose threats aimed at South Korea and the United States.

Seoul's Defense Ministry said it hasn't seen any suspicious North Korean military activity and that officials were analyzing the North's warning. Analysts say a direct North Korean attack is extremely unlikely, especially during joint U.S.-South Korean military drills that end April 30, though there's some worry about a provocation after the training wraps up.

The rival Koreas have had several bloody naval skirmishes in disputed Yellow Sea waters since 1999. In November 2010, a North Korean artillery strike on a South Korean island killed two marines and two civilians. A suspected North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship earlier that same year, killing 46 South Korean sailors. North Korea denies the warship sinking.

North Korea, angry over routine U.S.-South Korean drills and recent U.N. sanctions punishing it for its Feb. 12 nuclear test, has vowed to launch a nuclear strike against the United States and repeated its nearly two-decade-old threat to reduce Seoul to a "sea of fire." Despite the rhetoric, outside weapons analysts have seen no proof that North Korea has mastered the technology needed to build a warhead small enough to mount on a missile.

On Tuesday, the North Korean army's Supreme Command said it will take "practical military action" to protect national sovereignty and its leadership in response to what it called U.S. and South Korean plots to attack.

The statement, carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, cited the participation of nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in South Korea-U.S. drills.

North Korea's field artillery forces — including strategic rocket and long-range artillery units that are "assigned to strike bases of the U.S. imperialist aggressor troops in the U.S. mainland and on Hawaii and Guam and other operational zones in the Pacific as well as all the enemy targets in South Korea and its vicinity" — will be placed on "the highest alert from this moment," the statement said.

The North's recent threats are seen partly as efforts to strengthen internal loyalty to young leader Kim Jong Un and to build up his military credentials.

Kim "needs to show he has the guts. The best way to do that is to use the military might that he commands," said Lee Yoon-gyu, a North Korea expert at Korea National Defense University in Seoul. "This paves the way for greater praise for him if North Korea makes a provocation later and claims victory."

Kim will eventually be compelled to do "something provocative to prove the threats weren't empty," Lee said.

Tuesday is the third anniversary of the warship sinking, and new South Korean President Park Geun-hye urged the North again to abandon its nuclear weapons program. "Focusing its national strength on the development of nuclear weapons while its people are suffering starvation ... will only bring international isolation to themselves," Park said in a televised speech at a national cemetery south of Seoul where the 46 sailors are buried.

View the original article here