Shoes spotted next to HMAS Sydney

Shoes spotted next to HMAS Sydney	10.04.2008

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04/10/2008		$1m retirement package for Bob Irwin
BOB Irwin has been given a $1 million retirement package after parting ways with the Queensland zoo he founded and which was made famous by his son Steve

04/10/2008		Minister caught speeding
EMBATTLED Queensland Health Minister Stephen Robertson has been pulled over for speeding, joining the ranks of government ministers with a blot on their driving records

04/10/2008		Pup stuck in pipe rescued
FIREFIGHTERS have been called in to rescue a six-week-old puppy named Diesel, who stuck his head in a disconnected toilet pipe in north Queensland

04/10/2008		Elderly man dies in car rollover
AN ELDERLY man has been killed after his car clipped another vehicle and rolled on Brisbane`s northside

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Latest Comments:

You all need to have a look at yourselves!!! I work within one of the departments responsible for administering this BONUS payment. This was a ONE OFF BONUS that Howard created and was only EVER suopposed to be a ONE OFF!! It was supposed to be ONCE, not once a year!! You should all think yourself lucky you got it at all. There was talk when Howard was still in to abolish it so don't blame Kevin Rudd!!
Posted by: Andrew of Brisbane 9:58am today

So Kevin attacks the un unionised people again. You get the government you deserve. When is he going to stop blaming the previous government and actually do something. Take a look at yourself Rudd
Posted by: Steve Barker of Bundy 9:56am today

For a lot of people $1,600 is a windfall Geoff of Adelaide.They are unable to earn a living outside their home, take holidays etc.Think of the billions the carers are saving the government by looking after their loved ones themselves. I think this must be some brain dead bureaucrats idea of fiscal management and maybe when Kevin Rudd finally returns to Australia and addresses domestic issues he may see the unfairness in this decision and do something.
Posted by: Barbara Collins 9:56am today

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Former government`s carer bonus to be axed
Macklin says bonus was one-off payment
Abbott says carers now human shields

LABOR will scrap annual bonuses of $1600 paid to carers as its budget razor gang carves deep into welfare programs to cut spending and curb inflation.

It will replace the payments with a higher utilities allowance but will leave the sick and disabled and their carers hundreds of dollars a year worse off.

Although Families Minister Jenny Macklin refused to confirm the plan last night, she stressed the payments, created by the Howard government and paid for the past four years, had never been written into budget forward estimates and were "one-off".

As senior sources confirmed the payments were to be scrapped, Wayne Swan yesterday told a business lunch the Howard government had engaged in the "old politics" of pork-barrelling, leaving the incoming Government facing the need to make dramatic budget cuts to reduce the inflationary pressure that was driving up interest rates.

It also came after terminally ill Queensland pensioner Ashley Norman, 73, contacted The Australian to attack the Rudd Government over its plans, saying Labor had supported the bonuses in Opposition.

"My wife gets $100 a fortnight to look after me," Mr Norman said from his home in Mackay. "She`s got to do everything I did, everything she did and care for me like a baby.

"What he`s (Kevin Rudd) doing is criminal. To take $1600 off us after giving it to us every year for four years, it`s criminal."

Carers become `human shields`

Opposition frontbencher Tony Abbott accused Labor of using carers as "human shields in the fight against inflation".

"You`ve got this big surplus; you`ve got to do something with it," he said. "Let`s not victimise carers."

Mr Abbott said the cuts brought to mind a 2006 essay by the Prime Minister in The Monthly magazine entitled Howard`s Brutopia: The Battle of Ideas in Australian Politics in which Mr Rudd said Australia had become a brutopia because of the Howard government`s "market fundamentalism".

"(The cuts) suggest that Rudd`s essay was a political marketing exercise, not a statement of real personal belief," Mr Abbott said.

"What happened to Rudd`s compassion? Rudd, it seems, is more capable of running a brutopia than Howard ever was."

Almost 400,000 Australians have received the Carer`s Bonus for the past four years.

The bonus paid $1000 to carer payment recipients and $600 to carer allowance recipients. Because many households received both payments, the bonus had become a regular $1600 windfall.

Ms Macklin yesterday refused to rule anything in or out in the budget, in line with the rote response being given by all ministers.

But she said the Rudd Government understood the difficulties faced by carers and was extending the Utilities Allowance to Carer Payment recipients for the first time with an increase to $500 a year, every year.

"The Carer Bonus payments were only one-off payments, which the previous government never guaranteed into the budget," she said.

Carers Australia chief executive Joan Hughes said she held grave fears for the bonus.

"We`ve already heard from various departments there`s not going to be any more growth in our programs," she said.

Traces of Howard dumped

The payment is one of at least 30 Howard government programs, worth $3.6 billion, to be dumped under Labor as it struggles to slice spending to curb inflation it blames on reckless spending and vote-buying by the previous government.

Mr Swan has, since Labor`s victory, attacked the failure of the previous government to guard against inflation, repeated the message yesterday in a speech to the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce.

The Treasurer said the previous government had spent public money to win elections rather than ensuring the long-term productivity of the economy.

"Our election struck a blow at old politics and left us confronted with its legacy - a legacy of the old way that elections had to be bought, spending could be reckless, there was no need to invest in the future because pork-barrelling could get you through," he said.

The Howard government has been criticised for the generosity of its middle-class welfare, but in his first major speech since the election defeat, Mr Howard last night defended his record.

"The taxation system should generously recognise the cost of raising children," he told an American Enterprise Institute dinner in Washington DC.

"This is not middle-class welfare. It is merely a taxation system with some semblance of social vision."

Mr Norman has spent weeks attempting to find out whether the Rudd Government would continue with the carer`s payment for his wife Patricia, 70.

Yesterday he said he was told by Mr Rudd`s Parliament House office the payment would be axed.

On Monday he was admitted to Mackay Base Hospital. It was there that the doctor told him he would not have long to live.

"They told me it`s only a matter of time," he said.

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