What Australian newspapers say on Saturday, August 14, 2005

AAP General News (Australia)
08-13-2005
What Australian newspapers say on Saturday, August 14, 2005

SYDNEY, Aug 14 AAP - The first government majority in the Senate for more than 20 years
gives the Prime Minister an extraordinary opportunity to enact his vision for Australia,
The Weekend Australian says in its editorial today.

It would be a disaster for John Howard if the antics of any recalcitrant on his own
back bench stopped him using it.

The Howard government has not tackled the kind of root-and-branch tax reform that would
slash the top marginal rate of personal tax rather than just push up the level at which
it applies.

Nor has it sought to solve the social security mess, where parents with young children
moving from welfare to work can be penalised with lower benefits or even more tax.

The time for reform will never be riper. The next election is about two years away,
and there is no guarantee the government elected then will control both houses.

Melbourne's The Age says the work-family debate ought to alert us to broader changes
that are likely to play out long after this industrial relations battle is forgotten.

Low fertility rates and an ageing workforce have brought the nation to a turning point
at which overall demand for workers exceeds supply.

This is the other side of the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years. Some sectors already
have labour shortages, but Australia has yet to feel the full impact of the shortfall
between the steep rise in retirements and decline in new workers.

Truly progressive IR reform should respond to the emerging realities of 21st-century
Australia by preparing workplaces for the two-way flexibility that is needed to manage
this nation's demographic destiny."

The Sydney Morning Herald says the city's property addiction has turned toxic, with
falling house prices weighing down the rest of the state's economy.

But the real estate slowdown is a good thing if it's gradual enough not to cause serious
problems for the rest of the economy.

Sydney's housing market needs a period of calm so prices can settle to more reasonable
levels. When prices reach a low, the distorting effect of federal tax arrangements, including
relief, should be removed, to temper investors' exuberance and limit future booms.

Sydney's The Daily Telegraph says six decades after World War II, the impressions are
permanent on the hearts of those who lived through that war.

If we are wise, we will take the chance today to turn our backs on old enmities, thinking
not only of our own but of all.

For WWII cost the lives of 55 million men, women and children.

Averting such wars would be the best memorial.

The Weekend Australian Financial Review says a handsome electoral win for Japan's Junichiro
Koizumi would give him the mandate for deeper and broader change, if he wished to pursue
it.

Australia would urge him to forgo his visits to the Yasukuni shrine, arousing needless
friction in Korea as well as China that could be avoided by creating a national war memorial
distinct from traditionalist Shinto pieties.

Australia would also seek a Diet or parliament unambiguously committed to further economic
reform, so that it becomes a more inviting investment target, thus engendering global
growth.

It is encouraging that the Japanese markets have been climbing recently in anticipation
of a Koizumi victory. The history of the past decade warns against over-optimism, but
it might be time for Japan's sun to start rising again.

Melbourne's Herald Sun says the Prime Minister's explanation of the government's outrageous
fuel taxes will probably be regarded by drivers as an attempt to stall them with `voodoo
economics'.

As prices at the pump soared to what would, at the start of the year, have been unimaginable
highs, the cricket-loving PM used more spin than Shane Warne taking his 600th wicket.

No matter how he explains it, the GST is a tax on a tax and should be dropped.

Brisbane's The Courier-Mail says the true nature of Queensland's waiting list crisis
comes as a shock -- 108,500 people in July last year were waiting for an appointment to
determine their need for surgery.

The number -- more than six times what was previously believed -- speaks of a system
barely coping with demand.

The doctors' lobby, the health workers' unions and Queensland Health should focus on
tackling what will easily remain the most important public policy issue for several decades:
How to run a health system on which more and more Australians will become reliant as the
population ages and medical technology continues to advance.

While the commonwealth and the medical sector need to join Premier Peter Beattie in
taking a much less deceptive approach to health policy, Mr Beattie should provide the
impetus for such a change.

AAP kl/rs

KEYWORD: EDITORIALS

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