Kaz imports and outsources cheap labour.

One of the easiest cheap and nasty ways to make a substantial quick profit, in the IT industry is to outsource cheap labour. Cheap labour is usually in the form unskilled migrant labour. Amongst other companies KAZ exploits the unskilled labourer.

Kaz exploited a deliberate loophole in the system, to outsource cheap unskilled labour.

Migrants, usually from IT churning countries, migrate to New Zealand. Since the migration laws between Australia and New Zealand are more lax, they then make their way into Australia, via the New Zealand back door. They are then employed at KAZ at a cheap rate, then outsourced at a premium. KAZ usually employs these people in the ‘fish bowl’ or data centre, so they are out of sight of the general public.

The cost of cheap unskilled labour has many pitfalls, one being that the customer usually pays for the mistakes that are being made. This is very evident, and most customers are very aware of this fact.

KAZ has not had any new clients in two years, and their stock values have dropped from $1.40 to $0.12, reflecting the confidence of the industry in KAZ. KAZ also struggled to make 5% profit in such a lucrative market. KAZ is a running joke in the IT industry.

read more at http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/922176.html

What Rubbish: Councils Monitor Your Trash With RFID

Residents in NSW's Randwick Council received a lovely gift recently - fancy new bins for their rubbish and recycling. 78,000 of them, in fact.

No it wasn't a misguided attempt to swing votes by lavishing gifts on the electorate. It was a way of introducing RFID tags onto the bins so that the council and their waste management contractor could spy monitor the amount of rubbish and recycling being done throughout the area.

Randwick isn't the only council using the technology - Ryde council introduced RFID tags on their bins back in 2006.

The trucks that collect the rubbish weigh the bins as they empty them, and then use the bin's RFID chip to monitor the households waste and recycling quantities.

Despite fears that the councils will use this information to raise waste management fees and spy on residents, they claim that "bin weight data will help identify average bin weights by type and suburb. This information will also be used to develop waste education material." They also say that only the councils themselves and their waste management contractor have access to the data.

Potentially, this is a great use for RFID technology if it results in increased recycling and less household waste. But is it possible for a government agency not to use all that detailed information for evil? We'll just have to wait and see whether prices go up for waste management in these new tech-savvy councils.

smh Jano Gibson, 14 April 2008

Avril Lavigne stuns home fans with Canada bungle

Fans at Avril Lavigne's Canadian homecoming were left stunned after the singer displayed an embarrassing lack of geographical knowledge.

Lavigne, 23, shocked concertgoers at her Montreal show by incorrectly stating what province she was in.

"I love you Montreal, I'm so happy to be back home … in Ontario, Canada," Lavigne said to the crowd.

Montreal is actually a city in Quebec.

The 'Sk8er Boi' singer, who grew up in the Ontario province of Belleville, dropped out of school at 16 to record her first record.

Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron experienced similar embarrassment when she referred to the Turkish city of Istanbul as Budapest three times in an interview in January.

Lavigne was widely ridiculed last year when she told the world's poor to be thankful they "all have clean drinking water".

In a cringe-inducing list of Ten Commandments published in British music magazine Q, Lavigne said "It's important to be thankful, even if you're poor."

"I mean, we all have clean drinking water — well, okay, not people in the developing world," she said.

The millionaire pop star also detailed her humanitarian efforts in the wake of Hurrican Katrina.

"I am a very giving person. When the hurricane thing happened I went to my closet, filled six boxes of stuff and said to my assistant, 'Take it to Katrina'!" Lavigne said.

msn 4 April, 2008

Just another fine example of uneducated Entertainment Trash. It doesn't matter how much money you make, what's more important is that you are supported by people who make more money of you.

Man plunged to death in 'party violence'

Violence at a birthday party led a man to fall through a window and plunge four metres to his death, a Melbourne court has heard.

Albert Snowball, 22, of Perth, died after he fell from a window during a fight at a warehouse in Brunswick in Melbourne's north on November 27, 2005.

Boxer Khalid Baker, then 18, and his co-accused AB, who cannot be identified, are on trial in the Supreme Court after pleading not guilty to his murder.

In his opening address, crown prosecutor Peter Rose SC said Baker and AB had been involved in violent and serious unprovoked attacks at the party that night.

Mr Rose said Mr Snowball was on the stairway landing when he apparently said something to enrage Baker and his friend Ali Faulkner, causing them to rush upstairs towards him.

Baker then began violently attacking Mr Snowball, while Faulkner was restrained by an onlooker, he said.

AB joined in the attack, punching Mr Snowball repeatedly, he said.

Mr Rose said one or both of the accused pushed Mr Snowball, causing him to tumble out of the window and hit his head on the footpath four metres below.

He was rushed to the Royal Melbourne Hospital in a critical condition suffering severe brain damage from a fractured skull. He died two days later.

Mr Rose described the attack as "furious and sustained", saying the pair acted together to seriously injury the victim.

He said AB told police he was just a metre away when he pushed the victim. While he knew there was a window behind him, did not believe he would fall through.

AB's lawyer Bill Stuart said his client, who was drunk at the time, told police he was just breaking up a fight and did not mean to injure Mr Snowball.

"This guy came up, started yelling at my friend. My friend was trying to hit him. I broke it up," the accused told police.

"It was wrong that I pushed this guy but it was a fight. I was trying to break it up because it would've led to something else if I would've left my friends there."

Mr Stuart asked jurors to consider what caused Mr Snowball to fall out the window, whether the fall was accidental, whether AB intended to cause inflict serious injury or was just a "peaceman" caught up in a fight.

The trial before Justice Simon Whelan continues.

©AAP 9 Apr, 2008

Give us more TpT !! Lets import them from other countries, because they don't breed quick enough here.

Father, daughter incest pair 'lived under same roof'

An ex-wife of the South Australian man who had a baby with his daughter has rubbished claims the pair had almost no contact for 30 years.
Dorothy Deaves told ninemsn John and Jenny Deaves, who have now had two babies together, lived under the same roof when Jenny was a 15-year-old girl.
John and Jenny claimed in an interview broadcast on 60 Minutes that they began a sexual relationship after Jenny tracked down the father she had never known.

But Jenny attended Dorothy and her father John's wedding reception in 1984 and stayed with them for a week, Ms Deaves claims.

The 69-year-old said Jenny stayed with them four times during their marriage, which collapsed after the father-daughter duo took a trip together to Dubbo in 2000.

Dorothy said both father and daughter broke up with their marriage partners after the Dubbo visit.

"I'm devastated — he has hurt me terribly," she said.

"It was hard to face for a long time.

"It's one of those things everyone's so upset about."

John and Jenny Deaves were found guilty last month of a single charge of performing an act of incest with the other.

Court documents show that the first child the pair conceived in 2001 died soon after being born from a congenital disease. They now have an apparently healthy nine-month-old baby girl.

The sentencing remarks show the pair were charged with two counts of incest in 2007 after police were tipped off about their relationship following an investigation by the Department for Families and Communities South Australia.

The pair were initially bailed on the condition that Mr Deaves have no contact with Ms Deaves or their child — a condition the judge said drove Mr Deaves to attempt suicide twice.

Judge Millsteed described the incestuous relationship as "unacceptable" but not one where a father “violated his daughter and used his position of authority to take advantage of her powerlessness".

The judge said he took into account the consensual nature of the relationship and the fact it didn't involve exploitation when recording a conviction. The pair were placed on a three-year $500 good behaviour bond, with the condition they don't have a sexual relationship. Mr Deaves told 60 Minutes sex with his daughter was "fantastic" even though he initially thought it was wrong.

"Emotions take over, as people no doubt realise, there are times during your life where emotions do rule the heart, it rules the head," he said.

"I knew it was illegal, of course I knew it was illegal but you know, so what."

The two reunited 30 years after Mr Deaves — who was once jailed for armed robbery — separated from his daughter's mother. Ms Deaves said soon after meeting her father again, she began to see him as a man first and a father second. "I was looking at him, sort of going, oh, he's not too bad," she said.

"Like you might look at a man across the bar at a nightclub."

South Australian police refused to comment on reports the pair were being monitored.

ninemsn 7 Apr 2008

Nothing magical, nothing mysterious, just old simple TpT.

Australia's richest lose $5b in 3 months

Ten of Australia's richest businesspeople have lost $5 billion between them over the past three months due to the global financial upheaval.

Some of the executives have recorded losses on paper of up to half of their fortunes, New Limited newspapers report.

Australia's richest man, Andrew Forrest, has recorded the biggest losses, having watched his share in Fortescue Metals fall by $1.01 billion.

However, the miner's fortune is still valued at more than $7 billion.

The portfolio of the nation's second richest man, James Packer, performed slightly better, with his paper losses for the first quarter of 2008 estimated to be about $600 million.

This has largely been due to the decreasing share price of the Packer-based Challenger Financial Services.

Retail giant Gerry Harvey's shareholdings have dropped in value by $900 million while Frank Lowy's shareholdings have fallen by $439 million.

Seven Network boss Kerry Stokes' shares have lost $308 million in value.

Meanwhile Olympic legend Herb Elliot faces the loss of half his $40-million fortune after becoming the highest-profile casualty of the collapse of stockbroker Opes Prime.

The Weekend Australian reports Mr Elliot has lost control of half of his 5.5 million shares in Fortescue Metals Group worth about $20 million.

©AAP 5 April 2008

Police 'knew about' teen sex trade in NT

Trading young Aboriginal girls for sex has been happening for at least 15 years in a Northern Territory mining town, one of Australia's most powerful Aboriginal leaders says.

NT Chief Minister Paul Henderson on Friday conceded that police had known about the shocking allegations for "a significant period of time".

Despite this, and the intervention to combat child sexual abuse announced in June last year, there has been no arrests over claims of child prostitution at Nhulunbuy, 650km east of Darwin.

Non-Aboriginal people working there are believed to be exchanging cash, drugs, taxi rides and alcohol for sex with teenagers, some as young as 13.

Indigenous leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu said the sex trade had been operating for the past 15 years and at least 12 girls were currently engaged in the trade.

"Everybody here knows what has been going on and the time has come for us to put an end to this once and for all," he said.

"It has been let go for a while and it should be about time that somebody in authority comes and stamps it out."

Mr Henderson defended the NT police force.

"Police can't respond to a general allegation of just 'everybody knows'," he told reporters in Darwin.

"Police have, over a significant period of time, heard of these allegations but it's been very hard to provide specific evidence to get people before the courts."

Asked if he thought it was embarrassing that police had failed to make inroads, Mr Henderson replied: "I don't accept that".

"The onus is on people who have that information to report it to police," he said.

NT Acting Assistant Police Commissioner Colleen Gwynne said police had only recently become aware of the allegations aired nationally on Friday, but claims of a similar nature had been known for several months.

Following the latest media reports, federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin announced a child abuse taskforce was being sent to the remote Arnhem Land town.

"That will include additional police, additional family and children's services, child protection officers," she said.

Australia's most senior Aboriginal politician, NT Deputy Chief Minister Marion Scrymgour, denied the allegations reflected badly on the federal intervention.

"We are lifting the lid finally on child abuse in remote Aboriginal communities," she said.

Leon White, a former school principal at the remote Arnhem Land community of Yirrkala, said there had been "allegations (of child prostitution) for decades".

Many of the victims of the shocking racket are believed to come from Yirrkala and use sex to pay their way into town and back.

"It is good news that police are going to conduct an investigation into this," he said.

"There has been a conspiracy of silence ...

"I think the facts are that the silence has been a lot longer than just a year."

The Little Children Are Sacred report, which prompted the intervention, detailed allegations of a rampant sex trade at an unnamed town where mining workers gave Aboriginal girls - aged between 12 and 15 - alcohol, cash and other goods in exchange for sex.

It was published a year ago.

©AAP 4 April, 2008

Because this is happening in the black community, the white Anglo-Masonic Law System does not and never will care.
The apparent steps that are being made are too little and too slow.

Tips searched as government computer tapes dumped

Rubbish tips were scoured after tapes stored in a wheelie bill and containing emails from five government departments were accidentally dumped by Telstra, a Senate committee heard today.

The back-up computer tapes contained emails from various departments including Prime Minister and Cabinet, which reprimanded the telco over the blunder.

The mistake occurred in late March or early April this year from Telstra Enterprise Services' offices in Bruce, ACT, and rubbish tips were subsequently searched.

Telstra has since assured the agencies it would never happen again.

"We deeply regret this situation," Telstra's regulatory and corporate director, Bill Scales, told a Senate estimates hearing.

"There is no doubt that from Telstra's perspective that policies were not followed.

"As soon as we became aware of this particular issue, we notified the various agencies that were involved."

Mr Scales said there was no loss of information and the dumping of tapes posed only minimal security risks.

"However from our perspective this was unacceptable," he said.

"We apologised to the departments that were involved.

"Quite appropriately the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet wrote to us explaining how disappointed he was.

"We understand his concern, we recognise the points that he made and we gave him and the various agencies our assurance that it would never happen again."

Telstra believes the back-up tapes were taken from people's desks as usual, but were left for too long in a wheelie bin instead of being locked away, and were accidentally thrown out.

"It is presumed they were thrown out," Mr Scales said.

Asked if any searches or investigations were conducted at rubbish tips or where Telstra normally disposed of its rubbish, Mr Scales replied: "My understanding is yes there was."

"We did everything we could to try and find those tapes... it was an embarrassing issue for us," Mr Scales said.

Telstra regarded the letter from PM&C as a severe reprimand and again apologised today for the error.

"We've certainly been sanctioned directly by the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet," Mr Scales said.

"We take no pride out of this particular event, none at all.

"We've tried to face up immediately to our responsibilities.

"We regard a letter from the head of the department about this issue as a very severe sanction."

The other agencies affected were the Department of Communications, Information technology and the Arts, Department of Transport and Regional Services, Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

smh, 3 Nov, 2003

Coles-Myer sued over workplace injury.

A Coles Myer supermarket chain, for security reasons had a procedure for handling monies from the cashier. This involved placing the monies in a container, to be put into a vacuum tube, which then went to a central location, usually up stairs, for assessment then storage.

At a later stage it was recommended that it would be more beneficial, for the checkout ‘chick’ to deliver the monies personally, again usually requiring a journey up a flight of stairs.

During this recommendation, theres was neglect in realising that there might be an occupation, health and safety issue, regarding weight and or manner in which these sums of monies are carried.

During one such incident a checkout employee was injured during one such transfer of monies. As a result of this a court case became pending, and subsequently a sum of money was awarded to the individual.

Mildura crash driver jailed for 10 years

A Victorian driver has been jailed for 10 years over the road deaths of six teenage pedestrians near Mildura.

Thomas Towle, 35, formerly of Red Cliffs, veered into a group of teenagers, killing six and seriously injuring four of them, as they left a 16th birthday party at Cardross near Mildura on February 18, 2006.

Killed in the crash were Shane Hirst, 16, his 17-year-old sister Abby Hirst, Stevie-Lee Weight, 15, and Cassandra Manners, Cory Dowling and Josephine Calvi - all aged 16.

A Supreme Court jury earlier this month found Towle guilty of six counts of dangerous driving causing death, and four of dangerous driving causing serious injury.

Towle was found not guilty on six counts of the more serious charge of culpable driving.

On Monday, Supreme Court Justice Philip Cummins jailed Towle to a minimum term of seven years before he is eligible for parole.

During the trial the jury was told Towle was driving with his four-year-old son on his lap and speeding on a country road when he crashed into the group.

The prosecution argued his criminal negligence caused him to lose control of his car and crash into the teenagers.

The defence team said Towle had tried to avoid one group walking along the side of the road and ended up hitting another.

The prosecution said Towle's sentence must recognise the large number of victims.

However, the defence argued Towle should serve any penalties concurrently, meaning he should serve a maximum five-year jail term.

Towle's lawyer, Robert Richter, QC, said outside court that his client has instructed him to appeal against the sentence.

Towle's basic sentence was three and half years for each death, two years each for two of the injuries and one year each for the other two injuries.

While Justice Cummins said part of the sentence would be served concurrently, reducing it to 10 years, he said it would be inappropriate for the entire term to be concurrent.

A concurrent sentence, he said, would "reduce human victims to mere numbers".

"These victims were not and are not statistics.

"They were and are human beings, every one entitled to the full protection of the law."

Towle was stony-faced as he was led away following the sentencing.

Family members called out "I love you" as he was led away, while many friends of the teenage victims shed tears.

Family and friends of the six teenagers unable to come to Melbourne on Monday watched the sentencing on video screens in Mildura Court.

Justice Cummins said the sentence had to reflect the fact that Towle knew children were likely to be in the area of Myall St, where he was driving at high speed.

"A most serious element of your criminal driving was not physical, but psychological," he told the court.

"You knew that there were, or were likely to be, numerous children in the area.

"This is not a case of unexpected circumstances. This is not a case of a momentary lapse of attention.

"This is a case of multi-faceted lack of attention at high speed at night and with knowledge of risk. And with terrible consequences.

"The three central facts ... are that there was one limited course of driving, your knowledge of the presence or likelihood of numerous persons at the scene and that there were six deaths and four serious sets of injuries."

Speaking on behalf of the families of the victims, Mildura Senior College chaplain Colin Cole said they did not expect a tougher sentence.

"In a nutshell, it was the best we could expect," Mr Cole said outside court.

Carmel Calvi, mother of Josephine Calvi, said she was satisfied with the sentence.

"We're as happy as we can be," she said.

When asked what she would say to Towle, she replied: "I've got nothing to say to him."

Towle's father, Graham, said he could not comment on the sentence.

He said he was aware the sentence would be subject to an appeal.

"I've left it in God's hands," he told AAP.

©AAP 31 March, 2008