Royalties must cut poverty - University of New South...
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6 THE NATION THE AUSTRALIAN, MONDAY, JULY 14, 2014 theaustralian.com.au AUSE01Z50MA - V1 Political chaos is manna from heaven in a cartoonist’s world gone mad THERE is a curse that strikes Bill Leak frequently in the morning. As the cartoonist rises from his slum- ber, before dawn, an idea strikes him like a thunderbolt — brilliant, inspired and devastating witty. But it’s an idea that has arrived too late, a good 10 hours after he’s turned in his daily cartoon. Leak calls it the cartoonist’s version of d’esprit d’escalier — the French term for “staircase wit”, that infuriating moment when the perfect retort comes to you when you’re halfway up the stairs. “I get up every day at five and I like to be sitting in front of the computer and reading the paper and related material by half past five in the morning and seeing how much I can learn before I even think about doing a cartoon. “Ideas take a while. You find out the facts first and the idea forms itself gradually. “And, if you’re a cartoonist like me, you’ll find that they form themselves rather too gradually and the really good ideas occur to you the next morning instead of the day before.” Take one of his favourites of last year, his portrait of Kevin Rudd reclining by a lake in front of his own reflection, which earned him a Walkley nomination. “I used to be a bit of a narcissist but now I’m perfect,” says the caption, above the heading: “Change we can believe in”. Looking back now, Leak wishes he’d used a different heading: “On reflection”. When Leak’s Rudd cartoon was featured on ABC’s Insiders, presenter Jon Kudelka, also a cartoonist at The Australian, called that week in July — when Rudd rolled Julia Gillard — “possibly the greatest week for political cartooning in the history of Aus- tralia”. But Leak reckons things are only getting better for cartoon- ists: a grim observation for the rest of us. “The really lean and difficult times for cartoonists are times when things are going rather well for the country, because you can’t make happy stories funny easily.” “Disasters are much easier to make fun of. If the political situ- ation is in utter chaos and every day brings new dramas, these are great times for a cartoonist. And I think things are chaotic beyond belief at the moment. We’ve got no shortage of nutters around in fed- eral politics now, and nutters are always good for cartoonists. “Suddenly this elephantine sort of character appears on the scene in the form of Clive Palmer and you just think, ‘How has it come to this, how could this possibly hap- pen? And you wonder what could possibly be next.” Leak recalls the advice of one of his early mentors, the prolific car- toonist Patrick Cook, whose for- mula when it came to cartooning was simple: to take a situation, a character or a policy announce- ment and exaggerate it to the point of absurdity. But Leak believes that such a rule of thumb is no longer applicable to the current crop of federal politicians. “So many of them are already caricatures before I even pick up my pen and start working on them, and a lot of the things they are say- ing have already reached the point of absurdity,” he says. “I do think the desire to be popular on the part of politicians has warped or caricaturised politics to the point of unrecognisability. “There is so much emphasis now being put on how people in the so-called Twitterverse are going to respond to whatever com- ment you make ... that everything is guarded now, the utterances that our politicians make are very contrived for that very reason. “They are aware of the fact that they’ve only got to go to the toilet and someone will tweet about it, someone will misinterpret it and apply that misinterpretation to their retelling of it and by the time they get to dash off that message there’s bugger all a politician can do about it.” But though the descent of fed- eral politics into absurdity has been a boon for Leak, the cartoon- ist also pines for the days when ideas would be given time to circu- late, settle and mature. “In the 30 years that I have been actively engaged in doing political cartoons, I have seen such gradual deterioration in the quality of debate and the general standard of behaviour of our par- liamentarians and the standard of debate and the standard of the people that actually make it into the parliament,” he says. “It’s a world gone mad.” NATASHA ROBINSON ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL As The Australian celebrates its 50th birthday tomorrow, we’ll be counting down the years, continuing today. INSIDE Pages 10-11 Royalties must cut poverty: Scullion THE Abbott government will use its procurement policy to drive higher levels of indigenous em- ployment and career advance- ment within Aboriginal corporations as a result of con- cerns over the hijacking of these wealthy organisations by well- paid, non-indigenous executives. Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion said he was sad- dened by the failure of the mining boom’s riches to improve indig- enous welfare and was develop- ing new policy to ensure that indigenous corporations im- proved their employment out- comes. “The royalty process across the country just leaves me with a sense of sadness, the amount of money that is being paid out in royalties and the poverty of the people in receipt of those royal- ties,” he said. Senator Scullion asked for the documents relied on by The Aus- tralian for a detailed report show- ing how the chief executive of a wealthy corporation had author- ised substantial payments to a small clique of indigenous supporters, thereby bolstering his position. One director’s creditors and family members received al- most $500,000. The federal regulator for indigenous corporations, ORIC, said no breach of the law had taken place. Senator Scullion said it was possible that the law may need to be strengthened. He was concerned by the number of well-remunerated ex- ecutives working for indigenous organisations who came to lobby him and wanted to use the federal government’s purchasing power to make these organisations more Aboriginal. “I have people come and lobby me …. (and) I have to say they are all European people, they are all non-indigenous people, who are on a pretty good wicket batting for one side or the other,” he said. Senator Scullion said it was “completely outrageous” for executives of these corporations to use indigenous royalty income to pay for elite courses at US and European business schools, as was cited in The Australian’s re- cent report. Instead of entrenching them- selves in their roles, executives should have as part of their key performance indicators the re- quirement to find an indigenous successor. “You should, morally, be working yourself out of a job,” Senator Scullion said. He planned to make some an- nouncements soon about federal procurement policy so that it en- couraged employment growth and career advancement among Aboriginal Australians. He cited the case of housing construction in indigenous com- munities, which would include benchmarks for indigenous employment in the same way it specified that the house should have a roof. “It is not an aspiration any more. It is a strict requirement and it will be required under con- tract,’’ he said. He said there were many “bril- liant” Aboriginal people whose careers should be advanced by the growing income earned as a result of the resources boom. Senator Scullion flagged more streamlined governance arrange- ments under the Native Title Act for when determinations were limited to hunting rights, for ex- ample. Under the act, groups need to set up fully-fledged cor- porations when seeking a deter- mination. Indigenous groups were telling him they had to set up these costly arrangements even though “we don’t make anything from camping on land”. Senator Scullion also wanted to compel Aboriginal corpora- tions to incorporate under federal law by making this a condition of receiving federal funding. PAUL CLEARY How The Australian reported the story on May 7 Global youth leaders here to talk up jobs WHEN the global young leaders of tomorrow sat down at the Y20 summit in Sydney there was one issue that united them — action on youth unemployment. After consultation with the youth in their own countries and three months of online debate, the 120 delegates, representing the G20 nations’ 18-30 year olds, began workshops yesterday to draft a communique to influence the G20 summit — in Brisbane in November — to act on three key issues: youth unemployment, youth entrepreneurship and labour mobility. “We want G20 leaders to recognise that youth employment is a serious issue ... we want them to focus on that when they develop their own country plans,” one of Australia’s five delegates Tim Cameron, 27, told The Australian. “In terms of Australia youth, we really want the G20 to think about really effective evidence- based ways to combat a problem.” Mr Cameron, an economist for the Grattan Institute, said Austra- lia’s figure of 280,000 people under-25 out of work was three times that for unemployed people over 25. “You’d always expect to see that was higher ... but we think the multiple of three is probably not the right number — and it sets it up for this generation to be shut- out a little bit more than they should be,” he said. “The Y20 has the ability to push things up to the G20 to get youth voices heard in a time when the youth are increasingly feeling like they’re not being listened to.” Mr Cameron said the group was “pragmatic about the battle” they faced in influencing the G20. “The G20 is an economic forum so we framed it as what are the main economic issues and we put the focus on that,” he said. “Of course there are a whole bunch of social issues that are worrying young people. “But it was pretty consistent in my mind … there was nothing else that they cared about more than employment.” At the end of the process, the delegates will issue a com- munique to Joe Hockey address- ing the key issues. This will coincide with the start of the B20 business leaders forum beginning in Sydney on Wednesday. “In Australia, we need to have a better culture of evaluation of all our active labour market pro- grams and figuring out what works and promoting that rather than basing policies on politics rather than evidence,” Mr Camer- on said. “That’s something we’re going to push out post summit.” For Mexican delegate Sihini Trinidad Sanchez, 23, — whose name means “hope” — addres- sing youth unemployment and education were crucial. “This is where joint projects are born and changes are made, and this is what we can do as young representatives; think out- side the box and act as liaisons,” she told The Australian. “It’s important to … take the proposals talked about here and also in national consultation to local legislators and tell them this is what youth want and how can we engage with you.” They want the G20 to set evidence-based solutions over politics SIMON KING ATTILA SZILVASI Y20 delegates Tim Cameron, from Australia, and Sihini Trinidad Sanchez, from Mexico, in Sydney yesterday. ‘This is where joint projects are born’ Adapting ‘green’ steelmaking to other industries THE inventor of “green” steel- making, which uses discarded tyres as a raw material in mini- mills, aims to transform other industries through a $2.2 million research grant from the federal government. Veena Sahajwalla’s centre at the University of NSW is among seven groups to be funded under the Australian Research Council industrial transformation re- search hubs scheme. “The opportunity to partner with other industry sectors has been tremendous,” she said. The industry partners in the green manufacturing hub — Brickworks Building Products, Arrium Mining Consumables, Tersum Energy and Jaylon Industries — will put up an additional $1.6 million. Professor Sahajwalla, an en- gineer, won the manufacturing and hi-tech design category (now manufacturing, construction and infrastructure) and the overall prize in The Australian Innova- tion Challenge in 2012 for green steelmaking, or polymer injection technology. Her team took out a total of $30,000 in prizemoney. Green steelmaking, developed with industry partner Arrium, uses rubber from old tyres to partially replace coke as the source of carbon needed in electric arc furnace steelmaking. It boosts efficiency and diverts old tyres from landfill. The process is a sophisticated form of recycling, which Professor Sahajwalla labels the “reform” of waste. Arrium is using the method in its plants in Sydney and Laverton, near Melbourne, and has licensed it to a South Korean steelmaker. Professor Sahajwalla has been working to extend the concepts underlying green steelmaking to the reform of combined glass and plastic waste from old cars in a greener method to make iron- steel alloys called ferrosilicon alloys. These alloys are usually made using silica and coke in an expensive and greenhouse emis- sions-intensive method. The work would tackle the mounting global environmental problem of cars at the end of their lives. The technology tapping glass and plastic in old cars differs from green steelmaking but it adopts the philosophy underpinning the earlier work. Now Professor Sahajwalla wants to see the “reform” approach taken up by other industries, such as building materials. Some construction materials already incorporate waste but waste used in Professor Sahajwal- la’s scheme would probably be more drastically altered in the production steps. She said the prestige and publicity from winning the Challenge had helped build momentum in her work. “The Innovation Challenge award triggered a lot of these other opportunities,” Professor Sahajwalla said. “It was because it was discus- sed in the media that we had other industries contact us to talk about what this concept means for them.” The awards — which have a total of $65,000 in prize money — have five professional categories, ranging from minerals and en- ergy to ICT, and a new Young In- novators section for students under the age of 21. A Backyard Innovation category is open to the public. Entries close on August 11. CHERYL JONES NIKKI SHORT Veena Sahajwalla in her lab at the University of NSW ENTRY DETAILS theaustralian.com.au/ innovationchallenge The works of Leak. ‘So many of them are already caricatures before I even pick up my pen and start working on them’ A SEARCH is underway on Vic- toria’s highest mountain for two snowboarders who have not been seen since Thursday. The two men failed to return from their trip to the Eskdale Spur area of Mount Bogong in the state’s northeast. Their abandoned campsite at Mitchell hut was found by walk- ers at about 6am yesterday and police fear they have not been at the site since the last snow fall early on Saturday. Their tent was empty except for sleeping bags and some equipment. The men, both aged in their early 30s, have not made contact with their families since Thurs- day, via mobile phone. They also sent a photograph of their camp. Police believe the men have an emergency position radio beacon, but have not activated the alarm. Sergeant Simon Brand said volunteers and nine search-and- rescue officers headed up the mountain to begin the search this afternoon. “Thankfully, we have a number of experienced volun- teers who have turned out to as- sist with the search,’’ he said. AAP Search for snowboarders 50 years of cartoons at theaustralian.com.au IMMIGRATION officials will today attempt the first removal of asylum-seekers out of the tense compounds of Christmas Island in more than a week, following a series of self-harms, threatened self-harms and a damaged runway that halted transfers to Nauru. A group of asylum-seeker families was due to fly from Christmas Island to Nauru last Friday but the transfer was halt- ed at the last minute when a freight plane cracked the island’s only tarmac. The transfers had been occur- ring weekly, and it’s understood that some of the asylum-seekers sent to Nauru in recent months have reported back to detainees on Christmas Island that they should ask to come too because conditions are better there. Guards told The Australian that a group of women were still being watched closely in the family camp yesterday after threatening self-harm over the past week. Exaggerated claims about the incidents drew the ire of Tony Abbott last week, who said: “I don’t believe any Australian, any thinking Australian, would want us to capitulate to moral black- mail”. Christmas Island shire presi- dent Gordon Thomson said yesterday that the situation was serious but a Fairfax report last Wednesday that 12 mothers had tried to kill themselves was incorrect. “They have threaten- ed,” he said. Yesterday the Abbott govern- ment again revealed nothing about the whereabouts of a boat of 153 asylum-seekers intercept- ed somewhere in the Indian Ocean more than two weeks ago. The situation spurred a rally of around 150 refugee advocates in Melbourne’s Bourke Street Mall. Activists were calling for Im- migration Minister Scott Morri- son to grant refugee status to the Sri Lankan asylum-seekers de- tained at sea. Greens senator Janet Rice ad- dressed yesterday’s rally before the group marched to Liberal Party headquarters in Exhibi- tion Street. Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance members made up a large proportion of the crowd, the former group sell- ing T-shirts featuring the phras- es “Abbott Hater” and “F..k Tony Abbott” and handing out copies of “Red Flag”. The publication was earlier this month forced to withdraw citing legal concerns over a cover featuring an image of the Prime Minister getting his throat cut with the words “One cut we’d like to see”. The Refugee Action Co- alition, whose Melbourne affili- ate the Refugee Action Collective organised the rally, also backed down from claims it made in a press release last week that up to “10 mothers in the family camp have attempted sui- cide in the last two days on Christmas Island”. Refugee coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul told The Australian last week he “probably shouldn’t have said attempted suicide”. Asylum airlift ready to resume PAIGE TAYLOR RACHEL BAXENDALE
Transcript of Royalties must cut poverty - University of New South...
6 THE NATION THE AUSTRALIAN, MONDAY, JULY 14, 2014theaustralian.com.au
AUSE01Z50MA - V1
Political chaos is manna from heaven in a cartoonist’s world gone mad
THERE is a curse that strikes BillLeak frequently in the morning. Asthe cartoonist rises from his slum-ber, before dawn, an idea strikeshim like a thunderbolt — brilliant,inspired and devastating witty.
But it’s an idea that has arrivedtoo late, a good 10 hours after he’sturned in his daily cartoon.
Leak calls it the cartoonist’sversion of d’esprit d’escalier — theFrench term for “staircase wit”,that infuriating moment when theperfect retort comes to you whenyou’re halfway up the stairs.
“I get up every day at five and Ilike to be sitting in front of thecomputer and reading the paperand related material by half pastfive in the morning and seeing howmuch I can learn before I eventhink about doing a cartoon.
“Ideas take a while. You findout the facts first and the ideaforms itself gradually.
“And, if you’re a cartoonist likeme, you’ll find that they formthemselves rather too graduallyand the really good ideas occur to
you the next morning instead ofthe day before.”
Take one of his favourites oflast year, his portrait of KevinRudd reclining by a lake in front ofhis own reflection, which earnedhim a Walkley nomination. “I usedto be a bit of a narcissist but nowI’m perfect,” says the caption,above the heading: “Change wecan believe in”. Looking back now,Leak wishes he’d used a differentheading: “On reflection”.
When Leak’s Rudd cartoonwas featured on ABC’s Insiders,presenter Jon Kudelka, also acartoonist at The Australian, calledthat week in July — when Ruddrolled Julia Gillard — “possibly thegreatest week for politicalcartooning in the history of Aus-tralia”. But Leak reckons thingsare only getting better for cartoon-ists: a grim observation for the restof us. “The really lean and difficulttimes for cartoonists are times
when things are going rather wellfor the country, because you can’tmake happy stories funny easily.”
“Disasters are much easier tomake fun of. If the political situ-ation is in utter chaos and everyday brings new dramas, these aregreat times for a cartoonist. And Ithink things are chaotic beyondbelief at the moment. We’ve got noshortage of nutters around in fed-eral politics now, and nutters arealways good for cartoonists.
“Suddenly this elephantine sortof character appears on the scenein the form of Clive Palmer andyou just think, ‘How has it come tothis, how could this possibly hap-pen? And you wonder what couldpossibly be next.”
Leak recalls the advice of one ofhis early mentors, the prolific car-toonist Patrick Cook, whose for-mula when it came to cartooningwas simple: to take a situation, acharacter or a policy announce-
ment and exaggerate it to the pointof absurdity. But Leak believes thatsuch a rule of thumb is no longerapplicable to the current crop offederal politicians.
“So many of them are alreadycaricatures before I even pick upmy pen and start working on them,and a lot of the things they are say-ing have already reached the pointof absurdity,” he says. “I do thinkthe desire to be popular on thepart of politicians has warped or
caricaturised politics to the pointof unrecognisability.
“There is so much emphasisnow being put on how people inthe so-called Twitterverse aregoing to respond to whatever com-ment you make ... that everythingis guarded now, the utterancesthat our politicians make are verycontrived for that very reason.
“They are aware of the fact thatthey’ve only got to go to the toiletand someone will tweet about it,someone will misinterpret it andapply that misinterpretation totheir retelling of it and by the timethey get to dash off that messagethere’s bugger all a politician cando about it.”
But though the descent of fed-eral politics into absurdity hasbeen a boon for Leak, the cartoon-ist also pines for the days whenideas would be given time to circu-late, settle and mature.
“In the 30 years that I havebeen actively engaged in doingpolitical cartoons, I have seensuch gradual deterioration in thequality of debate and the generalstandard of behaviour of our par-liamentarians and the standard ofdebate and the standard of thepeople that actually make it intothe parliament,” he says. “It’s aworld gone mad.”
NATASHA ROBINSON
ANNIVERSARYSPECIAL
As The Australian celebratesits 50th birthday tomorrow,we’ll be counting down the years, continuing today.
INSIDE
Pages 10-11
Royalties must cut poverty: ScullionTHE Abbott government will useits procurement policy to drivehigher levels of indigenous em-ployment and career advance-ment within Aboriginalcorporations as a result of con-cerns over the hijacking of thesewealthy organisations by well-paid, non-indigenous executives.
Indigenous Affairs MinisterNigel Scullion said he was sad-dened by the failure of the miningboom’s riches to improve indig-enous welfare and was develop-ing new policy to ensure thatindigenous corporations im-proved their employment out-comes.
“The royalty process acrossthe country just leaves me with asense of sadness, the amount ofmoney that is being paid out inroyalties and the poverty of thepeople in receipt of those royal-ties,” he said.
Senator Scullion asked for thedocuments relied on by The Aus-tralian for a detailed report show-ing how the chief executive of awealthy corporation had author-ised substantial payments to asmall clique of indigenoussupporters, thereby bolstering hisposition. One director’s creditorsand family members received al-most $500,000.
The federal regulator forindigenous corporations, ORIC,said no breach of the law hadtaken place. Senator Scullion saidit was possible that the law mayneed to be strengthened.
He was concerned by thenumber of well-remunerated ex-ecutives working for indigenousorganisations who came to lobbyhim and wanted to use the federalgovernment’s purchasing powerto make these organisations moreAboriginal.
“I have people come and lobbyme …. (and) I have to say they areall European people, they are allnon-indigenous people, who areon a pretty good wicket battingfor one side or the other,” he said.
Senator Scullion said it was“completely outrageous” forexecutives of these corporationsto use indigenous royalty incometo pay for elite courses at US and
European business schools, aswas cited in The Australian’s re-cent report.
Instead of entrenching them-selves in their roles, executivesshould have as part of their keyperformance indicators the re-quirement to find an indigenoussuccessor. “You should, morally,be working yourself out of a job,”Senator Scullion said.
He planned to make some an-nouncements soon about federalprocurement policy so that it en-couraged employment growthand career advancement amongAboriginal Australians.
He cited the case of housingconstruction in indigenous com-munities, which would includebenchmarks for indigenousemployment in the same way itspecified that the house shouldhave a roof.
“It is not an aspiration anymore. It is a strict requirementand it will be required under con-tract,’’ he said.
He said there were many “bril-liant” Aboriginal people whosecareers should be advanced bythe growing income earned as aresult of the resources boom.
Senator Scullion flagged morestreamlined governance arrange-ments under the Native Title Actfor when determinations werelimited to hunting rights, for ex-ample. Under the act, groupsneed to set up fully-fledged cor-porations when seeking a deter-mination. Indigenous groupswere telling him they had to set upthese costly arrangements eventhough “we don’t make anythingfrom camping on land”.
Senator Scullion also wantedto compel Aboriginal corpora-tions to incorporate under federallaw by making this a condition ofreceiving federal funding.
PAUL CLEARY
How The Australian reportedthe story on May 7
Global youth leaders here to talk up jobs
WHEN the global young leadersof tomorrow sat down at the Y20summit in Sydney there was oneissue that united them — actionon youth unemployment.
After consultation with theyouth in their own countries andthree months of online debate,the 120 delegates, representingthe G20 nations’ 18-30 year olds,began workshops yesterday todraft a communique to influence
the G20 summit — in Brisbane inNovember — to act on threekey issues: youth unemployment,youth entrepreneurship andlabour mobility. “We want G20leaders to recognise that youthemployment is a serious issue ...we want them to focus on thatwhen they develop their owncountry plans,” one of Australia’sfive delegates Tim Cameron, 27,told The Australian.
“In terms of Australia youth,we really want the G20 to thinkabout really effective evidence-based ways to combat a problem.”
Mr Cameron, an economist forthe Grattan Institute, said Austra-lia’s figure of 280,000 peopleunder-25 out of work was three
times that for unemployed peopleover 25. “You’d always expect tosee that was higher ... but we thinkthe multiple of three is probablynot the right number — and it setsit up for this generation to be shut-out a little bit more than theyshould be,” he said.
“The Y20 has the ability topush things up to the G20 to getyouth voices heard in a time whenthe youth are increasingly feelinglike they’re not being listened to.”
Mr Cameron said the groupwas “pragmatic about the battle”they faced in influencing the G20.
“The G20 is an economicforum so we framed it as what arethe main economic issues and weput the focus on that,” he said.
“Of course there are a wholebunch of social issues that areworrying young people.
“But it was pretty consistent inmy mind … there was nothing elsethat they cared about more thanemployment.”
At the end of the process, thedelegates will issue a com-munique to Joe Hockey address-ing the key issues. This willcoincide with the start of the B20business leaders forum beginningin Sydney on Wednesday.
“In Australia, we need to havea better culture of evaluation of allour active labour market pro-grams and figuring out whatworks and promoting that ratherthan basing policies on politics
rather than evidence,” Mr Camer-on said. “That’s something we’regoing to push out post summit.”
For Mexican delegate SihiniTrinidad Sanchez, 23, — whosename means “hope” — addres-sing youth unemployment andeducation were crucial.
“This is where joint projectsare born and changes are made,and this is what we can do asyoung representatives; think out-side the box and act as liaisons,”she told The Australian.
“It’s important to … take theproposals talked about here andalso in national consultation tolocal legislators and tell them thisis what youth want and how canwe engage with you.”
They want the G20 to set evidence-based solutions over politics
SIMON KING
ATTILA SZILVASI
Y20 delegates Tim Cameron, from Australia, and Sihini Trinidad Sanchez, from Mexico, in Sydney yesterday. ‘This is where joint projects are born’
Adapting ‘green’ steelmaking to other industries
THE inventor of “green” steel-making, which uses discardedtyres as a raw material in mini-mills, aims to transform otherindustries through a $2.2 millionresearch grant from the federalgovernment.
Veena Sahajwalla’s centre atthe University of NSW is amongseven groups to be funded underthe Australian Research Councilindustrial transformation re-search hubs scheme.
“The opportunity to partnerwith other industry sectors hasbeen tremendous,” she said.
The industry partners in thegreen manufacturing hub —Brickworks Building Products,Arrium Mining Consumables,Tersum Energy and JaylonIndustries — will put up anadditional $1.6 million.
Professor Sahajwalla, an en-gineer, won the manufacturingand hi-tech design category (nowmanufacturing, construction andinfrastructure) and the overallprize in The Australian Innova-tion Challenge in 2012 for green
steelmaking, or polymer injectiontechnology. Her team took out atotal of $30,000 in prizemoney.
Green steelmaking, developedwith industry partner Arrium,uses rubber from old tyres topartially replace coke as thesource of carbon needed inelectric arc furnace steelmaking.It boosts efficiency and diverts oldtyres from landfill.
The process is a sophisticatedform of recycling, whichProfessor Sahajwalla labels the“reform” of waste.
Arrium is using the method inits plants in Sydney and Laverton,near Melbourne, and has licensedit to a South Korean steelmaker.
Professor Sahajwalla has beenworking to extend the conceptsunderlying green steelmaking tothe reform of combined glass andplastic waste from old cars in agreener method to make iron-
steel alloys called ferrosiliconalloys.
These alloys are usually madeusing silica and coke in anexpensive and greenhouse emis-sions-intensive method.
The work would tackle themounting global environmental
problem of cars at the end of theirlives.
The technology tapping glassand plastic in old cars differs fromgreen steelmaking but it adoptsthe philosophy underpinning theearlier work.
Now Professor Sahajwalla
wants to see the “reform”approach taken up by otherindustries, such as buildingmaterials.
Some construction materialsalready incorporate waste butwaste used in Professor Sahajwal-la’s scheme would probably bemore drastically altered in theproduction steps.
She said the prestige andpublicity from winning theChallenge had helped buildmomentum in her work.
“The Innovation Challengeaward triggered a lot of theseother opportunities,” ProfessorSahajwalla said.
“It was because it was discus-sed in the media that we had otherindustries contact us to talk aboutwhat this concept means forthem.”
The awards — which have atotal of $65,000 in prize money —have five professional categories,ranging from minerals and en-ergy to ICT, and a new Young In-novators section for studentsunder the age of 21.
A Backyard Innovationcategory is open to the public.
Entries close on August 11.
CHERYL JONES
NIKKI SHORT
Veena Sahajwalla in her lab at the University of NSW
ENTRY DETAILStheaustralian.com.au/innovationchallenge
The works of Leak. ‘So many of them are already caricatures before I even pick up my pen and start working on them’
A SEARCH is underway on Vic-toria’s highest mountain for twosnowboarders who have not beenseen since Thursday.
The two men failed to returnfrom their trip to the Eskdale Spurarea of Mount Bogong in thestate’s northeast.
Their abandoned campsite atMitchell hut was found by walk-ers at about 6am yesterday andpolice fear they have not been atthe site since the last snow fallearly on Saturday. Their tent wasempty except for sleeping bagsand some equipment.
The men, both aged in their
early 30s, have not made contactwith their families since Thurs-day, via mobile phone. They alsosent a photograph of their camp.
Police believe the men have anemergency position radio beacon,but have not activated the alarm.
Sergeant Simon Brand saidvolunteers and nine search-and-rescue officers headed up themountain to begin the search thisafternoon.
“Thankfully, we have anumber of experienced volun-teers who have turned out to as-sist with the search,’’ he said.
AAP
Search for snowboarders
50 years of cartoons at theaustralian.com.au
IMMIGRATION officials willtoday attempt the first removalof asylum-seekers out of thetense compounds of ChristmasIsland in more than a week,following a series of self-harms,threatened self-harms and adamaged runway that haltedtransfers to Nauru.
A group of asylum-seekerfamilies was due to fly fromChristmas Island to Nauru lastFriday but the transfer was halt-ed at the last minute when afreight plane cracked the island’sonly tarmac.
The transfers had been occur-ring weekly, and it’s understoodthat some of the asylum-seekerssent to Nauru in recent monthshave reported back to detaineeson Christmas Island that theyshould ask to come too becauseconditions are better there.
Guards told The Australianthat a group of women were stillbeing watched closely in thefamily camp yesterday afterthreatening self-harm over thepast week.
Exaggerated claims about theincidents drew the ire of TonyAbbott last week, who said: “Idon’t believe any Australian, anythinking Australian, would wantus to capitulate to moral black-mail”.
Christmas Island shire presi-dent Gordon Thomson saidyesterday that the situation wasserious but a Fairfax report lastWednesday that 12 mothers hadtried to kill themselves wasincorrect. “They have threaten-ed,” he said.
Yesterday the Abbott govern-ment again revealed nothingabout the whereabouts of a boatof 153 asylum-seekers intercept-ed somewhere in the IndianOcean more than two weeks ago.
The situation spurred a rallyof around 150 refugee advocatesin Melbourne’s Bourke StreetMall.
Activists were calling for Im-migration Minister Scott Morri-son to grant refugee status to theSri Lankan asylum-seekers de-tained at sea.
Greens senator Janet Rice ad-dressed yesterday’s rally beforethe group marched to LiberalParty headquarters in Exhibi-tion Street.
Socialist Alternative andSocialist Alliance membersmade up a large proportion ofthe crowd, the former group sell-ing T-shirts featuring the phras-es “Abbott Hater” and “F..k TonyAbbott” and handing out copiesof “Red Flag”.
The publication was earlierthis month forced to withdrawciting legal concerns over a coverfeaturing an image of the PrimeMinister getting his throat cutwith the words “One cut we’dlike to see”.
The Refugee Action Co-alition, whose Melbourne affili-ate the Refugee ActionCollective organised the rally,also backed down from claims itmade in a press release last weekthat up to “10 mothers in thefamily camp have attempted sui-cide in the last two days onChristmas Island”.
Refugee coalition spokesmanIan Rintoul told The Australianlast week he “probably shouldn’thave said attempted suicide”.
Asylumairliftready to resumePAIGE TAYLORRACHEL BAXENDALE
