loki@suburbia.com.au: Suppression Of Australia's Youth

[nettime <nettime@basis.Desk.nl>]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
<nettime-l-temp@material.net> is the temporary home of the nettime-l list
while desk.nl rebuilds its list-serving machine.  please continue to send
messages to <nettime-l@desk.nl> and your commands to <majordomo@desk.nl>.
nettime-l-temp should be active for approximately 2 weeks (11-28 Jun 99).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 


Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 19:05:24 +1000
To: nettime <nettime@basis.Desk.nl>
From: lachlan yates <loki@suburbia.com.au>
Subject: Suppression Of Australia's Youth

This appeared in a Sydney Morning Herald (www.smh.com.au) article a few days ago

Earlier the Australian Youth Policy and Action Coalition (AYPAC), the peak
body representing australia's youth, funding was cancelled. AYPAC was one of
the loudest voices against the government's polices. It is widely believed
(although not admitted) that this was the reason for the removal of funding.


----------
Seen but not heard: young Australia stifled

Date: 12/06/99

By STEPHANIE PEATLING

Members of the Federal Government's hand-picked youth advisory body have
been told to keep their thoughts on education and
employment policy to themselves and to stick to "broad vision statements".

Disillusioned members of the group are concerned, too, about a lack of
resources.

Each of the 50 members of the Roundtable group, who come from various parts
of Australia and were selected by community,
educational and departmental representatives, has been given $40. This is
meant to cover expenses such as phone calls, photocopying
and Internet access during a six-month consultation period between formal
meetings.

Officials from the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs have
been given the power to dismiss youth representatives if
they behave in a way that is seen to be "against the Roundtable's interests".

When a group of members working on education conducted a questionnaire on
voluntary student unionism, the findings were circulated
on the Internet.

But department officials ordered that the findings be removed from the Net
because they conflicted with the Government's position.

"They wouldn't even let us keep it on the secure Web site because it was
not in line with what we were supposed to do. They want us to
represent a huge range of youth which we can't when we're basically a
tokenistic organisation," one member said.

Mr Ryan Heath, one of the advisory body's Sydney members, said yesterday:
"There's a general feeling that it's a ridiculous burden to be
the only youth policy making body in the country. It's been made clear that
we are to find a range of opinions and give them to the
Government but not come up with policy suggestions of our own."

Other members confirm they have been told to stay away from "serious"
policy areas.

"All proposals are supposed to be given weight and there's 50 of us so
there's a lot of proposals which means you don't do anything. It
has forced us to do only broad, vision-type statements," one member said.
"To me, that's code for 'don't do much at all'."

The National Youth Roundtable's 50 volunteers are aged from 15 to 24. The
group was set up by the Howard Government to provide it
with a link to young people after the Australian Youth Policy and Action
Coalition was disbanded last year.

Some Roundtable delegates say the issue of resources is serious enough for
them to consider walking out of September's talks.

"That sum was used up on my taxi fare from home to the airport to go to the
first meeting in Canberra in March," one member said.

Roundtable participants were also promised email and Internet facilities
but 20 of the 50 participants are still not online.

"We don't have the resources to deliver the kind of results we're
interested in. We are volunteers and have other commitments to study
and work," a Canberra delegate, Ms Michelle Beg, said.

A spokeswoman for the Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs,
Dr Kemp, said last night: "The Government is committed to
making the Roundtable work and listening to the views of the delegates and
the aim remains to ensure that they are able to air their views
to Government."


--------------

when talking about perl as a post-modern computing language, he used this
analogy;

You've all heard the saying: If all you have is a hammer, everything starts
to look like a nail. That's actually a Modernistic saying. The postmodern
version is: If all you have is duct tape, everything starts to look like a
duct. Right. When's the last time you used duct tape on a duct?.



the man is a genius