CATTLE KILL IN INDONESIA GETS GOOD MAN SACKED AFTER 30 YEARS IN THE JOB

WHEN a slim blonde woman and her male Australian colleague turned up at the Kota Binjai abattoir in March, Aliaman thought little of it.

It was about 3am and the veteran slaughterman had only just been called out of bed. His workmates hadn’t turned up and there was a steer to kill and get to the local market by dawn.

”I was busy. It was already late. I didn’t pay them much attention,” said Aliaman, 45, about the appearance of Lyn White, the investigator from Animals Australia whose expose´ halted the $300 million cattle trade with Indonesia for a month and will probably result in Australian cattle never again going to Binjai’s traditional abattoir.

“People are angry with me” … Aliaman with his co-worker Darwin outside Aliaman’s house. Aliaman says his wife is also very angry and will not cook for him. Photo: Chalid Nasution

”I think they said they were tourists.” But he said he did wonder what they were doing with a camcorder.

The three workers at Binjai that night said Ms White’s Indonesian driver had given each of them 50,000 rupiah (about $6) for the access. They were given no instructions to mistreat the animal.

It was a decent sum for poor Indonesians but in accepting the gratuity, Aliaman’s life has been ruined. After the footage was shown on the ABC program Four Corners, he was driven to nearby Medan, the North Sumatran capital, and given a dressing down by agriculture ministry officials. The next day he was sacked from a job he had had for more than 30 years.

He now survives on odd jobs and about $1 a day and has been ostracised by his wife and community, where a small but lucrative business processing Australian cattle has disappeared and overall revenue at the abattoir has been cut to about a fifth of its previous levels. ”My colleagues, the people in the market, they blame me for what has happened,” Aliaman said outside his simple house shaded by a huge rambutan tree.

”My wife is very angry, too. She won’t cook for me. Sometimes she leaves the house and locks me in from the outside.

”Sometimes I stay with my brother but I can’t ask him for money because he is a pedicab driver … and I don’t go to the market at all because people are angry with me.” The footage taken at Binjai depicts Aliaman hitting the steer with a rope and then twisting its tail as he tries to move it close to the post where it was to be tied before being killed.

Another worker, Darwin, kicks the beast in the face as it is being pulled back into position.

Animals Australia released the footage on its website, with commentary from Ms White who named the beast ”Brian”, ”a big affable steer … trying his best to keep out of trouble”.

Ms White said: ”Sadly, this seems to be a battle of man versus beast that the workers get some gratification out of while the animal is simply terrorised.”

Binjai, a traditional abattoir where animals are trussed by hand before being killed, hardly boasts world’s best practice but Aliaman takes great exception to Ms White’s assertion that he hurt animals for pleasure.

”I didn’t torture the cow. I put the rope around the cow’s neck and pulled it towards the post,” he said. ”I hit it with the rope [and twisted the tail] just to move it to the pole. That was all.”

The thought of purposely hurting a beast is abhorrent. ”It is haram [forbidden under Islamic law]. Besides, there is a sura [chapter] in the Koran named after a cow, the al-Baqara sura.

”I always use a sharp knife and I always say a prayer before I slaughter an animal,” he added.

Ms White said yesterday that her opinion that Aliaman was gratified by hitting the animal was based on her observation. ”I’m not suggesting for a moment that these are bad people.”

She said she had no idea her driver had paid the workers for the access.

SYNTHETIC DRUGS TO BE PLACED ON THE BANNED LIST

Eight synthetic cannabis-like substances will be classified as prohibited substances throughout Australia from July 8, with plans to rule out any attempts to circumvent state bans on substances like Kronic.

On June 17, Western Australia was one of the first states to implement a ban via state-specific legislation on seven synthetic cannabinoids after mine workers and other consumers were revealed to have positive test results for cannabinoids in attempts to undermine drug screening processes.

However, several days after the release of the state government’s plan to ban these substances an alternative synthetic cannabinoid formulation was being marketed claiming to circumvent these controls, according to an independent Commonwealth delegate’s report.

South Australia consequently banned 17 synthetic cannabinoids and other states were exploring the wording of similar bans, with New South Wales due to follow suit tomorrow.

Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing, Catherine King said the changes to classification of specific chemical compounds would enable a nationwide, uniform prohibition on these drugs.

The chemicals to be prohibited ( using the common name) are: AM-694, JWH – 250, JWH – 200, JWH – 073, JWH – 122, JWH- 018, Cannabicyclohexanol, CP 47,497 – most of these can be found in retail products known as Kronic, Spice, Karma, Voodoo, Kaos and K2.

“There is a lack of evidence of any therapeutic value for these substances and their use poses potential health risks,” Ms King said.

“There have been widespread reports of abuse and symptoms, including severe hallucinations, psychosis and heart palpitations.

“Little is known about the long-term health effects from continued use.

“The drugs mimic the effects of existing illicit substances, but have not been uniformly illegal across Australia because they fall outside current controls.

“In response to calls for uniform restrictions on these types of substances, the Commonwealth has considered the matter and made a decision to prohibit eight of the most widely-used and abused synthetic cannabinoids.”

Synthetic cannabis-like substances have been widely available on the Internet but eight chemical compounds were considered the most widely-misused of these drugs.

“These restrictions will still allow access to these substances for use in strictly-controlled medical and clinical studies to allow for appropriate investigation of any potential future therapeutic uses,” Ms King said.

Yet broader restrictions are still being considered with advice on such restrictions being sought from Advisory Committee on Medicines Scheduling’s meeting in October.

The Gillard government has made an unprecedented intervention in an official tender process to stop Sky News Australia, partly owned by Rupert Murdoch, winning a $223 million contract to broadcast Australia’s overseas television service.

An aggressive bid to expand Australia’s presence in China helped push Sky News over the line in a fierce contest with the ABC to win the rights to the station, known as Australia Network.

An independent panel of public servants set up to evaluate the competing tenders saw Sky as the better bid – only for the government to baulk at stripping the contract from the publicly funded ABC to hand it to a company part-owned by News Ltd, Channel Seven and the Nine Network.

Labor then made late changes to the rules of the tender, sidelining the role of the independent panel and throwing the legitimacy of the process into doubt.

Australia Network broadcasts news, drama and sport to 44 countries in Asia and the Pacific, as well as programs to teach English language skills.

At present the ABC holds rights to broadcast the network, but the government put a new 10-year deal out to competitive tender in February with an outcome originally set for May 2.

It is understood Sky News proposed setting up a dedicated channel for China to run separately from the rest of the network as a way of expanding Australia’s reach in the Asian powerhouse, where censorship restrictions limit foreign news broadcasts.

No licences to broadcast into China have been granted in recent years but the Foreign Affairs Department has said it is keen to gain access for Australia’s public diplomacy channel.

The proposal for China was only part of the reason Sky was favoured, with the full tender details still secret.

But the winner of the contract remains in doubt after the government used the cover of recent upheaval in the Middle East and Africa to request more information from the ABC and Sky News.

The government has also asked the bidders to explain their operations ”in light of the increasing influence of key emerging markets on the global economy” – a phrase often used to describe China.

But the government is yet to release an amended call for tenders, despite promising a decision by September.

The department of the Foreign Affairs Minister, Kevin Rudd, had previously been in charge of the tender process, with final approval in the hands of departmental chief Dennis Richardson following the recommendations of the independent panel.

That system has now been scrapped, two months after the decision was due, and the final approval now rests with the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, after being referred to cabinet.

Senator Conroy is also the minister with responsibility for the ABC – although his office has denied opposition claims of a conflict of interest.

Senator Conroy’s office told the Herald he only became involved following a cabinet discussion shortly before the government announced the changes late on Friday evening, June 24.

But a Senate hearing on June 2 made it clear the government had long held doubts about where the tender was heading, with Mr Richardson unwilling to state then who would give final approval for the deal.

The panel is believed to have submitted its report ahead of the May 2 deadline.

It is unclear whether it made a final recommendation before the process was abruptly changed.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard says petrol will be exempted from the proposed carbon tax ”now and forever” and will not be included either in the fixed price period or when the emissions trading scheme kicks in.

But the Productivity Commission will examine how fuel excise can be shifted to the new tax, with an outcome that could force petrol prices up anyway after three years.

The Prime Minister said yesterday motorists would be spared from having to fork out more at the petrol pump as a direct result of the carbon tax she hoped to introduce next year. The major concession is not only a win for motorists, but also a success for Independent MPs Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott who argued for petrol to be exempted from the carbon tax.

”Families, tradies, small business people do not have to worry about a petrol price increase,” Ms Gillard said.

”Petrol prices will not be touched by carbon pricing.”

But while the Prime Minister insisted the exemption would not be a temporary measure, the Greens revealed that the Government agreed to have the Productivity Commission examine the whole fuel excise regime.

The Greens argued for petrol to be included in the carbon price from the outset but were outvoted during negotiations inside the multi-party committee on climate change.

Conceding yesterday that the party had to compromise on the issue, Greens deputy leader Christine Milne said fuel excise had to be changed to encourage people to use more environmentally friendly transport.

”We want Australians to drive less, and when they do drive, to drive more efficiently,” Senator Milne said.

”What we need into the future is a very clear and transparent signal to the public that there will be a price imposed on embedded energy and people can make decisions accordingly.

”This mish-mash of policies which sees subsidies and taxes working against each other needs to be changed. We need to restructure the fuel excise to reflect the fuel energy content of fuel.”

The Productivity Commission’s recommendations would be implemented in 2015, if approved by Parliament.

The Prime Minister also said self-funded retirees holding a Commonwealth health-care card would be treated similarly to pensioners with regards to the assistance they would get under the carbon tax’s compensation package for households.

But Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said the best way to protect struggling families from higher costs was to dump the carbon tax altogether.

Mr Abbott said the Prime Minister’s promise that motorists wouldn’t have to pay for an increase in fuel prices under the carbon tax couldn’t be believed.

”This is about as believable as her pre-election statement that there will be no carbon tax,” he said.

Full details of the carbon pricing regime are expected to be revealed within days, with almost all of the details having been negotiated and agreed among the members of the multi-party climate change committee.