Posts by Paul Williams
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Ben, I'd have thought there should reasonably be a limit on numbers as at least one criteria. There's sound reasons for limiting the number of people entering into a country as most infrastructure, public and private, is developed based on demographic forecasts and having open boarders would play havoc with that - almost all migrants to Australia end up in Eastern capitals, most in Sydney - the Sydney infrastructure is struggling.
All of this is however qualitatively different from what kinds of people you'd let in. Australia used to take in a great many more refugee migrants, now you need a trade or a qualification or else you end up in Woomera.
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I never thought I'd see the day I defended Hi 5, but...
...as a regular vewer (my 3 yr old son loves it) I think that the producers go to great lengths to keep the girls' clothing decent. Every mini skirt has tights or leggings. Every potentially skimpy top has a more demure top underneath, or a sports bra engineered for zero inappropriateness.
If you think Hi 5 is dodgy, put it up against the Sugarbabes "Push the Button", aimed at kids not much older. That one makes my skin crawl.
Part of my objection is that Hi5 are close to indistinguishable from the likes of the Pussy Cat Dolls, stylistically speaking, but I take your point. I'm pleased that so far my youngest is more than satisfied by Dorothy the Dinosaur and the Muppets (her favourite being Animal and Rita Moreo singing Fever... Rita's not terribly demure in her attire I gotta admit...).
Your other comment about tights and short skirts is fair also however I wonder if you saw any news regarding this research (http://www.netball.asn.au/_uploads/res/1_9668.pdf) by Netball Australia which found that many women were turned off sport at a young age because of the clothing they were encouraged to wear - not just the beach-volley ball crowd either, Netball and Basketball uniforms are all tight-fit too.
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I'm with FletcherB on this one.
I'm even a little prudish about the likes of High 5 - their music is no more annoyingly saccharine than any other kiddie/tweeny stuff, but they way they dress, I think, is inappropriate for young kids - girls in particular.
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And back to the cricket, although the Gillespie, McCullum and Macca shots were great - the moment for me was Watson's celebrations having got Macca out playing-on; he thought it was in the bag (as did the largish crowd of sweaty gym-nuts surrounding me at the time) but on-no-no-no-no...
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The South Africans also had some grievances when they were in Sydney at the begining of '06 - Andre Nel was a target but so too was Ntini.
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J Patel is the first player of Asian extraction to play for NZ who was born here.
That's a little surprising. And will you look at that, Dipak was born in Nairobi. Cool.
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Styris is Australian? Apparently Monty cops an ear-full from time to time though the Australian crowds treated him very well.
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Legbreak, personally I think it's good to acknowledge Taylor's heritage although I remember Parore getting snotty when there was debate about how to pronounce his last name (and when Kelly Evenden went from being a NZer when he was winning to Maori when he was mouthing off at officials).
I see it as positive, by drawing attention to the multi-culturalism of our sports teams we remind ourselves that NZ is a South Pacific nation.
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NZ cricket is well placed to compete in the Windies. Bond's playing magnificently and it's good to see Macca doing well. I'd not seen Taylor or Fulton until they were over for the CB series - great talents!
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There's still big shortages in various areas around the country, particularly the building trade, as a result of the national government doing away with apprenticeships.
Kyle, the National government didn't do away with apprenticeships - they remained an option but not a well publicised one (which was a mistake). The push was for broader and "more flexible" forms of training (which was enormously successful).
You're right that traditional trade apprenticeships suffered but they were in fact static through the 80s, around 25,000 per annum, and the system wasn't working.
You're also right that Labour did an outstanding job reinvigorating the industry training sector - not just with additional funds, which were significant (doubled the funding from around $45m per annum to around $100m in 2002/03), but also with smarter policies and strong support from senior Ministers.
That said, the real issue in trade apprenticeships is industry's lack of demand - the changing nature of jobs and industry has largely been at the expense of larger trade employers (downsizing, outsourcing and contracting labour) who used to have the scale and internal career ladders to take on large numbers of apprentices (hence my comment about railways and the Post Office).
On skill shortages - the building industry has problems recruiting and retaining apprentices because they don't pay well compared with other jobs, particularly in the service industry - the problem (which I think span's alluding to) is that you can sometimes get better money in a relatively unskilled job... the classic in Australia is the kids who leave school without the NSW HSC to move to Queensland to get $80k working in the mining industry...