What Australian newspapers say, Monday, Dec 17, 2007

AAP General News (Australia)
12-17-2007
What Australian newspapers say, Monday, Dec 17, 2007
SYDNEY, Dec 17, AAP - The Bali climate change conference made some progress on how carbon
trading can work and how the world should divvy up the cuts ultimately agreed to. As
such, Bali confirmed the sense of the Rudd government strategy, The Australian says in
its editorial today.

In signing on to the Kyoto agreement, Kevin Rudd showed his government takes global
warming seriously. But Mr Rudd and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong also did well in
Bali by protecting Australia's economic interest.

The newspaper says: "Australia relies on coal for $25 billion in export income and
almost all its electricity and the government is right to commit to nothing until economist
Ross Garnaut reports on the costs of cutting greenhouse gases next year."

The Bali conference produced no quick and easy answer to global warming but anything
that gets us closer to a plan that will work in the real world is no bad thing.

Melbourne's Herald Sun says Bali has provided a last-minute compromise that fulfilled
its basic purpose: to lay a road map for post-Kyoto agreement to operate after 2012.

A rocky road for crucial talks over the next two years is much better than none at
all. In that sense, to force nations -- including Australia -- to meet a 25-40 per cent
target for 2020 was premature and too ambitious.

The newspaper says: "New minister Penny Wong has cut her teeth in exhausting negotiations,
but she has done well, as well as could be hoped.

"The compromise, with the 2020 specifics avoided, was proper seeing the Rudd government
was elected on a policy of setting Australia's targets after Prof Ross Garnaut reports
next June."

Bali has fulfilled its function, dragged the US closer to future commitments, while
Senator Wong capitalised on Australia's honeymoon for signing Kyoto.

Melbourne's The Age says the progress towards a post-Kyoto treaty will be affected
by the timing of the US presidential elections.

As negotiations begin, the US will have a leader in the last days of his term. The
new president, whoever he or she may be, will be on a steep learning curve, although none
of the contenders has shown a wildly differing view from that of George W Bush.

It is indisputable that climate change is now the world's greatest crisis. However,
as Bali has shown, while the concern is universal, the consensus on how to tackle it is
often filtered through the prism of a nation's self-interest. This is understandable,
yet sells short the magnitude of the problem.

Bali showed the immense gulf between developed and developing countries on who should
bear greater responsibility for fighting climate change. The challenge in the time to
2009 is bridging that gulf. At least now the world has a road map and a destination.

The Australian Financial Review says Mr Rudd should be congratulated for wasting no
time in convening a Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting for this Thursday
in order to get the ball rolling on reforming commonwealth-state relations.

The newspaper says: "The prime minister must not allow his broad horizons for what
can be achieved through COAG to be foreshortened by state jealousies and petty-mindedness."

Mr Rudd has an ambitious but simple agenda for Thursday. He wants to set up working
groups in each of the main agenda items and develop a concrete work program for next year,
including policy initiatives to be ready by January and February.

The Review agrees with Mr Rudd that reform in crucial areas of joint commonwealth and
state responsibility -- climate change and emissions trading, housing affordability and
homelessness, and education -- is an urgent priority, and says they may as well get on
with it.

The Sydney Morning Herald says the federal opposition must resist self-pity and distractions
from challenges at hand.

The Herald says: "Good government depends on sound opposition, much more than the other
way around.

"Australian governance will be better for robust opposition, and the coalition will
retreat to irrelevance unless it is seen to serve Australia's interests from the left
side of the speaker's chair."

The coalition must shrug off its funereal mood, pull together, sharpen purpose, begin
a meaningful conversation with voters, and show Australians it has the mettle to stick
to its guns, particularly when core beliefs are unpopular.

The coalition must not get rattled. It must renew with confidence the search for quality
candidates to carry its message. It must get down to the hard, often exasperating, work
of scrutinising government and developing alternative ideas.

Only then will the national interest be served.

Sydney's The Daily Telegraph has urged NSW Premier Morris Iemma and Attorney-General
John Hatzistergos to take seriously the call by police for a review of the plea bargaining
system.

Police complain that plea bargaining appears to have become a game of horse trading
between defence lawyers and prosecutors.

The former are intent on the best deal for their clients and the prosecutors are all too
ready to deal to secure a conviction.

Tougher penalties mean nothing if someone makes an arbitrary decision to lower the
charges, the newspaper says. "For families who will spend Christmas grieving not only
the loss of a loved one but also dealing with the fact their killer got light sentences
thanks to a plea bargain, sometimes those bargains defy all logic."

This problem clearly now needs a fix. The question police and the community are now
asking is: what price justice?

Brisbane's The Courier-Mail applauds the push by Warwick Parer and Bruce McIver --
state presidents of the Liberals and Nationals -- to amalgamate their forlorn parties
and create a single conservative force that can take the fight up to the Bligh Labor government.

Apart, the two parties are dispirited, irrelevant and unfit to govern; fused, they
will offer at least the perception of a credible alternative.

But there are stumbling blocks. Each party fears losing its identity and constituency.

Amalgamation must also be sold to reluctant grassroots members, and a new name found that
maintains an identity among voters.

Then there are the problems of establishing uniformity on everything from policy to
candidate pre-selection.

But the advantages of a single conservative party far outweigh the costs. Queensland
voters are looking over Premier Anna Bligh's shoulder hoping to see a credible alternative
amble up the path. It is up to the state coalition if they, like Kevin Rudd, want to make
history.

AAP rs

KEYWORD: EDITORIALS

2007 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.