The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 1

1W nnr i i ii i i hi i hi ii i i yu mjy fcvN SATURDAY. JUNE 28. 1997 No. 49.866 RRST PUBLISHED 1831 248 PAGES $1.30 JWUMI, III I I liu Ub I VYIIULC-IUUI CHOICI 'V IN A NEW WEEKLY 20-PAGE LIFTOUT Surfing Ijfliri How to beat 1 1 computer fear the Net made simple oo 1H Bffl "tti irviVitiWf ft if ffi" i va is rsii.fl'.C inton turns urn heat on pwr 6 Perhaps John Howard should consider his predilection for all things British. He's certainly getting a much warmer reception in ft Washington than he did in London 9 JENNIFER HEWETT PAGE 17 little support for Australia's stance.

However, Mr Howard was buoyed yesterday during talks with senior members of Congress who strongly backed Australia's position and claimed to have the numbers to fight Mr Clinton's proposal. Despite this support, Mr Howard conceded late yesterday that he did not expect immediate results from his talks with Mr Clinton. At the Earth Summit in New York this week, the President declined during his speech to set a precise target for the reduction Speaker, Mr Newt Gingrich, expressed support for Australia's position on climate control. Mr Gingrich accused unnamed bureaucrats and the European countries of trying to "rig the rules" for economic advantage. "I think they the Europeans are playing a double game here," he said.

"I think they talk environment but they mean crowd out the US and Australia and other countries in favour of European jobs." At a lunch with senior Washington figures, Mr Howard was rf 1-i 'V- 1 COLUMN SALLY, six-year-old Billie Schwamberg's pet rat, died, so dad offered to have it stuffed. Her mum, Terry, dialled 013, seeking a taxidermist, and the operator suggested a Surry Hills listing, Get Stuffed. Terry phoned. "Sure," came the rather puzzled response. "I guess we can do that for you, however I haven't stuffed a rat before.

What would you like it stuffed with?" Maybe like a beanbag, Terry thought aloud. The penny dropped. "Terry, you know we are a restaurant?" TALK about an early start. Jogging in Samuel Street, Bayview, was a team of Japanese runners. Curious, Andrew Greig asked who they were.

"We are Japanese Olympic marathon team, training for Olympics," responded a man who said he was the coach. A joke? No, says the Japan National Tourist Organisation, telling us the team "wasn't doing so well in Japan" and had decided to shift its training to Sydney. CITY LIFE. As workers rushed to their offices yesterday morning Nerada Little, of West Pymble, watched a businessman with outstretched arms shepherd a large, lost huntsman spider to safety across Market Street's busy footpath. NATIONAL Maritime Museum workers are mourning the death of the French undersea explorer and aqualung inventor Jacques Cousteau.

Today, the Darling Harbour museum will open displays of relics retrieved from the Pandora, which sank on the Barrier Reef in 1791, and the Sydney Cove, which went down in Bass Strait in 1797. Such displays, said the exhibition curator, Kiernan Hosty, would have been impossible without Cous-teau's creation. "I should put a black armband on every item." ADAM Stewart, 6, of Clovelly, was at work on his school project, about Finland. Asked dad: "What's the capital of Finland?" said Adam. A GREYSTANES reader bought his train ticket for a trip from Chatswood to Liverpool, where he had an appointment.

The $3.80 fare would take him via Granville, where he'd change trains. But it was getting late so he used his mobile phone to cancel the appointment, stayed on the train and headed home, getting off at Parramatta. The ticket collector ordered him to buy a $1.60 ticket to cover his travel from Granville to Parramatta. He protested the Chatswood-to-Parramatta. fare was only $3.20 but she threatened him with a $100 fine for travelling without the right ticket CityRail gains $2.20 and another unhappy customer.

told by Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican, that support for legislation restricting Mr Clinton's stand on greenhouse gas emissions had increased over the past few weeks. The resolution demands that the Administration not sign any protocol on climate change unless it includes developing countries, and does no serious harm to the US. The legislation is designed to lock Mr Clinton into a firm position before the Japanese conference. PAGE 33: Global outcast. BHP profit tumbles as $lbn wiped from value By BRUCE HEXTALL Resources Writer BHP wiped more than $1 billion from the value of its operations yesterday, sending the group's annual profit tumbling to $410 million from $1 billion last year.

The troubled steel division booked a $220 million abnormal loss as BHP prepares for redundancy payments when it closes the Newcastle steelworks at a cost of about 2,500 jobs. BHP also took a massive writedown of $550 million on its ill-timed $3.2 billion takeover of the US-based Magma Copper group, a purchase presided over by its new chairman, Mr Jerry Ellis. Despite the 60 per cent slide in earnings, BHFs managing director, Mr John Prescott, remained adamant that BHP was entering a new era of growth. Before taking into account the $1 billion write-off, BHP achieved a 7.2 per cent increase in operating profit to $1.38 billion from last year's $1.29 billion. The large abnormal losses were expected by the sharemarket BHFs shares finished 9c up at $19.15, continuing a recovery from a low of $16.40 in April when it became obvious big writedowns against the value of some assets would be required.

The sharemarket now values BHP at $38.3 billion. Mr Prescott said a review of the company's assets had laid foundations for future growth. Operations now stretch from close to the Arctic Circle to the desert country of Chile. About 40 per cent of BHP assets are now overseas. PAGE 95: BHP clears decks.

By MICHAEL MILLETT and JAMES WOODFORD The United States President, Mr Clinton, has further isolated Australia by promising to call for a binding target for greenhouse gas emissions at the historic Kyoto conference on climate change in December. Australia opposes a set target and has called instead for countries to have different goals based on their economic needs. The Prime Minister, Mr Howard, meets Mr Clinton at the. White House early this morning, Sydney time, but is expected to get Heritage listing threat to second airport By MURRAY HOGARTH Environment Writer Holsworthy Military Range is expected to be heritage-listed within a month, the Herald has learned, threatening the Federal Government's choice of it as one of only two sites being investigated for Sydney's $5 billion-plus second airport. And leaked documents reveal that a spectacular increase in the number of "unique" Aboriginal sites at the range in Sydney's south has been identified during the environmental assessment process for the airport.

Holsworthy is at the centre of a fierce and growing protest campaign to stop any airport being built in its vast expanse of bushland and rugged river gorges, which contains threatened wildlife, including koalas, and rich European and Aboriginal heritage. It is understood that the Australian Heritage Commission (AHC) advised the Government yesterday that Holsworthy would almost certainly be interim-listed on the Register of the National Estate at its next meeting on July 25. This would trigger Section 30 of the Australian Heritage Commission Act 1975, which prohibits the Government from taking any action that would harm a place on the register unless there are "no feasible and prudent Thirteen months ago Federal Cabinet decreed that Holsworthy would be the sole "fallback" to Badgerys Creek in its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process, restricting consideration of "feasible and prudent alternatives" to one other site only. That decision was made despite Holsworthy having finished ninth out of 10 options during the last evaluation of airport sites in the mid-1980s, when Badgerys in the city's south-west was chosen as the best, and Wilton further south from Holsworthy second best. The chairman of the National Trust of NSW, Mr Barry O'Keefe, QC, said yesterday he was "very excited" at the prospect of interim listing for Holsworthy and that "it gives new life to the argument against the airport going Mr O'Keefe, who also heads the Independent Commission Against Corruption, said that heritage listing would open the way for a Federal Court challenge to the Government if it proceeded with Holsworthy.

"The first thing is that it would constitute a clear and legal recognition of the National Trust's long-standing position in relation to the Holsworthy area. We classified it ages ago," he said. It is understood that all of the AHC's commissioners have visited Holsworthy, that the commission's staff are preparing advice on the 190 square Continued Page 15 about SA1 billion over five years in aid to developing countries to help them reduce greenhouse gases. "No nation can evade its responsibility to confront it," Mr Clinton said. "We must all do our part industrial nations that emit the largest quantities of greenhouse gases, and developing nations whose emissions are growing rapidly." But in separate meetings with Mr Howard earlier, both the majority Senate Leader, Senator Trent Lott, and the House The Hong Kong deal isn't like this.

The place is already close to being a democracy, closer than most countries in the world. The colony even has a bill of rights that guarantees free speech and the right to dissent. So here's something that comes close to being new in the world. The people of Hong Kong, having tasted the hors d'oeuvres of democracy and been teased with a whiff of the main course, are to be handed over to the fixers and tyrants of Beijing. Handed over to a cabal of creaky and cranky old men who think dissent is something you run over with a tank.

And not because of a ar or a crisis, but because of a chess game between a worn-out superpower and an emerging one. There's a hint, no more, of the Timor gambit here. The deal is neat but cynical. Ah, the tangled skeins of morality. British newspapers are delivering sermons on why we Australians should apologise for the stolen Aboriginal children even though most of us Continued Page 22 CLASSIFIED Section no in bold Full Index 4 124 Auctions general ..2 48 Business for sale .4 108 Computers 7 1 Com.

Entertainment Employment Herald Motor Personal Real of greenhouse gas emissions, although he applauded the European Union for calling for a 15 per cut by 2010. Mr Clinton also wants devel LES CAR LYON on the Hong Kong handover pretend shrubs, no big sky, just a slit of inky blue between the towers. And then we'd hear it. We'd hear this cock crow, raucous and randy and wild of spirit, chanticleer on steroids. It was like hearing a police siren in the main street of Oodnadatta.

Someone, somewhere the sound came from high up was keeping a rooster, probably in a cage and almost certainly to eat. No matter. In this, the most urban and mercenary of cities, he was a rare bird, proof that the movers and shakers hadn't won every round. And whoever I oping nations to be required to agree to binding targets. They were originally exempt under the Climate Change Convention.

He also promised to give owned him hadn't completely forgotten that his own ancestors had emigrated here from huts and paddy fields on the mainland. The human spirit is a hard thing to kill. Now, two years on, I'm back in Australia trying to feel sorry for Hong Kong and its six million people. In theory, this should be easy. In 1984, Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher did a deal to hand the colony over to Beijing.

Think of two tycoons trading a huge mob of cattle and you'll get close to the spirit of the thing. And you'll recognise Maggie straight away in the photos taken of the occasion she's the hard-looking one. Some deal, this. The Brits had cast off colonies before, but mostly by handing them back to the people they had lifted them from in the first place. Heck, Britain even gave India back to the Indians.

In all cases, the idea was that these former colonies, having been shown the gospel according to Westminster, would blossom as democracies -well, sort of, anyway. If things didn't always work out that way, the idea was still worthy. The Aboriginal flag hung beside the NSW Parliament's coat of arms when Mimaga-Wajaar dancers from Lake Macquarie performed for the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Collins, and the Premier, Mr Carr, in the House yesterday. Meanwhile, it was revealed that the States could extinguish native title by converting leasehold land to freehold under the Federal Government's draft Wik legislation. Page 3, Full report.

Photograph by dean sewell It's the Dragon Chanticleer on Steroids We were in Hong Kong again for the international race meeting. Every dawn, we'd stand outside the Conrad Hotel, a modest little pension that provides you with your own personally embossed stationery, waiting for the bus to take us to the training gallops at Sha Tin, to be followed by a 12-course breakfast served on the racecourse lavn by a French chef. A tough assignment, sure, but someone had to do it. The hour before dawn is special up there. It's as close to serenity as Hong Kong ever gets.

The city hums rather than hustles, like an electric wire with the voltage turned down. Come daylight, there'll be a power surge. The locals will be trading everything from bullion to budgerigar futures, the streets will be bedlam. But not yet. The breeze still carries salt from the sea rather than diesel fumes.

You can actually think clearly. We'd stand outside the Conrad at the bottom of a typical Hong Kong canyon, hemmed in by glass and concrete, plastic and neon, a country boy's idea of Hell. No trees, just a few Child care: the no-frills solution By ADELE HORIN A revolution in Australia's child-care centres is under way. Consultants have recommended a new era of hard-nosed management, as community-based long day care centres face Federal funding cuts of $40 million from next Tuesday. The Government wants the centres to compete on an even footing with private child-care centres which receive no subsidy, and it has provided $8 million for the consultants to advise on the cost cutting.

But the advice has not gone down well with many child-care providers or parents. The centres have been given a range of options, including sacking staff, cutting food quality and getting parents to provide toilet paper, nappy wipes and suncream. Centres have also been told to be more businesslike and crack down on parents with bad debts. And even with the cost-cutting, some fees are set to rise by up to $40 a week. PAGE 4: Crunch time.

ROAD TOLL 286 Last year 275 PHONE Editorial ...92822822 Classified ....132535 Timber! Rate Saver is one of the lowest variable home loan rates in Australia. Now that leaves most of the other banks for dead. Call 13 24 07 24 hours, 7 days. www.colonial.com.au KfotentiaU Wouldn't you be better off? ISSN 0312-6315 HI WEATHER TODAYSydney9tol8.Rainperiodsincreasinglater INSIDE with the risk of an isolated thunderstorm. News Review 33 Obituaries 124 Opera Hse Spec 16 Opinion 47 Sport 62 TV Spectrum 24 World 19 Properties ...4 102 6 18 9 1 Trader 4111 Market 3 63 Notices.

.4 124 Estate 5 1 Internet www.smh.com.au Home delivery (02)92823800 ,2 Liverpool 8 to 19 Richmond 8 to 19. Arts Spectrum 13 NSW: Scattered showers across the State. Books Spectrum 10 Sunrise 7.01 am Sunset 4.56 pm Bridge Spectrum 23 TOMORROW Showers and a maximum of 16. Business 95 DETAILS Page 51. Crosswords Soec 23 Rate as at 290597.

Fees and charges are payable. Full details of relevant terms and conditions are available on application. State Bank of New South Wales Limited ACN 003 963 228. CSB 1214.