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

1 5 iilfl1Mlf 1M1 anil SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 1997 $1.30 No. 49,920 FIRST PUBLISHED 1831 Lr;) The fall SMOM How Packer The rl of Fairfax TfteMBiig Murdoch wrecked Men's 3 r3Cj-0 years on fel A tfmMk our game It Issue lm WEEKEND BUSINESS aaaQUUW SPORT KEN ART! iURSON'S lYt WifltliH' Wi nVfNO S( Barbecue wisdom, a nn a. 1 eJistra axes 25,50 jobs COLUMN 8 AN EVENTFUL night. On her way back from skiing, Lyn Jury, of Leumeah, pulled into a service station south of Canberra. Then another car came speeding into the forecourt, its driver honking his horn.

A woman passenger had just given birth to a girl and was having difficulties. Lyn just happens to be the Sydney Hilton Hotel's occupational health and safety co-ordinator, a trained nurse Coincidence No 1. Then she was joined by another customer, a doctor who specialised in difficult neonatal deliveries Coincidence No 2. Between them, they stabilised the mother and baby until an ambulance arrived. The drama over, Lyn drove home to find someone had broken in.

THIS ad was found by Peter Ward in the Guardian at Cowra, where the churches are trying new ways of attracting congregations: oat near, '90s dads Photo RICK STEVENS Dance, which deals with the older toddlerus destructivus. But it's just one of several new Australian publications dealing with parenting in the '90s, including this week's best-seller, Stephen Biddulph's Raising Boys. Downey's new book addresses "toiley-time'' and "vomit, snot 4n' worms" but also serious issues such as child discipline. farn By MATTHEW KIDMAN and ANNE DAVIES Telstra has set aside $2.3 billion to cover the cost of culling 25,500 jobs and huge losses from pay TV as it enters the countdown to the sharemarket float of one third of the company in November. The Government-owned Telstra yesterday announced an annual net tax prof of 1 .6 billion for the year to June 30, down 29 per cent on the previous year's record of $2.3 billion.

The poorer result was due not to poor trading performance, but to a decision by the Telstra board to clear the decks ahead of the partial privatisation in November. More than $2.3 billion has been set aside to cover one-off costs, including $1.1 billion for a massive redundancy program. Telstra is now one year into a plan to shed 25,500 staff by the end of the century, leaving it with a slimmed down workforce of 53,000. Ahrmt 10.S00 pmnlnvpp? Ipft last financial year and 7,000 are expected to go this year. Over the next two years a further 8,000 jobs will be shed.

The company was also forced to write down its investment in pay TV. Like Optus, which on Thursday announced it had written off its pay TV investment by $415 million, Telstra also acknowledged the disaster pay TV has been. It will write down its investment in the broadband pay TV cable by $587 million and will also make a provision of $476 million for the costs associated with reducing its commitments to Foxtel to roll out past four million homes. "We have squared away for the future," Telstra's chief executive, Mr Frank Blount, said. "It A cautious Minister for Communications, Senator Alston, said he could not comment on the Telstra result because of the Corporations Law in the pre-float period.

But the new chief executive of Optus, Mr Chris Anderson, who was appointed yesterday, lost no time in taking a swing at his competitor. "Telstra has acted like a monster in this community; it shouldn't be able to get away with it," Mr Anderson said. Competition was "not only an issue for telecommunications; it is an issue for the future of Australia, in my view. Competition has got to be brought back to this "My reading of it is that the regulators are fine, the Government settings are fine the spirit of what is trying to be achieved hasn't been adhered to by Telstra." Mr Anderson, the former chief executive of TVNZ, takes over in October from a Cable Wireless executive, Mr Peter Howell-Davies, who has been in the job barely two months. Telstra management was warned of "industrial turmoil" from the main Telstra union, the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union, if the company tried to impose forced redundancies to meet its workforce reduction targets.

The Opposition spokesman on communications, Senator Chris Schacht, said Telstra's massive operating profit confirmed that the public deserved lower prices for telephony and other telecommunications services. PAGE 6: Union warns Telstra of industrial turmoil. PAGE 94: Feral Optus roasts Telstra Road fines up Court fines for traffic and parking offences, drink driving and public transport fare evasion will rise by 10 per cent from Monday. They will not apply to on the spot fines only if the matter goes to court. PAGE 3: Full report.

guide for he says. They gain most from the kinds of chats they have around a barbecue. He started writing down these conversations and the result was his first book, So You're Going to Be a Dad, published in 1994. Now the author, an English teacher at Dee Why's St Luke's Grammar and a father of three girls, is arning of a new threat to dads unaccustomed to a baby about the house in his new book, Dads, Toddlers and the Chicken games will determine this year's GPS championship. If King's win, it will be the champions.

If Shore and Riverview both win, they are co-champions. It is no coincidence that these are the four GPS schools which still field large numbers of teams. As for the others, Newington had trouble finding a 16B team. Scots has not allowed its teams to play some teams at other schools. High has struggled for years to muster and teams.

Grammar's 15 As were not even able to complete their full season. Increasingly, the two deepest CAS rugby schools, Waverley and Knox, are being relied on to play the deep GPS schools, while the remaining CAS schools, Barker, Cranbrook, St Aloysius and Trinity, are finding more games with the weaker GPS schools. That any amalgamation is even being discussed also reflects disenchantment felt by the schools towards the NSW Rugby Union. "Their interest in grassroots rugby is niL" says Lantry. ROAD TOLL 394 Last year 380 PHONE Market 3 61 4 120 Editorial ...9282 2822 Classified 132535 Party time author Peter Downey, wife Meredith, and daughters Rachael, Georgia and Matilda.

1995-96 if 1996- 97 1997- 98 1998- 99 mm ,000 jyyuuo 151,000 Increase 199-96 due to pay i TV installation Projection is financially prudent." Mr Blount said he did not believe Telstra's $2.5 billion investment in pay TV had been a mistake. "This decision was never about pay TV per se; it was about local telephony defence, he said. "We never got the opportunity to test our defence argument," a reference to the difficulties Optus has had in carrying local calls on its pay TV network. The third black spot was Telstra's investment in the Jin-dalee over-the-horizon radar network, with Telstra writing off $394 million on the project. But on its main business telephony Telstra showed solid growth in revenues, up 4.9 per cent to a massive $15.4 billion.

At the same time costs rose only 2 per cent to $9.3 billion, leaving Telstra with an 18 per cent gain in pre-tax, pre-abnor-mals profit. Mobile telephony continued to grow in double-digit figures and with a more relaxed regulatory regime, Telstra is well placed to defend its market share. Resources Minister, Senator Parer. But officials from Senator Hill's department, in an assessment of the ERA proposal raised concerns over the lack of scientific information. They found the company's data on water quality was inadequate.

And they said detailed fauna surveys of the haul road and mine site areas had not taken place. A "reconnaissance flora survey" was conducted by helicopter in April 1996 but it did not target likely endangered species. "Until detailed surveys are conducted for the access road, mine site and haul road, assessment of potential impacts cannot be considered complete." Conservationists have condemned Senator Hill's announcement of approval for the project before any possible new findings. A spokeswoman for the Wilderness Society, Ms Virginia Young, said: "The willingness of the Government to give an environmental green light when there is still considerable uncertainty about the environmental impact is a surprise." The chief executive of ERA, Mr Phillip Shirvington, said his company was determined to meet all environmental recommendations. He said ERA had been denied access and was committed to further talks with the senior traditional owner of the Jabiluka lease, Ms Yvonne Margarula.

PAGE 37: Something to fight for. Weather today sydney 11 sunny. Liverpool 7 Key checks not made at Jabiluka CHURCH NOTICES TICES ft is solo operating! GIRLS WANTED, to work as solo operatinpi escorts. 0500836999 escon FOR SOME years, two lighting shops have faced each other across an intersection in Ash-field. One now has a window sign: Grand closing sale.

Building sold. The other, rather triumphantly, says: Staying Open Sale. New Lease Signed. A BIG celebration in Peakhurst tonight In three generations of the Lee family, there have been only three males and all born on the same day, August 30. Yong Suk Lee, an only son and turning 60, has come down from Seoul to be with his only son, Juhwa Lee, turning 33, and Juhwa's only son, Dong Hee Lee, turning 3, for a massive birthday party.

Juhwa and Dong Hee are both Australian. SEQUEL to Egregious Error No 78 (Column 8, yesterday). Several readers (it's amazing what Herald readers know) tell us that Charlotte Bronte started a fifth novel, called Emma, but left it unfinished when she died on March 31, 1855. Only a few pages remain. Would this satisfy the crossword clue quoted yesterday? We think not TRAVELLING through Ireland, Carol Griffith, of Beverly Hills, found yet another example of multiskilling.

In Virginia, County Cavan, Mr E. J. O'Dwyer's establishment carried signs proclaiming: BLACKWATER HOUSE Lounge Snooker Funeral Directors Auctioneers and Valuers Nationwide Building Society AND there was accommodation upstairs. J-I'll Cruise inG Too few teams to go round so schools talk of merging competitions Rugby fades as GPS rite of passage The grand, eeyant, olcte days, of cruise liners jfinff don't measure up to By MICHAEL EVANS Peter Downey realised he had plenty to learn about being a dad at his daughter Rachael's fifth birthday party. Dressed in full pirate costume, he burst into the party at his Balgowlah home yelling "Aah, me hearties!" and promptly caused all the children to burst into tears.

"We had to ring all the parents and get them to come and reassure their kids," he recalls. Old GPS boys Nick Farr-Jones and Matt Burke. making deep incursions. Parental concerns with rugby injuries appear to be growing. The donning of a rugby jumper is no longer an automatic rite of passage at GPS schools.

The chairman of the GPS athletic association, Michael Punch of Riverview, said yesterday: "I 'm aware that some of the sportsmasters are unhappy. In order to get a good round of fixtures, the strong schools have to look further afield, to the CAS Combined Associated "When I put Rachael to bed she just looked at me and said, 'Dad, you wrecked my party'." Peter read self-help guides to parenting when his wife, Meredith, was first pregnant, but found them irrelevant. "They were either too academic or these saccharine-sweet American books about how pregnancy and parenthood was this wonderful journey," he says. Modern dads don't need academic advice on fathering, Schools. But I have seen no formal proposals to amalgamate the competitions." Indeed, both Punch and Lantry blanched at the prospect of proposing an amalgamation to that fearsome group of traditionalists, the GPS headmasters.

Such is the nature of this group that when Optus proposed televising the GPS match of the day, most headmasters dismissed it without even discussing money. Yet the GPS rugby competition has provided the backbone of most NSW and Australian teams over the decades, players such as Wallaby captain Nick Farr-Jones (who couldn't even get into the Newington firsts), John Brass (High), Peter Fenwicke (Kings), the 1991 World Cup front-rowers Tony Daly (Joeys) and Phil Kearns (Newington) and Wallaby stand-out, Matt Burke (Joeys). Crowds of more than 10,000 people are expected today at two GPS games, King's versus Shore, and the fierce Catholic derby, Riverview versus Joeys. Both By JAMES WOODFORD in Canberra The Federal Environment Minister, Senator Hill, has recommended approval for the Jabiluka uranium mine without proper Aboriginal or European cultural heritage studies, no air quality studies and flora and soil surveys limited to searches by helicopter. Senator Hill has made 77 recommendations accompanying his approval for the mine, including the completion of scientific studies, but said on Thursday he thought nothing would be discovered that was likely to prevent the mine operation going ahead.

However the minister's own department, in its Environmental -Assessment Report, has warned of the long-term danger posed by the extra 20 million tonnes of contaminated, radioactive tailings, or mine residues, that will be produced. These will remain radioactive for "thousands of the Environment Assessment Branch's report says. "Although the company Energy Resources of Australia has committed to further action if seepage is detected, the relevance of such a commitment to an event that may occur years or more from present is questionable," it says. Senator Hill has said there are no environmental reasons for the mine not to proceed. The final decision to grant uranium export permits rests with the Internet www.smh.com.au Home delivery (02)92823800 ISSN 0312-6315 ir 7 70312" 631063 Her 1998 'Odyssey of Unique Discoveries' visits 38 magnificent ports.

Experience a grand quest for adventure. Call your AFTA travel agent or Cunard on (02) 9956 7777. By PAUL SHEEHAN Sydney's greatest bastion of tradition and elitism is showing clear signs of wear. In what will be regarded as unthinkable to thousands of people, some of the men who run the GPS rugby competition would like to end a century of tradition, and exclusion, and amalgamate their rugby competition with some outside schools. "This is the worst year we've ever had, it's been a nightmare finding games for all our sides," Tony Lantry, the sportsmaster of Australia's greatest rugby nursery, St Joseph's College at Hunters Hill, said.

"We have 38 teams, but only eight of them could get a game at Grammar. We would like to play schools that can field at least four teams in each age group. "We have to find games for our boys. It's ridiculous that we have to play the same schools three times." Sydney Grammar now fields more soccer teams (18) than rugby teams (13). Basketball is to 19-Mid-fine and mosty to 21.

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