The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • 4

4 THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD THURSDAY MARCH 20 1997 Shake-up to counter migrant rorting Schofield to head Harbour Festival By MICHAEL MILLETT Political Correspondent The Federal Government is planning a major shake-up of its immigration review system turning over tribunal personnel and telescoping the review process to counter what it claims is widespread by would-be migrants The rorting disclosed in Parliament by the Minister for Immigration Mr Ruddock yesterday includes people arriving on tourist visas and subsequently claiming refugee status Because of long processing delays the asylum seekers are able to work and use the Medicare system sometimes for several years before their claims are finalised at a cost of no more than the $30 fee for a protection visa Mr Ruddock said there was evidence of systematic fraud with charging up to $8000 to generate applications and advise clients on how to delay the process legally The include people from Fiji Tonga and the Philippines As an initial step Mr Ruddock will announce today the intention to advertise appointments to the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) the independent body-used to assess asylum claims The existing 42 full-time and 17 part-time members have been advised they will have to reapply for their positions with no guarantee of reappointment The move is the precursor to an even wider shake-up of the merit and judicial review process which Mr Ruddock has been working on for some months Based on a departmental review and a high-level of the it is understood the shake-up could involve the amalgamation of the RRT with the Immigration Review Tribu nal (IRT) a separate body dealing with non-refugee claims It is understood Cabinet is looking at an even more radical option put to the previous Government involving the amalgamation of a raft of merit review bodies including the Review Board the Social Security Appeals Tribunal and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal This would yield big administrative savings an important consideration for a Government searching for savings of between $2 billion and $3 billion in the May Budget Sources said Mr Ruddock was also looking at combining the internal review process and the IRT eliminating one step in the processing of non-refugee claims Scrapping the IRT would enable the Government to remove a number of controversial appointments made by the former Immigration Minister Senator Nick Bolkus When in opposition the Coalition accused Senator Bolkus of using IRT vacancies to stack the tribunal with political Mr Ruddock has been critical of the review system set up by Labor labelling the asylum process as a system" which no other country-had sought to emulate He has also criticised the RRT accusing it of taking an overly bureaucratic approach to decisions and turning over cases too slowly While members of a similar tribunal in Britain handle up to 10 cases a week the RRT is averaging two Mr Ruddock said the determination to address the problem of abuse was not a code for denying protection to genuine refugees we seem to be confronted with a prevalence of abuse which delays assessment and is disadvantaging bona fide he said More flats less solar power for Games site By MATTHEW MOORE Olympics Editor The number of dwellings proposed for the Olympic Games village has been increased by nearly 500 and the amount of solar energy planned has been cut by one-third according to the development application just released The application lodged by the State Olympic Co-Ordination Authority (OCA) says 2074 dwellings will be built at the Homebush Bay site up from 1 600 when the plans were unveiled in December To accommodate the extra dwellings the Mirvac and Lend Lease consortium (MVIC) has proposed to increase the number of flats and four-storey apartment buildings instead of the three-storey blocks announced last year When plans for the revolutionary village were unveiled the Olympic Co-ordination Authority said it featured solar village concept with a commitment to provide 1000 dwellings with the photovoltaic cells and gas-boosted solar hot water However in the application now before the Minister for Urban Affairs and Planning Mr Knowles it is proposed that only 665 dwellings will have the cells producing a maximum of 665 kilowatts of power The assistant director of energy1 programs and planning with the NSW Department of Energy Mr Phillip Lee has written to the OCA to point out the change to the original plans should be noted that there may be some public expectation from newspaper reports and an OCA press release that there will be one megawatt of solar power he said According to the development application the by MVIC last year was only for 665 dwellings A spokesman for the OCA said last night MVIC had to installing solar panels on some of the extra 460 dwellings to be built after the Games although he conceded it was not obliged to are confident that with the development of improved technology and increased market acceptance fof solar power we will see that level The OCA spokesman said the Government was looking at installing solar panels itself in other buildings including a school as a way of increasing the amount of solar power generated on the site Pacific Power a Government-owned power generator confirmed in December it had agreed to pay for the installation and maintenance of tne solar panels at the Olympic Village A spokesman for the Olympics Minister Mr Knight said last night that the Government would a group of insect-eating birds fairy martins which lived on the site By MATTHEW MOORE Olympics Editor Three new senior staff have been appointed to the Sydney Olympic Committee (SOCOG) including Mr Leo Schofield who will be the artistic director in charge of the final event of the renamed Olympic Arts Festival the Harbour of Life Festival in 2000 It is believed Mr Schofield (pictured) will work for SOCOG for 40 weeks over the next three years The Minister for the Olympics Mr Knight declined to supply details of the agreement with Mr Schofield or how much he would be paid for the high-profile job discuss he said Early negotiations involved a package of close to $1 million and some sources have said the final agreement is not too far below that Mr present salary at the Sydney Festival is about $150000 plus extra expenses Mr Schofield has a contract until 2000 as the director of the Sydney Festival and Lord Mayor Councillor Frank Sartor was keen for an assurance that Mr job with SOCOG would not detract from his Sydney Festival work A spokeswoman for Cr Sartor said yesterday: are no outstanding issues from this A spokesman for Mr Knight said negotiations between SOCOG and the Sydney Festival had been resolved after bit of give and The Premier Mr Carr was keen to get Mr Schofield involved in the Olympic Arts Festival after his success running the Melbourne Festival although his salary demands caused some consternation on the SOCOG board Mr Knight also announced that Mr Craig Hassall would be general manager of the Olympic Arts Festival and Events Mr Knight said Mr Hassall would be for the entire arts program which includes the four festivals between 1 997 and He will work closely with Mr Schofield in this job although it is not clear whether Mr Schofield will report to him or vice versa The third appointment was that of Mr John Barbeler as general manager finance Until recently Mr Barbeler was a Singapore-based director of finance and logistics for a company called Pepsico Restaurants International going to be an enormous Mr Barbeler said of his new job am looking forward to working with such a high quality team to make Sydney the best Olympics The president of the Australian Olympic Committee Mr John Coates said Mr appointment meant now has one of the most powerful collections of executives in this Olympic Arts new head Craig Hassall the golden rule is lose money Photograph by steven siewert Opera chief tunes up Olympic arts Coach ban a non-starter By VALERIE LAWSON a long long time from August March But at last the arts vacuum of the Sydney Olympics is filled formally by Craig Hassall 32 who has spent of my working at Opera Australia Last August the former Cultural Olympiad head Jonah Jones said he wanted to leave Yesterday three weeks after new of Mr resignation from the opera whizzed around the office by internal e-mail the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games announced he would be general manager of the renamed Olympic Arts Festival (OAF) From his old Surry Hills office looking as barren as last act of La Mr Hassail said a decade at the opera working for former general manager Donald McDonald taught him the golden rule lose money Mr Hassall who admits babe in the in arts politics said he was approached for his new job in February by marketing director John Moore who stressed were very strong marketing imperatives to this He was then interviewed by Mr McDonald who now chairs the ABC and Cultural Commission Mr Hassall was told last month that Leo Schofield would be artistic director of the Olympics Arts Festival in 2000 Asked who would be the creative force for the 1998 and 1999 festivals Mr Hassall said he did not know whether he would appoint artistic directors He favours such appointments but has faith in my own abilities to run them perhaps with a technical producer He the theatre opera and classical music (but played only bagpipes at Scots College) and likes the new name better than which sounded like violinists in a row with a starter The names of the 1997 and festivals A Sea Change and Reaching the World were enough to keep the titles and give them Olympic bid included four arts festivals The program for the first Festival of the Dreaming will be announced in June The second A Sea Change is about happened when Europeans came to Australia This could be as broad as an Australian theatre company putting on Hamlet the interaction of Australian and European ideas pretty wide open to Mr Hassall saw theme Reaching the World as big chance for multi-media with the Internet PBS and Channel 4 in Britain I know the ABC has talked to SOCOG already about a deal with the Members of the new Cultural Commission have discussed the need for four arts festivals on the $21 million budget Some have argued against festivals in and others believe a commitment to sponsors must be honoured Mr Hassall said he thought the budget was fixed but would love $40 Mr Hassall is from a farming family in Gilgandra and studied economics at Sydney University He has also managed the Bell Shakespeare Company However it had now been decided to look at other ways of improving traffic flow such as restricting turning movements and working out preferred coach routes through the area The authority plans to put a final draft of its study on public exhibition in late May In its submission to the authority the Tourism Task Force warned that measures to curb coach access would create problems for hotels which rely on more than one entrance for arriving and departing guests It said a number of inbound tom-operators had warned they would move their business to hotels away from The Rocks if forced to use mini-coaches By UNDA MORRIS Transport Writer The Sydney Cove Authority has buckled under pressure from private bus operators and the tourist industry and abandoned controversial plans to ban private coaches from The Rocks A traffic and transport study of The Rocks had recommended the historic precinct become a no-go zone for coaches carrying more than 20 passengers except for government buses and coaches operating from the Overseas Passenger Terminal The chief executive Mr Bob Mitchell said the ban had been proposed to counter growing congestion in The Rocks and fears for pedestrian safety oyster sales drop 85 after hepatitis A outbreak HIA RENOVATA SUPA CENTA Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal of New South Wales GRAND OPENIING Public Hearings 1 Passenger Transport Fares 2 Sewerage Backlog Prices The Tribunal will hold public hearings in respect of the Tribunal's investigations into Transport Fares and Sewerage Backlog prices at the Tribunal's hearing rooms Level 2 44 Market Street Sydney The hearings will commence at 1000am on the following dates: 1 Public Transport Fares Monday 24 March 1997 2 Sewerage Backlog Prices Wednesday 26 March 1997 Information about hearing agendas interim report (Sewerage Backlog) and submissions can be obtained by contacting Ms Mary West: telephone (02) 9290 8434 Further inquiries for Transport contact Mr Michael Seery: telephone (02) 9290 8421 and for Backlog Sewerage contact Mr Robert Burford: telephone (02) 9290 8408 Thomas Parry National Mutual Centre PO Box Q290 Chairman 44 Market Street QVB Post Office 20 March 1997 SYDNEY NSW 2000 NSW 1230 By ARDYN BERNOTH The NSW seafood industry is in crisis following the Wallis Lake oyster scare with retailers reporting an 85 per cent drop in oyster sales in the past three weeks The seafood industry is being crippled by the scare with a study by the Master Fish Association of 100 retailers last week showing a 30 per cent fall in all sales The plunge in demand has caused seafood prices to drop by up to 25 per cent over the past week their lowest level for more than five years the executive officer of the association Mr Sam Gordon said industry is very much demand-fed and at the moment there are kilos of wonderful The Minister for Fisheries Mr Martin will meet key restaurateurs today including Mr Peter Doyle of restaurants and Mr Neill Perry of Rockpool to help devise a way to boost public confidence in seafood again A Federal Court class action against Great Lakes Council nine oyster-farming companies and four processing companies over the hepatitis A outbreak may be extended to NSW Government departments A partner of the Melbourne law firm Slater and Gordon Mr Andrew Grech said he would examine an Environment Protection Authority report about the source of the outbreak PAGE 16: Editorial seafood out there which no-one wants to he said top seafood restaurants are also being hit by the incident in which one man died and 300 people were infected with hepatitis A after eating contaminated Wallis Lake oysters The chief executive of the Restaurant and Catering Industry Association Ms Jenny Lambert said the situation was desperate for seafood restaurants and she feared the dire conditions could continue for at least six months shows that once the public is scared like this it takes an industry months even up to a year to recover There is no reason the public should be concerned she said KA45 Mountain Designs 1 aranhoras H5M SAU NOW ON! 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