Month: May 2019

It was 50 years ago when R.J. Hawke, just-elected president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, arrived as guest of honour and after-dinner speaker at the Victoria Police Criminal Investigation Branch’s annual dinner.

Unwisely, he fronted directly from a long lunch and was spectacularly drunk.

Even so, the Police Association secretary Bill Crowley (who would later rise to the rank of assistant  commissioner) introduced Hawke that Friday night as ‘‘The future prime minister of Australia.’’ Bob continued to drink during the meal until it was his turn to speak. After all, the only drinking school harder than union delegates is hardened detectives.

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He rose unsteadily and started with a joke that was flatter than his unfinished beer. ‘‘CIB,’’ he started, ‘‘stands for Criminally Insane Bastards.’’

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Some detectives staged a walkout during the speech but returned later, swapping their indignation for port and cheese. The other speaker, Chief Commissioner Noel Wilby, was given a standing ovation.

One of those present was a hard-as-nails Stolen Motor Car detective by the name of Rod Shedden, who approached Hawke to tell him he was out of order. ‘‘He beat me with words,’’ says Rod, ‘‘and we ended up shaking hands''.

As was the way of detectives from that generation, the night continued to the Police Club at the back of the Russell Street Police Station.

‘‘He was lording it over everybody saying, ‘I’m R.J Hawke, president-elect of the ACTU,’ ’’ says Shedden. Multiple witness say Hawke started flirting with one of the female bar staff, eventually putting her on his knee.

‘‘I thought, ‘I’m sick and tired of this, bugger it’,’’ recalls Rod.

He went over to remind Hawke he was a guest in the Police Club and should pull his head in. Hawke, never short of a word, said as the police union owned the club and he was the head of the ACTU he was welcome at any time.

Shedden, a big man with fists the size of ham hocks, invited the much smaller Hawke outside for a more robust discussion. ‘‘To his credit he followed me out,’’ says Rod, now 82.

‘‘He put his glasses in his top pocket and faced up and I went ‘bang’, knocking him arse over head. I was going to pick him up and give him a few rib ticklers to remind him to keep better manners but some of my mates grabbed me and said ‘Rod, no more’.’’

By this point the future prime minister had lost all interest in the barmaid, the fight and the whole evening. ‘‘I’d whacked him pretty hard in the head and he was unconscious.’’

When Crowley descended on the scene he went straight into cover-up mode, threw the still- dazed Hawke into a car and sped off, reversing into the wall of the Police Club in his haste to leave the scene of the crime.

On Monday, Shedden had to front his boss. ‘‘Rod, what have you done? Half the force wants you sacked and the other half want you promoted.’’

The twist is that a very laundered version of the story appeared in a small newspaper suggesting that following the speech there was a dispute at the Police Club and ‘‘tempers became frayed''.

An outraged Hawke sued, alleging the article implied he was ‘‘guilty of offensive behaviour in a public place and accordingly had broken the law’’.

Shedden was told that under no circumstances could he give evidence, as it would be taken as an admission of assault. ‘‘I was told if I open my mouth I’d be sacked and lose all my entitlements.’’

The case was settled out of court.

In 1988 Rod Shedden retired as a detective sergeant, refusing promotion, ‘‘because all I wanted to do was to catch crooks''. And Bob Hawke, as Crowley (who became a life member of the association) had predicted all those years earlier, became prime minister.

I first learned of the fracas and subsequent cover-up more than 40 years ago and confirmed it with Rod over more than one quiet glass of ale when no-one was invited outside (except into the beer garden). But he was disinclined to go on the record.

I rang him shortly after the May 16 death of Australia's third-longest serving and much loved prime minister. This time, mellowed with age, he said yes.

‘‘The poor old bastard’s gone now. Good luck to him.’’

New Delhi: Ed Dohring, a doctor from Arizona, had dreamed his whole life of reaching the top of Mount Everest. But when he summited a few days ago, he was shocked by what he saw.

Climbers were pushing and shoving to take selfies. The flat part of the summit, which he estimated at about the size of two table-tennis tables, was packed with 15 or 20 people. To get up there, he had to wait hours in a line, chest to chest, one puffy jacket after the next, on an icy, rocky ridge with a several-thousand metre drop.

He even had to step around the frozen body of a woman who had just died.

"It was scary," he said by telephone from Kathmandu, Nepal, where he was resting in a hotel room. "It was like a zoo."

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This has been one of the deadliest climbing seasons on Everest, with at least 10 deaths. And at least some seem to have been avoidable.

The problem hasn't been avalanches, blizzards or high winds. Veteran climbers and industry leaders blame having too many people on the mountain, in general, and too many inexperienced climbers, in particular.

Fly-by-night adventure companies are taking up untrained climbers who pose a risk to everyone on the mountain. And the Nepalese government, hungry for every climbing dollar it can get, has issued more permits than Everest can safely handle, some experienced mountaineers say.

Add to that Everest's inimitable appeal to a growing body of thrill-seekers the world over. And the fact that Nepal, one of Asia's poorest nations and the site of most Everest climbs, has a long record of shoddy regulations, mismanagement and corruption.

The result is a crowded, unruly scene reminiscent of "Lord of the Flies"— at 8800 metres. At that altitude, a delay of even an hour or two can mean life or death.

To reach the summit, climbers shed every pound of gear they can and take with them just enough canisters of compressed oxygen to make it to the top and back down. It is hard to think straight at that altitude, climbers say.

According to Sherpas and climbers, some of the deaths this year were caused by people getting held up in the long lines on the last 300 metres or so of the climb, unable to get up and down fast enough to replenish their oxygen supply. Others were simply not fit enough to be on the mountain in the first place.

Some climbers did not even know how to put on a pair of crampons, clip-on spikes that increase traction on ice, Sherpas said.

Nepal has no strict rules about who can climb Everest, and veteran climbers say that is a recipe for disaster.

"You have to qualify to do the Iron Man. You have to qualify to run the New York marathon,'' said Alan Arnette, a prominent Everest chronicler and climber. "But you don't have to qualify to climb the highest mountain in the world? What's wrong with this picture?"

The last time 10 or more people died on Everest was in 2015, during an avalanche.

By some measures, the Everest machine has only gotten more out of control.

Last year, veteran climbers, insurance companies and news organisations exposed a far-reaching conspiracy by guides, helicopter companies and hospitals to bilk millions of dollars from insurance companies by evacuating trekkers with minor signs of altitude sickness.

Climbers complain of theft and heaps of trash on the mountain. And earlier this year, government investigators uncovered vast problems with the lifesaving oxygen systems used by many climbers. Climbers said cylinders were found to be leaking, exploding or being improperly filled on a black market.

But despite complaints about safety lapses, this year the Nepali government issued a record number of permits, 381, as part of a bigger push to commercialise the mountain. Climbers say the permit numbers have been going up steadily each year and that this year the traffic jams were heavier than ever.

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"This is not going to improve," said Lukas Furtenbach, a guide who recently relocated his climbers to the Chinese side of Everest because of the overcrowding in Nepal and the surge of inexperienced climbers.

"There's a lot of corruption in the Nepali government," he said. "They take whatever they can get."

Nepali officials denied any wrongdoing and said the trekking companies were the ones responsible for safety on the mountain.

Danduraj Ghimire, the director-general of Nepal's department of tourism, said in an interview on Sunday that the large number of deaths this year was not related to crowds, but because there were fewer good weather days for climbers to safely summit. He said the government was not inclined to change the number of permits.

"If you really want to limit the number of climbers," Ghimire said, "let's just end all expeditions on our holy mountain."

To be sure, the race to the top is driven by the weather. May is the best time of the year to summit, but even then there are only a few days when it is clear enough and the winds are mild enough to make an attempt at the top.

But one of the critical problems this year, veterans say, seems to be the sheer number of people trying to reach the summit at the same time. And since there is no government traffic cop high on the mountain, the task of deciding when groups get to attempt their final ascent is left up to mountaineering companies.

Climbers themselves, experienced or not, are often so driven to finish their quest that they may keep going even if they see the dangers escalating.

A few decades ago, the people climbing Everest were largely experienced mountaineers willing to pay a lot of money. But in recent years, longtime climbers say, lower-cost operators working out of small storefronts in Kathmandu, the capital, and even more expensive foreign companies that do not emphasise safety have entered the market and offered to take just about anyone to the top.

Sometimes these trips go very wrong.

From interviews with several climbers, it seems that as the groups get closer to the summit, the pressures increase and some people lose their sense of decency.

Fatima Deryan, an experienced Lebanese mountaineer, was making her way to the summit recently when less experienced climbers started collapsing in front of her. Temperatures were dropping to -30. Oxygen tanks were running low. And roughly 150 people were packed together, clipped to the same safety line.

"A lot of people were panicking, worrying about themselves — and nobody thinks about those who are collapsing," Deryan said.

"It is a question of ethics," she said. "We are all on oxygen. You figure out that if you help, you are going to die.''

She offered to help some of the sick people, she said, but then kept going and made it to the summit, which is currently measured at 8848 metres. On the way back down, she had to fight her way again through the crowds.

"It was terrible," she said.

Around the same time, Rizza Alee, an 18-year-old climber from Kashmir, a disputed territory between India and Pakistan, was making his way up the mountain. He said he was stunned by how little empathy people had for those were struggling.

"I saw some people like they had no emotions,'' he said. "I asked people for water and no one gave me any. People are really obsessed with the summit. They are ready to kill themselves for the summit.''

But Alee himself took some chances; he has a heart condition and says he "kind of lied" to his expedition company when they asked if he had any health issues.

Dohring, the American doctor, represents the other end of the spectrum.

At 62, he has climbed peaks all over the world. He read about explorers as a boy and said he had always wanted to get to the "one spot where you can stand higher than any place else on earth''.

To prepare for Everest, he slept at home in a tent that simulated high-altitude conditions. His total Everest experience cost $100,000.

Still, there was only so much he could prepare for. Last month, when he hiked into base camp at Everest at an altitude of 5380 metres, Dohring said he was overcome with awe.

"You look at a circle of mountain peaks above you and think, 'What am I doing here?''' he said.

He pressed on. After long, cold days, he inched up a spiny trail to the summit early on Thursday and ran into crowds "aggressively jostling for pictures".

He was so scared, he said, that he plunked down on the snow to keep from losing his balance and had his guide take a picture of him holding up a small sign that said, "Hi Mom Love You.''

On the way down, he passed two more dead bodies in their tents.

"I was not prepared to see sick climbers being dragged down by the mountain by Sherpas or the surreal experience of finding dead bodies," he said.

But on Sunday, he had made it out. He boarded a helicopter after reaching Base Camp and flew back to Kathmandu.

He counted his blisters at the Yak and Yeti Hotel where he said he treated himself to a thick steak and cracked open a cold beer. "Everest Lager, of course," he said.

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It has been two years since the publication of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, in which a council of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders made a significant proposal for recognition of their community’s “rightful place” in modern Australia.

They called for a change to the constitution to create a new body of Indigenous representatives, a “Voice”, to advise parliament on matters affecting their community.

This is not however just about Indigenous people. As the Uluru statement put it, if the Voice becomes a reality it could become a "fuller expression of Australian nationhood”.

Unfortunately, then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull decided that the proposals in the statement were neither desirable nor capable of winning approval at a referendum. Since then the idea has languished.

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Prime Minister Scott Morrison has a huge opportunity. He has so far indicated a willingness to engage with the issues, and the appointment yesterday of the first Indigenous cabinet minister in Ken Wyatt, now Minister for Indigenous Australians, is a strong start. Mr Wyatt is a supporter of constitutional recognition.

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The Herald today launches a campaign for the creation of a Voice by the end of this term of parliament. There will be considerable debate about the best way to achieve that goal but one thing is clear: the process should be high on our agenda.

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Some have in the past issued shrill warnings about earlier steps towards correcting injustices stemming from the white settlement of Australia: from the 1967 referendum which allowed the Commonwealth to create laws for Aboriginal people, to the Mabo decision in 1992, which first recognised native title, to the Wik decision in 1996 recognising land rights on pastoral leases. Yet today most people would argue that these landmark advances have strengthened Australian democracy.

Similarly, some might claim that a Voice will usurp Parliament’s powers or undermine sovereignty. Yet the authors of the Uluru statement have been careful to offer a modest proposal in the hope of winning wide acceptance. The Voice will simply be a formal process for canvassing the views of Indigenous people.

While some will question the value of creating this talk shop, they are wrong. The Voice will be a significant and practical institution because it will focus public attention on the plight of Indigenous people. Governments will have to consider what it says about concrete problems from incarceration rates to employment programs to the taking of children into foster care. The current Closing the Gap annual reports, the only formal accounting of policies towards Indigenous Australians, have failed to create that focus.

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Some have raised concerns about the lack of detailed agreement on how representatives to the Voice will be chosen from the diverse Indigenous community, or on how the new body will operate. There is a debate about whether all these details must be worked out in advance before a referendum or whether Australians should be asked to vote on the broad principles and leave the details till later. It is a tough call. The structure of the body must be clear enough to reassure Australians about what they are voting for but it should not be so specific that the vote becomes bogged down in the technicalities that doomed the referendum on the republic.

The Herald wants to open a discussion to facilitate the resolution of all these issues, led by Indigenous voices. It’s time we made this a priority and we had a grown-up, honest conversation about our past, in order to embrace the future.

For too long, politics has got in the way. The Herald urges Mr Morrison to show leadership and explain why this is important for all Australians. The time for Indigenous recognition, as an affirmation of our unique national identity, is long overdue.

• The Herald's editor Lisa Davies writes a weekly newsletter exclusively for subscribers. To have it delivered to your inbox, please sign up here

Loyal staff are being offered an extra five days of paid annual leave to stay put, while others are given the option of taking the school holidays with their children.

As the Reserve Bank of Australia grapples with stubbornly slow wage growth and a rise in unemployment, some companies are offering alternatives to a pay rise to keep valued staff happy.

ANZ has introduced what it calls "loyalty leave" in the form of an extra five days of paid holidays to employees with more than three years of consecutive service. This extends paid annual leave from four weeks to five.

ANZ executive Kathryn van der Merwe said the initiative is designed to attract and retain talent and improve staff wellbeing and engagement.

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"Many of our employees have told us that they want more flexibility to focus on what's important outside work, and one way we're giving them that is to provide more paid time off," she says.

Energy company Origin has increased paid parental leave to 20 weeks for primary carers, and four weeks for secondary carers. It has also removed a 12-month qualifying period for the leave which can be taken up to 24 months after a baby's birth.

Fergus and Nicole Stuart met at Origin in Sydney more than seven years ago, married in 2016 and are expecting their third child in July.

Mrs Stuart plans to take 20 weeks of paid leave after the baby is born. Her husband will take four weeks off when the baby is born and the remaining 16 weeks after his wife returns to work. He says having 40 weeks of paid leave between them "is fantastic".

"I think it gives a greater opportunity for the father to be the primary carer because the policy allows us to take that leave any time in the first 24 months after the child is born," he said.

Mrs Stuart said financial pressures on families living in Sydney and the extra leave meant "more time to enjoy those special moments" with her children.

Eva Bauer, 30, who works for Origin in Melbourne said she will take 40 weeks of leave at half pay. She will take a total of 12 months off, with only two of those months unpaid.

"This definitely takes the financial pressure off so I can take 12 months off without stressing about needing to come back to work earlier," she said.

"My husband just started his own business so this gives us a steady income and a good work-life balance.

"It allows you to be a mum while you have a career."

Origin chief executive Frank Calabria said the new gender-neutral policies would better support all new Origin parents and "improve attraction and retention of the best talent".

The new policy supports same-sex parents and covers birth, adoption, surrogacy and permanent fostering.

Ernst & Young (EY) now offers "Term Time" to staff so they can work five days a week during the school term and have the school holidays off as self-funded leave.

Julie McAdoo, who works for EY in Canberra, has booked 11 of the 12 weeks her three children aged 11 to 13 will be on school holidays during the next financial year.

"This means I get relaxed time to enjoy my children," she said.

"When I first started working for EY my husband was at home with our kids so I was able to work full time and invest in my career," she said.

"As our kids have got older, he has gone back to work full time."

EY says flexibility is the number one driver of staff retention and increases engagement. "Flexible work policies like this are necessary because of increased competition for talent," EY Oceania's People Partner Kate Hillman said.

EY staff can take between six to 12 weeks of self-funded leave in one or two blocks. And they can temporarily work part-time for up to three months.

"We're innovating so we don't lose these people while they pursue passions outside of work," Ms Hillman said.

"By next year, 80 per cent of EY's workforce across the globe will be Millennials, so this is a particularly significant consideration for us."

Human resources expert Sarah Kaine from UTS said technological change and a demand for flexible work mean some organisations will be in fierce competition for key staff in highly-skilled areas.

While other rewards were useful, providing a meaningful job and engaging work was the key to attracting and retaining staff.

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"I think it is going to be a patchwork of approaches that we are going to see," Professor Kaine said.

"I think there will be very specific sectors with very specific needs.

"I don't suspect we are going to see five weeks of leave offered to hotel cleaners."

PwC partner Dorothy Hisgrove said from July the company will pay full superannuation contributions to staff on up to 12 months of paid or unpaid parental leave. She said half the employees taking parental leave this year are men.

"Men and women are accessing the policy in equal numbers and that's a big shift," she said.

The parental leave policy covers all genders for birth, adoption, surrogacy, foster care and kinship care. The leave is also available to parents who have lost a child.

PwC offers primary carers up to 18 weeks' paid parental leave, in a block or flexibly, and up to two years away from work.

Meraiah Foley, who specialises in work and organisational studies at the University of Sydney, said employers find flexible work initiatives "pay dividends to employers well in excess of costs".

"We know from international surveys that a large majority of employees would choose greater flexibility and longer leave periods over higher pay," she says.

Sydney expect John Longmire to not only stay at the club next year but to coach the Swans beyond 2020 after his current contract expires.

The Swans' premiership-winning coach is set to be targeted by his former club North Melbourne, who formally parted ways with Brad Scott on Sunday after more than nine years at the helm.

Longmire is likely to be asked about his future when he conducts his weekly press conference on Monday.

The Swans would be extremely shocked if Longmire, who played 200 games with the Kangaroos and was a member of their 1999 premiership team, was to ask for a release from his contract.

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The Herald reported last month the Swans would open talks with Longmire to extend his contract later this year. It would be in keeping with the Swans' practice of re-signing their long-serving coach before he enters the final season of his deal.

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Fifteenth with three wins from 10 games, the Swans are long odds to make a 10th consecutive finals appearance this year.

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The Swans have not missed the September action under Longmire, who took over for the 2011 season and who broke Paul Roos' record for most games coached earlier this month.

Sydney, however, have invested heavily in youth with many of their younger players showing promising signs. They challenged leading premiership fancy Collingwood before losing by seven points on Friday night.

Swans chairman Andrew Pridham told the Herald earlier this month their faith in Longmire had not wavered despite their poor start to the season.

"My view would be he'd coach as long as he wants to and is enthusiastic about it," Pridham said.

"You'd be hard pressed to find a better senior coach with the record he's got. Nothing goes forever but if you look at world sport a lot of very successful clubs in world sport have a coach for a very long period of time. The trick is to refresh other aspects of program.

"You don't have a fantastic CEO and say he's been there X years and say he should go. If they're really good you want them to stay."

Swans chief executive Tom Harley was supremely confident Longmire would remain at the club despite the turmoil at North Melbourne.

"He is so invested in this footy club and we're really fortunate to have a coach like John," Harley said on the ABC after news of Scott's departure broke.

"He's got the most winning record of all current coaches and absolutely a massive part of our future going forward.

"I can't see that happening [Longmire leaving]."

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London: The prospect of a "no deal" Brexit was fast becoming the central battle of the race to succeed British Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday, as Environment Minister Michael Gove became the eighth candidate to declare.

May said on Friday she was quitting over her failure to deliver Brexit, potentially opening the way for a new leader who could seek a more divisive split with the European Union and lead to confrontation with the bloc or a possible parliamentary election.

Setting out their pitch to the Conservative Party's largely pro-Brexit membership who will decide the outcome of the contest, four of the leadership hopefuls have said Britain must leave the EU on October 31 even if this means a no-deal Brexit.

"I will fight for a fairer deal in Brussels … if not I will be clear we will leave on WTO terms in October," former Brexit minister Dominic Raab, who bookmakers rank as the second favourite to win, told BBC TV.

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"If you're not willing to walk away from a negotiation, it doesn't focus the mind of the other side … I will not ask for an extension."

Fellow contenders Esther McVey and Andrea Leadsom both made similar comments on Sunday.

Former foreign minister Boris Johnson, the bookmakers' favourite to replace May, wrote in his weekly column for the Daily Telegraph newspaper: "No one sensible would aim exclusively for a no-deal outcome. No one responsible would take no-deal off the table."

Gove, a leading campaigner for Brexit during the 2016 referendum campaign and a candidate in the Conservative leadership contest that May ultimately won, told reporters on Sunday that he planned to run again.

"I am ready to unite the Conservative and Unionist Party, ready to deliver Brexit and ready to lead this great country," he said.

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In an interview with the BBC later, he said Britain would "be able to get through" a no-deal Brexit but it was "ultimately better for all of us if we secure a deal and leave in an orderly way."

A DANGEROUS STRATEGY

The EU has said it will not reopen negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement, which has been rejected by parliament three times, while British lawmakers have also repeatedly voted against the prospect of a no-deal exit.

Highlighting the deep splits within the governing party over the way forward on Brexit, several senior Conservatives, including leadership candidate Rory Stewart, on Sunday warned against pursuing the policy of leaving without a deal.

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Finance minister Philip Hammond said parliament would be "vehemently opposed" to a no-deal strategy and a prime minister who ignored parliament "cannot expect to survive very long".

"I will urge all of my colleagues who are standing in this contest to embrace the concept of compromise … going to parliament with a hard line absolutist view and daring parliament to accept it is quite a dangerous strategy," he told BBC TV.

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Hammond said he could not support a no-deal strategy but declined to say what he would do if there was a vote of confidence in a government which adopted that policy.

"In 22 years in parliament I have never voted against the Conservatives … and I don't want to have to start now contemplating such a course of action," he said.

The opposition Labour Party said it was seeking to work with other parties to try and block May's successor from taking Britain out of the EU without a deal.

"There is real threat now of an extremist Brexiteer becoming the leader of the Conservative Party and taking us over the cliff edge of a no deal," Labour's finance spokesman John McDonnell told Sky News. "We have got to move to block a no deal."

Reuters

The Sydney woman accused of targeting the lucrative international student market for unenforceable fees in the eastern suburbs has been slapped with a travel ban in China amid fresh allegations she ripped off a business partner.

In a significant escalation of the business woes of Ashleigh Howe, a 29-year-old alumnus of SCEGGS Darlinghurst, a series of court cases in Shanghai and Beijing have detailed allegations that Ms Howe failed to pay suppliers.

It comes after the Herald revealed in April that Ms Howe failed to adhere to a NSW Supreme Court order to repay nearly $700,000 to liquidators of an accommodation company that helped students find lodgings around the University of NSW.

Around 100 mostly Chinese students attending university in Sydney had claimed they were gouged fees by Ms Howe's businesses. Legal advocates say these fees were unenforceable.

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Ms Howe now faces a mountain of legal trouble in China after travelling to Shanghai early last year to establish a string of high-end businesses targeted at the city’s expanding luxury market, including a children’s art school led by marquee artists charging up to US$12,500 a semester.

Instead, the ventures collapsed in acrimony over allegations of unpaid wages and debts.

Wage disputes, a rental dispute and multiple complaints of non-payment against Aima Shili Real Estate, a company Ms Howe claimed to represent in correspondence sighted by the Herald, are among five cases lodged with courts in Shanghai and Beijing over the past six months.

At the same time, liquidators were circling in Sydney, securing a court order for Ms Howe to pay $689,000 over unreasonable director-related transactions, insolvent and uncommercial transactions in relation to a student accommodation business she helmed.

Liquidators confirmed last week she has still not paid and they have been unable to serve a creditor's petition on her, believing she had been in China. But the Herald last week photographed Ms Howe leaving her eastern suburbs apartment block in a white BMW.

'She never paid'

Businessman Johan L.E. rented his Xikang Road property in Shanghai’s Jing’an District to Ms Howe in July 2018 for her to use as a showroom and artists’ residence. Johan was particularly keen to have Ms Howe on the lease after she introduced him in person to a prominent Australian designer who Ms Howe said would work on plans for the renovation of his property to accommodate for her business needs.

Johan said he met with Ms Howe at the St. Regis Hotel early in the month to hammer out the details. He agreed to contribute ¥532,000 – or more than $100,000 – towards the total cost of the renovation after Ms Howe signed a contract agreeing to contribute ¥1,000,000 of her own.

But Johan would never see a return on his investment.

“She never paid, she just swallowed it,” he said. “She took the entire amount.”

Renovations would proceed on his property just long enough to see the kitchen, bathroom and living room gutted before the contractors working on his house stopped turning up as Ms Howe had not paid them, Johan claimed. And then, he said, the rent failed to come through.

Ms Howe did not respond to questions regarding the money and renovations put to her lawyer.

“She always said: ‘We’ll pay you, we’ll pay you, we’ll pay you, blah blah blah, I’m travelling’, Johan said. “She’s got a long list of excuses.”

Johan commenced legal proceedings against Ms Howe in November, pursuing her for ¥610,350 in alleged damages. She did not appear at the court hearing date in January, he said.

“It would be nice to get the money paid back, but I feel sorry for her life, given the situation."

'It was a shambles'

Meanwhile, Ms Howe was busy assembling a team of staff based in Shanghai to help get her businesses off the ground, including her art school Look Learn Do.

“Look Learn Do came from an ambition of mine where I felt that there was a real lack of creative practice and play in the development [of] young children in China,” Ms Howe explained in a video posted to the school’s website, which has since been taken down.

“In the Western world, growing up in Australia, we’re really fortunate that the environment and our social engagements are a big part of our development.

“In China historically, because of the landscape, that hasn’t been possible.”

A number of those Ms Howe had brought on to work for her from mid-2018 said the trouble started almost immediately, and no site for the school was ever formally secured.

“It was a shambles,” one former employee said.

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“If you ever asked Ashleigh where the space was she would say, ‘Oh we’re signing the lease today, we’re signing the lease tomorrow’,” another said.

Visits from local police to their Shanghai office, and issues with visas and pay were also not uncommon, they said.

In November, frustrated staff made a phone call to the Melbourne-based accountant they believed they had been communicating with via an email carrying the domain name of another family business, Global Education Advisory, regarding arrears with their pay.

The phone call was the first time the accountant had heard of the email address.

By the end of the month, almost all of Ms Howe’s staff had walked away from their roles.

Travel ban

The most recent action brought against Ms Howe in Shanghai on March 21, 2019, was over unpaid commission to a recruitment agency.

Ms Howe was sued by her former business development manager in Shanghai, Chen Xiqing, in July for illegal termination of labour, after he was dismissed without notice via an email.

Ms Howe was ordered by a Shanghai court to pay compensation, but refused and appealed. After mediation, the court ordered Ms Howe to pay ¥42,000 in salary by September 21.

But within days of the appeal verdict, the Shanghai Yangpu court ruled again, issuing a travel ban on Ms Howe, and giving the reason that: “Without any proper reasons the person subject to enforcement rejected to implement the reconciliation agreement.”

This exit ban is still listed on Chinese court websites nationally, stating: “The entity subject to enforcement – Shanghai Aima Shili Real Estate Consulting has refused to fulfil its obligations as determined by legal documents, and the court in accordance with laws has restricted its legal representative Howe Ashleigh Margaret from leaving the country.”

An outsourcing company that provided finance administration services for Aima Shili told the Herald they were also looking for Ms Howe over unpaid fees.

“We don’t know what happened … there are quite a lot of due commissions unpaid,” the Shanghai company said. They had never met with her in person and only occasionally received replies to emails.

Despite the exit ban against her name, Ms Howe has reached out to at least one other artist this year, inviting them to be a part of her business.

Australian designer Trent Jansen received an email in January regarding Look Learn Do from Ms Howe that read: “I am an Australian; slightly crazy, definitely daring and limitless entrepreneur based in Shanghai, China.

“It is our expressed wish to make contact with and ascertain your interest in joining us in collaboration for this bold and defining project.”

Mr Jansen did not pursue the opportunity.

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Bong Joon-ho has become the first Korean ever to win the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or – the top film prize in the world – for his film Parasites, the extravagantly wacky story of a poor family that infiltrates a rich household by taking all their service positions, an employment victory that has unexpectedly bloody results.

The win was hugely popular among critics, but unexpected. All the smart money was on Pedro Almodovar’s semi-autobiographical Pain and Glory. Now 69 and threatening retirement, Almodovar was thought to be a sure-fire winner.

In fact, as jury chairman Alejandro Gonzalez Iniarritu made a point of telling the audience at the awards ceremony, the decision for director Bong was unanimous. Parasites was a genre fable, but it was also a critique of current politics “and spoke in a funny way about something so relevant and urgent and global in such a local film with efficiency”.

Pain and Glory came away with a best actor gong for Antonio Banderas, playing a version of the director who is consumed by his memories along with the pain of his middle-aged elements.

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This was noticeably the first year of the #MeToo era. Of the four films by women in the competition, three won prizes. Celine Sciamma won the prize for best screenplay for her austere period romance Portrait of a Woman on Fire, which had also been suggested as a possible Palme d’Or.

Austrian director Jessica Hausner ventured into sci-fi – without ever quite letting go of her customary formalism – to tell the story in Little Joe of a mood-enhancing plant that turns out to be a kind of body-snatcher; Emily Beecham scooped the best actress prize for her performance as an enthusiastic geneticist. Finally, the Grand Prix went to Mati Diop, a French-Senegalese actress and director whose film Atlantique put a magical poetic spin on a Senegalese women’s campaign for fair pay when their men mysteriously disappear. Once again, demonic forces are on the loose.

More than anything, the 72nd Cannes Film Festival will be remembered as the year when genre filmmaking achieved peak respectability. Both the festival competition and the parallel Directors' Fortnight opened with gleefully trash-aware genre films: the main program with Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die and the Directors' Fortnight with Quentin Dupieux’s Deerskin, a story of a man’s possession by the fringed leather jacket of his dreams in which The Artist star Jean Dujardin gives the scintillating comic performance of a lifetime.

Then we had more zombies from master of excess Bertrand Bonello in Zombie Child; Babak Anvari’s Wounds, which has Armie Hammer as an ineffectual slacker whose brain is infiltrated by evil thoughts via a stray mobile phone; and witchcraft summoning up the dead in young Brazilian director Alice Furtado’s Sick, Sick, Sick – all in the Directors' Fortnight.

Furtado said in an interview that the horror genre is the vernacular for our times. “Maybe it has to do with our stage of society … and our stage of capitalism. There are a lot of conservative values on the rise and maybe the horror and nightmares and monsters are a way to try to understand this reality from a fantastic point of view.”

In the competition, Bacurau by Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles (whose previous film, Aquarius, was about as different as it could be; the subject there was the skyrocketing price of houses in Sao Paolo) depicts an imaginary town in Brazil's impoverished north-east where rich Americans come to hunt the locals for sport, supervised by regular movie madman Udo Kier. It won one of two jury prizes; the other went to first-time French director Ladj Ly for his fast-moving story of a police shooting in a black district of Paris, Les Miserables. This may not have been a bumper year for incontestable masterpieces, but you certainly couldn’t call it dull.

Outside the cinemas, however, Cannes has gone rather grey. The sun barely showed its face, which certainly lowers the mood, but there were seemingly fewer people – leaving some press screenings barely more than half-full, which never happens – and certainly less money. For the first time anyone can remember, the Carlton Hotel didn’t have the usual three-storey promotional display for some upcoming Hollywood blockbuster.

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There were no crazy promotional stunts: what happened to the days when Jerry Seinfeld would be shot into the air by a giant cannon while dressed as a bee? And while there were parties, of course, none were in the Gatsby mode. Even the eccentrics who used to descend annually on the Croisette, like the Italian man with performing cats on his shoulders, have disappeared.

“It’s changed immensely,” said Jim Jarmusch during an interview about The Dead Don’t Die. “Cannes has gotten more staid and a little less vulgar. I liked the vulgarity because I like contradiction. I remember in the `80s being in Cannes and you’d see some magnificent Romanian film or Chinese film – I didn’t know anything about them – and then go outside into the sun and there’s a naked girl in a parachute descending into a circle of paparazzi on the beach. And I thought that was kind of amazing, you know.”

There are still reasons to be amazed on the cinema screens in Cannes, of course. A last-minute addition in the form of Mektoub My Love: Intermezzo by Tunisian-French provocateur Abdellatif Kechiche, gave weary critics a talking point late in the festival. Was it the 16-minute scene of gynaecologically explicit oral sex in a dance club’s toilet that was truly shocking, or was it the effrontery of asking audiences to sit through 3½ hours of young women twerking to bad techno? At least Cannes can still reliably produce a scandal – the world’s greatest film festival isn’t over yet.

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Amman: Three French members of Islamic State were sentenced to death by a Baghdad court Sunday.

The three were among 13 French citizens handed over to Iraq in January by the Syrian Democratic Forces, the mainly Kurdish US-ally that led the battle to oust Islamic State from Syria. The sentence sheds some light on the pressing question of what may happen when Western countries, including ones like France which oppose capital punishment, do not repatriate their foreign fighter nationals.

Hundreds of foreign Islamic State members survived the devastating battle to destroy the terror group.

The detained jihadists, a group which includes women and children, have since been at the centre of a political battle as their countries of origin decline to take them home and the SDF warns that it could run out of the money and manpower to hold them.

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In recent months, the SDF has transferred an increasing number of Islamic State survivors to Baghdad for legal processing – a process that in Iraq can include minutes-long trials in the absence of credible witnesses.

Of the 13 French citizens, one was later released as it was found he had travelled to Syria to support the Yazidi religious minority, who were the target of a brutal Islamic State campaign that human rights groups say was a genocide.

The remaining 12 were put on trial under Iraq's counterterrorism law, which can order the death penalty to anyone found guilty of joining a "terrorist" group, even if they were not explicitly fighting.

The three sentenced to death, Kevin Gonot, Leonard Lopez and Salim Machou, have 30 days to appeal. Gonot, who fought for Islamic State before being arrested in Syria with his mother, wife, and half-brother, has also been sentenced in absentia by a French court to nine years in jail, according to the French Terrorism Analysis Center.

Machou was a member of the infamous Tariq ibn Ziyad brigade, "a European foreign terrorist fighter cell" that carried out attacks in Iraq and Syria and planned others in Paris and Brussels, according to US officials.

Lopez, from Paris, travelled with his wife and two children to Islamic State-held Mosul in northern Iraq before entering Syria, French investigators say.

French nationals made up the largest contingent of foreign fighters from Western Europe. In 2015, French and Belgian recruits attacked the Bataclan concert hall, stadiums and bars in Paris.

Baghdad has offered to try all foreign fighters in SDF custody – estimated at around 1,000 – in exchange for millions of dollars, Iraqi government sources told AFP.

In late January, a French government spokesman said that citizens who joined Islamic State would be prosecuted and jailed if handed over to Paris.

Shortly afterwards, Nicole Belloubet, the French justice minister, told a radio show that the government would seek to bring home jihadists rather than risk them evading justice.

But since then, the only French nationals known to have been repatriated are five orphaned children.

This month, two French grandparents filed a lawsuit against the French state, alleging that its refusal to allow their grandchildren into France violates the country's human rights commitments.

The Daily Telegraph

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Australia has made great strides in recognising its disadvantaged and its minorities, but it cannot be a complete commonwealth until it recognises the most disadvantaged and overlooked of all.

Our first peoples are humanity's longest continuing civilisation and confer a unique status on our country, and also a unique responsibility.

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Yet they are excluded from Australia's success. They live in a parallel land of Third World conditions, when they could be included as the completing third part of our unique nation.

The three parts as Noel Pearson of Cape York brilliantly explains them: "There is our ancient heritage, written on the continent and the original culture painted on its land and seascapes.

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"There is its British inheritance, the structures of government and society transported from the United Kingdom fixing its foundations in the ancient soil.

"There is its multicultural achievement: a triumph of immigration that brought together the gifts of people and cultures from all over the globe – forming one indissoluble commonwealth."

In Pearson's words, "we stand on the cusp of bringing these three parts of our national story together" by giving constitutional recognition to Indigenous Australians to make "a more complete commonwealth". Except that he said that in 2014. And Australia is no closer.

Addressing the material and social suffering of the first Australians is necessary, of course. But insufficient.

Some of the finest moments in Australia's Parliament occur in February each year when the two sides of politics come together in the annual review of the Closing the Gap project, an effort to lift six key indicators of Indigenous health, education and employment to those enjoyed by every other part of our society. The deadline for achieving this is not a far distant one – 2030.

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The usual hysterics and hubbub of the House of Representatives fall away as the two leaders enter a serious and sincere bipartisan discussion of the year's progress. But progress is halting and uneven. Overall, it is failing.

The effort is bedevilled by the same problem that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander policy has suffered for centuries – it is driven by the urge to do things to Indigenous Australians, not to do things with them.

Our first peoples two years ago proposed the creation of an Indigenous advisory body to the Parliament. It would be established and legitimised by an amendment to the constitution.

The Indigenous "Voice" would have no executive or legislative power. Its function would be to offer Indigenous views on Indigenous policy.

Yet even the request for a voice was strangled by then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who falsely described it as a "third chamber" of Parliament, implying that it was some sort of danger to the prerogatives of the Parliament. This was a straw man, a false argument that was really just an excuse for inaction.

The new Parliament that is to convene in the next few weeks has an opportunity to fix this failure. By giving our first peoples a voice, the Parliament would give them their best opportunity to help a united country Close the Gap. Successfully. That is necessary, but insufficient.

Even if Australia can manage to close the gap on practical measures of Indigenous quality of life, our country is still blighted by the less tangible gap – the great gulf of respect, recognition and self-esteem that has trapped Indigenous Australians at the lowest level of the system of social order.

This is not some waffly concept but a central tenet of the human spirit. The ancient Greeks had a word for it. Thymos – the part of the human soul that craves recognition. With it, we are empowered and ennobled. Without recognition, we are less than fully human.

By establishing the Voice to Parliament in the constitution, Australia will acknowledge the first Australians' right to recognition and respect, and improve the effectiveness of the efforts to Close the Gap at the same time.

Labor campaigned on a promise of a "fair go for all Australians" while the re-elected Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, said that "if you have a go, you'll get a go". Both parties have a new opportunity to give substance to these sentiments.

Our first Australians are at a special disadvantage and need unique recognition and unique help. But on their own terms, guided by their own voice.

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