WHATEVER one thinks of him and the billion-dollar loss he caused to small businesses and investors, particularly the mums and dads, Alan Bond is indeed a brave man to make a comeback to corporate Australia.
True, he was not like some corporate cowboys of the late 80s and early 90s who milked their companies dry and fled the country to escape charges of fraud or conspiracy.
Bond stayed put, faced the music, went to jail for his part in what was then Australia’s biggest fraud case and left for Britain to regain his health and to strengthen his business acumen.
“I love Australia,” he declared simply last week when he arrived to attend the 25th anniversary celebrations of the historic victory of his yacht Australia II in the America’s Cup. On Sept 26, 1983, Australia had taken the trophy from the Americans who had held it for 132 years.
Looking older, a little overweight yet fit, the 70-year-old Bond sounded enthusiastic about returning to live in Perth to be closer to his extended family.
Within the next 12 months, he plans to move to Perth’s beachside suburb of Cottesloe where he has already built a two-storey mansion.
But his homecoming has raised memories of his fall from grace, and some are still bitter with the former yachting hero and corporate legend whose feeling of infallibility, reckless ambition and mindless greed finally brought him down and caused the loss of A$1.8bil to his investors.
Nothing, no matter how big or expensive, daunted him from acquiring to add to his empire that straddled Australia, Hong Kong, the US and South America. It included mines, properties, telecommunications, breweries, newspapers and television.
He kept on buying as if he had a bottomless pocket. He even bought the famous Vincent van Gogh painting Irises at Sotheby’s for US$53mil in 1987, the highest price ever paid for a painting then.
In 1988, he bought the St Moritz Hotel in New York from Donald Trump.
He was hoping that the profits from his empire would service the loan interests. But with interest rates rising and profits falling for his empire, the London-born Australian of the Year (1978) was heavily in debt.
Bond, who made his first million dollars before he was 21, was declared bankrupt in 1992 with a personal debt of A$500mil.
Perhaps his biggest mistake was to buy the late Kerry Packer’s TV Nine network for A$1bil and selling it back to him for A$700mil three years later.
Packer was said to have remarked: “You only get one Alan Bond in your lifetime,” meaning that you only get one chance to make A$100mil a year for three years off a person like Bond, who did all the work involved.
When Bond’s group of companies went into liquidation, 20 Australian and overseas banks took possession and sold off their assets, including WA newspapers. The banks recovered A$283 million; the other creditors got nothing.
Now Bond is back, having risen like a phoenix from the ashes, with A$265mil from his African diamond venture and oil fields.
And he is back on the rich list of the AFR magazine as the 157th wealthiest Australian. At the peak of his entrepreneurship, he was the nation’s fourth richest man.
But can he regain the trust of the community, some of whose business careers and life savings for retirement were ruined by the collapse of his empire?
He may have money from his newfound wealth, but he won’t refund his former shareholders who lost everything in his failed corporation.
There is now mixed feelings about him. Not many really care whether he is in Australia or elsewhere, while others feel it would be better that he disappears from the Australian scene instead of staying and reminding them of their painful memories.
But Bond believes many of them have forgiven him for what happened two decades ago.
Questioned by a TV reporter at the 25th anniversary celebration last week, Bond said he did not feel remorse for his part in the collapse of his empire.
“I think it’s history ... the world has moved on. I’ve moved on.”
SELF-PROCLAIMED Muslim cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika had told his followers in a home-grown terrorist cell plotting massive bomb attacks on Australian soil that they must be prepared to die or be jailed.
He was accused of instructing them to blast a stadium packed with more than 91,000 fans of the Australian-rule football grand final in 2005.
And in one of the discussions with his followers he spoke about the youngest man in the group, Abdullah Merhi, 23, who was prepared to become Australia’s first suicide bomber. The plots failed because of simultaneous police raids.
Potential targets
Among the materials seized from the homes of the group members were literature on how to make bombs, video tapes of messages from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and videos of the beheading of terrorist victims.
Benbrika’s instruction, contained in a batch of 482 tapes, was played at his seven-month marathon trial €“ Australia’s biggest terrorism case costing multi-million-dollars €“ which ended partly last week.
The jury of nine women and two men, who took 22 days of deliberations and emerged with highly unusual split verdicts, found Benbrika guilty of directing and intentionally being a member of a terror cell in Melbourne and possessing a CD connected with the preparation for a terrorist act.
Among the potential targets, the prosecution claimed, were Australia’s biggest entertainment and gambling centre Crown Casino and Melbourne’s rail network.
Perhaps the most serious allegation against the firebrand Benbrika was his declaration to his followers that it was “permissible to kill women, the elderly and children in the name of jihad”.
The Algerian-born former aircraft electrical technician, who had escaped three deportation orders since 1990 as an illegal immigrant before being granted permanent residency in 1995 on the ground of his marriage to a Lebanese woman with Australian citizenship, is said to have never worked and received welfare payments during most of the 18 years he has been allowed to live in Australia.
Ironically, one of his reasons for seeking permanent stay was that he loved the lifestyle in Australia.
A father of seven children, he is among the 12 men charged with a total of 27 counts of terrorist activities in Melbourne. Six of the accused were convicted last week, four were acquitted and the fate of two others has yet to be decided in a retrial. Those convicted will be sentenced in November.
The group, operating between July 2004 and November 2005, was plotting to bomb various targets in an attempt to pressure the Australian government to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
To fund the group, some members had allegedly stolen cars and sold them to raise money. Other funds had come from frauds committed against non-Muslims for which Benbrika was alleged to have granted fatwa or Islamic ruling.
The court was told that in May 2005, a police undercover agent, codenamed S1039, posed as a Muslim of Turkish origin and was introduced to the group.
He attended Benbrika’s religious classes and played his role so convincingly that he eventually had long private meetings with the cell leader.
Tit for tat
Benbrika trusted S1039 and, together, they went on a bomb-testing trip in October 2004 to a remote part of Mt Disappointment forest in Kilmore where they blew up a small version of a planned 500kg chemical-based bomb.
Tapes, secretly recorded by S1039, alleged that Benbrika had earlier discussed jihad being pursued by Muslims overseas in retaliation for “atrocities committed against innocent Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere”.
Benbrika told S1039 that violent jihad was justified in Australia because the country had joined forces with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He was also heard bragging about what he hoped to achieve. “We’ll damage buildings, blast things … we’ll think big, not small,” he was recorded as saying in a tape.
Shockingly, the gruesome evidence of the group’s intention was an extract of the exchange of conversations in one tape between Benbrika and Merhi, the would-be Australia’s first suicide bomber.
Benbrika: If they kill our kids, we kill (inaudible) little kids.
Merhi: The innocent ones?
Benbrika: The innocent ones. Because he (referring to former Prime Minister John Howard) kills innocent ones.
Merhi: And we send a message back to them.
Benbrika: That’s it.
Merhi: Eye for an eye.
Benbrika: So the jihad exists here.
Describing the case as the most successful terrorist prosecution that Australia has ever seen, Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland said he believed all the agencies had done an outstanding job given “the complexities involved in the fine line of gathering intelligence and the fine line of gathering evidence, which is admissible in court proceedings”.
“I would be naïve to discount the prospect of a terrorist attack in Australia,” he declared. “Clearly, a terrorist attack in Australia is possible.”
TODAY, the second Sunday after the state election, a minor political party will meet to decide the fate of the Carpenter government, which is hanging nervously on the balance between defeat and victory.
Labour, battered by a string of ministerial sackings or resignations over Corruption and Crime Commission investigations, could not return to power on its own right when it won only 25 of the 30 seats required.
Nor is the State Opposition led by a former defeated leader, Colin Barnett, who was resurrected less than a month ago after a series of Liberal leadership instability, able to form a government, having won only 22 seats and the support of one Liberal Independent with the possibility of two others.
Both major parties are now depending on the four Nationals to join either of them. But the brilliant Nationals leader Brendon Grylls has a price for his support – A$1bil a year funding for regional development
Never in the political history of Australia has there been a hung Parliament in which no party has a working majority to form a government. As a result, the state will remain in political limbo until the situation is resolved.
Traditionally, the Nationals had always joined the Liberals to form a coalition to govern the country or the states. But not this time as it seems.
Grylls has made it clear that neither he nor his party owes any allegiance to the Liberals as in the past – a change he made after becoming leader in 2005 to stand alone and be solely independent for the interests of regional development.
He has even rejected an offer by the Liberals to become Deputy Premier in a coalition government.
His aim is to gain the balance of power in the State Parliament in 2009. He has achieved that – three months earlier.
Hence, Grylls is the kingmaker of a new government and he is prepared to negotiate with either of the major parties to get the best offer for his team’s support.
He has formulated policies and initiatives to revitalise and drive regional development. To fund the regional projects, he is demanding 25% of the state’s mineral and oil and gas royalties over and above the Budget allocations to be spent on rural and regional areas.
Grylls has had separate meetings with Premier Alan Carpenter and Barnett and put forward his demands. He wants their acceptance in writing.
If either of the major party leaders accepts what appears to be Grylls’ ultimatum, then they would respectively have to forego or delay some of the major projects promised for the urban areas, such as the A$835mil new railway line north of Perth, A$1.1bil stadium, A$500mil museum, and the A$300mil waterfront project at the southern entrance to the city.
On the other hand, they could borrow money up to the maximum debt-to-revenue ratio of 47% to maintain the state’s AAA credit rating. The current ratio is 42.6%.
To make matters more complex, Independent John Bowler, who was dumped by Labour and suspended by Parliament for leaking a confidential draft committee report to lobbyist Julian Grill, has his own wishlist for the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie.
While Barnett has struck him out of any deal for his support, Carpenter is pondering on the issue if Labour wins enough seats to form a minority government. There are six seats still doubtful.
Labour’s predicament has been placed squarely on the shoulders of Carpenter for calling the election five months earlier and parachuting candidates of his own choice into various constituencies.
Undoubtedly, it is partly due to his arrogance and his failure to spend more of the increasingly bigger Budget surplus from the state’s booming resources for the much needed improvements to medical, dental and education facilities.
On top of all this, the ghost of former disgraced premier Brian Burke has returned to haunt Labour with scandals linking him and his mate Grill to several ministers who were eventually sacked or forced to resign over revelations by the Corruption and Crime Commission investigations.
Consequently, Labour has been severely punished in the poll with a swing of 8% against it.
Grill’s recommendation on which major party Nationals should support will be announced today after their State Council conference has approved it.
SHOCKING or alarming – whichever way one looks at it, the obesity crisis is costing Australia a staggering A$58bil a year.
The epidemic, as the experts call it, has caused 644,843 Australians to suffer cardiovascular disease (a 70% increase), not to mention 242,000 others who have Type 2 diabetes (an increase of 137%) over the last three years.
In addition, 422,274 are suffering osteoarthritis as a result of being obese (an 88% increase) and 30,127 have colorectal, breast, uterine or kidney cancer (a 47% increase) over the same period.
And if no fundamental changes are made in the lifestyle of consuming junk food and sugary drinks, the number of obese people will increase even further – by at least another million in the next 17 years.
These startling figures are contained in a new report by Access Economics, which found that more than 3.71 million Australians – or 17.5% of the nation’s 20.4 million-population – are obese.
In other words, one-in-six-people is categorised as obese in Australia.
They include 290,000 children and teenagers, which is not surprising as many children are frequently ingesting junk food and sweet fizzy drinks or chocolate milkshakes.
DA national president Dr Gary Deed describes the figures as “tragic” because they show that previous estimates of the size and cost of the crisis have been understated.
“The obesity epidemic in Australia is having a direct and catastrophic influence on increasing the incidence of Type 2 diabetes,” he said after receiving the report last week.
“We know that obesity and Type 2 diabetes can be prevented, and we need to make fundamental changes in the way we live to arrest the escalating crisis.”
Economic problems too
But the wellbeing of the people is not the only thing that is greatly affected by obesity. It is also creating an economic problem.
The report shows that loss of healthy life due to obesity or premature death is about A$50bil while the cost to the economy is A$8bil.
Globally, there are nearly half a million children under 15 with Type 1 diabetes, which, according to experts, cannot be prevented. It is estimated that about 200 children develop the disease every day somewhere in the world.
However, what is shocking, too, is the fact that while Type 1 diabetes is increasing fastest in pre-school children – at the rate of 5% a year – Type 2 diabetes has been reported in children as young as eight years old.
Experts say that diabetes is, in fact, one of the most common chronic diseases to affect children of any age, even toddlers and babies.
If it is not detected early enough in a child, the disease could be fatal or result in serious brain damage. Yet diabetes in a child is often misdiagnosed as the flu or some other ailment.
Over half of the children with diabetes will develop complications within 15 years. The complications can include heart and vascular diseases, eye and kidney complaints, poor vascularisation, damage to nerve cells, diabetic feet and high susceptibility for infections.
It is understood that diabetes in children has become a global public health issue with potentially serious outcomes.
The latest report on the costs of obesity is timely. It coincided with a major forum in Perth last week, organised by Curtin University and the Public Health Advocacy Institute of Western Australia.
The meeting called for measures to control obesity, including food regulations such as better labelling and a curb on the advertising and promotion of junk food.
It also recommended initiatives such as free public transport every second Monday and a lifestyle risk assessment in health checks for every four-year-old child.
Dr Deed has also called for long-term planning on issues such as urban design and urged that food labelling be implemented urgently.
“The fight against obesity requires a new approach that considers the economic and social conditions under which we live and how this is impacted on our health,” he concluded.
“The long-term policy planning should also include workplace initiatives, lifestyle education and making healthy choices easier for Australians and their families.
“Governments must act outside of concern for their current electoral cycle to address the explosion of obesity and diabetes.”