SECURITY RAID botched, ASIS

Australians (including Kiwis) may remember about this incident that happened some years ago now, but perhaps NOT the full details. With all the beat-up nowadays regarding so called "security" and "anti-terrorism" etc I thought it was time to refresh my memory.

I went searching (remember that "Google is your friend") and this was the very first article I came across. (at an extensive site www.ladlass.com/ )

Here is a fairly long excerpt of what seems to be an excellent article with much detail......also it lists all of its references at the end of the full article. (not here, this is only an excerpt)

At the end of this 'blog entry I will add a URL link to the entire original thing. (but the url's a right bastard so let's just hope I get it right eh)


ASIS = Australian Secret Intelligence Service
Militaryphotos.net :: View topic - Caught in the act : the ASIS raid

Caught in the act : the ASIS raid (ASIS = Australian Secret Intelligence Service)

Published in:
Wayward governance : illegality and its control in the public sector / P N Grabosky
Canberra : Australian Institute of Criminology, 1989
ISBN 0 642 14605 5
(Australian studies in law, crime and justice series); pp. 129-142
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/lcj/wayward/ch8t.html

At about 8 pm on Wednesday, 30 November 1983, the Manager of the Sheraton Hotel in Melbourne was alerted by a guest to a disturbance on the 10th floor. The Manager entered a lift and upon reaching the 10th floor, he was accosted by a stranger who said 'Come with me, you're not going to get hurt, but come with me.' The Manager retreated back into the lift, the stranger followed and pressed the appropriate button to return to the lobby. The two scuffled while descending. The stranger's repeated insistence that 'nobody would be hurt' was not entirely reassuring. When the lift reached the lobby, the Manager ran out and called for his staff to ring the police. The stranger retreated to the 10th floor.

Shortly thereafter another lift reached the ground floor. A group of hotel employees were gathered near the door of the lift, and the Manager equipped himself with a nightstick - a 30 cm metal rod covered with heavy duty red tape - which was normally kept behind the reception desk. As the lift door opened, a group of men stepped out. Some were wearing masks, some were carrying weapons, ranging from Browning 9 mm automatic pistols to the formidable Heckler and Koch submachine gun. The intruders moved through the lobby into the kitchen, menacing the kitchen staff on the way, and departed in two getaway cars waiting outside a kitchen exit.

One of the cars was stopped by officers of the Victoria Police a short distance from the hotel and its occupants were taken into custody. When other police officers arrived at the hotel, they encountered a bystander, who rather strangely claimed that he could explain everything that had happened, and that he was willing to pay for any damages incurred. Hotel staff may have assumed that they were the victims of an armed robbery; in fact they were unwilling parties to an incident culminating a year of acute embarrassment for the new Hawke Labor government. The episode in question turned out to have been a resoundingly unsuccessful training exercise by officers of the super-secret Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).

ASIS, unknown to most Australians prior to its having been thrust, reluctantly, into the public spotlight, is Australia's equivalent of the United States' CIA and Britain's MI6. Although its primary function was the collection of foreign intelligence, it was also required, as a result of decisions taken by the Fraser government and continued by their successors, to maintain a 'covert action capability'. While the precise contours of this minor role remain secret, it appears that such a function involved paramilitary activities - for example, the rescue of hostages (Wright 1989).

To this end, a small group of part-time agents were recruited and brought together for periodic training exercises. The ill-fated visit to the Sheraton Hotel was for the purpose of rescuing a 'hostage' being held in a room by two 'foreign intelligence officers of a major power'. In an effort to make training activities as realistic as possible, it was decided to conduct the exercise in a public place, without notifying hotel staff, local police or bystanders. The trainees were equipped with weapons, albeit without live ammunition.

The episode caused considerable distress to a number of unwitting individuals.

The article this above excerpt is from was dated 28 Aug 2005, and you need to scroll down past the photocopier trace-ability article first, amd maybe the satellite photo article too.


URL LINK ORIGINAL ARTICLE

HOUSE PRICES RIP-OFF.....now it's official

For the last 15 years, house and land prices throughout Australia (and New Zealand too) have simply sky-rocketed, in many cases, for no real reason.

An independant, international commission recently completed a study in Australia, and YES it's now official, that Australian house prices are 52 % higher than they rightfully *should* be, when compared on a corrected basis, with International criteria.

In Austral-asia, private home ownership runs somewhere around 70 % (ie 70 % of the population live in a home they own outright, or are paying off on mortgage).

Some folks owned a second home, which they rent out as an investment. This can be a good thing, sort of like a retirement nest-egg, or something to later help one's children get a start in their lives.

However the tax rebate called "negative gearing" seems to have been partly responsible at least, for the trend to pay ever increasing prices for houses and apartments. Even if the price the "investor" pays is s-o-o great that he'll never cover the mortgage repayments, no worries, the Tax-man will let him claim the "loss" on his income taxes, as a deduction.

20 years ago in Perth, a 3 bedroom house would rent out annually for 8 % of it's gross value, not surprisingly Real Estate agents started pushing residential house sales to upper-middle income earners as a way of obtaining assets and tax deductions. nowadays the figure is somewhere around 1 or 2 %. ie assuming zero outgoings of maintenance, rates and insurance, it'd take 50 to 100 years to break even with the purchase price of the house. This hasn't stopped Real Estate agents, who are paid by percentage commissions, from continuing to talk-up and beat-up the market as much as possible.

Oftentimes banks have been very generous giving out large loans on small or no deposit to "investors" who've been happy to spend the money like water, further exasperating the situation of pushing up house prices to levels very much higher than the houses could be said to be *really worth*.

The recent independant international commission found that Australia-wide, residential houses were 52 % *more expensive* than they should be.

I know from the personal experience of various e-friends that a reasonable 3 bedroom family home in Houston Texas (4th largest city-metro area in USA) or a healthy size, modernised, 3 bedroom terrace-house in Baltimore Maryland (within commuting distance of Washington DC......effectively the political capital of the Western World)......both places with good-sized yards (land area) in USA these places sell for less than US $ 90,000.

Converted to New Zealand dollars you would not be able to buy even an empty building block of land, anywhere within the greater Christchurch area for that sort of money.In the area of Chch (population approx 400,000) you'd be hard pushed to find an empty building block for NZ $ 150,000 (~US$ 110,000). The cheapest house you'd find to buy would be more than that obviously, for even the "worst", a "handyman's dream", real bulldozer material !

In Australian dollars, forgetting Sydney and Melbourne entirely, you'd just barely get the smallest new building block on Perth's very outer edge cheapest new subdivision new housing areas around Mandurah (one and a half hours drive south of the Perth city centre area)

Unfortunately the newspapers have by and large ignored the situation. Remember that the real estate section of the newspaper amounts to about one third of it, and paid advertising is what drives newspapers (the journalists sometimes relegated to little more than an afterthough I fear)

In Perth's previously cheapest outer edge suburb, "Medina" the house prices went up 26 % one year, then last year, 42 % on top of that.

Awhile back there was one small article in the newspaper, and then another small article more recently, saying that maybe it IS NOT such a good thing that housing, for the poorest people at least, is going up in price by 40 % or more per year, while wages and social security pensions rise by only some 2 % per year.

There's an increasing number of folks living in country areas, sometimes very remote areas, simply because they cannot afford to live anywhere else......and I'm not just talking about myself, this is becoming a real socio-politic-economic issue within Australia (and probably NZ too).

Houses in country areas are much cheaper to buy, and oftentimes old abandoned farmhouses can be lived in rent-free, provided to "tenant" is prepared to do some maintenance in lieu of rent, and pay associated rates and charges. However a disadvantage of country areas is the lack of services. There's much less, often nearly nothing, available in the areas of (Reliable and paid) Employment, education and other retraining (especiallly for the mature aged person).

Both state and Federal governments have so far been laughing all the way to the bank, as various types of "stamp duty" or "property tax" are based on percentage values, and often on a sliding scale......so when a $50,000 family home becomes a $250,000 family home, the Govt gets 5 times (or more !) the money-for-nothing they normally would do. Finally the situation looks like maybe starting to bite them in the backside. There's an increasing pool of available labour......paid and volunteer, who find themselves living in remote country areas where their skills and abilities are wasted un-used.

Note this to have further added later, if I get around to it.