Labor can bounce back as a team: Shorten

Party members and unions will have a say in choosing Queensland Labor's parliamentary leader. Source: AAP

FEDERAL leader Bill Shorten has likened the prospect of a Labor Party comeback to the form reversal of the Australian cricket team.

He told the Queensland party conference that Labor had been written off since the election like fast bowler Mitchell Johnson before the Ashes.

"But then something happened, Mitchell started running in hard, he started running in very hard and bowling very fast," he told the cheering crowd of Labor faithful in Brisbane on Saturday.

"Now no one knows what's going to happen in this Ashes series.

"It's wide open and anyone can win.

"And what's true in sport is true in politics."

Mr Shorten called for unity, but there were deep divisions over proposals to give the rank-and-file more power.

Motions called for ordinary members have an input in voting for Queensland senate candidates, the state parliamentary leader, the Brisbane lord mayoral candidate and the state party's three vice presidents.

But the powerful delegates dug in their heels.

A motion for the branch members and unions to each get 30 per cent of the vote to choose who held the state parliamentary leader was passed.

But only after a delegate's suggested amendment to give the rank-and-file 50 per cent of the vote, with the other 50 per cent split between unions and caucus, was shouted down by outraged union delegates.

Later a motion to democratise senate preselections was fiercely challenged by regional delegates, who thought it would give too much power to the southeast.

In the end there was a division, which was likely to see the motion deferred.

Another motion for branch members to have a say in choosing the state party's three vice presidents was also set to be deferred, with one delegate telling delegates that democracy would destroy their power.

"You're voting yourselves out of existence," he warned.

In the end the delegates' hardball tactics resulted in only one motion giving branch members more power being passed, with the rest set to be deferred.

But a motion to reintroduce a ban on mining uranium in Queensland was easily passed.

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Stabbed woman hails cab to NSW hospital

A NSW woman somehow waved down a cab to get to hospital after suffering critical stab wounds. Source: AAP

A NSW woman mustered the strength to wave down a cab to rush herself to hospital after suffering critical stab wounds.

Police say a 42-year-old woman waved down a taxi driver on Villiers Street in South Grafton at 11.40pm (AEDT) on Friday and asked for help, saying she had been stabbed.

A man who had been standing next to the woman fled while the taxi driver took her to Grafton Hospital, where she underwent emergency surgery for stab wounds to her stomach, upper chest area and neck.

Police believe the stabbing was related to a domestic incident and apprehended a 55-year-old man as he returned to a Villiers Street home in the early hours of Saturday.

He was taken to Grafton Police Station and charged with causing grievous bodily harm with intent to murder.

He will appear in court at a later date.

The woman remains in hospital in a critical but stable condition.

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Police charge would-be carjacker

A MAN who allegedly tried to carjack a BMW in central Sydney before hitting a bouncer outside a bar has been charged.

In the early hours of Saturday the 39-year-old allegedly pushed the driver of a BMW, parked on the corner of Sussex and Slips streets, into the passenger seat and tried to start the car, police say.

Security guards from a nearby hotel pulled the would-be carjacker from the BMW but he ran off to a bar on Lime Street.

Leaving the venue, the man allegedly assaulted a bouncer in what police say was an "unprovoked attack."

He tried to run again but was chased by doorman's colleagues, caught and restrained.

Police took the man, who had suffered a head injury, to St Vincent's Hospital.

He was released on Saturday afternoon and charged with carjacking, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and common assault.

Bail was granted and he's due before Central Local Court on Monday.

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Honduran candidate calls for protest

Honduras' opposition leader says she will refuse to recognise the results of the country's election. Source: AAP

OPPOSITION candidate Xiomara Castro has announced that she won't recognise the result of Honduras' presidential election because of alleged voter fraud and called on her supporters to protest the win by the ruling party candidate.

Castro, whose husband Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a 2009 coup, told a news conference that she would demand a vote-by-vote recount of Sunday's balloting, which she described as "a disgusting monstrosity that has robbed me of the presidency."

Honduras' electoral court declared conservative Juan Orlando Hernandez the winner. The court says he received 36.5 per cent of the votes compared to 28.8 per cent for Castro, with 93 per cent of the votes counted. Six other candidates shared the remaining votes.

Claiming her campaign had found "innumerable examples" of voting irregularities, Castro said "we are not going to accept the results released by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and we will not recognise the legitimacy of the government that is the product of this shameful assault."

Castro, 54, presented what she described as evidence of fraud and provided a document detailing alleged irregularities. She called on her supporters to hold massive and peaceful street protests against the result.

Castro led for months in the polls until Hernandez, 45, erased her lead by presenting himself as the law and order candidate in an impoverished country with the world's highest homicide rate and much of the cocaine travelling from South America to the US.

The European Union and the Organisation of American States observer missions have released reports calling Honduras' election process transparent despite some irregularities.

The electoral court has acknowledged that there were delays in the vote count because 20 per cent of the vote tallies from the polling stations couldn't be fed into the scanner and needed to be counted by hand. Former President Zelaya said Wednesday that the fraud occurred in that 20 per cent.

But Jose Antonio de Gabriel, deputy head of the European Union's team of election observers, said the irregular votes came from all over the country and not from areas that heavily favoured Castro.

The US State Department issued a statement after the election congratulating "the people of Honduras for their strong participation" in the vote.

"We note that Organisation of American States and European Union electoral observation mission reports reflect a transparent process," it said earlier in the week.

Castro's campaign was considered an attempt at a political comeback by Zelaya, whose ouster left Honduras politically unstable. Poverty and violence have worsened over the last four years under outgoing President Porfirio Lobo.

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Tiny fish gives big evolutionary insight

The defence secrets of a leaping fish may give an insight into how life made it from water to land. Source: AAP

THE defence secrets of a tiny, leaping, amphibious fish, unveiled by NSW scientists, may give an insight into how life survived the transition from aquatic to terrestrial habitats.

The Pacific leaping Blenny grows to only eight centimetres and spends its time leaping from rock to rock, defending territory and feeding on the tropical island of Guam.

Dr Terry Ord and Courtney Morgans from the University of NSW first compared the colours of five Blenny populations with the rocks they lived on.

After discovering the colours were almost identical they modelled Blenny lookalikes out of plasticine and placed them in the habitat.

Dr Ord said the models were collected after several days and the incidence of attacks from birds, lizards and crabs recorded.

"We found the models on the sand were attacked far more frequently than those on the rocks," he said in a statement.

"This means the fish are uniquely camouflaged to their rocky environments and this helps them avoid being eaten by land predators."

They also found closely related fish had similar colouration, meaning the Blenny's ancestors were probably rock coloured when they first moved out of the water.

"These species provide an evolutionary snapshot of each stage of the land invasion by fish," said Dr Ord.

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UN report on trauma of Syrian refugee kids

SYRIAN refugee children are paying a cruel price as civil war rips their country apart, the United Nations warns in a report with heart-rending testimony from youngsters driven from their homes.

"This is impossible to forget. It's like someone has stabbed me with a knife when I remember," 15-year-old Taha, who saw seven corpses near his house in Syria, told interviewers with the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).

He and scores of other Syrian refugee children in Jordan and Lebanon were interviewed for a 60-page UNHCR report, starkly laying out the trauma of young exiles from a conflict that has killed more than 120,000 people.

The children's last names were not revealed, to protect them and their families.

"It is important that this human face of the refugee crisis is not forgotten," Volker Turk, UNHCR head of international protection, told journalists in Geneva on Friday.

"And if you look at what children face, they illustrate very strongly what this crisis is all about," he said.

Children make up about half of the more than 2.2 million Syrians who have fled their homeland, according to UN numbers of registered refugees.

Syria's neighbours meanwhile estimate some three million Syrians have already left the war-ravaged country, which means around 1.5 million Syrian children are living as refugees.

"Looking back over the last 20 years, the Syria refugee crisis for us is unparalleled since the Rwanda crisis," Turk said, referring to the 1994 genocide in the African nation.

He pointed out that children also represent about half of the 6.5 million people driven from their homes but who remain inside Syria.

In the report, the children describe in words and with drawings the horrors they have witnessed and the turmoil within.

"There is blood up to people's knees in Syria," said 17-year-old Sala.

And 16-year-old Maher, who was tortured in Syria and whose father remains missing there, said: "My first wish would be to go back to Syria and to have my father released."

Some of the children also drew pictures of weapons of war and bodies.

"The idea of home and warmth is gone with a stroke," said Turk.

"There is a lot of psychological scarring and a lot of trauma ... You see it in sleeplessness, children being very withdrawn, there is stuttering, bed-wetting."

Anger was also common, with some boys wanting to return to Syria to fight.

Other scars are physical: 741 Syrian children were treated for war wounds in Lebanon in the first six months of this year, and 1000 cared for in the vast Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan.

The massive influx of Syrians has stretched food, water, healthcare and accommodation resources to the limit in the host countries, and also overwhelmed their education systems.

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Elderly Albany man convicted over hit

AN elderly, wealthy West Australian businessman has been found guilty of attempting to hire a hitman to murder his son's ex-wife.

Brian Vincent Attwell, 73, has been on trial in the Albany Courthouse on the state's southern coast for the past five days, charged with the rare offence of attempting to procure the commission of a crime.

The court heard the accused asked a truck diver, who approached him desperate for work with his civil contracting company AD Contractors, to kill 50-year-old Michelle Patreena Attwell after becoming frustrated with a protracted, bitter legal dispute between her and his son following the breakdown of their marriage.

The driver informed police, who instructed him to set up a meeting between Attwell and an undercover policeman.

Attwell met the policeman twice at a beach near the woman's home, and paid $10,000 in two instalments as a down payment on a $30,000 job.

The court heard Attwell refer to her as a "maggot", a "pain in the arse" and a "nuisance to society" who should be "put to sleep".

He told the officer to bind Ms Attwell in duct tape, strangle her and bury her in a 30-foot hole dug by an excavator.

Defence lawyer Tom Percy argued his client was just expressing his frustration with the ongoing legal dispute, a central point of contention being his son's stake in AD Contractors, a multi-million dollar business.

Attwell repeatedly said during his testimony that his hateful comments were "huff and puff", and that he only wanted his estranged daughter-in-law frightened.

But state prosecutor James MacTaggart said evidence showed Attwell was committed to having her murdered.

Mr Percy argued the undercover policeman had not been given enough information about Ms Attwell - including a photograph - for her to have been in real danger.

Mr MacTaggart, however, said Attwell had provided an address and general description, and that was sufficient for the woman to be at serious risk.

On Friday, a jury convicted Attwell, who spent six months in custody after he was charged.

They deliberated for more than three hours over two days.

Mr MacTaggart noted Attwell was ill and barely mobile, but said he deserved a substantial term of imprisonment as he had engaged a contract killer to a party in a legal dispute.

Ms Attwell, who sat through the whole trial, would not speak with the media but issued a statement in which she asked for her privacy to be respected.

"It's been a long, sad and distressing year for the whole family and this week has been harrowing," she said.

"I'm glad it is over and I hope this really is the end of the matter and I can get on with my life without fear and interference."

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Cash rate cutting cycle coming to an end

IT'S good new for the economy but bad news for borrowers.

There's not going to be an interest rate cut next week and the chances of a reduction next year are slim as the non-mining parts of the economy are expected to pick up pace.

All 14 economists surveyed by AAP say the Reserve Bank of Australia will not cut the cash rate at its board meeting on Tuesday.

Only eight of those surveyed expect a rate cut next year.

The mining and resources investment boom is at, or near, its peak and other parts of the economy are expected to pick up pace and have a more significant role in driving the Australian economy.

Citigroup head of economics Paul Brennan said there is evidence that the Australian economy is starting to rebalance, helped by recent rate cuts.

"The RBA's previous assessment that the influence of previous interest rates cuts working through the economy still holds true and there is data to show that domestic expenditure is slowly improving," he said.

"Housing and equity markets and measures of sentiment have either remained largely stable or strengthened further."

September quarter capital expenditure figures, released on Thursday, were stronger than expected, which Mr Brennan said shows mining investment will still be quite strong for some time to come.

"Mining capex plans are not falling off a cliff while the capex plans of non-mining companies are starting to firm," he said.

"Information from other business surveys also suggests some resilience in overall business investment and this resilience could be sustained if the recent rebound in confidence is sustained."

HSBC chief economist Paul Bloxham said a lower exchange rate will also help the domestic economy and save the RBA from cutting its rate again.

In the past six weeks the Australian dollar has steadily fallen, losing six US cents since October 25 to its current level just below 91 US cents.

"RBA governor Glenn Stevens has suggested that it is his judgement that the Australian dollar is currently above levels that we would expect to see in the medium term," Mr Bloxham said.

"Our own view is still that the Australian dollar will be around 90 US cents at year end and will fall modestly through 2014 to 86 US cents."

As new mining and resource projects come into production, mineral exports and housing will be the main drivers for the Australian economy in 2014, he said.

"We expect the housing boom to continue as low interest rates continue to provide support," Mr Bloxham said.

"The recent pick up in consumer confidence is expected to translate into a modest pick up in household consumption."

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Church dissent over abuse approach

ANGLICANS in Australia would take a dim view if the church sold off its multi-million dollar assets to settle with abuse victims, the head of the church says.

The primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, Phillip Aspinall, told a royal commission the church needs a mandatory compensation scheme imposed on it so it can deal fairly with sex abuse victims.

Dr Aspinall said the only way a compensation scheme would work was if it was imposed from outside.

The Anglican Church of Australia is not a unified structure, dioceses have primary power and can reject or adopt laws passed by the General Synod, Dr Aspinall told the final day of public hearings into how the Diocese of Grafton dealt with victims of sex abuse at a church orphanage in northern NSW.

"Many confuse our structures with the Roman Catholics and presume the primate has coercive powers akin to the pope," he said in a statement submitted to the royal commission.

"The belief that the primate of the Anglican Church is effectively the CEO of Australian's Anglicans is wrong.

"It may well be helpful if the royal commission were able to achieve a uniform mandatory compensation scheme which would ensure parity, not just between Anglican dioceses, but across government organisations, so that we don't have different classes of victims.

"It would be much quicker and simpler for us if that were imposed on us from outside and dioceses would not fall into the trap that Grafton did in terms of focusing on financial matters to the detriment of victims."

The commission has learned that Grafton is asset rich with properties valued at approximately $200 million, but had a debt of between $10 million or $12 million dollars because it built a private school that was not attracting students.

Dr Aspinall told the commission that across 23 Anglican dioceses their wealth would be in assets, not cash.

Justice Peter McClellan asked if there had been any church discussion that it might need to sell assets to make settlement payments.

Dr Aspinall said there might have been, but every diocese would find it hard to achieve as the assets were houses and churches and the people who had raised funds to build them would take a "dim view" if they were being sold for this purpose.

He went on to say that with a mandatory compensation system a diocese would simply be given a determination by a statutory body and be required to find the money.

"Then they could focus on the financial aspects and be forced to deal with it."

He also said it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the church to implement that kind of system itself, as it would require every diocese to agree.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard Grafton diocese tried to deny liability for the North Coast Children's Home when more that 40 former residents alleged horrific physical, sexual and psychological abuse.

After years of legal wrangling, a without-prejudice settlement was reached in 2007 which saw 39 victims accept what has been described as a paltry payment of about $10,000 each.

The commission also heard that the then Bishop of Grafton, Keith Slater, was focused on the diocese's debt problems.

Bishop Slater has apologised for his handling of the affair.

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RAAF warns homes face jet noise impact

THE RAAF says a local council in NSW is allowing people to build near one of its busiest bases where they will be blasted with aircraft noise.

Air force chief Air Marshal Geoff Brown said he was disappointed with decisions by Port Stephens Council to provide exemptions to its planning rules for some developments near RAAF Williamtown, north of Newcastle.

He said new developments were inside the contours on the Australian Noise Exposure Forecast (ANEF) map that were deemed unsuitable by the relevant Australian Standards.

"Home owners that purchase these new developments are acquiring properties that will be exposed to high levels of aircraft noise both now with F/A-18A/B Hornets and F-35A in the future," he said in a statement.

Air Marshal Brown said RAAF Base Williamtown was a strategic national asset providing vital training for the next generation of air combat aircraft.

Aircraft noise is a particular issue for RAAF Williamtown and the Salt Ash Air Weapons range where residential encroachment and the operation of Hornet and Hawk jets has produced noise complaints.

The RAAF has taken some measures to mitigate noise including using particular flight profiles and limiting flying periods.

Air Marshal Brown said the continuing trend by Port Stephens Council to approve development in the ANEF "conditionally acceptable" zone undermined the hard work to reduce the impact of aircraft noise.

He said aircraft noise would never be eliminated and it would never be possible for home owners to soundproof their backyards.

"We will continue to work with the Williamtown community through our fly neighbourly policies. However our focus will be on working with existing home owners," he said.

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