'500 dolphins caught in WA nets' in decade

ABOUT 500 dolphins have been caught in the Pilbara trawl fishery in the past 10 years, West Australian scientists say.

Murdoch University PhD candidate Simon Allen and colleagues from the Cetacean Research Unit have made the claims based on independent observer data, which shows methods to reduce dolphin bycatch are not working.

"Independent observers reported bycatch rates of about 50 dolphins per year, which is double the number reported by the skippers of these vessels," Mr Allen said.

Under-reporting was not unusual around the world, especially where marine mammal capture was illegal, he said.

"This doesn't necessarily mean that skippers are deliberately under-reporting," Mr Allen said.

"Fishers are concentrating on the job at hand and may not see a dead dolphin fall out of the net on winch up."

A report by the WA Fisheries Department detailed similar findings, but instead suggested self-reporting mechanisms in place were accurate and the impact posed negligible risk, Mr Allen said.

But researchers said modified bycatch reduction devices with top-opening escape hatches could be more effective.

The scientists have also called for a reinstatement of independent observers and in-net video collection to accurately measure bycatch.

"The next step is to calculate the acceptable levels of human-caused dolphin mortality, which requires an estimate of the dolphin population size in the region," Mr Allen said.

"If the ongoing bycatch exceeds that threshold, switching to alternative, less destructive fishing methods, like trap or line fishing, should be considered."

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More double demerits for WA drivers

DOUBLE demerit penalties will now apply to West Australian motorists caught using their mobile phones while driving and running red lights during holiday periods.

Road Safety Minister Liza Harvey said the change would come into effect in time for the Easter long weekend and would be reviewed after three years.

"We know that both running red lights and using your mobile phone while driving are linked to fatal and serious crashes," she said.

"We don't want anybody to lose a loved one on our roads over the Anzac and Easter holidays."

Double demerits already apply to drink and drug driving, speeding and not using seatbelts.

Earlier this year, the Road Safety Council undertook a review of the double demerits system and advised that illegal mobile phone use and running red lights should be included.

Over the past five years, road fatalities had dropped by 30 per cent, but WA still had one of the worst road tolls in Australia, Ms Harvey said.

Double demerit penalties will be enforced between April 17 and 21, and between April 24 and 27.

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SA and Canberra closer on road plan

The SA and federal governments have held talks on Adelaide's north-south road corridor. Source: AAP

THE federal and South Australian governments have held talks aimed at overcoming disagreements on how to fully redevelop Adelaide's north-south road corridor.

The two governments had been at odds before the recent state election, with the Commonwealth wanting to start the project with an upgrade at Darlington in the city's south.

The state government maintained a section of the road further north should be the priority.

But a meeting on Thursday between federal Assistant Minister for Infrastructure Jamie Briggs and new SA Transport and Infrastructure Minister Stephen Mullighan appears to have closed the gap.

Mr Briggs said he was now more confident about the project.

"We want to get the north-south corridor upgraded in a decade," he said.

Mr Mullighan described Thursday's meeting as productive.

"We've made very clear what our priority is and they've made very clear what their priority is," he said.

"What we're working on is how we can deliver both projects."

Mr Mullighan said talks would continue.

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Safety overlooked in batts scheme rush

FORMER prime minister Kevin Rudd's "horrendous" timeline for the home insulation program denied bureaucrats adequate time to consider safety risks, an inquiry has heard.

Public servants were given five months to devise the $2.8 billion scheme.

Safety considerations were overlooked as they scrambled to have it up and running by July 1, 2009, a royal commission has been told.

Former environment department deputy secretary Malcolm Forbes, who oversaw delivery, says potential risks would have been properly considered if time wasn't so tight.

Commissioner Ian Hanger QC asked what was "so magic" about July 1, 2009.

"That's what the prime minster wanted," Mr Forbes replied.

Asked why nobody told Mr Rudd it couldn't be done, Mr Forbes said doing so would have gone against the public service culture, which was to remain positive and get the job done.

Mr Forbes said he did raise concerns about the challenging deadline with former co-ordinator general Mike Mrdak.

"We were flagging early that this was a significant challenge to us," he said.

A coronial inquest has already blamed the scheme's rushed rollout for the deaths of young Queenslanders Matthew Fuller, Rueben Barnes and Mitchell Sweeney.

NSW tradesman Marcus Wilson also died installing home insulation.

Mr Forbes said he had never, in his 33 years as a public servant, seen such a short gap between a government program being announced and rolled out, as occurred with the home insulation program (HIP).

"The HIP implementation timeline was horrendous," he said in a statement to the inquiry.

" ... some compromises were made that left risks remaining to achieve the timeline."

The scheme wasn't fully implemented until September 2009 but even then inspections were happening slowly.

While 400,000 homes had been insulated by October, only 172 roof inspections had taken place.

The inquiry resumes on Friday.

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Four jailed over WA drug-fuelled killing

TWO men and a woman who lured her former lover to a site where he was run over and repeatedly shot have been sentenced to life in prison for the murder.

Tamara Kathleen Broadbent, Gary David Young and Damien Paul Kosick were each sentenced on Tuesday in the West Australian Supreme Court to life in prison.

Broadbent and Young must serve at least 24 years behind bars before being eligible for parole, while Kosick must serve 22 years.

A third man, Kym Steven Foster, was sentenced to eight years in prison for manslaughter.

The four offenders murdered father-of-two David Blenkinsopp in March 2012.

Earlier, during sentencing submissions, a victim impact statement from Mr Blenkinsopp's wife was read to the court in which she described her difficulty in explaining to the children that their father was dead.

The trial heard Mr Blenkinsopp, who was bipolar and a drug user, was having an affair with Broadbent in 2011, but their relationship was often violent.

By February 2012, she began dating Foster and took out a restraining order on her former lover, which he then broke, the court heard.

On March 4, Broadbent, Foster, Kosick and Young went on a drug and alcohol binge while Mr Blenkinsopp did the same elsewhere, after which he was lured to his death, prosecutors said.

The four accused confronted an unarmed Mr Blenkinsopp and shot him twice in the torso and once in the leg with a rifle.

He was also run over before being buried.

Broadbent fired at least one more shot at the bush grave.

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Cabbie charged over rape of 10-year-old

A 10-YEAR-OLD girl with profound hearing difficulties was allegedly raped several times by an elderly cab driver hired to take her to school.

Sydney police charged the 64-year-old on Tuesday morning with eight sexual assault offences, including two counts of aggravated sexual intercourse with a physically impaired child 10-14 years old, after investigating allegations from late 2013.

"The offences, which are alleged to have occurred on a number of occasions in 2009 when the girl was aged 10 and 11, took place in the vehicle the man used to transport her to and from school," police said.

The alleged child rapist would abuse the girl a few streets from her home, after dropping other children off at the end of the school day.

He appeared in Liverpool Local Court on Tuesday and was denied bail.

He's due before Campbelltown Local Court in May.

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Superbug may become untreatable: Qld study

A RAPIDLY spreading superbug that causes bladder and blood infections could evolve and become untreatable.

Queensland researchers found a strain of E. coli was one gene away from becoming resistant to almost all drugs.

The bacteria had evolved and spread rapidly worldwide over the past five years.

Study co-author Dr Nouri Ben Zakour says the spread of the multi-drug resistant ST131 strain could lead to a spike in urinary tract and blood infections.

"More than 150 million cases of urinary tract infection are reported globally every year," Dr Zakour, from the Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre, said.

"So an E. coli resistant to all currently effective antibiotic treatments could be devastating to the community."

The University of Queensland research will be used to develop detection tests.

The study was published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

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Obeid touted $100m water deal: ICAC

Banker Gardner Brook has told ICAC the family of Eddie Obeid "thought they were running the state". Source: AAP

MOSES Obeid boasted that a mooted $100 million water deal "eclipsed" his family's notorious Mount Penny coal venture, the NSW corruption watchdog has heard.

In sensational testimony before the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), former Lehman Brothers banker Gardner Brook said the son of former MP Eddie Obeid told him in 2008 the water deal would bring in "a bucketload of money".

Mr Brook told the inquiry the Obeids thought they ran NSW and were looking at a privatisation deal which would make a fortune.

The ICAC is probing allegations infrastructure firm Australian Water Holdings (AWH) billed the state-owned Sydney Water for limousine rides and trips to luxury Queensland hotels.

Mr Brook told the ICAC on Tuesday he got to know Moses Obeid while working on a coal deal at Mount Penny in the NSW Hunter region - a deal the watchdog has already branded corrupt in a separate inquiry.

"Moses said that he and his family had an ownership in Australian Water (Holdings) and that they had great influence over it," Mr Brook recalled in a written statement.

"The company was looking into a privatisation deal where they could effectively control all of Sydney's water. Moses said, 'We are going to make a fortune out of it'."

Mr Brook told the commission a payoff of $100 million was mentioned.

Mr Brook said he met with the two Obeids and and former Labor MP Joe Tripodi in August 2008 in Elizabeth Bay, where the men canvassed selling off NSW electricity assets and Moses repeatedly declared "this conversation's not happening".

Mr Brook didn't understand at the time, he said, "but I've figured it out since".

"It's fairly obvious that these people thought they were running the state of NSW," he said on Tuesday.

Lawyers for the Obeids suggested Mr Brook "had a problem with intoxicants" in 2008 or that he suffered memory loss after a 2010 accident.

But Mr Brook stood by his testimony.

"My recollection is sharp. Razor-sharp," he said.

Counsel assisting Geoffrey Watson SC this week zeroed in on documents he says provide "hard evidence" that AWH's Sydney Water billings amounted to fraud.

Sydney Water had agreed to pay for AWH's costs as the company built water infrastructure around Sydney's northwest.

It has been alleged the utility also picked up the tab for payments made to lobbying firm SolutionsRUs, Qantas flights and luxury lodgings at the Sofitel Hotel in Cairns and the Conrad Treasury in Brisbane.

It has also been alleged Sydney Water paid for a chauffeur to drive Eddie Obeid Junior and ex-AWH chief Nick Di Girolamo around Sydney.

Ian George, who certified AWH expenses while working for accounting firm MBT, said some payments appeared to have been rubber-stamped in error but that invoices were generally reviewed.

"Somebody sat down and thought, ah yes, they must have been driving to Acer Arena with what, sewerage pipes in the boot?" Mr Watson asked.

"How could this happen? What was going through your mind when you signed the certificates month in, month out which included these items?"

The inquiry continues.

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Public servant slams pink batts processes

A SENIOR public servant who described Kevin Rudd as "scary" in satirical presentation slides says he was treated unethically while devising the home insulation scheme.

Federal environment department assistant secretary Kevin Keeffe told a royal commission in Brisbane on Monday it was unethical for bureaucrats not to warn him that his business model would be dumped at a meeting attended by senator Mark Arbib.

But Mr Keeffe had to defend his own actions when the inquiry was shown a series of slides he made for a presentation to environment department staff in September 2009, two months after the scheme's rollout.

The first described former prime minister Rudd, former co-ordinator general Mark Mrdak and then environment minister Peter Garrett as "some scary people".

"When I say scary, they were key stakeholders we had to manage," Mr Keeffe told the inquiry.

There were also slides about "scary numbers", "scary timelines" and "scary stakeholders" in relation to the home insulation scheme.

Earlier, the inquiry heard how Mr Keeffe was furious to learn at a March 31, 2009, meeting that his business model for the program had been dumped.

He said he should have been warned before the meeting attended by Mr Arbib, Mr Mrdak and staff at the co-ordinator-general's office.

"It's not the done thing in public service culture for a central agency to not give someone at my level a heads-up this is going to come," Mr Keeffe told the inquiry.

"To have it delivered to you on a plate is unethical."

Mr Keeffe was still fuming after the meeting, and fired off emails to others in the department.

"I'm past slow smolder (sic). Seriously cranky," one email read.

"Still cranky at being put into unwinnable position where blame flows our way," another said.

Before the scheme's July 1, 2009, introduction, the environment department's regional brokerage model was switched to a more centralised one that allowed for the participation of smaller installation businesses.

The scheme ended up being swamped by low-skilled workers who required only a general safety induction before entering ceilings.

Mr Keeffe said he pushed for installers to be trained but was overruled because the government was more concerned about job creation and stimulating the economy.

Training for installers was scaled back to include only supervisors, but Mr Keeffe said it was always his expectation that anyone entering a roof would have to first complete a five-day training course.

He also told the inquiry he didn't expect installers in Australia to die, despite fatalities occurring in New Zealand.

Four installers died in Australia, including two who were using metal staples to secure foil insulation.

Three New Zealand installers died using the same practice in 2007.

The inquiry before commissioner Ian Hanger QC continues.

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Deja vu all over again for WA voters

Tony Abbott (L) and Bill Shorten are campaigning ahead of the WA Senate election re-run on Saturday. Source: AAP

HAVEN'T we heard all this before?

That is surely what the West Australian electorate was thinking on Monday as the state's looming Senate election re-run brought politicians by the planeload to Perth - with plenty to say but little of it new.

While Prime Minister Tony Abbott was rebranding his agreement with WA Premier Colin Barnett for the national disability insurance scheme, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was preparing to appear at a teachers rally - just as he did the week before September's poll.

And with Clive Palmer making plenty of noise, micro-parties threatening an upset and Greens Senator Scott Ludlam battling hard for his political future, the fourth WA election campaign in just more than a year has been a case of deja vu for the election-weary west.

Mr Abbott made an early-morning swoop into RAAF Pearce to meet the troops searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight before hitting the hustings in the city.

The PM accused the opposition of untruths over school funding, defended his reinstatement of knights and dames, and pushed for the abolition of the mining and carbon taxes.

"The people of WA need to know that Labor is not being straight with you, and Bill Shorten won't give you a straight answer about the carbon tax and the mining tax here in Perth," Mr Abbott said.

With a teachers strike set to close more than 100 WA schools on Tuesday, Mr Shorten got in early to attend a school in Belmont, in Perth's east, with a message about Liberal education cuts.

"Education cuts are occurring in Western Australia and if Tony Abbott gets a rubber stamp in his Senate ... we'll see further cuts to West Australian schools," Mr Shorten said.

Meanwhile, Mr Palmer's pre-election advertising blitz for his Palmer United party (PUP) reached fever pitch, with claims the Liberals and Labor are "taking bread out of the mouths of WA babies".

While up to three radio ads ran in each break on local stations, an animated YouTube slot from PUP claimed the flow of WA's GST share to the east was denying food for the state's children.

"They send our GST to Melbourne and Sydney - get it back," the PUP ad urged.

Meanwhile, the Australian Sports party - whose candidate, Wayne Dropulich, won a Senate seat in the recount - has been criticised for posting a topless woman on its Facebook page as part of its campaign.

The image - accompanied by a joke involving a weight-loss program that encouraged an overweight man to chase naked women - appeared on the party's site late last week.

The campaign will continue on Tuesday, with Mr Abbott set to host the entire federal cabinet in Perth, while Mr Shorten will rally on the steps of state parliament along with the teachers union.

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