What the nation s newspapers say today, Sat, April 3, 1999

AAP General News (Australia)
04-03-1999
What the nation s newspapers say today, Sat, April 3, 1999

SYDNEY, April 3 AAP - How to stem the evil in Kosovo without being tainted by the same
spirit? The Weekend Australian asks in its editorial today, drawing an analogy with Christ's
suffering and resurrection to the worn torn region.

"The streams of distressed men, women and children who are today's living image of human
agony, hope that their travail will end in resurrection," the newspaper says.

"It is in such hope that the Jews left Egypt in exodus. In similar expectation, Muslims go
on pilgrimage to Mecca. And Christians hear the rending of a tomb.

"So in the dark valley of the shadow of death in Kosovo, we all hope for resurrection."

The Brisbane Courier-Mail today says there is no more pivotal day in the Christian calender
than Easter and were it not for the resurrection of Jesus, Christianity would have no more
relavance today than the Essenes.

In its editorial, it says that, to its believers, Christianity is both a source of comfort
and an uncomfortable hair shirt.

Throughout history, it says, there have been countless Kosovos, however history passed them
over and hope returned, to flourish anew.

"That may be of meagre comfort to the people of Kosovo faced with the implacable hatred of
Slobodan Milosevic and his death squads; but hopefully it will steel the resolve of United
States President (Bill) Clinton and other NATO leaders who cannot now lose heart in the fight
against the monstrous evil," the newspaper says.

The tragic start to the Easter Weekend on the nation's roads has left 17 people dead - two
more than the total recorded during the four-day break last year, the Herald Sun says in its
editorial today.

The victims had died needlessly, the paper says. Many of the deaths resulted, tragically,
from in attention.

"It wasn't exhaustion that claimed the life of a two-year-old girl in the New South Wales
city of Maitland early yesterday ... reports tell how the toddler wandered on to the New
England Highway trying to follow her mother and five other children," the paper says.

"The suffering can be avoided.

"Drive safely."

Speeding drivers should be compelled to accompany police to the three places officers have
to visit in the event of a road fatality, as recommended by traffic commander Superintendent
Ron Sorrenson, The Daily Telegraph says in its editorial today.

Those are: the crash scene "where an offender can witness the devastation an impact at high
speed can cause to the human body"; the victim's home, to break the news to the parents that
their child won't be coming home; the morgue, to identify the body.

"Being forced to attend the human misery caused by recklessness on the road is extreme,
and, of course, would be difficult to legislate," the newspaper says.

"But it would be a deterrent. After all, nothing else appears to be working."

NSW Premier Bob Carr should remember that a do-nothing approach to government over the past
four years might have brought down his government, The Sydney Morning Herald says in its
editorial today.

"The polls showed that 58 per cent of voters were disenchanted with the Carr government.
Only an incompetent opposition over four years saved him," the newspaper says.

"For the next election, Mr Carr will have to demonstrate that the state government has
developed and established a plan to take NSW through the difficult post-Olympics period.

"The catalyst for this plan has to be the privatisation in some form of the power industry.
The resources locked into government ownership of this industry need to be unlocked for
infrastructure development in other areas.

"Mr Carr has dedicated his second term to creating jobs. This will only happen if the Carr
government works hard itself on a reform package."

The victims of rampant over-servicing - a euphemism for rorting - the Medicare system, are
indirectly the federal government and Medicare itself, the Adelaide Advertiser says today.

But we, the patients and the taxpayers, are the ones who really pay, the newspaper says in
its editorial, throwing its support behind a proposal currently before federal Health Minister
Michael Wooldridge.

"We pay twice: first through the income levy, tax by another name, which funds Medicare,
and second through the frightening possibility of mis-diagnosis by doctors who see so many
patients that a proper assessment of their condition becomes almost hit or miss," it says.

"The sanctions now proposed in the review presented to the federal Health Minister, Dr
Wooldridge, seem eminently reasonable and designed to tackle the problem at source.

"They require that proper records be kept. Those who do not so face the possibility of
being denied access to the Medicare cash cow."

The split between the country and the cities must be healed, The Age says in its editorial
today.

Rural Australia is turning to One Nation candidates and Independents, looking for
solutions, the newspaper says.

"It is not hard to see why such developments have taken place. Bureau of Statistics figures
issued late last month showed that while jobs have grown by tens of thousands in both
Melbourne and Sydney in the past three years, the net number of jobs in rural Victoria and New
South Wales has declined substantially," the paper says.

"It is incumbent on the coalition parties at the national level to look at ways of bringing
rural Australia back into what the prime minister loves to call 'the mainstream'."

AAP cdh

KEYWORD: EDITORIALS

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