Salvos abuse evidence will shock: inquiry

Evidence about abuse at Salvation Army homes is some of the worst heard at the royal commission. Source: AAP

CHILDREN at a Salvation Army home in Queensland were fed food donated for animals, savagely beaten, sexually abused and locked in a cage, an inquiry has been told.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which is examining four homes run by the Salvos in NSW and Queensland from 1966-77, has been told that evidence to be given of corporal punishment and sexual abuse at the homes were some of the most disturbing the commission had heard.

It is at the "severe end of abuse" examined by the commission, the opening of a two-week hearing in Sydney heard on Tuesday.

Simeon Beckett, counsel assisting the commission, said the hearing would hear many allegations about five identified officers, "Laurence Wilson, Russell Walker, Victor Bennett, John McIver and Donald Schultz".

Mr Walker, Mr Schultz and Mr McIver are still alive and have been given notice of the hearing.

He said the evidence against Mr Wilson, who died in 2008, would shock.

Mr Beckett said the commission would be examining the response of the Salvation Army to child sexual abuse within two Queensland homes for boys, Alkira at Indooroopilly and the Endeavour training farm at Riverview, as well as Bexley Boys Home in Sydney and the Gill Memorial Home in Goulburn, NSW.

Outlining the evidence that would be presented, Mr Beckett said 13 people would give evidence of severe and disturbing abuse at all the homes.

At the Endeavour farm, one witness would tell how he was made to sort fruit and vegetables given to the farm to feed the animals, picking out what could be given to the boys.

If he made a wrong choice, he was flogged.

"Other forms of punishment included sweeping the playground with a toothbrush, cleaning 50 pairs of shoes ... and on one occasion forcing a boy to eat his own vomit."

Boys were also locked in a cage on the home's verandah for up to two weeks as punishment. Children were raped and beaten. Mr Bennett was said to beat boys until they bled.

Mr Beckett also said there had been an inquiry in Queensland in 1999 and a senate inquiry into the Salvation Army homes.

"In 1976, a childcare officer expressed extreme concern at what was happening and reported 'the normal behaviours for Alkira is absconding, truancy and stealing. How desperate do children have to become?'," Mr Beckett said.

He added that evidence would show that the Salvation Army moved personnel around.

The hearing continues.

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NSW govt finalises CSG safeguards

THE NSW government's announcement of finalised safeguards to protect homes and high quality farmland from coal seam gas projects has upset groups on both sides of the CSG debate.

NSW Deputy Premier Andrew Stoner said on Tuesday the finalised reforms struck the right balance for communities and industry and were the strictest regulations around CSG projects in Australia.

CSG exclusion zones were in force for an estimated 95 per cent of dwellings covered by current petroleum licences and tough regulations were in place for NSW's most valuable agricultural land, he said.

"Today marks a significant milestone in this government's commitment to balance the energy needs of the state and the need to support our vital agricultural industry," he said in a statement.

CSG exclusion zones now applied to 2.7 million hectares in NSW, Mr Stoner added.

In addition, about 2.8 million hectares of valuable farming land was safeguarded by ensuring the impacts on land and water or resource proposals were considered upfront through the independent scientific Gateway process, he said.

Protection of "critical industry clusters" includes 60,000 hectares of vineyards and horse studs in the Upper Hunter region.

But the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) said the government had further dented the credibility of its pursuit of science-based energy policy with its announced restrictions.

"The NSW government has dreamt up yet another layer of arbitrary and politically-driven regulations for an industry the state desperately needs," APPEA Chief Operating Officer Eastern Region Paul Fennelly said in a statement.

"Despite knowing that NSW imports 95 per cent of its gas supply and that a failure to develop local supplies will lead to higher energy prices, the state government has again turned its back on both the science and the industry's proven track record."

"It is not surprising to see NSW's reputation as a place to do business slipping," Mr Fennelly said.

The Nature Conservation Council of NSW, meanwhile, said the safeguards were a "common sense" victory for those concerned about CSG projects in urban areas but "key water resources and sensitive environmental areas" remained at risk.

"Drinking water catchments are still not protected, neither are important natural assets like the Pilliga Forest, which is set to be carved up and polluted by gas development," campaigns director Kate Smolski said in a statement.

The NSW Greens called on the government to increase the amount of land protected from coal seam gas mining.

"Only 3.37 per cent of NSW's land area is protected from fracking for coal seam gas, and only 0.4 per cent of land is classified as a critical industry cluster," Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham said in a statement.

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Treasurer sets fed debt limit at $500bn

TREASURER Joe Hockey has given a directive to set Australia's debt limit at $500 billion, despite parliament voting to abolish the ceiling altogether.

Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen said it was a classic example of the coalition saying one thing before the election and delivering the opposite after.

Mr Hockey's directive relating to government borrowing was officially gazetted on January 22.

"I direct that the maximum total face value of stock and securities that may be on issue is $500 billion," Mr Hockey states.

The directive expires on April 1, 2024.

A spokesman for Mr Hockey said it was in line with the legislation passed in December to abolish Labor's $300 billion debt ceiling and "satisfied funding and operation requirements".

The abolition of the debt limit was the result of a compromise with the Australian Greens, after Mr Hockey's initial attempt to legislate the $500 billion ceiling failed.

Mr Bowen told AAP on Monday the decision followed the extraordinary deal between the Liberals and the Greens to deliver the Greens' policy of no debt limit.

"Before the election Joe Hockey was against debt, now he can't get enough of it," Mr Bowen said.

"The Hockey-Milne deal on no debt limit has ensured the economic fringe dwellers are at the centre of economic policy and decision-making in this country.

"It doesn't matter what regulation Joe Hockey signs, this deal ensures he can run up unlimited government debt."

The mid-year economic review released last year forecast debt to rise from $310 billion in 2013/14 to $460 billion by 2016/17, and $667 billion by 2023/24 if the budget is not brought under control.

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Vic man's beating death in home rampage

A group of 10 men smashed up a house and car in Victoria before leaving a man dying in his home. Source: AAP

AN armed gang of youths stormed a Melbourne home in an Australia Day suburban rampage, beating to death a 20-year-old man and injuring two others.

Police say the group of 10 men were armed with long weapons - possibly bats, poles or machetes - as they smashed a car, trashed the home and killed the man in a matter of minutes.

The armed men then slowly walked away from the Deer Park property, shouting racist abuse as they disappeared into nearby parkland, a neighbour recalled.

"They didn't seem to be in much of a hurry at all," said the 50-year-old neighbour, who didn't want his name published.

Two others from the western suburbs home are recovering in hospital with leg and hand injuries.

Police say the attack is not random or racially motivated, though it's believed everyone knew each other prior to the incident.

Homicide Detective Senior Sergeant Paul Tremain said there's no record of previous problems at the address.

"It was almost a case of running into the property, inflicting as much damage and injury as possible, and then running out," he said.

"We are very confident that we will get on top of this."

A next-door neighbour said a half-dozen people were having an Australia Day BBQ on the front lawn of the property on Sunday before the group of armed youths arrived around 10pm (AEDT).

The group, aged in their late teens to early 20s, smashed the tail lights, side mirrors and windows on a yellow ute parked in the front driveway before pushing their way into the Billingham Road home.

A woman was heard screaming, "Call the cops" and, "Don't leave me" as the 20-year-old man was beaten by the gang.

Neighbour Helen Thwaites heard the woman's cries for hours after the young man had died.

"It was heart-wrenching to hear," she said.

"How tragic. Why? What a waste."

It's believed the man, from nearby Diggers Rest, had been recently staying at the home. He was friends with the person who lived there with his girlfriend.

Neighbour Raziye Tahir said many residents are scared about what happened.

"It's really shook us. We couldn't sleep at all last night," she said.

"I hope they catch whoever has done this."

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Man shot dead in Sydney's southwest

A young man has died on a footpath in Sydney's southwest after being shot. Source: AAP

A YOUNG man has died on a footpath outside an apartment block in Sydney's southwest after being shot.

Police and ambulance paramedics responded to reports of a shooting at Equity Place in Canley Vale at about 2.45am (AEDT) on Sunday to find a man aged in his 20s on a footpath suffering gunshot wounds.

Despite the efforts of paramedics, the man died at the scene.

Police say the man was known to them and the shooting was not believed to be random.

Riot squad officers were called to the scene in the early hours of Sunday after a group of young men who knew the victim clashed with police in heated exchanges.

One man shouted he wanted to see his brother before being restrained and pulled away by a friend.

A distraught young woman, believed to the girlfriend of the deceased, was also at the scene early on Sunday.

Police cordoned off the street and erected an awning as forensic officers examined the scene and local residents were questioned.

Jennifer Nguyen, 33, who lives at the apartment block where the man died, told AAP she heard nothing overnight but thought there might have been a party on Saturday night.

"I woke up about 4am when police knocked on my door," Ms Nguyen said.

"Oh my God, I was shocked."

Ms Nguyen said the street was normally very quiet.

Meanwhile, police are investigating an incident at Hinchinbrook, also in Sydney's southwest, after a man driving a car escaped injury when the rear passenger windows sustained suspected gunshot damage.

"A 32-year-old man, who had been driving the car at the time of the incident, was not injured," police said.

Police were called to the incident at South Liverpool Road at about 2.25am on Sunday and have seized a black Holden Barina for forensic examination.

A police spokeswoman said it was not known at this stage if the two shootings are linked.

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Record number of new Australians

A record 17,863 people will become citizens as part of Australia Day celebrations. Source: AAP

MORE people than ever will become Australian citizens in ceremonies across the nation on Sunday.

The federal government says a record 17,863 people will become citizens as part of Australia Day celebrations.

They will pledge their allegiance to the nation at some 400 ceremonies to be staged across Australia as it marks 65 years since the first citizenship ceremony was held.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison congratulated the nation's newest Aussies on the 65th anniversary of Australian citizenship.

"The 65th anniversary of Australian citizenship is an opportunity for all of us - whether Australian by birth or choice - to pause and reflect on the privileges and responsibilities which come with being an Australian citizen," he said in a statement.

Mr Morrison will preside over a ceremony in Sydney on Sunday to welcome 30 new citizens.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Tony Abbott will confer citizenship on 24 people at the national flag-raising and citizenship ceremony in Canberra.

Victoria will welcome the most new Australians of any state, with 4500 people to gain citizenship.

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Police pelted by brawling Vic youths

BRAWLERS pelted police with glass bottles in Melbourne as they tried to break up a large street fracas, sparking fears of drunken violence marring Australia Day festivities.

Officers had been confronted by a huge crowd of aggressive youths after being called to Springvale in the city's southeast just before midnight on Friday.

At least 80 people were already fighting in the street when a glass bottle was thrown at one of the police.

Acting Senior Sergeant Anita Brens says police had to spray down four men in the crowd with capsicum foam to try to break up the brawl.

While the group slowly left the suburban street, they continued pelting police with a barrage of glass bottles.

"They continued to be abusive towards police and fight amongst themselves," she said.

No one was arrested and the police all escaped injury.

Victorian Premier Denis Napthine said he was disgusted by the group's behaviour and praised police for being able to handle such a volatile situation.

"That is absolutely inappropriate, that is wrong, it is disgusting behaviour," he said.

"It is not the sort of behaviour we want in Melbourne or Victoria."

The melee came only a day after senior police warned of drunken violence occurring over the Australia Day long weekend.

Deputy Commissioner Tim Cartwright said the assault rate on January 26 has been skyrocketing in recent years, largely due to open-air events, alcohol and large gatherings of people.

"We have lots of public events, lots of occasions, but it's still our worst day," he said.

Patrols will be stepped up in city hotspots and around public transport hubs to deal with the expected surge in violence.

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Sydney Harbour to launch Australia Day

WHETHER you're into sheep shearing, whip cracking, fireworks or surfing, there is something for everyone this Australia Day.

And a 100-year-old Iraqi-born grandmother and a two-year-old Indian boy are among nearly 3600 people from 113 countries to become citizens across the state on Sunday.

The largest ceremonies in NSW will take place at Sutherland and Blacktown.

Meanwhile in Sydney, an indigenous ceremony will welcome in Australia Day with a ritual fire at the Opera House at 7.30am.

The fire, along with offerings from around the world will then be carried onboard a boat, before meeting bark canoes under the Harbour bridge for a smoking ceremony.

It will commemorate our past and future, with the national anthem to be sung in the Eora language.

Throughout the day, other free festivities include the popular race of Sydney's ferries, as well as the Australian army parachute display over Circular Quay.

In a new event, tug boats and 10 yachts will perform a "ballet" on the harbour.

Singers Mahalia Barnes and Prinnie Stevens will entertain with the sounds of motown in Darling Harbour from 6pm.

Ms Barnes said it is a great opportunity to celebrate and be grateful.

"We live in one of the most amazing countries in the world, we are very, very lucky," she told reporters on Saturday.

"The best thing about it is that everyone goes out and has a good time."

At 8.45pm, fireworks will mark the finale of the festivities on the harbour.

Meanwhile, face painting, an animal farm and a 3pm concert with The Wiggles will be rolled out at Hyde Park through the day to keep the kids entertained.

"Police have said that the crowd that comes to The Wiggles, Dorothy the Dinosaur and Peppa Pig are the best behaved crowds of the Australia Day weekend," Blue Wiggle, Anthony told reporters.

"It is a lovely, lovely day for families to come along, celebrate Australia and the multicultural society we live in."

Further west in Sydney's Olympic Park, about 6000 Sydneysiders are expected to head to Bicentennial Park for fireworks, sheep shearing, whip cracking and sheep dog trial shows.

Elsewhere in the state, more than 110 people are hoping to break a world record by riding the same wave at North Broulee Beach on the NSW south coast.

At Newcastle a national maritime festival will be held from 8am to 5pm.

Across the state, police are urging people to slow down after almost 800 speed infringement notices were issued on day one of the long weekend campaign.

"With 168 major crashes and one fatality, I'd like to again remind drivers to slow down, stay within the speed limit; no deadline is worth dying for," NSW Police Traffic and Highway Patrol Commander, Acting Assistant Commissioner Stuart Smith said in a statement.

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1974 flood victims face second recovery

IT was an abnormally wet summer when Cyclone Wanda crossed the Queensland coast 40 years ago today.

Wanda made landfall near Maryborough, about 250km north of Brisbane, as a relatively weak system, but at the time no one realised it was about to unleash the flood of the century on the state's capital.

In the five days that followed the cyclone's landfall on January 24, 1974, almost a metre of rain fell in the Brisbane area, and Ron and Patricia Goeldner were sitting ducks.

On January 25 all those years ago, the couple huddled on their second-floor balcony in Yeronga and gasped at what came into view as they trained a torch on the churning Brisbane River.

Through the rain and dark they snatched glimpses of yachts and caravans tumbling in the current.

Aside from the days of pelting rain, there'd been no proper warnings about just how far the river would rise.

The Goeldners' only realised the danger they were in when it was too late to save their most treasured possessions, including their children's baby photos.

By 5pm the next day, Australia Day, the river broke its banks at Yeronga and took just two hours to rise the 30 metres towards the Goeldners' home.

Ron flung his five-year-old son over one shoulder, his three-year-old daughter over the other, and tucked their cat under his arm.

Patricia followed with the budgie and a packet of Weet-Bix.

They waded through waist-deep water to their back neighbour's house where they were soon joined by 16 other soaked and bewildered neighbours.

"It just broke the bank and was on us, we had no warning," Patricia tells AAP.

When morning came, the river had risen further. Only their roof and a few tree tops could be seen above the boiling, muddy torrent.

By the time the water receded four days later, 14 people were dead and 300 injured, 6000 homes flooded in Brisbane and Ipswich to the west, 56 homes were completely destroyed - three of them in the Goeldners' street.

The flood had swallowed vast swathes of the city, with the river rising to a peak of 5.45 metres - about one-metre higher than Brisbane's 2011 flood disaster.

The 1974 event was the catalyst for the construction of the Wivenhoe Dam, 80km upstream from Brisbane. Finished a decade later, it was intended to mitigate future severe floods and prevent smaller ones.

The dam was designed to reduce the level of a 1974-scale flood by two metres. But it didn't.

When the 2011 flood hit Brisbane, it delivered another disaster for the Goeldner family. They had no insurance because they'd believed Wivenhoe would save them.

Water again swept through their home, albeit at a lower level than in 1974.

Property values have since plummeted and a recent assessment of the Goeldners' home wiped $340,000 off its value.

While Patricia is at peace with the 1974 "freak of nature" flood, she becomes tense when talking about the 2011 disaster, which she insists was avoidable.

She is one of 2500 flood victims who've signed up for a class action aimed at achieving a $1 billion-plus damages payout from the state over the 2011 event.

"We've always been told it wouldn't happen again because of Wivenhoe," Patricia says. "They've got to be held accountable."

Litigation funder IMF Australia and Maurice Blackburn lawyers will argue Wivenhoe's engineers should have released more water, earlier, to reduce the peak.

They will also question why the dam's flood centre was shut and monitored from home between January 2 and 6, despite the unfolding disaster.

Their modelling suggests that had the dam been properly operated, about 85 per cent of properties would have been spared flooding, and the rest would have escaped with less damage.

"This was a flood that didn't have to happen," Damian Scattini from Maurice Blackburn tells AAP.

A wide-ranging inquiry into the 2011 flood, and a subsequent Crime and Misconduct Commission investigation, found the four engineers who operated the dam didn't follow the manual.

But it cleared them of colluding to cover up their mistakes.

However, the dam's manual was described as a dog's breakfast and is being rewritten.

As a precaution, the dam will also be reduced to 75 per cent of capacity when extremely wet summers are forecast, and the Brisbane City Council is also improving its storm water systems to help protect 15 low-lying areas.

The class action is expected to be filed in March, and that can't come soon enough for the Goeldners.

It took them 18 years to financially recover from the 1974 flood. Their recovery from 2011 flood is a work in progress.

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Pouch-surfing could save wallabies

AS some of Australia's mammals stare down the barrel of extinction, researchers are hoping a bit of pouch-surfing might bring them back from the brink.

In a case of inter-species trickery, the new breeding technique involves transferring tiny joeys from the endangered wallabies into the pouches of other, more common species.

By swapping the young to a surrogate mother, it frees the endangered female from the burden of nursing their young and increases their breeding rate.

University of Newcastle Professor John Rodger said his colleague Dr David Taggart, a marsupial reproduction specialist, pioneered the technique.

So far he has tested it on the brush-tailed wallaby and the tammar wallaby.

In one of his most successful cases to date, a wallaby went from having one joey a year to eight, Prof Rodger said.

With 15 per cent of all wallabies and kangaroos either extinct or threatened, he said it offers the mammals a fighting chance.

And so far, the swapped wallabies haven't suffered from any identity problems.

"So far it seems that their (the joey's) behaviour, after they become independent, is appropriate for their species," Prof Rodger told AAP on Friday.

"Their behaviour is hard-wired rather than learned."

The professor and doctor are hoping to expand the cross-breeding program as part of a bid to establish a $200 million Co-operative Research Centre (CRC) for wildlife biodiversity.

A consortium of more than 40 partners, including universities, have applied for $40 million in federal funding to be rolled out over eight years.

Prof Rodger said they were due to find out any day as to whether their bid was successful.

"Everyone is obviously on tenterhooks waiting to find out," he said.

If successful, a raft of other species' pouches are in Dr Taggart's sights, including the long footed potoroo and mountain pygmy possum.

Dr Taggart's technique will be showcased in the up and coming David Attenborough documentary, The Rise of Mammals, to be aired in Australia in February.

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