Aust sheep trade ends 40-year ban on Iran (AAP)

View Comments AAP Australian exporters have been given the green light to start shipping livestock to Iran.

Australia is set to end a 40-year boycott on live animal exports to Iran with the signing of a health protocol agreement.

But critics and animal activists say it's a blow for animal welfare.

Iran has agreed to animal health certification protocols giving Australian exporters the green light to start shipping sheep, cattle and goats off to that country.

It's the first inroad to Iran in four decades since trade was banned following the 1970s revolution.

No timeline has been given for the resumption of exports but Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce says it will happen "as soon as possible".

"The next step will happen very quickly because Iranian importers ... want to get their hands on Australian stock," he told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

Animal activists labelled the trade resumption as a step back for animal welfare and called for the expansion of the chilled-meat trade.

"The best welfare outcome for Australian animals is for them to be slaughtered here to Australian standards," the RSPCA said in a statement.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie was appalled by the live-trade expansion into "particularly notorious" countries.

"It's horrifying," he told reporters in Canberra.

Iran was Australia's biggest market for sheep before the boycott, and the trade resumption will open up a potentially $20 million market.

It's understood the deal will fall within the guidelines of Australian and UN and trade sanctions that limit deals with Iranian financial services, listed entities and specific persons.

Those sanctions do not prohibit the provision of food to Iran.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/23927806/aust-sheep-trade-ends-40-year-ban-on-iran/

Qantas Brisbane staff not warned of cuts (AAP)

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Some Qantas call centre workers who will lose their jobs in Brisbane first heard the news through the media, a union says.

Qantas' Brisbane call centre, which employs around 200 full-time equivalent employees will be closed by 2016, while its Melbourne operation, which employs approximately 250 full time equivalent employees, would close by mid-2015.

Australian Services Union's Queensland secretary Julie Bignell said Brisbane staff were given 10 minutes to prepare for a meeting, but some had already heard the news after it had been leaked to the media.

"By then the union office was already receiving text messages and phone calls from our members in the call centres saying `what's going on?'," she told reporters on Wednesday.

"That's just an appalling lack of consideration for your loyal employees to have to run around and ask other people whether they've got a job or not."

Employees in the Brisbane and Melbourne call centres will be offered re-deployment to Hobart, where the airline will base its call centre operations in a single facility by 2016.

Ms Bignell said while the Tasmanian government was offering incentives for Qantas to move its operations to the state, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman had been ignoring repeated requests to meet with the union.

Mr Newman said Qantas, which has moved heavy maintenance and catering to Brisbane in the last year, needed to make its own business decisions.

"They have to arrange activities as they see fit," the premier said.

"I certainly expect that Qantas will look after the families affected."

But Shadow Treasurer Curtis Pitt told AAP the premier was standing by to watch more and more companies shed jobs.

"The premier needs to work with industry to help affected workers and drive down Queensland's 6.3 per cent unemployment rate, levels not seen since the GFC."

The ASU will meet with Qantas on Thursday to fight for the jobs, but believes more will be heading offshore.

Qantas previously announced a $2 billion transformation program, which will eventually see it shed 5000 jobs.

The airline later rejected claims from the ASU that the announcement of the cuts was leaked by the carrier to media before staff were briefed.

A spokesman for Qantas told AAP that employees were called in for an announcement at the call centre sites before the announcement being made to media.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/23918612/qantas-brisbane-staff-not-warned-of-cuts/

Xie cried about deaths: Lin grandma (AAP)

View CommentsAAP Robert Xie's mother-in-law (C) says he cried as he told her about discovering the Lin family dead.

The Lin family matriarch doesn't accuse her son-in-law Robert Xie of carrying out the five murders that left her son and two grandchildren dead in their Sydney home.

But neither has she declared his innocence.

"I don't accuse him of being the killer. I don't say he is innocent because I don't have any evidence," Feng Qin Zhu said on another emotional day of evidence at the Supreme Court.

Mrs Zhu sat with her head in her hands for most of Xie's trial on Wednesday as a jury watched a police interview of the grandmother describing the day she discovered she had lost five family members.

In the interview, Mrs Zhu said alleged killer Xie had called her husband on the morning of July 18, 2009 to say something had happened to her son, newsagent Min Lin.

Xie then picked up the pair from their Merrylands home and drove them to their son's home at North Epping.

During this trip, Mrs Zhu said Xie cried as he recounted what he and his wife Kathy had found upon entering the Lin home that morning.

He said they had gone upstairs and seen Min's wife Lily with "blood all over her face".

They then found Lily's sister Irene, before discovering the two grandsons - Henry and Terry - lying on their bedroom floor, not breathing.

"When he said he saw Lily lying in blood I asked him if he saw my son and he said he did not see him," Mrs Zhu says in the interview from September 2009.

"My husband and I, we were both in such a shock. Our minds were just blank."

In the hours before this conversation took place, the Crown alleges that Xie crept into his brother-in-law Min and sister-in-law Lily's home and killed them, her sister Irene and their two sons Henry, 12 and Terry, nine, with a hammer-like weapon.

In the months after the deaths, Mrs Zhu said Xie, her husband and herself had fought about who would look after the surviving member of the family.

"My husband said `Xie family is Xie family and Lin family is Lin family' ... and he (Xie) replied, `I hate you all to death, get out of my house'," she told the court.

Afterwards, Mrs Zhu said Xie apologised telling her "Mumma ... I shouldn't have said those things."

It was her daughter Kathy, she said, who first raised the issue of Min's assets with her.

Later the family received an anonymous letter naming Xie as the killer, the court heard.

The trial continues.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/23915399/xie-cried-about-deaths-lin-grandma/

Robert Xie *sounded nervous* when he told relatives of Lin family deaths, court hears (ABC)

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The man accused of murdering five family members in Sydney seemed nervous when he told other relatives about their deaths, a court has heard.

Robert Xie, 50, is accused of killing his brother-in-law Norman Lin and his family at their home in Boundary Road, North Epping, in July 2009.

Today jurors were played a video of a police interview given by Mr Lin's mother, Feng Qing Zhu, in 2010.

In it she said Xie was crying and sounded nervous and "a bit scared" when he phoned to say something had happened to the family.

Ms Zhu said he then drove her and her husband from their home in Merrylands to the Lin family home.

She said on the way, Xie told her he did not know where her son was, but that he had seen Ms Lin's body covered in blood and that he had seen the bodies of her sister Irene and the Lin children Henry and Terry.

The court has previously heard that Xie and his wife Kathy Lin found the bodies inside the house.

Ms Zhu said when she arrived at the property Kathy Lin was outside with emergency crews and seemed sad.

"You could see that she was very low and she tried to comfort us," she said.

In the police interview Ms Zhu was also questioned about a family dinner she hosted, and Xie attended, in the hours before he is accused of murdering the family.

She said the family left her home about 9.30pm (AEST).

The Crown alleges Xie was bitter and resentful towards some of the adults in his family.

Xie - a former surgeon and restaurant owner - has pleaded not guilty to five counts of murder.

The trial - which is in its third week - is expected to last for four months.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/23918507/robert-xie-sounded-nervous-when-he-told-relatives-of-lin-family-deaths-court-hears/

Second *sink hole* opens up in a Swansea street, near Newcastle (ABC)

View Comments ABC The second sink hole is a few metres wide.

Concrete is being used to fill two so-called "sink holes" that are threatening the stability of homes in Lake Macquarie near Newcastle.

The first hole opened up underneath a three-storey home on Lambton Parade at Swansea Heads, forcing the residents inside to evacuate last night.

Emergency crews were called when neighbours noticed the hole had caused the front corner of the house to sink, extensively damaging the property.

The hole is about 7 metres wide and 5 metres deep, and is believed to be a disused mine shaft.

A second sink hole, which is a few metres wide, opened up in the front yard of a neighbouring property this morning.

The Mine Subsidence Board is using concrete to fill the holes.

University of Newcastle engineering professor Stephen Fityus says he does not think the neighbourhood should be concerned.

"If there's one big shaft in this particular area it's unlikely there'll be dozens of them, that's not the way coal mines work," he said.

"Coal mines are usually horizontal features and so when things collapse they tend to collapse over a relatively short, vertical height and occasionally shafts go back to the surface.

"This is probably an anomaly than anything that's likely to be a trend of more things to come."

Dennis Thompson's house is between the two properties affected by the sink holes.

He and his wife made the discovery when they went outside this morning.

"My wife got up this morning to water the grass and after the meter turned off she could still here it ticking over," he said.

"So we went back out to investigate, and low and behold there's a hole in this side of the property as well.

"So immediately I went and notified the neighbour who came out and very casually said 'I better do something about it'."

Mr Thompson said it was quite a shock.

"We've never had a problem here in the past, even when we had the earthquake there was very little damage done out here," he said.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/23908132/second-sink-hole-opens-up-in-a-swansea-street-near-newcastle/

Hikers found in Snowy Mountains after surviving night in freezing conditions (ABC)

View Comments Hikers missing in Snowy Mountains found safe and well

A Sydney couple missing in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains has been found safe and well.

The 62-year-old woman and 65-year-old man became lost after leaving a Thredbo Village lodge to go walking in Kosciuszko National Park yesterday morning.

The woman contacted emergency services shortly before 3:00pm (AEST) to say they were lost.

High winds and freezing conditions hampered a search for the pair overnight and this morning.

Superintendent Rod Smith says the pair walked out themselves about 9:00am into the arms of an ambulance officer at Thredbo.

"We're quite surprised and it's remarkable they've been able walk out in such good condition considering the weather we had overnight which was just atrocious in that area," he said.

"We had rain, we had snow on the peaks, winds up to 100 kilometres an hour and the temperature got down with a wind chill factor of minus 16 degrees overnight. It doesn't get much worse than that really."

Superintendent Smith says they are yet to find out how the couple survived overnight and where they sheltered.

Autumn weather in Snowy Mountains 'can turn suddenly'

The search comes 12 months after Canadian student Prabhdeep Srawn went missing in the Snowy Mountains

The 25-year-old was last seen at Charlotte Pass Village on May 13, 2013, before heading off on a bushwalk to Mt Kosciuszko and then onto another unknown mountain nearby.

Mr Srawn has not been seen or heard of since.

Superintendent Smith says people need to take extra care when hiking this time of year.

"Some people get themselves into strife perhaps because they head out into conditions with a blue sky and good weather and it can turn so suddenly this time of year," he said.

"People can become disoriented and the conditions are such that they get lost or something bad happens to them like a trip or a fall."

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/23905596/hikers-found-in-snowy-mountains-after-surviving-night-in-freezing-conditions/

Health boss Gavin Austin rejects findings in damning Integrity Commission report (ABC)

View Comments ABC Mr Austin did not respond to a Government deadline to show reason why he should not be suspended.

One of the Tasmanian health bureaucrats named in an Integrity Commission report as engaging in misconduct has disputed the allegations.

A damning report tabled in Parliament yesterday found the former Royal Hobart Hospital boss Jane Holden hired her associate Gavin Austin without following proper processes.

It also found Mr Austin hired several of his past associates and his own son without following due process.

The commission's report points to a culture of spin and cover up in Tasmania's health system and says cultural change is needed.

It said Mr Austin hired a family member to do work on King Island without following proper processes.

Both managers told investigators they relied on their subordinates to know the procedures.

Mr Austin, who is the head of the North-West Health Organisation, has refused an interview request.

But in a text message to the ABC he says he is following a legal process and he disputes the allegations.

"I do want to add it has been my privilege working for the board, the people, patients and staff of the North-West. I look forward to the outcome of the investigation," the message reads.

Mr Austin was given until 5pm yesterday to give reasons why he should not be suspended.

He did not respond by the deadline.

Ms Holden has also refused to comment. She remains on the public payroll.

A prominent Hobart lawyer has criticised the Integrity Commission report.

The Australian Lawyers Alliance's Greg Barns says the commission is not like a court because it does not give the accused the right to cross-examine their accusers.

"I think that the conduct of the minister in releasing the report in the parliament, by effectively hanging these people out to dry without them being entitled to have their say, is appalling conduct," he said.

The commision took the unusual step of naming the pair in the report to give context and because of their seniority.

The Government looks set to use the report to restructure the health system at a time when it needs to find huge savings.

Despite many people being aware of the allegations the Commission said it took a member of the public to raised the alarm revealing an unethical culture within the department.

The Government has one month to respond to the report, but has vowed to take action on the 11 recommendations.

They include declaring all conflicts of interest; a review of remuneration to public servants and an audit of all recruitment in the North west health system.

The Auditor-General is currently conducting an audit of state service recruitment.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/23908246/health-boss-gavin-austin-rejects-findings-in-damning-integrity-commission-report/