The price you pay for being an Aussie

$A falls slightly on job losses Source: AAP

COMPARED to Yanks, we shell out half as much again to fill our tanks. Shave or buy shoes and you'll lose. We're so expensive that the price Canadians pay for a pair of jeans at home would only buy one leg here. Need a drink? Well, you'll get stiffed on that too.

"I don't know that many people realise just how ripped off we've been," said executive director of The Australia Institute, economist Richard Denniss.

Analysis by News Ltd reveals we are paying as much as 170 per cent more for comparable products. This is consistent with 2011 research by The Australia Institute, which also found that local prices were sometimes double those overseas.

Dr Denniss said yesterday that "we pay some of the highest prices in the world for most consumer goods and have for many years".

Australians pay some of the highest prices in the world for most consumer goods and have for many years, says economist Richard Denniss.

Which is what's prompting us to buy more from offshore, and to be bolshier when shopping in stores here.

CommSec chief economist Craig James, who has tracked international prices of everything from iPads to BMWs, said: "In the past, Australians sat back and accepted the price on offer, but the culture has changed. Now we don't just accept the sticker price.

"The internet has opened up the world to people, as has the higher Australian dollar," he said.

Dr Denniss said online retailing "is doing what competition law has failed to do".

Several technology giants have been summonsed to appear before a parliamentary committee on IT goods pricing

Our market was very concentrated, he said., which led to high prices.

The Australia Institute's 2011 research cited data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that found the average mark-up on clothes and shoes was 142 per cent. For electronics, the mark-up was 85 per cent and on furniture, 76 per cent.

"But the profit margins that our retailers are used to are gone forever," Dr Denniss said.

Both Mr James and Dr Denniss believed local retailers were responding to the rise of the internet.

Major department store chains Myer and David Jones, as well as supermarkets Woolworths and Coles, have forced multinational suppliers to cut prices.

And the current federal parliamentary inquiry into IT pricing had helped to raise awareness of just how expensive many goods are in Australia, Dr Denniss said. It emerged on Monday that tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft and Adobe had each received a summons to appear from a committee of politicians probing the prices we pay for software, games, devices and downloads.

Dr Denniss said the Free Trade Agreement between Australian and the US had the capacity to force American companies to offer their wares on more reasonable terms.

"Australia doesn't need to change the terms of the Free Trade Agreement, its terms need to be implemented," Dr Denniss said.

While Aussies do pay more than most around the world for what we need and want, we also earn more than most.

OECD data show average earnings in US dollar terms are 37 per cent higher here than America- and nearly 50 per cent better than in the UK. We earn a third more than Canadians, according to the OECD. It doesn't track New Zealand, but our wages are reportedly 50 per ce nt higher than Kiwis'.

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Firefighters killed by fallen tree

DSE firefighters tackled the fires in the Harrietville region this week. Picture: Simon Dallinger Source: Herald Sun

TWO firefighters have died fighting a gigantic blaze in isolated bushland in northeastern Victoria.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment officers were killed yesterday afternoon by a tree that fell on their vehicle.

Authorities confirmed last night the victims were a man in his 30s from Corryong and a woman in her late teens from Tallandoon.

They were working around the remote Pheasant Creek Track at Selwyn, 170km north-east of Melbourne. Emergency services converged on the area last night, braving the fire, harsh terrain and the risk of of further falling trees.

The Australian Workers Union said the two DSE firefighters were killed in the line of duty.

"Our members have confirmed that two firefighters unfortunately lost their lives," AWU Victorian secretary Cesar Melhem said.

The pair had been part of a major effort fighting the fire that has been burning in the Harrietville area for weeks, intermittently threatening communities.

The fire threat prevented emergency crews from getting to the pair. Officers did not get to the scene until 8.10pm.

A coroner will head to the scene this morning.

Mr Melhem said last night members were in mourning, adding the loss would be shattering for their families.

He said the DSE firefighters were "the SAS of the firefighters. (They) work in the most horrific conditions imaginable, away from the big centres, out in the bush, and with very little recognition of their heroic contribution to the state. They have died heroes, which will be no small comfort to those that grieve them."

They are the third and fourth Victorian firefighters to die this summer.

In December, CFA volunteer Peter Harry collapsed died while battling a house fire in Gisborne.

Last month, 61-year-old DSE firefighter Peter Cramer, from Gippsland, died fighting a fire in Tasmania.

- with Anthony Dowsley and Angus Thompson

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Australian woman's NYC rape horror

An Australian tourist was raped in a midtown Manhattan alley after exiting her taxi and being grabbed from behind by this man, according to New York police. Source: The Daily Telegraph

AN Australian woman raped in New York City was attacked across town from where another woman of a similar age was assaulted last week.

The 20-year-old from Victoria had left the exclusive Lavo nightclub - a celebrity haunt and favourite of Hollywood superstar Leonardo DiCaprio - and was heading back to her hotel when she was grabbed from behind and dragged into an alleyway in the early hours of Sunday morning.

It is believed the woman had been travelling in a taxi but for some reason began arguing with the driver and left the vehicle.

While she is not sure exactly where she was attacked it is believed to be in the vicinity of East 58th Street and the exclusive Madison Avenue.

Earlier that week a 22-year-old woman was forced into an alleyway at East 27th Street and Glenwood Road.

Police say a man approached the victim, punched her repeatedly and proceeded to rape her.

He then stole her mobile phone and her wallet.

It is not known if the woman was also a tourist.

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade yesterday confirmed an Australian was involved in the latest incident.

"We are providing consular assistance to the woman's family in Australia," she said.

The man wanted over the rape of the Australian woman is believed to be aged between 35 and 40 years of age, 187cm tall and 86kg.

At the time of the attack he was wearing a dark cap.

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Mad-cow countries can sell us their beef

Dutch and Croation beef has been cleared for importation to Australia. Source: Supplied

AUSTRALIA has reopened the door to beef imports from Europe, a decade after banning meat from countries with a history of mad cow disease.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand has ruled that consumers face a "negligible" risk of catching brain-wasting disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) from eating Croatian or Dutch beef.

"FSANZ completed BSE food safety risk assessments for these countries and concluded that the BSE risk posed to consumers from the export of beef products from these countries is negligible," Food Standards said in a statement.

"While meat from these countries can be imported, there are import certification requirements in place and in the case of Croatia, more stringent requirements."

The official green light ends a decade-long import ban on fresh or frozen beef from Europe.

New Zealand and Vanuatu - both BSE-free - have been the only countries allowed to sell beef in Australia.

Butchers and supermarkets will have to label all meat with the country of origin, under new Federal Government labelling laws to take force in July.

But restaurants and takeaway food outlets are exempt, so diners will not know if they are eating Australian or imported meat.

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Department yesterday said it had not yet issued any beef import permits from Croatia or The Netherlands.

"The new arrangements ... are yet to take effect with respect to issuing new import permits," it said in a statement.

Liberal senator Bill Heffernan - a farmer who chairs the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs References Committee - yesterday called on the Federal Government to "err on the side of caution".

"I don't think Australia should accept beef from anywhere that's had a BSE outbreak, simple as that," he said.

"There's no such thing as a BSE-free herd or zone because there is no live test for the disease, and the human variant (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease) can incubate for 30 years."

But Cattle Council of Australia chief executive Jed Matz yesterday said the import approval did not bother Australia's cattle farmers.

"We're supporters of free trade," he said.

"If they're safe then we welcome their imports. I don't think there would be a very large amount of meat being imported from those two countries so I wouldn't be concerned."

Eight other countries, including Mexico, Turkey, Brazil and Lithuania, have lined up to seek Food Standards approval to sell their beef in Australia.

The United States has put its application on hold.

Australia has never had a case of BSE, a brain-wasting disease in cattle that can infect people who eat contaminated beef.

The Food Standards assessment of the Dutch application found 88 cases of BSE had been detected in The Netherlands since 1997.

It rated The Netherlands as having a "negligible BSE risk".

Food Standards found that no cases of BSE have been confirmed in Croatia to date, and rated the country as a "controlled BSE risk".

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Lovelorn Aussies being fleeced online

EXCLUSIVE: AUSTRALIANS have lost $23 million to dating scams in the past 12 months - an all-time high.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will use Valentine's Day to reveal that in 2012 it received reports from 65 people who admitted handing over at least $100,000 each. More than 1100 said they had lost money.

The losses are up more than 50 per cent on 2010 levels and the number of victims has increased 85 per cent in only two years.

Frauds built around the chance of romance are especially insidious - and successful.

The current "Targeting Scams'' report by the ACCC finds that while dating scams make up just 2.5 per cent of complaints, they account for 25 per cent of losses. And the proportion of complainants who say they lost money is 46 per cent - nearly four times the average of all scams.

According to the ACCC, in a romance scam the shonk typically develops a strong rapport with the victim, often over weeks or months. A 2011 report by the Australian Institute of Criminology found that one-third of victims said they had been in contact with their scammer more than 20 times. Three people said they had been in contact with their scammer more than 200 times.

They play on the target's emotions.

"Sometimes they even send flowers,'' ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard said.

Then comes the request for money to supposedly help cover costs associated with illness, injury or a family crisis. Dating and romance scammers often approach their victims on legitimate dating websites, then attempt to move them away from the security of the website to instead communicate by, say, email.

Last year the ACCC set out guidelines for dating sites that encouraged them to more closely scrutinise profiles for pictures known to be used by scammers, Internet Protocol addresses that would identify users in countries linked to fraud activity, and unusually high message volumes.

Ms Rickard had a simple message for users of match-making sites.

"Never, never, never send money to someone you haven't met,'' she said.

If you have fallen victim, stop communicating, plus change your email address and other contact details. Report the scammer to the dating site. If you've lost money, inform the police and the ACCC. If you've bank account details, speak to your bank.

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Traitorous plot to kill his brother

Brother accused of his murder ... William Metlej. Source: The Daily Telegraph

A CONSTRUCTION worker has been accused of organising an assassination attempt on his brother after twice planting drugs in his house in the hope of having him arrested.

William Metlej survived being shot in the head by an alleged hitman outside his Earlwood home in 2002, but he had no idea who his enemies were.

One was his brother Joseph Stephen Metlej and another was close friend Christopher James Poniris, 42, of Strathfield, who was a key participant in the conspiracy to eliminate William, a court heard yesterday.

After a five-year investigation by NSW police and the Crime Commission, the two men were arrested in 2007.

Poniris and Joseph had twice planted drugs in William's home and tipped off police, who raided the Minnamorra Ave house on both occasions, the court heard.

When they failed to have William jailed, the pair then had Robert Enzo Martin - the owner of one-hat restaurant Il Piave in Rozelle - hire an assassin who allegedly shot the father of two in the head on his driveway.

Details of the extraordinary case emerged in the Sydney District Court yesterday at the trial of Christian Roberto Follert, who is accused of being the gunman. He has pleaded not guilty to discharging a weapon at a person with intent to murder and shooting at a person with intent to commit grievous bodily harm.

Follert's barrister Roland Bonnici told the court someone had shot Metlej but police had arrested the wrong man.

In his opening address to the jury, crown prosecutor Chris Everson told the court William was taking his son to swimming training at Newington College on November 28, 2002.

He parked the car across from his house after noticing one of the tyres of the car was flat. As he was changing the tyre a gunman approached him from behind and shot him in the back of the head and shoulder.

Mr Metlej was in a coma but eventually returned to full health.

Mr Everson told the jury Poniris approached Martin at his restaurant on Darling St and said William had sexually molested Joseph when they were younger and he wanted him killed.

The story was a lie but Martin arranged to meet Follert - an old school friend - who allegedly agreed to murder Mr Metlej for $50,000.

Joseph was sentenced to a two-year suspended sentence in 2011. Poniris was jailed for 14 years last June but has lodged a notice of intention to appeal.

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Tony Abbott's bold water plan leaked

More like it to come? ... Warragamba Dam / Pic: Polair3 Source: The Daily Telegraph

UP to 100 dams could be built across the country to prevent floods, fuel power stations and irrigate a food boom to feed 120 million people across the Asia Pacific region, under plans being considered by Opposition leader Tony Abbott.

In the second high-level policy leak in a week, The Daily Telegraph has obtained a copy of the Coalition's draft policy discussion paper for water management of Australia.

Included in the list of dam projects, which the Coalition will consider, is a $500 million plan to raise Warragamba Dam in Sydney, and new dams for NSW in the Hunter Valley, Central Highlands and along the Lachlan River.

The last major new dam built in NSW was Splitrock - in northern NSW in 1987.

The majority of the dams would be in northern Australia, where they would be used to irrigate arid zones for agriculture and more than double Australia's food production.

Claiming the environmental lobby had been to blame for the lack of new water infrastructure, the report from the Coalition's water taskforce endorses a major dam-building program to "help feed 120 million people and beyond over the coming decades".

The total cost of the water plan, if all projects were approved, would be $30 billion - and would be funded by a mix of public and private sector finance.

The document was written by a Coalition taskforce chaired by shadow finance minister Andrew Robb and deputy chair Barnaby Joyce, shadow environment minister Greg Hunt, spokesman on northern Australia Ian MacDonald, spokesman on the Murray Darling Simon Birmingham and Senator Bill Heffernan.Attached to the document is a list of 100 dams across the nation the Coalition has identified as potential projects. The document explicitly states the Coalition does not necessarily endorse all the projects.

What do you think of this plan? Tell us below

One of the projects involves transporting water from the Kimberley region, 1500km to Perth, using canals, pipelines and ocean super tankers or large synthetic bags towed behind tug boats.

The document clearly favours many of the projects, including those identified as flood-mitigation measures, and larger projects that would be used to irrigate a new food bowl in the Top End.

The draft paper claims a final Coalition policy on dams and water management will be released in early 2013.

Mr Robb, in a foreword to the document, claimed: "We have identified more than 100 dams and water management proposals. A Coalition government will not support the construction of dams for the simple sake of building dams, however, it will back projects that bring demonstrable community benefits.

"Many opportunities to pursue projects that would enhance water security, help to mitigate floods, provide hydro power, and perhaps most importantly to grow our economic prosperity while being sensitive to the environment, have been missed."

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Woman invents ghost to keep house

A WOMAN claimed her family home was haunted in a bid to keep the price tag low enough that she could keep it in a divorce settlement.

The wife, 52, told her husband, lawyers, a property valuer and a court a ghost had been seen at the property.

But she was happy to remain in the house and wanted the chance to keep it, while her estranged husband wanted it sold.

The wife, through her solicitors, wrote to the valuer saying it was "her belief that the property is haunted" and asking how this would impact on the property's value.

The court heard the valuer appeared "rather amused" by the request and replied: "Exorcism is not one of our many speciality services and unless the ghost was held captive in the room to which we could not gain access, it must have been at lunch."

The woman maintained in court there was a ghost in the house and many people in her street knew it.

She said her nephew had seen the ghost some years ago and she "felt something".

The court heard the haunting was confined to one room of the house, the wife's bedroom.

She raised other problems with the property, including a leaking shower, slugs, termites and a freight line near the house that ran day and night.

Federal Magistrate Stephen Scarlett said it was a blatant attempt to persuade the valuer to reduce the price he put on the property.

"I found this account of the alleged haunting to be unbelievable and I am satisfied that the claim was fabricated for an ulterior purpose, namely, as an attempt to influence the valuer to return a low valuation of the former matrimonial home," he said.

The valuer confirmed none of the wife's concerns had any bearing on his $750,000 price tag.

The court judgment, splitting everything the couple owned, allowed the wife to keep the house if she was able to pay the husband $189,000.

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